‘Award-winning’ by Edmund and Clare Weiner

Use of the epithet award-winning, as the graph* shows, has grown exponentially. It was virtually unknown when the authors of this blog were born. During the 1980s and 1990s its use skyrocketed (to use another odious expression). 

What has happened? What is it about our recent cultural history that has propelled this parvenu compound into such a prominent position? A writer, artist, or performer is rarely featured in the media unless they are award-winning. If you listen to Radio 3 you’ll hear the word many times every day. If you look somebody up on Wikipedia, you’re quite likely to be told the dreary fact that they are ‘an award-winning writer’, etc., instead of the interesting details of where they come from or what their family background was. 

 We think there are at least two reasons to be wary of this word and what it stands for. 

 The Great and the Good 

 First of all, what does award-winning really tell us about a book, play, or a film? That a panel of ‘experts’, who may be high-culture intellectuals, young progressive liberals, or conservative Christian notables, think highly of it. Does this tell us that we shall admire its style — possibly. That it is deeply meaningful? Only if our ‘meaningful’ and the panel’s are the same. That we shall enjoy it? Only if it is ‘our kind of book’. That we should both enjoy and admire it — if we are susceptible, if we’ve got to be popular with our group, if we need to fit in. 

 ‘Fleabag’ took three awards recently — but honestly, not everyone reading this will agree that ‘Fleabag’ is the best TV drama they’ve seen this year. They may disagree, but many people wouldn’t say so, for dissent can be construed as stepping out of line. 

 To win an award, a person or artistic creation must be considered competitively. Apart from the ‘rules’ or guidelines of a competition, these comparisons made between one entry and another will inevitably include bias. And bias comes from belief and surrounding culture. Approval of the culture is, again, subject to ‘what will prove popular?’ ‘What will look progressive?’ ‘What will uphold tradition?’ ‘What is the mood of the moment?’ Often the the panel won’t be able to agree, and will choose a centre-placed entry, the one they all find a safe answer to the problem of their disagreement — not the one which stands out from the crowd, with the most insightful questions to ask. 

 In this atmosphere, where the ordinary consumer of entertainment fears to differ from the group, and the great and the good who sit on panels make the decisions, the bias of society can be moved along by hidden influences: not necessarily in a useful direction. That doesn’t have to mean towards what is conventionally called moral corruption. Many other things undermine our God-given powers of discernment. Over-simplification of complex issues is one such danger. Facile humour is another. Alteration of important historical facts for the sake of a story is a third. 

 Survival of the fittest? 

 The second reason is the very fact that award-winning presupposes competition. Competition is hardwired into our society. Our economic system is based on it. So is our education system. In the classroom and perhaps even more on the sports field, competition and support for the team is woven in, so people think competitively. 

In competition, so the theory goes, the ‘best’ rises inevitably to the top. So if an author wins an award, if a TV series gets an award, it must have proved itself to be ‘the best’. We rarely question it. We rarely ask if there could be an alternative way of doing things. If there is one winner, there must needs be many losers. Oh, that’s life, get over it, someone will say. Yes, that’s the dark jungle that humankind has blindly allowed to grow. A false paradise where the few get prestige and wealth, and the many are set aside. 

 But is this the Kingdom pattern which Christians are called to promote? We think not. We think that the great truths of creation and redemption affirm the value of everyone, and that this individual value applies to what each person makes. Of course some people make better things than others, and of course some people are better judges of quality than others. One is not advocating the levelling of all standards! 

 Kingdom patterns 

 No, the challenge is twofold. First, to an outlook that hands over the decisions to a small cadre of distant taste-formers, instead of our making them for ourselves. The Kingdom encourages each of us to be the real individual whom God formed, sifting and considering what is our own taste, our genuine response to what is written or performed. 

 And second, to a tendency to think that only creations that have the stamp of approval from elite, professional, high-profile institutions are really worthwhile. The Kingdom bids us give a welcome to the contributions of the humbler brothers and sisters, who perhaps haven’t been published by the trade, who don’t get invited to speak from the podiums of churches, festivals, and conventions, who may, in fact, never become award-winning authors.

*When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the selected years.