Let us face it, cinema awards are usually controversial. More
so if they are from Bollywood , though you would be slightly assured as a
Bollywood fan that there are times when even Oscar awards have had their share
of controversies. Having said that the voting system of Oscars is a bit mature
which blesses it with some semblance of professionalism.
The scene in India every year moves from worse to worser.
Most of us know the now famous unwritten boycott of Bollywood awards that Aamir
Khan has been practicing for years now, it all started when Aamir was deprived
for an award for Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander and since then that movie is more
remembered for the controversy than its content.
The biggest problem that Indian cinema, particularly
Bollywood awards have no or zero credibility is that most of these awards are
owned by a certain media house and a lot of media channels in electronic medium
will not carry the stories about them or cover them because no one wants to
cover a competitor. Add the fact that some of the prominent awards are backed
by a TV house too so some awards get unabashed and unfair coverage some other
ones. In fact awards are even bartered at times As Akshay Kumar once famously
claimed that he was asked to do dance numbers for an award on stage by a famous
award ceremony group of Bollywood.
The national awards could have been the answer to being that
third party institution of perfect awards however with media ignoring these
beyond a point because they have their own awards to protect and then
governments ways of executing these awards have made them more like a necessary
yearly ceremony value than public respect. In short national awards are more
respected by those who win it, the public rarely is involved. In fact national
awards also have had their share of controversy in last few decades. Sometimes
a hard hitting movie that criticizes the government of the day is not just
nominated or sometimes a current favourite matinee idol is given an award just
to keep him or her loyal to the powers that be and before you jump to
conclusion this has been taking place since 1960s.
This year however another act of complete arrogance was
unleashed by a famous awards held by one of India’s most respected film media
publication. Let us not name it though for a lot many of you it will not be
difficult to hard guess which one it was. The said award has already declared
awards for 2018 when the year was a still four weeks away from getting over.
Some big banner movies are yet to be released and some of them have some of the
biggest makers and actors involved. If you were to draw a parallel it was like
Oscars being released without waiting for Silence Of The Lambs in that year.
What made the whole circus laughable was how media groups
congratulated the winners. How the winners went about tom toming there trophies
in the media and social media. How the fans went berserk. In all this no one
pointed out the blatant act of unfair blocking of some deserved actors. For
example without a doubt Gajraj Rao’s was a great performance in Badhaai
Ho, but how can we so certain that
Tigmanshu Dhulia would not be equally appealing in Zero? The point is not to
degrade Gajraj Rao. The point is fairness.
As such whenever a certain actor is recommended over someone
else then there is a fan group which gets agitated but at least an award
function should show that they have judged all the nominees of that year.
It will obviously take us years to get something which is as
credible and consistent as an Oscar but private award owners are the most
competent ones to show the way and over the years through consistency we could
start looking forward to these. In fact the whole act of these awards being
announced sooner than the year itself ending was probably the hunger to be the
fastest. TRP is where all media virtue melts.
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