The Golden Globes Box Office Achievement Award Is Total Bull

Correct me if I’m wrong, but participation trophies—those little marks of a job well done so often derided by conservative talking heads—were not traditionally handed out to actual competition winners. If you got a shiny ribbon or a modest trophy for coming in one of the top spots, you weren’t also given an additional award for the big-hearted tenacity that got you into the competition. The winner won. Why would they need an additional prize just to blow their head up even more?

That’s the question I found myself asking during this year’s Golden Globes, where a new category seems specifically designed to honor a few movies just for being mainstream enough to be a part of the conversation. This “Cinematic and Box Office Achievement” category is comprised of eight nominees, each of which reached “a box office receipt total/gross of $150 million, of which $100 million must come from the U.S. domestic box office, and/or obtain commensurate digital streaming viewership recognized by trusted industry sources,” according to a statement from the Globes last fall.

In layman’s terms: The Golden Globes is honoring box office juggernauts that might not have otherwise been nominated, probably to get eyeballs on their ceremony. (And, even further simplified: The producers would likely love for the legions of diehard Swifties to tune into their program to see if Taylor Swift might win the award.) It’s all a not-so-clever ruse, an attempt at renewed relevancy, one that will not successfully ingratiate the Globes to viewers after public disgrace. To do that, the producers would have to actually put in the effort to make the show fun again.

Read more at The Daily Beast.