FILMS: Getting the best out of the worst

06 Sep, 2015 - 00:09 0 Views
FILMS: Getting the best out of the worst Miley Cyrus hosted the VMAs last Sunday

The Sunday Mail

MADE famous by the likes of Phineas Barnum (19th century American showman and circus owner), and Oscar Wilde (Irish poet and playwright), the adage “there is no such thing as bad publicity” has always boggled my mind.

Miley Cyrus hosted the VMAs last Sunday

Miley Cyrus hosted the VMAs last Sunday

It means that regardless of what people have to say about you, what matters is that they are talking about you.

It means you are relevant.

This to me has never made sense.

Until last week when I watched the MTV Video Music Awards.

Once the numbers were crunched, this edition was nothing to write home about.

It had one of its lowest viewership numbers, approximately 5,3 million, and virtually no surprises in terms of winners.

The usual suspects — Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, Ed Shereen and Beyonce — walked away with gongs.

No new stars were born.

However, the show will be remembered not for its core business, which is to reward and acknowledge the music industry’s top performers, but for the controversy that emanated from it.

Miley Cyrus and Kanye West, two of the industry’s most controversial individuals, did what they do best: They pulled off a “Miley” and a “Kanye”.

As host, Miley got into a heated verbal confrontation with Best Female Hip-Hop winner Nicki; wore a string of revealing outfits; and mouthed expletives non-stop.

And Kanye — while receiving the Michael Jackson Vanguard Award — revealed his intention to run for the US presidency in 2020, made up with an old rival, and appeared intoxicated during a rambling rant that was supposed to an acceptance speech.

In that way, the event broke all kinds of records on social media, chief amongst them a Twitter record for the most talked about and tweeted non-sports event in the US.

The biggest lesson from this was that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Which brings me to the main focus of this week’s instalment.

We are nearing our 2015 awards season and on the menu are the Zimbabwe Hip-Hop, Annual National Sports, Soccer Star of the Year”and thereafter the National Arts Merit awards.

These are supposed to be the biggest highlights of the showbiz and celeb calendar, attracting much attention and dominating bar talk.

But not in Zimbabwe.

This could be because planning, which is an integral part of successfully hosting any event, simply doesn’t seem to take place in this country.

Sad isn’t it?

We are merely months away from all these aforementioned events and there is no buzz at all surrounding the events.

The dates, hosts, venues and themes are either treated like national secrets or simply do not exist.

Where is the wow factor, the shock and awe? Where is the glitz and glam?

A lesson from the recent MTV Videos Music Awards is that thinking outside the box can ignite a little fire.

Picking Miley as host was the most horrible decision ever made that actually turned out to be a stroke of genius.

The organisers had nothing new to offer: no new stars, no new acts, no new nothing.

But they saw Miley and her controversy and banked on her to get people talking.

Consider that Taylor Swift presented the Vanguard Award to Kanye, given their history.

What a way to create talking points!

There was also the Miley and Nicki Minaj bust-up (which some say was staged). It is these things that create the buzz in showbiz when there really is nothing else to talk about.

I still find it hard to believe that Zimbabwe’s big award shows, with the exception of the Namas, are not beamed live by ZBC.How do you create a showbiz industry without TV? Where is the social media hype? What kind of pre and after parties are we holding?

Much work lies ahead.

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