Nope (and horror) Doesn't Need the Oscars

A transgressive genre's struggle to reach the mainstream is maybe futile.

Every year around this time film blogs churn out the same article about which movies were ‘snubbed’ at the Oscars, and every year the horror genre is mourned for. Consistently headlines pop up decrying the Academy for not respecting the genre. But this year I have found a good example that finally begs the question: are we making horror to win awards? Should we? What does it mean if we do?

This year Jordan Peele’s Nope became one of the most successful horror films since the start of the pandemic, a creature feature with the grandeur of the best summer blockbusters and a rich well of themes for audiences to dig through and ponder on. The lack of nominations for Nope has been perceived as especially egregious, since just five years ago Peele won his first Academy Award for his debut film Get Out. This win was celebrated as the horror genre finally starting to break through, but looking back, Get Out is the exception that proved the rule. Filmmakers like Ari Aster being completely shut out has been seen as ignorant by the voting body, but due to Peele’s previous win, some likely assumed Nope would not suffer the same fate.

But… did you guys watch Nope? Do you know what Nope is about?

Nope is a movie with a large thematic thread about how Hollywood and the entertainment industry makes a spectacle of trauma while leaving the victims with nothing. It is a condemnation of observation, a denial to look at the giant eye in the sky that will swallow you whole if you spend too much time basking in its grandeur. Do we really want Hollywood execs praising a movie that condemns the very culture they have created?

The horror genre is defined by its ability to transgress and transcend societal norms. That is what it has always been and what it always will be. If we start making horror movies to win awards, we will not be making very good horror movies. We need to grow past this elementary desire to have room for our genre amidst an industry that constantly feels the need to pat itself on the back while sweeping all of its transgressions under the rug. And at the risk of being easily disproven by a few Twitter screengrabs, most of the people complaining about the genre’s lack of representation that I see are not genre filmmakers. Most could likely care less. The people I do see complaining about it over and over again are journalists who know the same headlines get the same angry shares year after year. This is a circus that does nothing but boost the exhausting 24 hour film news cycle that we have never needed. By putting our focus on the Oscars, we’re wasting time that could be spent actually talking about the films.

All of this is to say: if the upper class people horror usually exists to offend find a horror picture safe enough to herald as the epitome of cinema for a given year, it’s probably not a very good example of the genre.