Hi all! Happy Pi Day, happy Oscar Eve, and welcome back to So Desensitized! The topic of this year’s two year anniversary post has officially been announced over on my Instagram, and I’m here to talk to you all about cinema’s biggest night - and the ways in which it fails most movies and creatives. Also on my Instagram is a selection of horror books whose adaptations have won Oscars, including Dracula, The Exorcist, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Jaws. Happy reading, stay spooky, and grab your popcorn! 🍿🎥🎬🏆🔪🩸

It is a well-known fact that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have been…less than appreciative of horror films since basically ever. There have been more and more notable snubs over the past few years - Toni Collette in Hereditary, Lupita Nyong’o in Us, Florence Pugh in Midsommar, etc. - with countless extraordinary performances going unrecognized due to the genre they were presented in. And this isn’t something new, either. Horror has been essentially ignored at awards shows since there have been awards shows, as evidenced by the fact that only one horror movie has ever won Best Picture, and none were even nominated until 1974. Really, horror as a genre has been critically maligned pretty much since its conception in film, and even in literature.

Behind every Oscar snub is years upon years of various types of art and expression being devalued. It should not go unnoticed that the majority of Best Director nominations every year are men. Or that Black stories are often sidelined, or given basically token nominations as though that’s good enough and then not actually being awarded anything. I would like to, for example, take a moment to mention that both Driving Miss Daisy and Do The Right Thing came out in the same year, and suggest that you all guess which one won Best Picture. Hint: it wasn’t the one directed by a Black man. All this to say, Oscar snubs are incredibly common, especially for Black movies and horror movies. And the culture around awards and award shows creates a very elitist idea of what makes a ‘good’ movie. Seeing the same kind of movie written and directed by the same kinds of people win over and over again suggests to the audience that those are the only kinds of movies and stories with any value, and that others are ‘lesser’ somehow. Now, this problem is not limited to critical art awards - see also assigned reading lists - but awards are where it matters. Awards are a way of showing the general public the best in whatever the art form is that came out in the past year, be it books, movies, TV shows, music, what have you.  And if that public sees only one kind of story win, they are going to start getting ideas about what kinds of stories matter and what don’t.

Back on the subject of horror, it has been a maligned genre basically since its conception. The word ‘thriller’ was invented to sell horror books as something that the respectable citizen wouldn’t be ashamed of reading, even if what it contained was decidedly horrific. So that goes to show that not only if someone tries to tell you that the horror movie you just watched was actually an ‘elevated psychological thriller’, they are basically just telling you that it was a psychological horror movie, but that people have been looking for ways to not call horror what it is since forever. Psycho is a ‘thriller’. The Silence of the Lambs is a ‘thriller’. Get Out is a ‘thriller’. The Shining is a ‘thriller’. There are genuinely people out there who will try to tell you that The Exorcist is a ‘thriller’. And those are the same people who decide what movies get the most acclaim, and the most prestigious awards. In the past, horror movies that have won or been nominated for Oscars have been movies that either got pity makeup or design nominations, or, more importantly, movies that could be waved away as ‘elevated’. Movies that looked enough like mysteries or dramas if you squint that the fact of a man’s face being peeled off and worn as a mask could be essentially ignored in the context of such a ‘critical’ movie. Not one of those gross horror movies, no. No, this is a detective procedural, and the cannibalism and cross-dressing is perfectly acceptable because it’s elevated. All you people who are calling it a horror movie are simply being vulgar. It’s better than that. It has Sir Anthony Hopkins and a lot of the color grey.

While on the surface, this kind of elitism could be excused - they’re still awarding horror movies, it doesn’t matter what they call them - it is actually indicative of a bigger problem, that being the devaluing of certain genres. It does matter that The Substance and Get Out were awarded Musical or Comedy Golden Globes, because neither of those movies are comedies and they sure as hell aren’t musicals. It matters that the people who make decisions of which movies get national recognition won’t acknowledge the kinds of movies they give that acclaim to, that the voters at the Academy are so deeply entrenched in the idea of certain kinds of movies being ‘lesser’ that they won’t even say that they are giving awards to those kinds of movies even as they hand over the trophy. It is horror. People are murdered and eaten in The Silence of the Lambs. A man gets run through with a deer head in Get Out, not to mention the true and genuine societal horror that runs through the entire movie - which is still horror, even if it’s not gory. Not to mention all the kinds of shit that happens in The Exorcist (crucifix scene, anyone?). The point is, there is no such thing as horror that is ‘better’ than other horror by nature of being given an Academy Award. Every. Single. Horror movie that has either won or been nominated for an Oscar (and there are a few) has had absolutely wacked out shit in it that the Academy chooses not to mention because they believe it is beneath them. As though that isn’t art, too. You cannot ignore the fact of the story. No matter how much you use the word ‘thriller’, you are giving important critical acclaim to a movie in which a man is eaten by a shark which then explodes.

Now, all this could be taken as a way of saying that either the Academy Awards mean nothing or that the wacked out horror in these movies means they shouldn’t have won Academy Awards. Neither of these things are true. The Oscars do mean something. They mean recognition. Nothing that declares, officially, what the best movie of the year was means nothing. People pay attention to the Oscars, which is why it is so important that they leave out so many stories, because then those stories, those beautiful and good and vital pieces of work, are left behind to be forgotten, marked as worthless. As for the insane bits in these movies meaning that they shouldn’t be given Oscars, that is the exact opposite of the point I’m trying to make. The thing about those moments of absolute, bloody horror are just as valuable, and often just as critical and complex, as the more elevated seeming aspects elsewhere in the movie. The idea that scenes of blood, gore, sex, what have you, inherently devalue a movie, or need to be ignored for the sake of prestigious awards is absolutely insane. In a good movie, every scene has a purpose. Imagine if Hannibal Lecter didn’t kill anyone, or Buffalo Bill didn’t have his skin suit. That would take away from the point of the movie. Scenes of violence or gore or sex or any kind of ‘vulgarity’ do not take away value from the rest of the story, and to say that they do is to say that the genre they are in is somehow lesser than all others, no matter what else there is to the story.

Now, there has been a trend in the past two years of horror that cannot be handwaved away being recognized. Most notably, The Substance (2024), a truly insane and gooey body horror movie with brilliant writing and acting was awarded several of the wins that are often associated with an upcoming Oscar. However, it was nominated for many things, but did not take home any big wins on Oscar night. And I worry that this kind of thing will happen again this year. The Academy likes to nominate things that are undeniably good, but, well, a little out there, a little unexpected and then not actually award them. It’s a way of saying ‘look, we know this was a truly spectacular movie with a lot of critical stuff going on and great writing and all, with outstanding performances to boot, but…you know we can’t let something like this win, so nominating it just has to be enough for you”. This year, there have been several horror movies to be nominated, with Sinners becoming the most nominated film of all time. A Black horror movie has become the most Oscar nominated film of all time. That in and of itself is insanely important and groundbreaking, but I do worry that it opens up a door for the Academy to go ‘well see, we’ve acknowledged it, aren’t you happy? It got its recognition”. There is also opportunity for this to happen to Weapons, Frankenstein, and The Ugly Stepsister, which (with the exception of Frankenstein because the Academy likes Guillermo Del Toro) cannot be waved away as ‘elevated’. Really, neither can Sinners at all, either. 

Now, the sad thing is that none of these movies have a good chance of winning simply by nature of what they are. The Academy is shockingly unwilling to recognize greatness in horror, basically no matter what. The best movie of the year was a horror movie about Black vampires, and that fact will not go away even if  The Academy says different. However, the Academy hates horror, Black people, and Ryan Coogler specifically, so the odds are…not good. But who knows? Maybe Sinners will become the second horror movie ever to win Best Picture. I’ll find out with the rest of you. In the meantime, remember the value in every genre and every scene, stay spooky, and go to some local ballet and opera performances! ;) 🏆🔪🩸