This past Tuesday night, live from the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California was the 47th Annual People’s Choice Awards.
The People’s Choice Awards, sponsored by E!, first premiered in 1975. In terms of the voting itself, the contest used to be administered via telephone-based Gallup polls but has since shifted towards online voting. The online voting is conducted either via the People’s Choice site, where users have to use their Facebook accounts, or via Twitter where people can vote through publishing certain tweets.
There are four categories in the awards show: movies, TV, music and pop culture.
Starting with movies, Disney was the big winner.
Disney’s Marvel Studios films took home four awards including The Movie of 2021 for “Black Widow,” The Action Movie of 2021 for “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” Female Movie Star of 2021 for Scarlett Johannson for “Black Widow” and finally Action Movie Star of 2021 for Simu Liu for “Shang-Chi.”
Disney’s live-action side of the business took home Drama Movie of 2021 for “Cruella” and Male Movie Star of 2021 and Comedy Movie Star of 2021 for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for “Jungle Cruise.” Disney’s Fox brand also won The Comedy Movie of 2021 for “Free Guy.”
Disney and Pixar took home The Family Movie of 2021 for the animated-flick “Luca” which was released straight to Disney+ in June.
The only non-Disney award winner in the movies category was Kevin Hart winning the Drama Movie Star of 2021 for his Netflix release “Fatherhood.”
The world of television was a different story, as the awards were much more dispersed between networks.
Marvel Studios’ Disney+ show “Loki” was victorious as The Show of 2021. ABC’s long-running medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” won The Drama Show of 2021 and Netflix’s Mindy Kaling-created comedy “Never Have I Ever” took home The Comedy Show of 2021.
“Loki” star Tom Hiddleston won the Male TV Star of 2021 while the star of “Grey’s Anatomy” Ellen Pompeo won Female TV Star of 2021, right along with their respective series’ wins. Chase Stokes from Netflix’s “Outer Banks” brought the Drama TV Star of 2021 back to the North Carolina-based series and Selena Gomez won Comedy TV Star of 2021 for Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.”
Moving onto music, Lil Nas X won the Male Artist of 2021 and Adele was victorious as the Female Artist of 2021. The South Korea-based boy band BTS won Group of 2021 and their song “Butter” won Song of 2021 and Music Video of 2021.
Lastly, in the pop culture category, the Game Changer of 2021 was awarded to Simone Biles, likely for her athletic prowess and advocacy for mental health awareness, both of which were on display during the 2020 Olympic Games at Tokyo.
To see the full list of awards, visit the People’s Choice Awards website.
Ultimately, this awards show is not generally considered to be of the utmost prestige given people, not experts, are voting. This tends to frame this event as more of a popularity contest, rather than a determination of the most deserving victor. However, we must always remember that art is subjective and this awards show lets the people speak.
So though it may not carry as much weight as the Oscars, Emmys or Grammys, the people are speaking.
In the end, it’s the people’s choice.
