A Brief History of Award Show Curses
Hollywood loves to build people up just to knock them down, to the point that certain awards are believed to impart a curse upon their recipients. While they dreamed of ascending the stage to accept their Oscar or Grammy, the finger of a paw taken from a deeply coked-out monkey curled somewhere, probably Nic Cage’s basement.
Or did it?
One of the most notoriously cursed awards is the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, which makes sense. A new artist is by definition unproven, so there’s a much higher probability that they’ll end up sucking than a lifetime achievement honoree. In fact, it’s frankly weird how often the Grammy Awards have gotten this right. Just about every winner in the history of the award has gone on to a sterling career. The idea of a curse seems to mostly stem from the disgrace of Milli Vanilli, whose award was taken back after it was discovered that they were lip-synchers, and a comment from a member of Starland Vocal Band, who won the award in 1977, declaring that it was “basically the kiss of death and I feel sorry for everyone who’s gotten it since.” But, like, no. It was just you guys.
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Of course, the Oscars are the center of most award show curse claims, chiefly concerning the winners of Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor and Actress, whose careers are said to be doomed. If you pay attention to the marketing materials that heavily advertise whether a movie stars an Oscar winner, you know this is false. A survey of the data shows that Oscar winners score more and better parts than their loser peers, and furthermore, water is wet.
More plausible is the so-called “Oscar love curse,” said to befall Best Actress winners whose husbands cheat on and/or leave them shortly after their win. A string of high-profile victims — including Sandra Bullock, Emma Thompson, Reese Witherspoon and Halle Berry — lend credence to the idea, and weenies do hate it when women are more successful than they are, but statistically speaking, this one’s a dud, too.
In fact, there’s only one award show curse that seems to have any truth to it, and it’s the Oscar love curse — for men. Actors who win Oscars are three times as likely to divorce during the first year of marriage, and even nominated actors are twice as likely. It doesn’t seem to correlate with when they win their award/nomination, and it doesn’t perpetuate any tidy notions about staying in the kitchen, so there’s not much to take away from it besides maybe a warning to the ladies of Hollywood to steer clear of successful men.
Have you considered a nice key grip?
