I used to be obsessed with the Oscars. Now awards season just bums me out

Cut to the Feeling is a monthly column by Anne T. Donahue about the art and pop culture that sparks joy, grief, nostalgia, and everything in between.

The year Titanic swept the Oscars, I taped the ceremony on VHS, dressed up in my Bootlegger best, and soaked up the hours-long broadcast because I had my 1998 priorities straight. I was a preteen obsessed: I lived for the fashion, the speeches, and the fleeting glimpses of my future husband, Leo. I laughed at the jokes I didn't understand, and teared up at each montage because I knew they were speaking directly to me. The Oscars were an important event, and I was happy to pay witness. I had found a niche.

The Emmys, Golden Globes, and MTV Movie Awards (the best awards because back then they were edgy) dictated where I would be sitting in front of my TV and when. As my teens melted into my twenties, my friends and I would gather 'round with treats and drinks, watching and reacting, and vowing to one day create anything that would garner the same semblance of gravitas. (None of us particularly wanted to make a movie, but listen: you never know.) I recapped award shows, wrote about award shows, and raged against the crimes committed by them, too. Until one day I just stopped caring, and unless I was commissioned to write about them, I largely tuned out.

Or so I tell myself. The journey from award show obsessive to its indifferent counterpart has been years in the making. As a suburban kid who took Hollywood at face value, I spent a long stretch of time believing the movies and actors I liked best should be the ones who earned trophies, and most movies I loved catered to my white, heteronormative narrative so I was usually appeased. I didn't understand the necessity of different points of view or that I liked these movies because I saw myself in them. I didn't understand why P.S. I Love You wasn't a shoe-in for Best Picture.

But then you grow up, and award culture doesn't.

For decades, writers, critics, directors, actors, and anyone with a creative mind had been challenging award show norms and the abuse of power that tends to dictate who wins what and for whom. In 2015, #OscarsSoWhite trended in response to the tidal wave of homogeneity that blanked the nominations, yet 2016's Best Picture nominees were still a buffet of whiteness. The Golden Globes, the "fun" awards due to its adjacence to free-flowing alcohol, has been historically entrenched in discrimination and controversy, including acts of blatent racism, bribery, and sexual assault (to name a few). Even the BAFTAs are a disappointment: Lily Gladstone was snubbed this year despite her unparalleled performance in Killers of The Flower Moon and so was Andrew Scott (who broke all of our hearts in All of Us Strangers).

Yet the snub discourse is also indicative of the skewed lens award shows present with. Last week, conversation fixated on Barbie and lack of nominations for Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie. Never mind that America Ferrera earned a nomination, that Greta Lee and Celine Song were robbed (robbed!), or that Lily Gladstone made history as the first Indigenous actor from the United States to ever receive a nomination. Instead, the focus laid the groundwork for a white feminist platform that culminated in a Hillary Clinton tweet that seemed to reflect her feelings on 2016's election loss. It was, to put it plainly, a massive bummer. And it reflected the ways in which pop culture has outgrown the awards economy almost entirely.

This isn't news. With every award show and every nomination announcement, we've come to expect disappointment. We mentally prepare for a host who can't read the room or straight-up refuses to. We remind ourselves that a Globe, Emmy, or Oscar may be validating, but aren't the markers for an extraordinary job. We self-soothe with the mental picture of an entire audience reacting to the La La Land incident of 2017. But most importantly, we ensure the films and TV shows that take risks and tell solid, authentic stories maintain a place in our own conversations. Pop culture worth celebrating weaves its way into cultural discourse which evolves into something more meaningful, interesting, and long-lasting. An award win may spark dialogue, but it's only maintained for the long haul if a piece of work can hold its own.

Plus, we know how the sausage gets made. The inner-workings of the film and television industries have been laid bare and we're all wise to the race, class, and gender hierarchies that define them. The SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes illuminated the wage disparities between billionaire CEOs and the casts and crews, as well as the apathy with which genuine concerns were (and are) treated. (Remember: the WGA strike was to continue until writers began to "lose their apartments.") The industry is broken, and so is the way in which it celebrates itself. Awards are nice, but they can't carry the conversation.

We can. By tuning out the pomp and circumstance (outside of being psyched to see people you like be publicly recognized), it's easier to seek out the work that emotionally or mentally resonates. And that's what the best pieces do, anyway: the movies and TV shows we remember and talk about and re-watch and formulate entire personalities around are the ones that weave their way into our brains and hearts. They're representative of varying perspectives and experiences (not just our own), and they engage us in ways mainstream art may not. It's very nice when something that hits home lands with the Academy, too. But a snub doesn't — and can't — devalue something that's interesting enough to thread its way into our conversations. I still love an award win speech, but a lack of one doesn't dull the sheen of an overlooked jewel.