Seriously, who gives a #$@! who the winner is?

The 80th Academy Awards took place last night, and as it's been the habit of this page for several years now, this page could not be bothered and retired early to finish off Standard of Honor, the second novel in Jack Whyte's Templar Trilogy. This page carries almost as much as contempt for awards shows as he does for so-called 'reality TV', and doesn't grasp how anyone can regard these affairs as being competitive, let alone interesting.

The Oscars pulls in ratings similar to the Super Bowl, but unlike the Super Bowl, the Oscars are a subjective competition, not an objective and transparent one. Once I get the past the insipid commercial excess and patriotic overkill of 'the big game', I can actually see the New York Giants surprise the New England Patriots because of their control of the line of scrimmage, their relentless pursuit of Tom Brady, and the athletic prowess of their receiving corps. In contrast, I couldn't tell anyone why No Country for Old Men won Best Picture. It's a good movie, but is there any empirical standard that makes it any better than the other nominated movies, or movies that weren't nominated?

It's often been said that the standard for awarding the Oscars is more political than empirical, which is perhaps why I can't be bothered, because the politics involved seems to be the middlebrow American standard of personality cults, style over substance, the love/hate relationship with populism, and the inability to seriously engage voters. This page actually knew someone who was a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and the only reason he looked forward to the Oscars was getting to see the nominated movies for free.

Perhaps if there were more moments during the Oscars like Marlon Brando turning his acceptance speech over to the American Indian Movement or Michael Moore calling 'Shame' on the Bush Administration, I would be more willing to engage this annual cinematic bacchanal, but as it stands, the Oscars only remind this page that I'm not one of the cool kids, and that many Americans still mistake gaudy overhyped popularity contests for real democracy.