TALES FROM THE BLINDSIDE: Why winning awards is not only not a blessing, but may even be a curse!
OP/ED By Jeremy Steele
"Meat parades — offensive, barbarous and innately corrupt".
No, these are not words used to describe the AVN or Xbiz awards. show. These were the words George C Scott used to to describe the Oscars.* (*In case any readers aren’t aware, the Oscars are mainstream’s version of the
AVN awards.)
In 1971 He was the first performer to turn down an Oscar. Two years later, Marlon Brando followed suit in turning down his Oscar for best actor in "The Godfather". In his place, Sacheen Littlefeather came on stage said that he disaproves of the treatment of Native Americans, thus telling the academy they can take their little golden men and shove ’em up their asses!
It seems that George and Marlon had read the handwriting on the wall, back then, Meanwhile, the current tabloids mention the so-called "love curse" of Oscar’s "Best Actress" winners in the last dozen years. Nearly every woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress has broken up with her husband, boyfriend or lover — some just months after thanking them from the award show stage.
The first who comes to mind, Sandra Bullocks (Star of "The Blind Side"): This is what happens when a woman dates a guy who was cheating on someone else in order to be dating her in the first place. You said on stage not to judge a child for where it comes from, Sandra. Well, how about that child you call your "Man"?
Kate Winslet, who won for playing a Nazi in "The Reader" in 2009, saw her marriage to director Sam Mendes go kaput this week– amid reports that he had grown close with actress Rebecca Hall.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck; Just two months after she accepted the award, the couple were broken up. Also on the list Hilary Swank, Julia Roberts and Halle Berre, the latter who won in 2002 for "Monster’s Ball, and then split up her husband the next year, after reports of his infidelity. Charlize Theron won in ’04 and split up this January. Reese Witherspoon; by the end of the year in which she won her oscar she was through with her busband.
The best I’ve read of is a past reciprient, Marlee Matlin, who won Best Actress for "Children of a lesser God". William Hurt broke up with her in the limo on the way home from the Oscars that night!
The only other two recent winners to escape heartbreak are Helen Mirren, who won for "The Queen" in 2007, and (her career’s wad shot high after getting naked in Caligula and Excalibur) and Marion Cotillard, who won for "La Vie en Rose" in 2008. They are both still with their significant others.
And speaking of Caligula, a movie which bridged mainstream and porn, begins with a quote from Matthew 16:26: "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?" Well the arena of voters have lost their soul, due to politics. Politics really makes porn look like Disneyland in comparison!
Now, considering the pitfalls and possible "curse" of mainstream oscars, should we expect any better fate for porn award winners?
The strangest case on the porn side I’ve witnessed is when Tony Tedeschi accepted his AVN porn acting award on stage and then announced to everyone that he’s broke and down to his last 5 bucks. I’d say that’s definitely a faster spiral downward than Marlee Matlin and William Hurt’s cab ride.
I haven’t been keeping tally so I have no idea how many former porn award winners are now pawn shop clerks, telemarketers or cashiers at Dennys. It would make an interesting study, I guess, although it’s ethically necessary to leave them alone (unless they ask for the attention).
If the Oscars are cursed, then perhaps it’s because too many people have been literally cursing them over the years, fed up with the fact that they never were nominated, or won, and the horrible academy picks, obviously controlled by sickening politics.
And when it comes to winning a porn award for best blow job or sex scene, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the winner’s personal life will get much better (think about it), or even their professional life.
Just as height attracts lightning, a female oscar winner’s on stage declaration of love for her man is a loudspeaker alert for every woman in the world that that’s a guy worth trying to get a hold of,
whether or not he’s taken.
Personally, I don’t think porn awards could ever reach the depths of patheticalness that the Oscars have. Both porn and mainstream performers both have in common the fact that their icons have been consecrated in vice. Both academys have prostitution at it’s core. Meanwhile, most people never get the acclaim they deserve. For those that do, that’s awesome! You’re part of a unique minority!
When it comes to porn awards, they can’t possibly be like having a bald and gold statue-man around the house. It’s not like you can display it in your living room when Grandma and the little curtain climbers come over to visit for Easter. You gotta hide those trophies like you do the whips, dildoes and lube, then just hope the kids don’t find them during the morning’s easter egg hunt.
Although the Oscars are generally less dull than porn awards shows, it certainly is more corrupt. The motion picture academy, year after year show how utterly pathetic they are, and picks winners for idiotic politicial or sentimental reasons. They give Martin Scorcese an Oscar for "The Departed" because he never won one before (as if this is why you give Oscars) when he’s made much better films that never won. But this excludes someone who deserves the award, who likely needs the award more to further his career.
As one puts it: "Political correctness is the number one villain in this tragedy. I definitely sense in countless movies of our present era a desperate need to prove one’s obedience to the masters of the zeitgeist. At best, their situation may only be one or two steps above of what was endured by the typical citizen of the former German Democratic Republic."
Kathryn Bigelow, only the fourth woman to be nominated for best director by the Academy of
Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, became the first woman to win an Oscar for directing "the Hurt Locker". It won over Avatar, which was seen and liked by many more people, but who’s controversial anti-war message and radical suggestion that "we" are the bad guys (when it comes to our "pre-emptive strike" and "shock and awe" campaigns) was politically incorrect, so Avatar had to not win!
If the Oscars are cursed is it because they are corrupt. And who wants to win a corrupted Icon? Millions do, of course. And, this is as it shall be, even as the yearly events continue to deteriorate in prestigious value.
But in the end, when all is said and done, an Oscar or a porn award will both carry about as much esteem as handing Henry Kissinger or Hussein Obama the Nobel Peace prize or giving Al Gore a Pulitzer. Kissinger is a war criminal. Obama, following his hope based peace prize, is now esculating wars abroad and his first employer in Washington happens to have been Henry Kissinger. Al Gore is a whore selling a lie about carbon emissions causing global warming in order to generate more tax revenues.
Awards are made of plastic, just like some of the people who win them or select those who do. And in a corrupt institution those idols perhaps carry a dark voodoo vibe to them.
Beware! Every vice has it’s price. Remember this and don’t ever allow those awards to take on any supernatural significance or they may come to do significant harm, just as some of those Oscar ladies are learning.