A person’s social status will always play a role in the opportunities one gets in life but does it play a role in award ceremonies as well? The 2023 VMAs (Video Music Awards) happened recently on September 12th and a particular category winner sparked this conversation with a majority of people being upset over the final decision. 

Visual Effects

Visual effects is the use of manipulating or creating film imagery to add a sense of realism to visual storytelling. The visual effects category had two prominent artists nominated that many wanted to win, these being Melanie Martinez’s “Void” and Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero”. Unfortunately for many, Taylor Swift ended up taking home the title of “Winner”. But why are people so upset about this? 

While many thought both nominations were amazing there was a major difference of amazing for both. With the category being visual effects, many felt this was an unfair win due to the extreme difference of use in visual effects for both videos.“Void” was completely made up of visual effects while “Anti-Hero” was partially visual effects with a majority of the music video being practical effects/no effects. 

As both artists had self-directed their videos they had complete control over the use and amount of visual effects but while Melanie was creating an entire mystical world for herself and hundreds of magical visuals, Taylor was creating double of herself and an egg bleeding glitter. This led many to believe it was a popularity vote, especially because the public could not vote for this category as it was “professional” vote only. 

With the extreme difference in popularity between the two it was quite obvious to many that it was more or less a popularity vote to please the massive amount of Taylor Swift fans. Taylor Swift sits at #2 artist with 100.9 million monthly listeners and Melanie Matinez at #483 artist with 14.6 million monthly listeners at the time of this article’s publication. In many’s opinion this played the biggest role in the votes rather than the videos themselves. Taylor Swift won a total of 9 awards at the 2023 VMAs, deserved or not deserved the public was most upset over the visual effects award. 

Opinions

After the announcement of the winner, many took to social media to give their own opinions on the results. Redditor _mel222_ commented on a thread saying,

“For me it’s pure favoritism, and it’s not because Melanie hasn’t won, it’s because they don’t give a chance to lesser-known artists, that is instead of always putting the same artist, let new artists be known so they can win.” 

Redditor pastelqueen011 also adds, 

“They’re both two of my favorite artists. I’m happy Taylor won, I would have been happy with either of them, but Melanie’s video was so cool, it sucks that she didn’t win. Her video did have cooler effects, I’ll definitely give her that.” 

To get firsthand insight I posted a poll onto my instagram asking who should’ve won and why, 90% said Melanie with 10% saying Taylor but the people who picked Taylor decided not to say why. Instagram user kooljester says 

“Melanie Martinez should have easily won this award. Just by comparing the two you can easily see which one is more dramatic and emotionally driven. Melanie’s video is outstanding. It has a stronger stance in being creative versus Taylor’s video.”

So after all this information, who really should’ve won the VMA’s visual effects awards? That just depends on your personal opinion. For me both videos were good but “Void” had way better visuals than “Anti-hero” and was deserving of winning. Although I am not the happiest Taylor won, that does not mean one should hate on Taylor because that’s not productive or deserving and does not support the point of wanting Melanie to win.