There are many reasons for you to want an Oscar: prestige, praise from your peers, ticket sales, sexual attention...

But are awards a good thing for everyone else? Or do they allow incompetent arbiters of taste to over-inflate certain kinds of art over other more deserving ones? And who the hell decided that awards should be so political?

We sink our teeth into the good, the bad, and the ugly of cultural awards, and try to decide what, if anything, makes them valuable.