“A Quiet Place” Will Be Snubbed At The Oscars

Although I am anxiously awaiting an exposé on MoviePass’s sketchy-at-best business model, I took the deal that felt too good to be true and ran with it. MoviePass is a subscription-based ticketing service for movies. For a flat fee for $9.95 per month, MoviePass allows users to see one movie per day, sending each subscriber a prepaid debit card to pay for each showtime. After walking out of the theater midway through the trashy cringiness of Bill Holderman’s Book Club and wrestling with the unnuanced, lackluster portrayal of London’s Orthodox Jewish community in Sebastian Lelio’s Disobedience, I was grateful that MoviePass freed me of the financial burden of paying upwards of $12 for a movie experience. The service granted me the freedom to watch films I would have otherwise missed out on. Two movies stand out in particular. John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place blew me away with its primarily non-verbal performance and its unique sound mixing, taking advantage of the silence that consumed most of the film. Featuring stunning cinematography, an intricate storyline, along with an exceptional performance by Toni Collette, Ari Aster’s Hereditary cemented itself as an instant classic. Despite my praise for these phenomenal movies, I couldn’t help but think, “It’s a shame they’re not going to win any Oscars.”

[su_pullquote align=”right”]Historically, the odds are stacked against these two spectacular movies when it comes to recognition at ceremonies like the Oscars and Golden Globes.[/su_pullquote]Historically, the odds are stacked against these two spectacular movies when it comes to recognition at ceremonies like the Oscars and Golden Globes, especially outside of the technical categories. More informally, these movies will probably be snubbed of features in online listicles called something like “Must-See Movies”. The film establishment holds a prominent anti-horror bias in what it ranks and highlights, or in what it deems quality entertainment versus popular and lesser.

The horror genre has been a staple of entertainment – whether through folk tales of witchcraft and the supernatural or Western classics like H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu.” Films are no exception to appreciating fear and horror. The genre of horror interacts with mainstream American culture primarily through its recognition at award ceremonies, like the Academy Awards or Golden Globes. Interrogating the anti-horror bias of the film establishment raises the questions of what purpose award shows serve, and how legitimate they really are. Using the most traditional metric for film recognition—the Academy Awards—the film establishment exposes its prejudice against fear flicks. Only one horror movie, Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs, has won the Best Picture award. Five others have been nominated for the same award, the most coveted prize of the night. Genre classics like Frankenstein and The Shining, as well as recent favorites like The Babadook and The Witch, received no nominations from the Academy. With a vast majority of the nominations in technical categories, only a handful of horror films have received nods during award season, inaccurately reflecting the amount of horror movies released each year. Of course, these arbitrary award ceremonies do not and cannot capture true artistic and technical merit, but rather give us insight into what contemporary critics and the general American public consider to be excellent.

A popular solution to the Academy’s anti-horror bias is to create a separate award recognizing the Best Horror Film, like the Best Foreign Language Film and Best Animated Feature categories designed to recognize film genres. The idea is that films in the horror genre would be recognized consistently and independent of the general pool of a given year’s cinema. However, creating categories for genre awards stands upon a flawed premise and exposes the bias of the Academy. If horror films were fairly considered for all awards, there would be no need for an independent genre prize. Rarely are films in genre categories ever nominated for other awards, further indicating the Academy’s bias. Isolating a group of films into a genre category serves to recognize these films just enough to satisfy fans while avoiding pitting them against critic favorites. On one hand, considering films of different genres separately enforces these genres as deviant and mutually exclusive with “Best Picture.” At the same time, this type of categorization creates recognition for the best of these films, normally unrecognized because of the genre bias. Separation inherently implies hierarchy. Especially in recognition, awards being presented individually imply levels of prestige, with the last award of the night usually being the most coveted. The solution for anti-horror bias does not lie in conceiving independent awards. The Academy should shift their genre bias so that these special categories become unnecessary, and films of all genres and backgrounds be equally considered.

The anti-horror bias of the Academy Awards—among similar institutions—feeds into a larger phenomenon of “Oscar bait,” a term referring to films produced with the primary motivation of nominations for the Oscars. Gabriel Rossman and Oliver Schilke, two UCLA sociologists, analyzed what factors contribute to “Oscar bait,” and created an algorithm to predict how many Oscars a film would be nominated for by scanning its summary and tagged keywords on IMDB. They found that war movies, historical epics, and biographies were the most likely to earn nominations. Common themes of nominated films included plot elements of political intrigue, disabilities, war crimes, and show business. Films with keywords like “zombie” were negatively correlated with nominations, disqualifying a common trope of horror. Horror films are not the only ones that suffer from the formulaic attitude of the film establishment — genres like westerns, musicals, and sports rarely see recognition.

Category prizes label films as valid art only when they conform to our notions of what a good horror or musical or comedy film should contain. Genre categories are at the same time freeing and limiting. A horror genre may have resulted in Jordan Peele’s Get Out being considered only a great horror film instead of a great film in general. However, the Golden Globes Awards, which do not contain a designated horror section, categorized Get Out as a “musical or comedy.” The contradictory nature and role of award ceremonies in the designation of horror films illustrate that attitudes toward the genre cannot be solved through the tweaking of awards shows’ structures. Rather, these problems would be more appropriately addressed by changing the makeup of the institutions.

Corporate entities can do their part to help the film establishment overcome its genre bias. As streaming consumption waxes and movie-going rates wane, digital recommendation algorithms hold the power in controlling what viewers watch. In the case of streaming giant Netflix, the program uses algorithms to recommend viewing that users will likely enjoy but might not know about based on their watching history and other customer data. If you binged Parks and Recreation in the span of a few lonely summer nights, you might see a recommendation to start Freaks and Geeks, a series dealing with different themes like coming of age, but with similar humor and a sitcom setup. Netflix is using this intelligent and sneaky algorithm to market entertainment slightly different than users’ typical watching habits, but still compatible with the preferences of the users. In particular, Netflix said in August 2017 that it is refining its algorithms to recommend more horror and science fiction to users. Todd Yellin, vice president of product innovation at Netflix, announced that the new algorithms will “help members break these pre-conceived notions and make it easier for them to find stories they’ll love, even in seemingly unlikely places.”

The company cites horror series Stranger Things as a prime example of the algorithm’s power in overcoming genre bias, “One in five Stranger Things fans were new to horror before [they watched Stranger Things].” In 2017 and 2018, Stranger Things racked up 49 wins and 178 nominations in critical award ceremonies. Because the series only streams on Netflix, we would be remiss not to give Netflix’s recommendation algorithms credit for promoting this show to a wider, horror-averse audience. Some may say that Netflix is pushing an agenda by altering its recommendation engine to suggest more horror films, but actually Netflix is only making the appropriate changes to feature relevant movies (and shows) of all genres, regardless of their formal recognition.

Horror is on the rise. The New York Times dubbed 2017 as “The Biggest Year in Horror History,” citing box office records for the genre. Critics see wins by recent films like Get Out as progress by the film establishment. But before they tout a few nominations of one movie as a breakthrough for the Academy’s relationship to genre, the institution should reconsider how horror films are promoted, considered, and classified. A concrete way to combat bias would be to invite more directors, actors, designers, and technicians with experience with a wide variety of genres as members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. More experts that understand the nuances of horror would help the Academy overcome its anti-horror bias. There’s no telling how long companies that make horror films accessible (like MoviePass) will last – mainstream acceptance is necessary in acknowledging the merits of horror films. When we see consistent nominations and wins of deserved horror films in technical and non-technical categories, we then can claim evolution of the film establishment.

Liza Sivriver ‘20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at lizasivriver@wustl.edu.