And the Oscar went to...

From the "Things that were more interesting a few weeks ago but I'm only getting around to mentioning now because... hey, it's not like I'm getting paid to do this and get off my back--oh, sorry about that. Please come back. Really, I'm sorry. I'm not upset with you" department:

It has been proffered by some that the Academy Awards ceremony is tantamount to "the gay Super Bowl." While I think that's unfair both to gays and to the Super Bowl, I will concede there are certain parallels between the big awards show and the big game.

• Both are day-long media events, where the pre-show festivities are filled with guests who are there primarily due to the need to fill the time. Before the big game Fox forced Hugh Laurie to attend the game just so Ryan Seacrest could interview him about a sport he didn't watch and get in a plug for the House episode following the game; before the awards show E! booked the pitbull from No Country For Old Men (I am not making this up). (The dog proved better, as he was actually involved with the event that followed.)

• Both go on for hours and tend to not be that worthwhile as entertainment. This year's big game proved a nice exception to this, but generally any event intended to be watched by people in millions around the world must be bland enough for mass consumption. Complaining that the Oscar host doesn't get edgy enough is like lamenting that they don't book Arcade Fire for the Super Bowl halftime show; what would give you the expectation that either would happen?

Given that often the game and the awards ceremony don't end up being worth watching, why would we continue to have parties to communally view them? In the past, one could argue that it was better to be included in case something noteworthy occurred, but in the age of YouTube and on-demand access, anything noteworthy will not only be available afterward for the interested, but it will be discussed and dissected on the media outlets for days following the event. No, it seems like the only logical rationale is that we subconsciously long for those days when we were ostensibly joined in our communal experience, where most everyone saw the same thing. We haven't had a moon landing in decades, and even the last episode of The Sopranos wasn't anything like the last episode of M.A.S.H. in scope (because not everyone has HBO), so we have to find events like this to come together and have something to celebrate. Or at least something where we can lament together then next day.

There are worse things than having a reason to bring people together, getting them away from watching YouTube and reading blogs... hey, where are you going?

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I'd say the biggest similarity between the Super Bowl and the Oscars is they're both events where people get involved who aren't particularly interested in the actual event. This involvement includes the obvious way—namely, actually watching the event on TV, despite having watched little or no football during the season or even the playoffs, or having seen few of the nominated films. (Ostensibly these events are promoting their respective sport or industry, but they end up promoting themselves primarily.) However, people who don't watch the telecasts (and have no interest in watching) can be involved through another route: the office pool.

Both involve making guesses about the outcome, although the Super Bowl pool is easier: It requires only picking an open square on a grid of 100 and hoping the numbers corresponding to it end up corresponding to the digits of the game's score at particular intervals. It doesn't matter which team the person may be rooting for. Heck, the only requirement is contributing the entry fee; one need not even know which teams are playing. No skill is necessary, nor, really, is even pertinent.

The Oscar pool is essentially a multiple-choice test. However, it does not rely entirely on random chance; some skill certainly helps. That skill is not having seen the works nominated and determining which held the highest artistic merit. No, the skill is trying to anticipate how a group of people much more deeply involved in the industry would most likely choose. Every year there's plenty of speculation amongst those in the entertainment media in the weeks leading up to the Academy Awards about who the front-runners are. So with the Oscar pool preparation, one conceivably could see a need to spend five minutes on the EW website to feel better informed. That doesn't guarantee anything, of course, but it can at least get one the obvious choices (Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardiem) right. But there's always categories like Documentary Short Subject that virtually no one actually saw and allow for moments of dumb luck to push one over the top.

Ultimately, this is why the Super Bowl is more popular. It's not so much the appeal of violence in the game; it's that one can win money on the game without having any skill whatsoever. That's what Americans like: reward without effort.

~

Really, given that it involves voting, the Academy Awards should be likened more to a national election, but there's nothing for Ryan Seacrest to host with that, so the analogy is unlikely to catch on. Of course, if during exit polls they start including the question "Who are you wearing?" then there's a bit more similarity that could be introduced.