Oscar Blogging

Me and my posse, we follow the film awards, the festivals, all of it. We discuss, we dig in, we have a good time. I say this up front because I don't want to be misunderstood when I say that many Oscar bloggers, such as Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere, have completely lost their minds. This truly is a matter of degree. An unreasonably intense concentration on awards puts the films themselves, and any merits they might have, totally in the shade. What matters to the over-committed is whether you are on the right side or the wrong side. This year, for Wells, that boils down to whether you are a supporter of The Social Network, in which case you are with the forces of light, or The King's Speech, in which case you have cast your lot with the forces of darkness. I mean, it is completely ridiculous; it is also, in a weirdly entertaining way, something to behold. The night before the nominations, Wells was in a funk:

I don't care about listing Oscar nomination predictions. I've been feeling Phase One fatigue for three or four weeks now.

To which one commenter sensibly replied:

"Phase One fatigue" might be partially due to the fact that you've been doing hour-long Oscar podcasts about this little awards show for some-teen odd weeks now....These things should never even be thought about until December 1st -- at the very earliest -- even by film critics/journalists. What's the upside? You start burning out on it right around (or long before) the race actually starts actually becoming relevant.

And another accurately noted that Wells has been covering "every fart of the awards season" (in hyperventilating fashion, to boot). The guy, and others like him, need to get a grip.

The truth is, almost no one cares about the Oscars one week after they have been given. The "pre-hash" has eaten up the event, which in any case is a perfect example of a pseudo-event as defined by Daniel Boorstin years ago in his classic study The Image ("an event or activity that exists for the sole purpose of the media publicity and serves little to no other function in real life"). Pseudo-events can be fun -- I don't want to get too superior about it -- but for a fair number of people (Oscar bloggers, MTV watchers, Green Bay Packers fans), they have come to supersede reality.