Pulitzer shmulitzer
I recently read two Pulitzer Prize winning novels, in an attempt to shore up my credibility as a semi-literate individual. The first one, Tinkers, is a little book that seemed to be right up my alley, but I couldn’t even get through half of it. (Which is extremely rare — I tend to finish books even if I don’t like them.) The second one, A Visit from the Goon Squad, was something I had heard peripherally good things about, and it is centered around the music industry, so I thought it’d be a safe bet. I finished the book, but more out of spite than because I was enjoying it. At several points I was mildly angered that I was subjecting myself to the experience.
I don’t want to turn this into a book review, and I know there’s no accounting for taste, but the experience got me thinking in general about the endorsements of so-called experts.
The Grammy Awards are a joke
I hope I’m not shattering any illusions here, but amongst us musicians, the longest standing, deepest, saddest joke in the realm of music awards are the Grammy Awards. (Let the flame wars commence!) If I can let my pretension flourish for a moment, the list of last year’s nominees is a depressing collection of soulless pop stars, beloved past-their-prime rock and rollers, and benign jazz artists.
A quick search on Google for “grammy awards are a joke” yields 3,460,000 results. Searching on “grammy awards are great” yields 4 hits. Surely, I thought, some sort of record low, until I searched for “grammy awards are awesome” and was given 2 results. Of course, people like to complain more than they like to give praise, but the disparity does say something of note.
Oscar, Oscar, Oscar
I’m no expert, but according to my naive take, the list of best picture award winners isn’t overtly embarrassing like the Grammy list. I do imagine, however, that amongst genuine cinephiles the Oscars are at the very least considered to be glamorizing big budget fare at the expense of more artistic, smaller budget films.
Google returns 5,210,000 results for the phrase “oscars are a joke”, which doesn’t necessarily mean that the Oscars are less well thought of than the Grammy Awards, but does seem to point to the idea that more people are talking about the possibility.
Why all the hate?
So what is it about these popular awards that generates so much scoffing from those in the know? For one thing, any judgement regarding an aesthetic matter will inevitably start a vigorous debate amongst experts. Tie that with the crass commercialization of the most popular award shows, and you’ve got a recipe for disenfranchisement of the upper tier of any artistic discipline.
Self-Policing
One solution to the problem is self-policing by experts, for experts.
Of course the problem here is insularity. The more you close off your judging community from the masses, the more you form a self-contained critical vacuum into which less fresh air can enter.
One community taking this tack is Dribbble. (No, that’s not a misspelling; there are three bs.) It’s a show-us-what-you’re-working-on website for designers — something like Twitter with small pictures instead of small text entries. And like many other social sites, you can “like” pictures that have been posted, which in essence means that the community is judging its own members.
Thus the idea is to limit the pool of artists and artwork to the upper tier. As they say in their FAQs: “All players are drafted (invited) by members. Having members take responsibility for those they draft sharpens the focus on sharing interesting work. We also limit invitations…”
Does it work? Well, designs posted on Dribbble are generally of a very high caliber, so something is working right. Of course, that’s just one designer’s opinion, and perhaps the beauty of Dribbble is that they don’t care what I think about what they post.
Are you listening to the right people? And how do you decide who the right people are?
