As a foal is born knowing how to walk, so the human is born, more or less, knowing how to behave at awards ceremonies, specifically, how to make the “I’m so glad they won and I didn’t, it was totally deserved” facial expression.
Collective etiquette has stripped the enjoyment out of the Emmys, Oscars, Grammys, Baftas, the whole debacle shorn of human passion, leaving only shiny material and overlong thank yous. Athletes are much better at losing than actors, especially when they fall to the ground and beat it with their fists.
Last night, actor and standup comedian Jackie Hoffman, up for best supporting actress in the Emmys, broke the code with a magnificent “Damn it!” upon ceding the prize to Laura Dern. Lest anyone had missed her outburst, in a room with more camera surveillance than an Amazon warehouse, she followed it up with some grapes so sour they would shrivel your metaphorical tastebuds, tweeting: “Laura Dern had famous parents. Forgive me for being from real people #elitism #Emmys2017.” Hoffman also went on to say: “I hear the media actually taking my reaction seriously? Are you kidding me?” – marvelling that she had duped some with her gag. And while she may have been joking, she has some eminent predecessors who probably weren’t.
1. Sore winner
Elton John famously – so famous that I can’t let it go, even though it was 2004 – won classic songwriter at the Q awards, but couldn’t contain his rage at Madonna winning best live act, making the rather extreme case that “everyone who lip-syncs on stage in public when you pay like 75 quid to see them should be shot”.
2. Sore loser on someone else’s behalf
When Kanye West was nominated but failed to secure an MTV Video award in 2009, he took it with good grace – a relative term meaning “much better than the 2006 MTV Music awards, when he said that, if he didn’t win, the awards show would lose credibility, which is known as the ‘corrupted systems loser’”. However, when Beyoncé lost to Taylor Swift, he went bananas, perhaps ventriloquising the soreness of his own loss on to someone else, the way kids at boarding school have to pretend the person next to them wants some jam before they can ask for it.
3. Sore face loser
Say nothing. Do nothing. No gesticulation, head shaking or stabbing yourself with cutlery. Nothing. A completely impassive face, cf Bill Murray at the Oscar triumph of Sean Penn, says everything about the fathomless injustice you have just suffered. But only if you have Bill Murray’s face. Ironically, Sean Penn probably could not make this face.
