Just as Hollywood’s navel-gazing self-regard reaches its mid-winter peak each year, there has traditionally been one awards show aimed at bursting that ballgown bubble. Yes, while social media was delighting over Oscar nods for Greta Gerwig, Jordan Peele, or the double song-and-actress nomination for Mary J Blige, the 2018 Razzie nominations landed to claim their fraction of the headlines.
Transformers led the pack with nine nominations, followed by Fifty Shades Darker and The Emoji Movie, but it was a shock nom for Jennifer Lawrence's performance in Darren Aranofsky's divisive thriller mother! that first precipitated a few blank faces.
"Reactionary" tweeted Vulture's Mark Stephens. "Moronic" and "predictable" said Scott Tobias, while director and producer Scott Derrickson was blunter still. "F**k the Razzies" he posted, joining a rather prominent chorus of people slamming the awards not just for their conclusions, but their entire raison d'etre.
The Razzies have always been a kind of reactionary form of film criticism and their time has probably passed.
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) January 22, 2018
Since originating in the living room of industry publicist John Wilson in 1981, the Razzies are now an almost entirely online phenomenon. Traditionally cast as a punk antidote to the Oscars, they’re sold as a great, slobbering raspberry to the self-congratulation of Hollywood.
In the days of a homogenous studio system and an obsequious press, the rarity of pointed – even vicious – critique made the Razzies seem bracing and delightful. Nowadays, they seem not just out of order, but out of time.
The bitchiness which, four decades ago, seemed so daring and bold, is now ubiquitous. Even a cursory scroll through Twitter shows a reflexive, one-note negativity can be found regarding any product, artist, topic, place or thing. Moreover, a lot of these modern critiques are rich and layered; prepared to expend hundreds, even thousands, of words laying down their theses, often with more depth and humour than the artworks they excoriate. YouTube channels such as RedLetterMedia, whose 90 minute takedowns of the Star Wars prequels are a much better use of your evening than those films themselves and the video essays of Lindsay Ellis, which interweave social, historical, and even architectural critiques into her dissections of Disney movies.
By comparison, snarkily placing some movies in some envelopes doesn’t seem brave or taboo, but a decidedly uninspiring way to diss the work of others without even adding anything of your own into the bargain. As Matt Singer of screencrush.com put it this week, “even crappy movies deserve better than this.”
It could be that the Razzies are now just one more shriek, indistinguishable amid the braying din; a dying tiger unfit for purpose in the modern world. Or, as double Oscar nominated actress and singer Mary J Blige, put it best; there really is too much hateration in this dancerie.
