Both claim to be events that celebrate excellence in their fields, be it athletic competition or artistic expression. The Olympics claim to be about amateur athletics, celebrating the unadulterated joy of competition. Even though professional athletes are allowed to participate and even the "amateur" athletes stand to make millions of dollars in endorsement deals if they succeed
The Oscars celebrate making movies, which is a commercial business, no one is an amateur here but the party line is, that this night is not about making money, it's about the pure art of movie making. But check out your local movie ads today, see how many movies are touting their Oscar wins and see how many movies are back in theatres with images of that little golden guy on their ads
Both are all about the numbers and the numbers relate to money. In the Olympics, you have the medal count. Even when a country like Canada didn't win in overall numbers, we like to say "But hey, we won more gold!"
In the Oscars, it's all about the numbers as well, primarily the number of statues a particular film was nominated for, or awarded. That will be touted in the revised film ads as well
Is one film actually better than another because it won more Oscars? Is an athlete more worthy of attention and fiscal rewards because they won gold over bronze? Is a country made superior because its athletes got more medals than another?
The Olympics and the Oscars are competitions. No matter how fuzzy wuzzy and kumbya they want us to feel, they are competitions. In competitions there are winners and losers. Both pretty much acknowledge there are degrees of victory as well; in the Olympics it's gold over silver, in the Oscars it's the number of awards you win and which awards you win. Nobody pays much attention if you won Best Sound Editing (but they should, trust me, they really should) but everyone wants to know who won Best Picture
I noticed this year that the Oscars do seem to be letting go, a little, this pretense that it's all about love from your peers. In recent years, when an award was presented, the verbage was "and the Oscar goes to" This year they reverted to "and the winner is" Yes folks, it's all about winning. On one hand we listen to acceptance speeches and presentations that tell us that film makers do their thing "for the art" but really, what's important, is who has their sweaty hands on that little golden guy
It's no different with the Olympics. There's a reason why in the next few months you'll see images of athletes with their medals around their necks. Perhaps that won't be their choice, perhaps they'll be coerced into doing by their handlers; but the fact is, they have handlers and they will listen to them, because they want to continue to compete and they need money to do that, and they also know their time at being able to compete at such a high level is limited and e everyone wants a nest egg.
It's not that different for movie makers. As I said, movie making is generally a more straight forward money making exercise but you have to concentrate on where that money comes from, and who is benefiting from it
I'm not completely cynical .. no, really, I'm not. I think there's a few centimeters on my left big toe that are still a cynicism free zone. I do believe that a lot of film makers, even commercially successful ones, are initially motivated to make films from some inner creative drive. But making a film is a ludicrously expensive process and most people (aside from James Cameron or Steven Spielberg maybe) don't have the wallet to finance it out of their own pocket. Production companies become involved, studios, distributors, investors. Check out the opening credits of any film, and count the number of production companies involved. They are not there because they believe in the artistic integrity of the film, they're there for an expected return on investment.
It's the same with amateur athletes. Most of these people begin their journey as kids, young kids, and they sacrifice an awful lot; time, socialisation, etc. For people doing sports like biathalon or skeleton, there probably isn't an initial thought about making buckets load of cash, they are there for the competition. But all that time has to be supported somehow, not to mention the gear, training, coaches etc. And when Nike is drewling over your gold medals, it's because they want your name on their shoes. They expect a return on investment as well
And we all feed in on this. Everyone got caught up in the medal count and "owning the podium" at the recent winter Olympics. People are breathlessly blogging about which film won the highest number of Oscars.
We can admire that athlete on the field or have an emotional reaction to a scene in the film but in the end, we like to quantify things. We like to measure things. We like our numbers
So Hurt Locker owned the podium, the US Olympic team owned the red carpet, and James Cameron is laughing all the way to the bank. After all, he has the number one and number two highest grossing films in history. And he doesn't need to thank the Academy, he's just going to dog paddle in his swimming pool filled with cash ..
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