Awards matter. They validate risky artistic decisions, help build careers, and drive audiences to discover indie projects that don't have marketing budgets. These things happen because we collectively decide that the organizers have their finger on the pulse, with a broader scope and better judgment than the average person. We are, in effect, employing them as curators. But as we watch the evidence stack up that a lot of them operate in bad faith, why don't we just ignore them in favor of better alternatives?
When we see the Golden Globes fail to recognize diverse talent year after year, one starts to wonder what exactly they value and why we give any credence to their opinions. I don't need to rehash their missteps‚ Vulture does a good job of capturing them here. But increasingly I think that instead of begging them to change, we should just start ignoring them. I don't want to ask them to change because it offers them agency that they no longer deserve, and recognizes them as an arbiter of art and quality when they obviously no longer are. The only thing they deserve is our apathy. Debate amplifies their bad choices. Apathy deprives them of oxygen, accelerating their irrelevance.
So I'm suggesting we just stop talking about the Golden Globes. We don't make viewing decisions based on their choices because they don't make good selections. We don't read articles about them because they operate in bad faith. We don't view them as a reliable handicapper for the Oscars or Emmys because they're racist. And we start to reallocate that attention to curatorial platforms willing to do the hard work that inclusion requires.
