The art of the Oscar snub

By Tom Shone

The Oscar “snub” is a relatively new phenomenon. It’s a product of the Internet, and in particular the asymmetry it cultivates between the almost year-long prognostication aimed at guessing which films the Academy will reward, and the simple brute fact of the Academy’s opinion on the matter. The resulting pinch of expectation and result is what we call a “snub”, or to put it another way: we guessed wrong. Pity the poor actor or film that happens to get caught up in this swirl of anticipation and disappointment, although it does lend the announcement of this year’s nominations, which happened this morning, the excitement of good slapstick: what happened to Ridley Scott? Where’s “Carol”? Or Michael Keaton? Or Tarantino? And there they were, just trying to enjoy their breakfast.

There are several types of snub, the first being the Honest-to-Goodness Head Scratcher, where a prediction made in good faith turns out to be simply inaccurate. Many, myself included, thought that Best Director would be a gold watch given to Ridley Scott for lightening up with “The Martian”, and more particularly for past services rendered (“Alien”, “Blade Runner”, “Gladiator”). He wasn’t even nominated. Nor was Spielberg for “Bridge of Spies”, his best film in years. Best Director now becomes a much more interesting face-off between two bearish auteurs: Alejandro González Iñárritu for “The Revenant”, going for a back-to-back win after last year’s “Birdman”, and George Miller for his high-speed apocalypse, “Mad Max: Fury Road”, which lead the pack with 12 and nine nominations respectively.