As the starts of a brand new year, January and February are quite eventful months, and nothing is as symbolic of that as the Grammys and the Oscars, the annual awards for artistic merit from the music and film industry respectively.
This year, the Grammys were held on February 2. Due to the timely nature of the Grammys, much of the focus on the show was how the music community would band together to help relieve and bounceback from some of the tragic events in LA. Notable moments included Beyonce winning her first Album of the Year Award for her country album Cowboy Carter. Kendrick Lamar’s hit song and Drake diss track “Not Like Us” also saw immense success, winning a total of 5 grammy’s alone, including Song of the Year and Best Music Video. Numerous live performances also stole headlines including new rapper/RnB artist Doechii’s renditions of her songs “CATFISH” and “DENIAL RIVER” and Best New Artist winner Chappell Roan’s performance of “Pink Pony Club” and her winning speech that called for better health insurance for aspiring artists.
The Oscars, on the other hand, were held a month later on March 2nd. There were a number of storylines heading into the award show, none of which were more significant than those revolving around Emilia Perez. Emilia Perez was a movie that was already rooted in controversial origins, with its plot almost glorifying the cartel and featuring an incredibly nonsensical gender switch that completely redeemed said cartel leader. Further more, the main actress of the movie, Karla Gascon, already had numerous controversial tweets relating to the death of George Floyd and other controversial matters related to race and marginalized communities. Furthermore, the movie portrayed a miseducated American facsimile of Mexico that enraged viewers and as a result, many fans felt like the movie was undeserving of having a historic amount of nominations. In the end, another relatively controversial movie, Anora starring Mikey Madison (the winner of “Best Actress”), took home “Best Picture”, Adrien Brody took home “Best Actor” for his performance in The Brutalist. Zoe Saldana won “Best Supporting Actress” for her role in Emilia Perez and Kieran Culkin won “Best Supporting Actor” for his role in A Real Pain.
