7 Disturbing Trends At Bollywood Award Shows

Skimpy models dancing, shameless advertising, buying awards and paying the biggies just to show up for the popularity they bring along; what have our award shows come to?

We applaud entertainment, but then again, some disturbing trends are making it impossible for real talent to be appreciated. Here are a few trends at Bollywood award shows that seriously need to be reconsidered.
     

1. Over The Top Branding & Advertising
Branding and advertising is necessary, we will give you that, but nowadays it has reached a new level of shamelessness. The duration of advertising spots has increased considerably over the years and the name of the sponsor is announced before the name of the award show itself! Those good old days of live telecasts and simplicity, where art thou?

2. Choosing Popularity Over Talent

Bollywood has such a huge spectrum of movies that it is difficult to judge which movie or actor deserves to be crowned as the ultimate best. But Bollywood’s trend of lifting the already popular and turning a blind eye to the less popular (especially the non-Khans and non-Kapoors) is just ridiculous.

How else do you explain Sooraj Pancholi winning the award for best debutant when he was placed against such commendable actors?

3. Too Many Unnecessary Performances 

Award shows are to applaud and appreciate talent and not to blow whistles at scantily-clad women shaking a leg on stage. We’re sure Bollywood award shows can do without most of these performances.

4. No Credibility In The Voting Process

Who chooses the ultimate winner anyway? The jury? Public? How can we trust the choices being made? No wonder most awards being given away don’t make sense. Maybe it’s time to make the voting process for the celebrities a bit more transparent.  

5. Paying Stars Just To Show Up

These award shows are only harping on the popularity of the stars. Why not try to create an identity of yourself, so much so, that the biggies would actually WANT TO show up? Maybe we’re being too idealistic, but change has to begin from somewhere.

6. Buying & Selling of Awards

Why work hard when money can buy you an award? Seriously? Just why take the trouble? Akshay Kumar was approached by a few organizers of an award show and they asked him for a discounted fee for a performance since they were giving him an award that night. Akshay Kumar had a fitting reply for them. He said, “Keep your award to yourself. Pay me my full fee.”

7. Scripted Applause, Scripted Smiles, And Scripted Everything!

Since the award shows don’t have a live telecast anymore, there’s room for a lot of improvement (or should we say tampering?) Most of them are scripted, the applause is fake, the actors are told when to laugh or even smile. What we don’t realize is that there’s beauty in spontaneity and the raw emotions captured on camera that no amount of prep can ever make up for.  

Bollywood’s great and everything, but we will never progress if we only keep harping on the popularity of the already popular. If we never let new faces and talent come to the forefront, be transparent about the results and show real emotion rather than putting up just another show, then why do these award shows have to even exist we wonder?