And the Award Goes to…
After years of assiduous psychoexistential analysis and countless nights of atrocious inner debates, my scattered selves came to the ultimate conclusion that the reason why they never seem to figure out the point of award ceremonies in Lebanon boils down to one, clear-cut fact. There is no point at all. We tried asking around, went hunting for verbal clues between the lines of nauseatingly formulaic acceptance speeches and eventually resorted to social media for the latest in opinionated overemotionalisation, still no traces of a point were found.
From unnecessarily verbose intros to intellectually challenged remarks, the Murex d’or transported viewers on a shamelessly disordered 6-hour journey into folkloric pretentiousness in its 16th (and arguably most clueless) edition.
My particularly observant selves struggled to transcend the outdated format as award presenters took the stage June 2016 in strikingly unharmonious pairs to voice their cliché-packed discourses on a whointerrupts-the-other-first basis, wasting the audience’s already wasted time to score points against each other.
And the categories gradually unfolded with no clear intention, let alone a tremendous lack of substance, leaving us in sheer awe as to how far deeper the Lebanese drama-infused TV recipe can sink (well, it seems to have reached previously unheard of depths this time).
We even tried to derive a last bit of hope from the refined fashion sense of the elite but stumbled upon an overload of paillettes that is bound to leave us aesthetically paralysed for a minimum of two lifetimes.
But regardless of fairly trivial and totally acceptable matters of poor organisation and nonexistent coordination, what is most perplexing about this award ceremony is the extent to which it perfectly reflects the structure, flaws and mechanisms that make up the Lebanese society.
A paranoid society that feeds on appearances but preaches humbleness. A trivia-driven community of individuals who are just never able to fit their colossal egos into a mortal human body. A bundle of madness where a chaos of rules resulted in chaos being the only rule.
Award season has been officially kicked off in the ‘Lebanesest’ possible way. And here we are again, watching our nation’s brighter-than-paillette future unfold as the red carpet unfolds (divulging its finest socialites and most famous celebrities along the way). Far, so far away from any viable signs of sociocultural evolution, let alone a foreseeable systematic revolution.
And the award goes to us. No, I am no longer referring to my selves. I am referring to the people. The award goes to us, for making peace with chaos and accepting to be ruled by the absence of rules.