社會(huì)學(xué)家揭示“小金人”的秘密

If the Oscars seem boring and predictable to you this year, then you're in good company. Sociologists have considered the Academy Awards predictable for a long time.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with Gabriel Rossman, a UCLA sociologist with some of the most interesting research on the intersection of economics and pop culture. Rossman has two fascinating papers about the Oscars. The first addressed the tantalizing question: What qualities of a movie best predict Oscars nominations?

Unsurprisingly, the biggest correlation was being in a very serious movie. Considering 172,000 performances listed on IMDB in 20,000 movies, Rossman and co-author Nicole Esparza found that dramas were were nine times more likely to get nominations.

The second and third best predictors both had to do with the size of the competition. When there are fewer films released around awards season, the odds that any one movie gets a nomination increases. This simple principle applies, rather unfortunately, to actresses, as well. It's an industry truism, borne out in the evidence, that women have fewer meaty roles in the types of movies likely to be nominated for an Oscar. That means any one dramatic end-of-year performance by a woman has a higher chance of earning a nomination.

Perhaps the most substantive finding in the paper is that people with high IMDB movie rankings in past movie credits were more likely to work with other stars, doubling their chances at getting a nomination. “Actors are going to look good when they work with talented people," Rossman told the Daily Bruin. "This is an interesting thing since you tend to get talented people working with other talented people, meaning that people will end up looking even better than when just working alone.”

Maybe this seems completely obvious to you: Better actors get better parts and then get to work with better directors (hello, Leonardo DiCaprio). But it's also a classic example of what sociologists call cumulative advantage or the "Matthew Effect," named after the passage in Matthew where Jesus says "For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich." This isn't as simple as the rich getting richer. It's the idea that slightly more talented people get access to higher-quality support for their talents, which greatly multiplies the benefits of their innate advantage (e.g.: smarter students going to colleges with better professors and better career services connections).

The fact that movies with stars get more Oscar attention might be an indication that Hollywood's stars are simply better than its non-stars. But probably not. It's much more likely a sign that (just as you might have suspected) we're bad picking out discrete instances of talent in star-studded projects. This would imply we—or, at least, the Academy—is just as bad at recognizing Oscar-worthy talentin movies without any past Oscar nominees. In both cases, the context overwhelms our ability to recognize individual achievement.

Rossman's second Oscar paper is about audiences and prizes. Some producers really want to win Oscars. These producers would also, presumably, like to make money. The problem is that audiences don't like most movies that are "Academy Award movies"—here defined as late-year releases about serious subjects (like AIDS, slavery, or technological dystopia)—so the business of making an Oscar-y movie is high-risk with dubiously high reward.

Rossman explains it well:

It turns out that audiences dislike movies that are *trying* to get Oscar nominations but really like movies that actually *get* Oscar nominations. By inference, if there were no Oscars to drive box office towards them, there would be far fewer movies about historical protagonists overcoming oppression. Indeed, it looks like Hollywood basically nails it since they make exactly the right number of Oscar-targeted movies that the two effects balance out on average.

To the victors go the spoils, kind of. Best Picture winners can expect a 22 percentraise in box office after a nomination and another 15 percent bump if they win, according to IBISWorld. But the financial calculations probably miss the best reasons to try to make an Oscar movie: To win accolades within the industry, to win access to stars who can make you more money down the line and, just maybe, to bask in the honor of making a truly great film.

相關(guān)內(nèi)容

幾周前，我和加布里爾•羅斯曼(洛杉磯加州大學(xué)的一位社會(huì)學(xué)家)聊起經(jīng)濟(jì)和流行文化結(jié)合方面最有意思的一些研究。羅斯曼手頭有兩篇關(guān)于奧斯卡的論文，很有意思。第一篇解答了一直困擾人們的問(wèn)題：一部影片具備什么樣的條件才能獲得奧斯卡提名?

令人并不感到意外的是，最大的因素是和影片的嚴(yán)肅性相關(guān)。通過(guò)研究IMDB上20000部影片的172000次點(diǎn)映，羅斯曼和論文的另一個(gè)作者妮可•埃斯帕扎發(fā)現(xiàn)，劇情片比其他類型影片獲提名的可能性高出九倍。

第二大和第三大因素都和競(jìng)爭(zhēng)的規(guī)模相關(guān)。當(dāng)頒獎(jiǎng)季上映的影片很少時(shí)，任何一部影片獲得提名的機(jī)會(huì)就增加了。很不幸的是，這個(gè)簡(jiǎn)單的規(guī)則同樣適用于女演員獲獎(jiǎng)提名。有證據(jù)表明，在可能被提名奧斯卡獎(jiǎng)的影片里，內(nèi)容充實(shí)的女性角色很少，這是行規(guī)。這意味著，一個(gè)女演員年末任何一個(gè)打動(dòng)人心的表演都很可能獲得提名。

也許論文最重大的發(fā)現(xiàn)是，在過(guò)去的影片評(píng)分中，影片獲得IMDB高評(píng)分的人更容易和其他明星相處，使得他們得到提名的機(jī)會(huì)也翻了一番。羅斯曼告訴《洛杉磯加州大學(xué)校報(bào)》“演員和有才華的人合作將表現(xiàn)良好”，“這是件很有意思的事，因?yàn)槟銉A向于使有才華的人聚在一起工作，這意味著他們最后會(huì)比一個(gè)人工作時(shí)表現(xiàn)要好。”

可能你很明白：好的演員得到好的角色，能夠和好的導(dǎo)演一起共事。但是這也是一個(gè)典型的被社會(huì)學(xué)家稱為積累優(yōu)勢(shì)或“馬太效應(yīng)”的例子。“馬太效應(yīng)”這個(gè)名字來(lái)源于《馬太福音》，在這部著作中耶穌說(shuō)道“凡有的，還要給他更多使他變得富有。”這并不是簡(jiǎn)單的“富有的變得更加富有”。這說(shuō)的是稍微更具才華的人會(huì)獲得更優(yōu)質(zhì)的支持從而大幅增加他們固有的優(yōu)勢(shì)(例如，更聰明的學(xué)生上大學(xué)接觸更好的老師獲得更好的職業(yè)發(fā)展機(jī)會(huì))。

有明星的影片會(huì)得到奧斯卡更多的關(guān)注，這可能表明好萊塢的明星比不是明星的演員更出色。但恐怕不是這樣。(正如你所懷疑的那樣)這可能更多地表明在眾星云集的電影行業(yè)中，我們不善于挑選出個(gè)別的有才華的演員。這暗示，我們——或至少是奧斯卡——一樣地不善于認(rèn)可沒(méi)有任何曾提名過(guò)奧斯卡的演員但頗具才氣、值得奧斯卡獎(jiǎng)的影片。在這兩種情況下，大環(huán)境支配我們認(rèn)可個(gè)人成就的能力。

羅斯曼第二篇關(guān)于奧斯卡的論文是關(guān)于觀眾和獎(jiǎng)項(xiàng)的。一些制作人真的很想要獲得奧斯卡獎(jiǎng)。這些制作人可能想賺錢。問(wèn)題是，大部分的“奧斯卡獎(jiǎng)影片”——這里指的是上映的晚，話題沉重(像艾滋病、奴隸制、技術(shù)敵托邦)——觀眾都不喜歡。因此，制作一個(gè)為奧斯卡量身定制的影片這門生意是風(fēng)險(xiǎn)很高的，高回報(bào)則不一定。

這一點(diǎn)羅斯曼解釋得很好：

事實(shí)上，觀眾不喜歡“試圖”得到奧斯卡提名的影片，但確實(shí)喜歡真正"得到"奧斯卡提名的影片。根據(jù)推理，如果沒(méi)有奧斯卡推動(dòng)票房，那么關(guān)于戰(zhàn)勝壓迫的歷史人物的影片將會(huì)少之又少。的確，好像好萊塢基本上敲定了奧斯卡，因?yàn)樗麄兩a(chǎn)的影片的數(shù)量正好是奧斯卡需要的影片數(shù)量，他們基本上持平了。

勝利者總有點(diǎn)備受寵愛(ài)。據(jù)市場(chǎng)研究公司IBISWorld講，最佳攝影獎(jiǎng)獲得者在提名之后可以獲得票房的22%，在獲獎(jiǎng)之后可以再獲得15%。但是光計(jì)算金錢可能遺漏掉試圖制造一部奧斯卡影片的最佳原因：在本行業(yè)內(nèi)贏得榮譽(yù)，獲得將來(lái)能為你賺更多錢的明星，或僅僅是為了獲得制作一部真正偉大影片的榮譽(yù)。