Oscars for Corporations
For one, they’re always acting like they care
about our health, the environment, justice, art
more than they care about generating shareholder wealth.
It’s true, the acting is usually pretty atrocious
but when it’s good, it’s almost miraculous.
We get to consume their shit without feeling like rubes
or that we’re complicit in our own diminishment.
When the acting works, we feel we’re part of something
larger than ourselves that’s doing something good in the world.
I think the corporations who pull this off
occupy a much larger slice of our interior
spiritual pie chart than those individuals whose filmed
performances reveal the slimmer slices—of beauty—
we find so moving. Why shouldn’t we honor
the global business interests capable of acting
at that high a caliber with a little gold statuette?
Shouldn’t we want to celebrate the best of the best?
Wouldn’t that better incentivize more bravura
performances, fewer moments of broken immersion
in the narrativized dreamscapes these entities give our lives?
Sad they’ll never give Oscars for this kind of acting.
And it’ll only get harder and harder to enjoy
the Academy Awards every year, knowing so much
more societally important acting, acting upholding
the very political order that moderates history,
is going on out there unsung, unrecognized.