Precisely why Bollywood Prize Demonstrates Fight to Continue to be Pertinent.

What’s the first thing that involves the mind when you think of ‘Oscars’ or ‘Golden Globes’? Prestige. It’s different when it comes to desi counterparts such as the 60 year old ‘Filmfare Awards’ or the much younger ‘Life OK Screen Awards’ (21 year old). ‘Oscars’, ‘Golden Globes’ and ‘Filmfare’ have something in common – a long legacy spanning over a half century. Oscar celebrates 87th year in 2015 whereas Golden Globes celebrates 72th year. Hollywood awards are known for their fair and transparent process in selecting the winners. Over 6000 elite Academy members vote for Oscars to select the yearly winners. As for Golden Globes, it constitutes 93 prominent journalists from all over the world, who’re members of Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), in the voting panel. When looking back, we are able to observe that these two major awards had an easy run without many controversies questioning their legitimacy & the choice process. Needless to say, a calculated campaigning can still sway the Oscar & Golden Globe voters – somewhat (as we witnessed in case of Shakespeare In Love in 1999 and Crash in 2015)! Brushing aside such minor hiccups, these awards continue to remain relevant and prestigious. The same can’t be said in regards to the Bollywood awards. Especially since we have twelve new award shows, the prestige is the final thing they are bothered about. bigg boss telugu vote

Where are Bollywood awards heading?

Well, it’s not heading to a wonderful place – that’s certain! Controversies and corruption ensure it is very hard for the Award shows to remain relevant & significant. Speaking of Filmfare awards, it’s a favorite award. The subscribers of the Filmfare magazine decide the winners through voting (however, they introduced critic’s choice awards for few major categories to make it less dull). As all of us know, public is not necessarily the most effective judge when it comes to quality of movies, acting and technical prowess. As Oscars realized, the folks who work in the commercial are the most effective to judge the merit of a movie or artist. Now it’s too late for Filmfare awards to alter their format. So, let’s not hound them on that matter. However, at the least they can be honest and fair in the manner in which they select the favorite awards. Invest the a closer look, despite giving good performances and milestone movies, Aamir Khan and his movies always missed Filmfare awards. Same may be said about Ajay Devgn as well. To refresh your memory, both Aamir Khan and Ajay Devgn spoke contrary to the politics behind award shows. Aamir Khan boycotted all the award shows (of course, except National Awards and Oscars). Time and again, we hear allegations these awards are ‘fixed’ ;.It’s not merely stars, fans likewise have spoken contrary to the dirty picture behind awards.

Award shows have become a huge televised event in India involving big money. So TRP matters. Who brings TRP? Big stars, who else! Don’t believe that it’s different in Hollywood. ABC, which can be under contract to broadcast Oscars until 2020, resorts to a number of circus to improve the TRP of Oscars (did you forget Ellen Degenerator’s selfie stunt during last year’s Oscar Ceremony?) However, in Hollywood big stars don’t ask for money or favours to attend these awards. If they’re nominated they will definitely show up at the red carpet and graciously cheer the winner despite their bitter losses. They understand the fact that maintaining a wholesome ecosystem of awards is essential for ensuring quality. In Bollywood, we hear a number of stories in regards to the insane demands of stars when it comes to attending award shows.’ If you should be not going to give me an award and then don’t bother sending an invitation’ – this seems to be the motto of the majority of the major stars, according to various reports. This leads to hilarious award categories. For the ‘best actor’ category, some award shows give as much as 5 different awards (best actor in a thriller, best actor in a crisis, best actor in a comedy and goes on)! Then they invent very creative award categories to accommodate a certain demanding actor! There clearly was a current controversy regarding music awards, where Honey Singh was presented with best music director award ignoring A R Rahman & Amit Trivedi!

Bollywood fans have already been discussing in regards to the pointlessness of Bollywood awards on social networking like Twitter and Facebook. It seems like everyone except award show organizers is aware of this growing criticism. Speaking of Oscars, we have something similar in Bollywood. IIFA (Indian International Film Awards), which came directly into existence in 2000, is a worldwide Bollywood award show where nominations & winners are selected by peers in the industry. The glossy award function is usually held at an international venue outside India. Nevertheless, they keep honouring minimal deserved winners. Moreover, they are not far behind when it comes to hilarious categories.

Simply speaking, Bollywood award scene is really a big mess right now. This is largely related to the fact that industry is disorganized to the core. They don’t have unity – they don’t have functional organizations for the actors and technicians. If they had, it would have been easier for them to conduct their particular award show modelled on Oscars. Because case, a respected outside agency (an agency named PricewaterhouseCoopers has the responsibility for tabulating Oscar votes) can handle the voting process to prevent politics and corruption. Also, it would force the stars to attend the awards without asking for favours. Such a move could pick up the system. But who is going to do that? The leading actors are in loggerheads all the time. They fight over everything and their cold wars and camp systems are infamous in Bollywood. So that it will be a lot to expect them to do something positive about this mess.