“小金人”背後的祕密

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.如果你覺得今年的奧斯卡很無聊，結果在你的預料之中，那麼你和很多人想到一塊去了。社會學家早就認爲奧斯卡獎是可以預測的。

幾周前，我和加布里爾•羅斯曼（洛杉磯加州大學的一位社會學家）聊起經濟和流行文化結合方面最有意思的一些研究。羅斯曼手頭有兩篇關於奧斯卡的論文，很有意思。第一篇解答了一直困擾人們的問題：一部影片具備什麼樣的條件才能獲得奧斯卡提名？

令人並不感到意外的是，最大的因素是和影片的嚴肅性相關。通過研究IMDB上20000部影片的172000次點映，羅斯曼和論文的另一個作者妮可•埃斯帕扎發現，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爭的規模相關。當頒獎季上映的影片很少時，任何一部影片獲得提名的機會就增加了。很不幸的是，這個簡單的規則同樣適用於女演員獲獎提名。有證據表明，在可能被提名奧斯卡獎的影片裏，內容充實的女性角色很少，這是行規。這意味着，一個女演員年末任何一個打動人心的表演都很可能獲得提名。

也許論文最重大的發現是，在過去的影片評分中，影片獲得IMDB高評分的人更容易和其他明星相處，使得他們得到提名的機會也翻了一番。羅斯曼告訴《洛杉磯加州大學校報》“演員和有才華的人合作將表現良好”，“這是件很有意思的事，因爲你傾向於使有才華的人聚在一起工作，這意味着他們最後會比一個人工作時表現要好。”

可能你很明白：好的演員得到好的角色，能夠和好的導演一起共事。但是這也是一個典型的被社會學家稱爲積累優勢或“馬太效應”的例子。“馬太效應”這個名字來源於《馬太福音》，在這部著作中耶穌說道“凡有的，還要給他更多使他變得富有。”這並不是簡單的“富有的變得更加富有”。這說的是稍微更具才華的人會獲得更優質的支持從而大幅增加他們固有的優勢（例如，更聰明的學生上大學接觸更好的老師獲得更好的職業發展機會）。

有明星的影片會得到奧斯卡更多的關注，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衆星雲集的電影行業中，我們不善於挑選出個別的有才華的演員。這暗示，我們——或至少是奧斯卡——一樣地不善於認可沒有任何曾提名過奧斯卡的演員但頗具才氣、值得奧斯卡獎的影片。在這兩種情況下，大環境支配我們認可個人成就的能力。

羅斯曼第二篇關於奧斯卡的論文是關於觀衆和獎項的。一些製作人真的很想要獲得奧斯卡獎。這些製作人可能想賺錢。問題是，大部分的“奧斯卡獎影片”——這裏指的是上映的晚，話題沉重（像艾滋病、奴隸制、技術敵託邦）——觀衆都不喜歡。因此，製作一個爲奧斯卡量身定製的影片這門生意是風險很高的，高回報則不一定。

這一點羅斯曼解釋得很好：

事實上，觀衆不喜歡“試圖”得到奧斯卡提名的影片，但確實喜歡真正"得到"奧斯卡提名的影片。根據推理，如果沒有奧斯卡推動票房，那麼關於戰勝壓迫的歷史人物的影片將會少之又少。的確，好像好萊塢基本上敲定了奧斯卡，因爲他們生產的影片的數量正好是奧斯卡需要的影片數量，他們基本上持平了。

勝利者總有點備受寵愛。據市場研究公司IBISWorld講，最佳攝影獎獲得者在提名之後可以獲得票房的22%，在獲獎之後可以再獲得15%。但是光計算金錢可能遺漏掉試圖製造一部奧斯卡影片的最佳原因：在本行業內贏得榮譽，獲得將來能爲你賺更多錢的明星，或僅僅是爲了獲得製作一部真正偉大影片的榮譽。