Oscar, Oscar, Oscar

There was a time when I cared about the Oscars because I liked movies and thought that it was important that better movies or performances or screenplays or whatever won the awards.

Then I realized that competitive awards for artistic endeavors are inherently bullshit.

But I still kinda cared about the Oscars because I thought that if the movie artists I liked won awards, then they would get more and better work, and so I would get to watch more movies that I would enjoy.

That didn’t work out, largely because (a) winning an Oscar doesn’t often result in more and better work for actors, writers or directors, and (2) winning an Oscar occasionally results in the particular Oscar-winner doing different work than the work that I had previously enjoyed, specifically work that I personally found less enjoyable.

Then it became increasingly infrequent that any of the nominated (or even the mentioned-as-snubbed) artists were people that I cared about, wanted to see more work from, or had even heard about.

But I still kinda cared about the Oscars because, despite competitive awards for artistic endeavors being inherently bullshit, it is still probably the best way to alert people to Good Stuff.

Then the overlap between my taste and the Academy’s taste diverged enough that I no longer really care what the Academy considers good stuff.

Also then: much of the resources (of money, talent and skill, among other things) was diverted from films to long-form television. This largely meant that the movies that were up for Oscars are increasingly irrelevant to the cultural zeitgeist in general.

Then really good video recordings of theater became available and I largely stopped watching movies altogether.

Although it turns out that I have seen five films that have been nominated for Oscars in various categories this year, and enjoyed, like, three and a half of them. So that’s all right.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.