The Rewards of Awards : Everyone Is a Winner When the Accolades Stay Small

Flawed. Breathless. Human. Mystifying. Infuriating. To kill for.

No, this is not a review of that nice kid down the street in his first television acting bit (now you see him, now you don’t). We’re talking awards here. Breathless. Human. Mystifying. Infuriating. To kill for.

In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re waist-deep in awards season. January the film critics, February the Golden Globes. March the Pulitzers. April--the cruelest month--the Oscars. Then the Obies, Tonys, Clarence Derwents, Drama Desks, Outer Critics, Inner Factotums . . . and, ah yes, Monday the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle.

For the 19th consecutive year, the members of the circle (this writer among them) will give out their annual round of brown-and-gold plaques. Rules of the game: The circle never gives more than 30 awards. Sometimes fewer. With 64 nominees this year, it doesn’t take a mathematical whiz to figure out that at least 34 will walk out of that banquet empty-handed. Is that so terrible?

Ask the participants.

Every year this writer wonders, sometimes out loud, if she wants to take part in this bloodless game of American roulette. Isn’t a good review, she reasons, foolishly, the best award? Reason again . . . .

Every year the circle’s president assures the assembled nominees, spouses, significant others, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, cousins thrice-removed and perfect strangers that to be nominated is, in itself, to win. Every year everyone pretends to believe it. Every year nobody does. People don’t come to lose.

I ask you: Why does this not make sense?

The question comes from a mildly unassimilated cultural outsider with complicated feelings about the role of manufactured competitions, even benevolent ones, in artistic life. The idea behind awards has always been one of providing recognition--an additional pat on the back for a job particularly well done. If awards did just that and were accepted on that basis, no problem. At least no more than usual.

We could more generously accept their unavoidable failings: the oversights, the unintented miscalculations, the faulty systems, the straight-out bloopers, the fact that even the best awards are the result of consensus--a form of averaging. Some awards (see People’s Choice) even seem to work in reverse: Vote one to a big-enough star and grab a free ride on the celebrity coattails to draw attention to yourself. Others narrow the field so drastically (the Tonys, devoted to Broadway shows) that, in lean years, almost anything goes.

Cosmically speaking, these are not big sins. Yet considering all these qualifiers, you know that each year some superior stuff will fall right through the cracks, while something ordinary may be honored well beyond deserving. So wouldn’t it be saner to lighten up? We’re not talking here about denying winners the right to glory in well-earned success. We’re talking about putting things in perspective and narrowing the distance between winners and so-called runners-up.

Writer/producer Fay Kanin, was playing devil’s advocate the other night. She protested that awards are good, that the competition they provoke is a less lethal substitute for war. Competition, she insisted, leads to super-achievement. “Be the best you can be.” It’s inculcated early in a child’s education, whether for grades or spelling bees or baseball games.

One has to concede the point. You could argue that competition is not just our way of life, it is life: Survival of the fittest. But somewhere along the way, no doubt with the best of intentions, we’ve also created a monster. We’ve let things get out of hand.

When awards, or their stakes (as in the Oscars) become huge media events, they become unreal and unrealistic. It’s not just the suspense that’s killing; the prize itself can be. Recognition is good. Open warfare for that recognition is not. It distorts.

Instead of being in the contest for the reward, candidates often end up in it for the blood. Look at what the disproportion between the race and the pennant has done to professional sports. Look at how curiously it affects our presidential races, where the eye is on the prize, much more, it seems, than on the issues.

Why can’t all awards be more like the Nobels or the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants? These most highly valued prizes are also the most faithful to the original idea of award as accolade because, more than any others, they address themselves to specific achievement. One cannot consciously compete for them. They are not about winning. They are about the pursuit of excellence as its own reward.

When writer/producer Hal Kanter attended the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards dinner in 1981, the first thing he said when it was over was, “Don’t ever televise it.” What he meant was, don’t take yourselves too seriously. Don’t make it so big you’ll spoil the fun.

We haven’t, and the circle’s awards, by Oscar standards, have remained a smallish, unsmug affair. May it be ever thus. It’s calling a truce, once a year, to bring artists and critics together to celebrate the art and pass out those extra few pats on the back.

As long as things stay that way, everybody does win. The numbers will take care of Monday’s “award recipients,” so here’s a toast to the losers--the most maligned word in the language--whoever they may be.

They also serve who strike out.

Pardon me, but I feel that urge to wonder out loud coming on . . . .