The glory days of celebrity award shows have come to an end.

Gone are the days when Americans would gather around their standard definition televisions and watch to see who were the best of the best in film and music industries.

Nowadays, not many people care about these ceremonies. The 2019 Oscars had their second lowest viewership since 1974. 

What’s happening is that the white dominance, politically driven nature of these ceremonies has come to a crossroads. The past decade has seen a continued push back of racism and immoral politics in every avenue of human life. Hollywood is notorious for having an abundance of scandals and controversies. The acts of Hollywood have caught up to its award shows, and the dropping of television viewership has shown people are fed up with them.

For starters, who the awards are given to has been controversial. White male film directors or artists winning over people of differing color has brought up cries of racism. This seems to happen at least once a year between the Academy Awards, Grammys, MTV VMA’s and other big name award shows out there.

Just this year, Spike Lee turned his back to the Green Day producers as they walked up to receive their award. He did not explain himself when asked by reporters why, but he left a silence that makes us assume there was a civil rights motive, especially in light of his Oscar acceptance speech.

Then, there are the speeches: they are too political. If someone makes a comment even remotely out of line, someone else will call them out for immorality or improperness. To use this year’s Oscars again, President Trump called out Lee because his Oscar acceptance speech was a “racist hit” against him. All Lee described was the journey of African-American freedom in America and encouraging everyone to vote against the ideal that’s also inside these awards. Let the winners say what they want without fear of ridicule of breaking code or judgement of negative assumptions. 

There’s even been people inside the awards who have protested against the show. Marlon Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather in the 1973 Oscars to reject his award and protested against Hollywood negatively stereotyping against Native Americans.

On a less pressing issue, people forget when these shows happen. They happen about the same time each year, yet people barely think about them.

Most don’t know any of the celebrity award shows are happening until the day of, and others don’t even know the awards occured at all until the day or two after. Part of the problem might be that ads for the Grammys or Oscars occur mainly on television. Most people these days, especially teenagers and young adults, are on the internet.

The internet giants like YouTube and Google use algorithms that cater to people’s tastes.

So if they aren’t interested in celebrity affairs, they will not see ads for such occasions, like the Oscars. 

Arguing that one movie is better than another is one thing. Arguing one movie won over the other because of the bias unmoral nature of the judges is another. Americans are tired of the latter. Therefore, we stop watching.