The (Bad) Taste Test: What Is the Point of the Razzies?
Awards shows never seem to know who they’re for. On the surface, they seem like entirely self-congratulatory affairs: a bunch of industry people getting together to reward their own industry for another year in the books. And in theory, there’s nothing wrong with that; peers are on panels and juries for one another all the time. But for a while now there’s been a change in, if not how these award shows see themselves, but how they want the world to see them.
In 2009, the Oscars expanded the field of Best Picture nominees to ten, after the financial success, critical acclaim, and 2008’s lack of a Best Picture nomination bestowed on The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan’s “Heat but they’re in silly costumes” take on the Batman mythos.) That year’s Oscar host, Hugh Jackman (another member of the superhero-industrial-complex), even asked in his opening number “How come comic book movies never get nominated? How can a billion dollars be unsophisticated?” Fans have been bending themselves out of shape over this for years - even complaining the year after Joaquin Phoenix won the literal Academy Award for Best Actor for Joker - that these films aren’t taken seriously by awarding bodies. This led to the bizarre, meaningless fan voted Oscar categories: OscarsFanFavourite, and OscarsCheerMoment. Both of them were won by Zack Snyder movies, and both of them are functionally worthless as awards.
What they do is capture the ways in which the Oscars seem compelled to change; to make themselves palatable to whatever populist audience they think might stick with the telecast if there’s a chance that men in tights could win some awards. In theory, the point of this is clear: to get people to watch the broadcast, to make them interested in the Oscars, and the films that get nominated in their meaningful, competitive categories. But the conversation surrounding it over the last few years, with pundits treating something like The Power of the Dog - a masterfully crafted and deconstructed queer western - as the cinematic equivalent of being told to eat your vegetables, makes the whole ceremony seem even more hollow. If you’re not gonna take these nominees seriously as works of art and instead point out that they weren’t as financially successful as the latest Spider-Man sequel, then it’s difficult to make the case for their own existence.
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The Razzies have always had a similar problem and this year seemed to be no different. The Golden Raspberry Awards exist as something between an elaborate joke and a kind of anti-Oscars, as people come together to celebrate the worst of the worst, the true cinematic clangers of the year. And the problem with this is their choices - and the ways in which they’ve tried to alter the ceremony for almost a decade - just seem kind of pointless.
The Razzies were mired in their own controversy this year, when they nominated a child actor for Worst Actress. Ryan Kiera Armstrong, who played the lead in an adaptation of Firestarter, eventually had her name taken off of the list. The co-founder of The Razzies, John J. B. Wilson, said that the intent of her nomination was “to be funny,” and that they missed the mark. The thing with The Razzies is that they never really succeed in being all that funny. And sure, there might be something to nominating big Hollywood blockbusters instead of independent films (The Room didn’t get any Razzie nominations back when it came out), but given that they have a history of nominating child actors, they aren’t exactly immune to the idea of punching down. Their problem is that the whole thing just feels like grabbing at low-hanging fruit, the easiest targets available for “bad” cinema: critically panned romcoms; any kind of cinematic excess; or vehicles for people having a moment in the cultural spotlight that are easy to take shots at.
Looking at this year’s set of nominees, it’s no wonder that a stoner comedy with Machine Gun Kelly; Tom Hanks’ performance in Elvis; the hyper-polarising Blonde and superhero flop Morbius all make the cut. The Razzies don’t provide criteria for the bad films, just as the Oscars don’t need to justify the ones that they label as good and worthy, and they shouldn’t have to. What they do need to work out though, is who and what the Razzies are for: what does a body accomplish by pointing at the latest film written by a flash-in-the-pan celebrity like MGK and declaring it one of the worst things made that year?
There’s a place for something like The Razzies, don’t get me wrong; responses to film don’t need to be exclusively positive in order to have a place in the conversation. But they don’t seem to know what they’re for anymore. From increasingly far-reaching jokes in their Worst Screen Pair category - won this year by “Tom Hanks and his latex-laden face (and that ludicrous accent)” for Elvis, to feeling the need to stress their cinematic bonafides by having their Worst Remake, Rip-off, or Sequel being won by Disney’s Pinocchio, stressing that it’s “NOT del Toro’s.” Even the Razzies feel the need to defend their own, middle-of-the-road, good taste.
This defensive reflex is all over their relatively recent Razzie Redeemer Award, which has been around for almost a decade. With it, they nominate previous Razzie nominees or winners who have become quote-unquote respected artists. And what’s interesting is that the Razzies define respect and artistry in the same way as the Academy: Ben Affleck was redeemed for Argo, and Peter Farrelly was given a shot at post-Movie 43 and Dumb and Dumber redemption for Green Book. Both of these redemptive films won the Oscar for Best Picture. This new Razzie also offered a hand wave in the direction of the #MeToo movement in 2017 and, a year before that, saw the awarding body redeem Mel Gibson.
“The implication is clear as day, and underscores the pointlessness of the Razzies: that in the end, they seem to care about themselves so much more than anyone else does.”
There’s a real irony to this new era for the Razzies; one with a small piece of self-awareness, and giving previous quote-unquote winners a chance at redemption. It’s just turning them into The Academy; a bastion of safe, occasionally interesting choices that reveal more than anything, a desire to stick to the status quo. When Sandra Bullock won Worst Actress for All About Steve, she brought DVDs of the film with her to accept the award, telling the assembled voters that they ought to watch it to find out if she really was the worst actress that year. The implication is clear as day, and underscores the pointlessness of the Razzies: that in the end, they seem to care about themselves so much more than anyone else does.
Words: Sam Moore
