The BAFTA’s meet The BARFTA’s

One of the things that neatly exemplifies just how ‘celebrity’ obsessed our culture has become, is not just the award ceremonies themselves, but the fawning sycophancy by a media that has suspended all objectivity for access to ‘talent’ It’s like a dog eating its own vomit, the seriousness with which they treat the basically trivial and woe betide anyone who punctures their ever so carefully inflated balloon of pomposity, as Ricky Gervais did to such great effect when he used to host the Golden Globes. Anyone would think he’d done something that mattered in the real world.

Tonight it’ll be Baftas, where the British film industry will delude itself once again that it’s nothing more than a tax break with a shared language and technical expertise. Once again the award winners will make teary speeches about how great this was, how lovely it was to work with that, but that actually the other was a story that needed to be told. And they’ll bang on about how brave this was, how selfless that was, and how humbling the other was, whilst being applauded enthusiastically by the losers who look overjoyed to have lost.

Nothing sums up the shallowness more, the utter fatuousness of these awards, than this The nominees are aware that a camera is right there in their face, to get their reaction when the result is announced so if they win, they need to act almost mortified but if they lose, act bizarrely delighted to have lost. It’s only a matter of time until there’s an award for Best Loser Reaction Shot. One for the showreel…

You don’t get this nonsense in any other field of human endeavour. You don’t get builders fondly reminiscing about a wall they’d put up years ago, how the mortar was so great. Neither do you get surgeons waxing lyrical about the thread they use to sew up patients after open heart surgery or waiting staff at a Harvester banging on tearfully about how the chef goes to great lengths to ensure that there’s always a vegan option on the menu. Because there are no awards for any of them, there not considered sexy enough to warrant that kind of attention, that’s not prime-time BBC1 enough, but what we do get is endless red carpet photos of actors wearing dresses designed feed the media cycle. Are they too this, or not enough that, or are they referencing the other?

David Tennant is hosting this year. Perhaps he might take us all on one last trip on the TARDIS to a time in human history that wasn’t so obsessed by self-important non-entities. Oops. silly me.There wasn’t. There never will be. Its the human conditioned to be conditioned.