Dubious Distinctions

It was with mild surprise that I read a recent news item that restaurant critic Giles Coren had won the award for bad sex in fiction. Huh, what was that again? Apparently the award, now in its 13th year, is Britain's most dreaded literary accolade. It was set up "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it" by Rhoda Koenig and Auberon Waugh of the Literary Review. The literary world (of which I am not a part...FOR SURE!!) is not alone in pulling up its constituents for bad taste. In the world of cinema there are the ruthless Razzies to contend with. The Golden Raspberry (Razzie) Awards annually present Dis-honours for Worst Achievements in Film since 1980. Their yearly bestowing of Tinsel Town's Tackiest Trophies is regularly covered by all major news services and targets some of Hollywood's biggest names. Winners of Razzie include actors Bill Cosby, Kevin Costner, Roberto Benigni and Lawrence Olivier as well as Madonna, Burt Reynolds and Brooke Shields. Sylvester Stallone scores as all-time champion with 10 wins.

Nor is this type of singling out reserved for the arts. In the sciences, the Ig Nobel Prize, sponsored by the Annals of the Improbable research, acknowledges "Scientific achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced". The 15th and most recent awards ceremony was conducted at Harward University, where actual Nobel Laureates handed out the prizes. In the category of medicine, Gregg A Miller won and Ig Nobel for his invention of Neuticles, artificial replacement of testicles for dogs available in three sizes and three degrees of firmness. In the category of Economics, Gauri Nanda of MIT won for her invention of and alarm clock that runs away and hides. Previous years' winners include an analysis of the forces necessary to drag sheep over various surfaces, a report that revealed that chickens prefer beautiful people and a washing machine for cats and dogs (I appreciate the last one, because my dog is too painful to handle when we plan to give him a wash or something closer). The prizes are often nominal; a statuette, a champagne bottle (I love that drink as well as the song...add a supernova) - but many recipients sportingly show up. In celebrity-dom there is no such thing as bad publicity. Poet Ghalib summed it up many centuries ago when he wrote "Badnaam honge to kya naam na hoga"