“Ooh, the Hollywood issue!” was my first thought on pulling the glossy new Vanity Fair magazine – timed to this Sunday’s Academy Awards – from my mailbox.

Then came my second thought: “Who are these people?”

The traditional tri-fold cover featured a dozen movie stars, all in their 20s and 30s. I realized with a sinking feeling that I recognized only a handful of them. Of course, I knew Selena Gomez and Florence Pugh, and I know that Austin Butler had been nominated for his portrayal of Elvis Presley.

But most of these glamorously dressed, sullen-looking characters – Jeremy Allen White, Ana De Armas, HoYeon Jung? Not so much. (If stars in their 40s and beyond had been featured, like Cate Blanchett or Colin Farrell or Michelle Yeoh, I would have stood a better chance.)

But that’s precisely why I’ve come to love the big, dopey awards shows on TV that most sensible people choose not only to shun but to mock as unwatchable swill.

For me, they function as crash courses in the pop culture that I’ve somehow missed over the past year as I was streaming Slow Horses, obsessing about the Buffalo Bills, or listening to the John Coltrane channel on Pandora.

The shows are rare examples of monoculture in a pop-culture world increasingly fractured into tiny splinters. You’ve got your favorite series on Hulu (Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence, you say?) and I’ve got my favorite new journalism flick (She Said, absolutely).

Separated by our demographics, tastes and backgrounds, we don’t share the same references very often these days. We seem to speak different languages. But the gap can be bridged if you’ve got three hours on a Sunday night.

Take the recent Grammys, for example. Going into last month’s broadcast, I have to admit that I did have a mental image of Bad Bunny, based solely on his stage name, but it bore little resemblance to the sexily bearded 28-year-old Puerto Rican dynamo who kicked off the show with a medley from his Un Verano Sin Ti, the first Spanish-language nominee for album of the year. Now I know.

And every once in a while, these shows offer transcendent moments. When the country star Chris Stapleton joined Stevie Wonder for a rousing rendition of Higher Ground, their performance was legitimately thrilling, especially when Motown legend Smokey Robinson emerged on to the stage.

Sure, you could catch up with it on YouTube or Twitter the next day – and many did – but there was something worthwhile about seeing it as it happened.

As I spent some time on a college campus this week, I asked a few undergraduates about the awards shows. The conclusions were inescapable: No one had any intention of watching the Academy Awards on Sunday, and everyone found the whole notion of these broadcasts completely foreign.

“I don’t even know which is which – the Grammys are music, right?” was one response. And another noted that she never watches TV, unless Netflix counts. That apathy shows up in the flagging number of viewers. Back in 2014, the Oscars drew about 40m viewers; last year, only 15m tuned in. (By contrast, last month’s Super Bowl garnered well over 100m viewers worldwide.)

Most of my student interviewees had seen only one of the 10 nominees for best picture – in all cases, that was Everything Everywhere All at Once. I saw it, too, along with Tár and The Banshees of Inisherin, and intend to catch up with others, particularly All Quiet on the Western Front.

I can understand their ennui. They have better things to do, as almost anyone should.

I’m also in sympathy, on the other end of the age spectrum, with 82-year-old singer Nancy Sinatra (most famous for her 1965 hit These Boots Are Made for Walkin’). About an hour into last month’s broadcast, apparently baffled by her unfamiliarity with the performers, Frank’s daughter threw in the towel.

“It’s official,” Sinatra tweeted. “I’m too old to watch the Grammy Awards.”

But for those who would like some passing conversational knowledge of the current scene – a modicum of pop-culture literacy – the shows get the job done. You might even discover an artist whose work is worth exploring more deeply, or at least admire her slit-up-to-here designer frock.

So, despite the scorn of young and old alike, I’ll keep watching. After all, my goals are modest but achievable. Now that I know that Bad Bunny is not an evil lupine, I would like to be able to identify at least half of the Vanity Fair cover stars.

And should I see Emma Corrin on the street in Manhattan, I want to recognize the non-binary star and perhaps offer a shout of support for gender-neutral awards.

Granted, Sunday’s Oscars show is likely to be hideously long, irritatingly undisciplined, annoyingly planned and poorly executed. But I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

• Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture