The 86th Academy Awards happened this weekend, and it had us wondering: what are we really cheering for when celebrity after celebrity read the names of yet more celebrities to shower them with more photographs and recognition?

If you think it’s about movies, I think you’ve got too much gold glittering in your eyes to see what’s up.

At the center of award ceremonies like the Oscars, the GRAMMYs and the Country Music Awards lies something far less imaginative, original or creative than genuine vision the awards claim to recognize. This thing — it seems obvious — is money.

The first red flag any viewer of a big-time award ceremony should be alerted to is the fact that these groups claim to be choosing “the best” movie, song, play or script.

The “best?” How could you possibly be so arrogant to assume you have the authority to choose the best movie made on the face of the planet in an entire year?

I don’t have a problem with these groups’ supposed “authority.” You might argue that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences doesn’t have the right to say what’s best. But it’s their ceremony; they can have their own opinions.

What bothers me is that they think they’ve considered enough movies, songs, etc. to say they can pick one to beat them all.

I guarantee you the best song ever written in 2013 was not “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk, as this year’s GRAMMY awards asserted. The best song ever written in 2013 was a rock ballad composed by some teenager in New Brunswick, or a 20-minute ukulele solo recorded by someone’s grandma in West Virginia, or a simple three minute piano duet thrown together by two sisters in Austria.

My point is the GRAMMYs only consider music that’s been backed by millionaires, distributed by conglomerate corporations and bought half a billion times on iTunes. To say you’re in any position to choose the “record of the year” is to scoop up a handful of sand on the beach, pick out your favorite piece and declare it’s the best speck of sand on the whole shore.

Even when it comes to movies, which, I admit, aren’t often created by old ladies in Japan or random middle schoolers in Kentucky, the Oscars speak absurdly out of turn when they pick one “winner.”

As a film student at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles last year, I got to spend time with real student filmmakers working on some incredibly moving stuff. Even the cheap films some of them had made in high school had more energy, intensity and beauty in their first 10 minutes than the ultra-famous “The Wolf of Wall Street” had in its entire 180-runtime.

It’s not creativity we’re rewarding at the Oscars — it’s money. And our tuning into ABC to see which rich people won this year just made them a whole lot more money.

Will Beaton is the editor-in-chief for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].