The Academy makes it so easy...
Courtesy to superhypeblog.com for the hairdrying pic, by the way. I like it.
This time it has to do with the so-called 'swag bags' that each nominee will be getting at this year's awards. This is a 'little bag of goodies' that they each receive from the Academy for having been nominated. So sweet of the Academy.
I've always known these swag bags were filled with a lot of expensive gifts, but yesterday by pure chance I overheard on one of the news stations just how much this year's swag bags will cost per nominee. Each swag bag has goodies to the value of $85 000.
Yeah, you read that right - eighty-five thousand dollars!
The goodies include a trip to Monaco, a trip for a whole bunch of people for a safari to South Africa, expensive electronic goods, and on and on.
Thank goodness I wasn't carrying anything in my hands, because they would have gone crashing to the floor, such was my disbelief.
And then my disbelief turned to outright anger. Who the bloody hell are these people that they deserve 'gifts' totalling $85 000 just because they're nominated for some bloody award? And just how sensitive is it of the Academy to divulge those types of figures for little gift bags at a time when the United States is lurching from one economic crisis to another and unofficial estimates put the unemployment and underemployment rate at close to 30%?
Do these people have no shame??
And what of the stars? Those over-pampered, utterly self-important celebrities that earn millions of dollars just for appearing in a film - do they really need these types of gifts gratis? Why is it always the rich or the very well-off that seem to get all the freebies?
What are the likes of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson and Helen Mirren, all nominees this year, going to make of these swag bags? Are they going to keep them, gleefully clutching on to their goodies with their beautifully manicured, lotioned and perfumed hands? If they do, just how do they reconcile such obscenity at this time with all their liberal, do-gooder causes and sentiments?
Hell, I love some of these people and think they're great performers, but does no one see the hypocrisy here?
And, by the way, does every nominee get this type (and value) of gift? I don't know why, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's something especially reserved for the directors and producers and actors. I just don't see nominees for Best Documentary Short or Best Sound Editing getting quite the same amount of love from the Academy. Call me a cynic.
Yes, this kind of over-the-top, frankly gratuitous gifting is frankly obscene at any time, but never more so than at this time of economic hardship for so many all over the world, including in their very own US of A.
You may think I'm overreacting. And of course there are bigger and more important issues and injustices in the world. But it is these small, 'insignificant' little financial obscenities that, in their own, small way, have an insidious tendency to make the haves feel even more impervious to the real problems facing the (growing number of) have-nots. The gulf just keeps getting bigger. Even when it comes to giving out gifts.
And even if it's just a case of simple bad taste, it's just plain wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Shame on you, Oscar.
Do you get my point?
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