The strangest cultural development of recent years has been the growth in the giving and receiving of awards across all areas of endeavour. There has been very little critical coverage of this, presumably because most of the publications that might provide such coverage run awards of their own.
I tried to locate some sort of overview by means of an internet search, but my keywords were not up to the job. “Culture of award-giving” yielded only numerous awards for culture. “The giving of awards” threw up “The Giving Nation Awards.” “The growth in awards” produced “The Fast Growth Business awards” run by “Growing Business” magazine.
In my own profession, the writing of fiction, there is always an award in the news. Right now, it’s the Orange prize for women’s fiction—won this year by Rose Tremain. Journalists need events to justify unleashing their pontifications, and the giving of a prize, it seems, constitutes one. The trick is so universally practised that authors are frequently asked, “What awards have you won?”, and the term “critically acclaimed” has given way to “award-winning.” Not, unfortunately, in my case: I’m still stuck on “critically acclaimed.” But I have recently learned that I have been shortlisted for an award to be given in July by the Crime Writers’ Association.
Now here is a prize that would suit me just fine. I am a crime writer, and do not aspire to be anything else. My black tie and the instructions for tying it are ready to go. If I win, I will feel both tremendously excited and, paradoxically, normalised, since I am just about the only author I know who has never won a prize. Indeed, I once gave a reading alongside a man—ten years younger than me—whose book jackets declared that he had won “over a hundred awards in the course of his career.”
The manager of a central London Moss Bros once told me that awards ceremonies are one of the main reasons we now rent more evening wear than ever, in spite of the dressed-down nature of everyday life. Everything is award-winning. If I buy a packet of cheese and onion crisps, I fully expect them to be described them as award-winning. As the Dodo says in Alice in Wonderland, all must have prizes. The British Potato Industry award has been defying our sniggers for some years now, and the Loo of the Year award, run by the British Toilet Association with sponsorship by Armitage Shanks, is one of the more high-profile in its sphere.
The phenomenon reflects the primacy of the free market, and a recession certainly isn’t going to stop it: the more competitive the environment, the greater the usefulness of an award. “In our cash-strapped times,” Mark Borkowski of Borkowski PR tells me, “you’re only going to see more industry awards. The trade magazines are making more money off awards ceremonies than from advertising. You might have to pay to be eligible for an award; you pay hundreds of pounds for your company table at the ceremony. It’s a great networking opportunity in a world where people are increasingly disconnected. Everyone gets very drunk. Then the results are quoted all over the papers.”
Borkowski has judged dozens of PR awards. “Most PR is so crap,” he enjoyably confides, “that if you win an award for it, then it really is a huge boost.” I’m not quite sure I follow that logic, but I accept that winning awards can be very good for business (and would be very good for mine).
Yet awards are often a brutal shorthand, a substitute for nuance, like the awarding of marks out of five for all forms of art. They are also a substitute for news. If the Oscars, the Baftas, the Brits, the Man Booker, the Mercury prize et al did not exist then our newspapers would have to be about 10 per cent smaller, which of course would be no bad thing. I resent the time-wasting vacuity of a sentence such as “Jack Nicholson, right, has been named best Hollywood hellraiser in a survey of UK film fans. The 71-year-old actor, who has won three Academy awards, beat Robert Downey Jr…”
As well as covering awards, journalists give each other awards. Sports journalists are especially prone to this. They win things almost as regularly as they write about other people winning things. I read recently that “ITV’s Formula 1 crew won its second successive Bafta for coverage of Lewis Hamilton’s 2007 Canadian grand prix win.” There is an echoic quality in this that I find quite sinister. We are creeping towards having awards for the best awards.
Awards are often defended on the grounds that they reflect a meritocratic society. Well, I would at least concede the following: the only way a non-famous person is likely to be mentioned in a newspaper, short of dying in a peculiar way, or committing or being the victim of a crime, is by winning an award for their work.
But what is the true meaning of the achievement? It is to wear the bow tie or party frock; to be photographed by strangers; to be the last name read out on the reverse-order list; to shake the hand of Jeremy Paxman or, if he’s not available, Jeremy Vine. The accolade is not the award as such but the fact that the winner is given, for rather fewer than 15 minutes, the highest favour that can be bestowed in modern Britain: the golden mantle of celebrity.
And I can’t help thinking that, come July, it would look rather good on me.
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