Conclusion
And the winner is...
Award ceremonies are common. Their precursor is the humble trophy, which has a long history. The fount of all knowledge—Wikipedia—tells us that ancient trophies were made on battlefields inscribed with a story of the battle and were dedicated to gods. “Trophy” was coined in English in 1550, derived from the French trophée in 1513: “a spoil or prize of war.” Wikipedia doesn’t tell us why the concept took 37 years to cross the Channel. Perhaps it took that long to translate it into grubby Anglo-Saxon.
Anyway, trophy presentations evolved into awards ceremonies, popularised by Hollywood to reward thespians, directors, producers, technicians, set designers, and everyone else at the top of their film-making craft. The ceremonies spread like butter into the arts and eventually across society. Most societies, organisations, unions, covens… now book a ballroom in a top hotel and bestow honours on their performers of the year.
So I wasn’t that surprised when a practitioner approached me enquiring about creating the Body Language awards. “Why don’t you have an awards dinner? It could be a way of recognising clinics like mine,” she said. “This can give us something to aspire to; to show others that we have excelled in our craft.”
An astute practitioner, I thought, in recognising the importance of a Body Language award. Seriously, I couldn’t help but think of the difficulties in reaching a true consensus. You have to bear in mind that awards are often not genuine. Patronage and politics often figure.
Hollywood produces examples frequently—I’m sure you can think of your own—often when it awards ageing stars for their service to the industry rather than for a single, outstanding achievement. Are you going to tell me that the limited expressions of John Wayne as Marshal Rooster Cogburn in the original True Grit were better conceived than the acting of Richard Burton in Anne of the Thousand Days, Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy, or Peter O’Toole in Goodbye, Mr Chips? According to the sentimental Academy they were, because John Wayne won the best actor award that year. I have nothing against “The Duke”; he is just a case in point.
Long service, patronage and politics aside, deciding which actor gave the best performance is relatively straightforward compared with choosing, say, Best New Clinic. In choosing an Oscar, members of the academy cast their vote after all watching the same films in comfortable armchairs. How can you objectively choose Best New Clinic? We may agree on the criteria, but ensuring their rigid application by all judges might be a tad difficult. Presumably such an award would involve an on-site inspection but by whom? When? With notice? How many visits? How many patients would be interviewed? Other considerations abound. Call me a cynic, but I think expediency would scupper a true appraisal and the resulting unscientific nature of the procedure would be at odds with the very science the sector is keen to promote.
The same is true of other awards such as Equipment Supplier of the Year or Best Surgeon. Again, we could establish criteria for both awards, but the actual judging would be difficult, particularly where a person’s skill is involved. How would we assess a plastic surgeon’s work—go to past patients and interview and analyse them? Have a panel of peers observe the surgeons at work throughout a working day? A week?
Patronage exists in the publishing industry itself. Every year a panel decides newspaper of the year, and every year the award changes hands like a relay race. While The Guardian, the FT, The Daily Telegraph and others may have been deserving of the award, should we continue to give it the same credence when it is won by the Daily Mail or News of the World? Was their journalism so good that year that it subsumed their core titillating values, or were there other reasons? Surely the fact that the British Press Awards is such a cash cow has nothing to do with it!
Certainly, awards can be gratifying for winners, even when their acceptance seems humble. On winning an award, the late American comedian Jack Benny said: “I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.”
But to carry real weight, candidates for awards must be genuinely appraised, and this is a gargantuan task. Just ask the Nobel Prize committee.
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