Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been catching up on some of the Oscar bait still floating around cinemas, flicks like American Hustle and Saving Mr. Banks. Both movies have performances in them deserving of nominations, but you can never tell who will finally get the nod. That’s because studios will spend anywhere from $200,000 to a few million dollars in promotions just to help secure an individual nomination, and if your performance doesn’t have such a campaign behind it, then you can pretty much forget hearing your name called on Oscar night no matter how good you were. The promotional wars have escalated so much in recent years that some people believe they’ve gone too far…
All that money and effort for a little gold statue. Well, that and somewhere between a 40 to 50 percent increase in box office returns after your film gets nominated. Everybody has their own idea of a proper reward, I suppose.
Even we Christians have an award in mind if we’re honest about things. That being said, however, it’s one that’s quite a bit better than a statue or a few million dollars. Quoting St. Augustine, the Catechism tells us that “desire for true happiness frees man from his immoderate attachment to the goods of this world so that he can find his fulfillment in the vision and beatitude of God… There will true glory be, where no one will be praised by mistake or flattery; true honor will not be refused to the worthy, nor granted to the unworthy… God himself will be virtue's reward; he gives virtue and has promised to give himself as the best and greatest reward that could exist.” I’ll take that over a statue any day.
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