双语:The Oscars: No Longer a Tastemaker
发布时间:2019年06月05日
发布人:nanyuzi  

The Oscars: No Longer a Tastemaker

奥斯卡奖不再引领潮流

 

The Academy’s influence peaked half a century ago

奥斯卡金像奖的影响力在半个世纪前见顶

 

“Green Book”? Critics sneered when Academy Award voters named this saccharine tale of a friendship between a black pianist and his white, tough-guy chauffeur the Best Picture of 2018. Yet rather than being a rare injustice, the award reinforced a trend. The top Oscar has increasingly gone to films that are soon forgotten.

 

《绿皮书》?当奥斯卡评委将2018年最佳影片颁给它(讲述一位黑人钢琴家和他那个我行我素的白人司机之间的友谊的煽情故事)时,引来了影评人的讥笑。不过,这一评选结果并非某种罕见的不公正,反而是在强化一种已有的趋势:奥斯卡最佳影片奖被越来越多地颁给了那些很快就会被遗忘的影片。

 

A film’s quality is in the eye of the beholder. Its influence, however, can be measured more objectively. IMDb, a crowd-sourced online database, contains a list of references to every film in subsequent films and TV shows. For example, “Casablanca” has over 1,600 references, including a discussion in “When Harry Met Sally” and a poster in “True Romance”.

 

对于一部影片的质量好坏,观众见仁见智,但其影响力却可以有较为客观的衡量方式。众包的在线数据库IMDb罗列出每部电影被后来的影视作品引用的情况。例如,《卡萨布兰卡》被引用1600多次,像是《当哈利遇到莎莉》中就有一段关于它的讨论,《真实罗曼史》中出现了它的一张海报。

 

The data are spotty: films from the 1980s get four times as many references as those from the 1940s. However, the same bias presumably applies to all films made in a given year. So a rough proxy for a movie’s cultural influence is to count how many times it was referred to in subsequent years, and then compare its tally with those of all other films made in the same year.

 

这种数据有其缺陷:上世纪80年代的电影被引用的次数是40年代电影的四倍。不过,这种偏颇想来对同一年里所有电影的影响程度是一样的。因此可以用一个粗略的指标来衡量一部电影的文化影响力,那就是统计它在出品之后的年份里被引用的次数,然后将其得分与同年出品的其他所有电影做比较。

 

Decades ago, Best Picture nominees were regularly among the most influential films. Fully 68% of references to films made in 1939 are to “Gone with the Wind” (a winner) and “The Wizard of Oz” (nominated). A statistical model shows that in the 1950s, Best Picture winners had a 20% chance of being the most-referred-to film.

 

几十年前,获得最佳影片提名的电影通常也都在最具影响力的影片之列。在对1939年出品的影片的引用中,足足有68%指向《乱世佳人》(获奖影片)和《绿野仙踪》(提名影片)。统计模型显示,在上世纪50年代,最佳影片有20%的概率成为被引用次数最多的影片。

 

That changed with the advent of “Star Wars”, summer blockbusters and sequels. Since the 1970s the films most referred to have been commercial flicks. Oscar voters usually spurn such movies; the ones they do like have become commercially less successful, and thus less culturally relevant. Best Picture winners today have just a 2% chance of leading the references table. By snubbing “Black Panther” (which already has 151 references) and the art film “Roma”, this year’s voters scoffed at both cultural influence and critical acclaim.

 

随着《星球大战》、各种暑期大片和续集的出现,情况发生了变化。自上世纪70年代以来,被引用次数最多的影片已经是商业片了。奥斯卡评委们通常对这类影片不屑一顾,他们青睐的电影在商业上变得愈发不成功,因而在文化上的影响力也已下降。如今的最佳影片只有2%的机会成为被引用最多的电影。从《黑豹》(已有151次引用)和艺术片《罗马》在奥斯卡上受到的冷落来看,本届评委对文化影响力和评论界的赞誉都嗤之以鼻。


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