No one heard of it, so it must be awful

Award shows for movies and television can be stupid, self-arrogant and full of grandstanding, not to mention full of lazy voters who nominate the same people year after year. But there's one criticism of award shows that I've become increasingly disenchanted with: "It won and no one's heard of it!"

Just because "no one has heard of it" does not mean it's not great. In fact, maybe it was the best of it's category! Sometimes popularity does not equal quality. (See: According to Jim) Most of the time, for movie and/or television award shows, I have not seen all people or projects nominated. And who do I root for? The people or projects that I know. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the others that I have not seen aren't just as good, if not better, in that category.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a independent film, Bella. It was a great movie, one of my favorites of the year. But, it was an independent film. Not many people see those. (Or can see them; this film had a limited release.) If it got nominated for some Oscars, I'm sure a vast majority of people would be upset because it's a movie they never heard of before. But they have heard of National Treasure II, which was popular, and therefore think that to be "in touch" with America, popular movies should get the peer-to-peer honors. Bella, although a different type of movie than NTII, was much, much better.

I have plenty of problems with award shows. But just because some nominated and award projects that no one has heard of does not necessarily mean it's bad or awful; it could be it deserves the praise. And if you haven't seen the project in question, then hold off any criticism; you just might like it after all.