Oscar Season is incoming, and while I'm always excited to see all the movies, it's got me thinking about all of the industry that surrounds it. It has turned arts into sports. All of the prognosticating and the betting over the Oscars. How we measure the length of standing ovations at festival. Jockeying over the better Rotten Tomatoes score, both the critic's and the audience's.
And it’s not just movies, it’s music, too. Especially with the fandoms and factions. Trying to use numbers of streams and sales, chart positions, Grammy nominations and wins, and reviews to prove their fave is the best or better than your fave.
I just hate that the conversation has mirrored how we talk about sports and the "ring culture" over it all. People want the hard data to prove their fave is better, instead of letting any sort of subjectivity in. It turns the whole enterprise of discussing art into a cynical enterprise where we lose why we go to the movies or listen to the music in the first place. To make us feel, let us escape, recognize the commonalities of our lives to those on the screen and in our ears. Can we go cack to talking about the art?