AMVCA public vote time to rethink

Once a classmate called me on WhatsApp and asked me to vote for him as “political student of the year” at the annual college awards. Then an idea occurred to me: Shouldn’t this category be refereed by a small group of students who know the facts, rather than the entire mass of students?

I had a similar thought while following the rituals of the ninth edition of the AMVCAwhose final was held on May 20, 2023 at the Eko Hotel in Lagos.

Clothing choices for its attendees aside, this year’s show was also noted for its lavish service to democracy. The actors won certain plaques for this and that, they just hadn’t been selected for the award by a select panel of film critics or filmmakers. Certain award categories had been decided by the public. Well, I disagree with that logic.

Organized annually by MultiChoice, the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards honor performances in Nigerian film and television. It has a rather literal name: “Viewers’ Choice” actually means that the public has a say in the matter.

In total, there are 12 voting categories; and it’s no problem when the public votes for awards like Best Online Social Content Creator. But it becomes problematic when the public can also decide who gets the biggest awards, such as Best Actor in a Drama and Best Original Drama Series, among others.

And this is not to say that members of the public cannot competently interpret films. Perhaps most people can. It is, after all, a medium with elements—particularly story and character—that are intrinsic to the human experience and can be intuitively appreciated without formal education; just as you can intuitively judge the taste of food without being a Michelin star chef.

And perhaps being an expert at acting in movies requires that you also be an expert in life, that you know a thing or two about art, politics, and religion. It is not necessary to know the author’s theory or have a film diploma to recognize the biblical allusion in a scene in The devil’s lawyer where Al Pacino probe Keanu Reeves on top of a skyscraper. You only need to have attended Sunday school.

That said, there’s still an acre difference between the critical judgment of the public who sees 20, maybe 30 movies a year, and that of a filmmaker or critic who averages, say, 100. That kind of movie consumption gives the second group one advantage: context. And knowledge of the context (social, historical, authorial) is possibly the most important piece of equipment in art criticism.

That is why the organizers of the awards that most of the world refers to, such as the Oscars and the Nobel Prize, trust the judgment of specialists. The Oscars have an academy of about 10,000 voters, and the Nobel is awarded by the Swedish Academy. One effect of this is that it lends a certain gravity to the prizes, both in the eyes of the public and the winners. Surely there is no comparison to the self-satisfaction an author would feel upon winning a literary award that had been decided by Philip Roth and Saul Bellow and Teju Coleto one that was won largely by a Twitter poll.

And this is the problem with the AMVCA. For all its cultural significance, it has yet to reach its full potential because sizable and consequential parts have been reduced to popularity contests. Therefore, it does not inspire widespread faith in its critical authority. This same problem plagues The Headies, another Nigerian institution that indulges in a reckless brand of democracy.

The current AMVCA model could exist to encourage public participation, which would make the organizers of the show a truckload of money. But now the AMVCA must decide if it also wants to be seen as a serious referee. And it can do so by playing tyrannical government: giving little importance to democracy.

I did not reply to that WhatsApp message; and my old college continues in that democratic tradition. But there’s no reason for the AMVCA to have to.