The “Golden” Globes: Save the Cheerleader… save your opinions

The best argument that America has more celluloid taste than the rest of the world gives us credit for is the consistently embarrassing discrepancy between what the Hollywood Foreign Press thinks, and what I think.

Granted, as a single person, I hardly represent America, or more specifically the United States Of, but who pray tell are the Hollywood Foreign Press? They’re press, for one, and they’re clearly foreign, and they seem to focus predominantly on Hollywood. These three factors clearly prevent them from making meaningful and correct decisions when it comes to film and television. Notwithstanding their foreignness and pressiness, it’s also important to point out from a semantic perspective that a good number of films and television shows aren’t even made in Hollywood. Hence this localization becomes superfluous in the evaluation of said non-Californian material(s). The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has no such incongruity in its name, and also doesn’t make the confusing mistake of separating dramas and comedies and passing judgment on television as sort of an afterthought.

And THAT is where my true umbrage lies; the most recent crop of Golden Globe nominations fail to mention HBO’s series The Wire. At all. The HWFP did the right thing back when Angels in America came out, and rewarded it generously and in proportion to its genius. In the interim period, however, they appear to have lost whatever semblance of presiding mental acuity they were once imbued with, and have given - wait for it - NBC’s Heroes the nod for best television drama OVER The Wire.

?

I’ve SEEN episodes of Heroes. While it cleverly panders to online fandom communities and has competent scoring and special effects work, it’s ultimately derivative and - far more problematically - ridiculously scripted and acted. It’s disposable. It’s fun, but further from being anything remotely in the proximity of “art” than Three’s Company was. In contrast, the fourth season of The Wire was… unequaled. In any year.

And so, as a citizen of a country often looked down on for cultural inadequacy and a superficial entertainment industry, I can only point at this sterling example of the FOREIGN press eating the same dogfood they mock, and passing by one of the most striking accomplishments the form has ever produced.