'Megachurch But Harmless': The 'Las Culturistas' Culture Awards Are Reinventing the Awards Show Model

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | June 20, 2023 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | June 20, 2023 |

Picture it: you’re sitting on the couch in the living room of your childhood home, popcorn bowl resting in your lap, the TV flashing images of famous women in fancy gowns. It’s Oscars night, which means you get to stay up past your bedtime. Your parents are debating the nominees for Best Picture and commenting on the aforementioned fancy gowns. Your young mind is overflowing with the wonders of celebrity and glamour and Hollywood. Life is good.

Somewhere along the line, though, things changed. You grew up. The red carpet faded to a dull maroon. The debates about the nominees became more fraught. The whole enterprise started to reek of vapid, shallow materialism.

Enter: Las Culturistas.

“For those of you that don’t know what’s in store for tonight, the vibe is going to be megachurch but harmless,” Bowen Yang of Saturday Night Live told a crowd of over 2,000 people this past Saturday at the second annual Las Culturistas Culture Awards, a parody version of an awards show. Alongside his cohost and podcast partner, Matt Rogers (I Love That For You, Fire Island), awards such as “Best Skill To Have” with nominees like “Drew Barrymore Impression” and “A Sense of Play,” were presented. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was nominated in the category of “They Should Be An Actor Award For Not Actor But Should,” and Cate Blanchett was up for the “Cate Blanchett Award for Good Acting.” In the end, Blanchett beat out her fellow nominees, including Sarah Snook and Meghann Fahy, and accepted her namesake award via video.

The Las Culturistas podcast is a chatty weekly digest of all things culture and entertainment news. Hosts Yang and Rogers, who met as freshmen at NYU, ask their guests questions like, “What was the culture that made you say culture was for you?” and end every episode with a round of “I don’t think so, honey,” in which they each take a minute to complain about something in culture-at-large that’s bothering them.

The pair told The New York Times that they fell in love with awards shows in 1998, when Titanic swept the Oscars. As they found success in the entertainment industry and started attending the very events they grew up watching with reverence, they saw the ugliness behind the glamour. “There is something titillating and alluring about it, but something disconcerting at the same time,” Yang told The Times. “I feel like we’re in a moment where the form is being questioned and is changing.”

“This is so stupid and silly and gay,” said a fan in the crowd. “And that’s what makes it brilliant.”