The Oscars are undoubtedly an important night for cinephiles, but the influence of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has arguably been in decline since the turn of the millennium. Fewer and fewer people are watching the ceremony. The television ratings for this year's ceremony were the lowest on record, and they are not a statistical aberration. At the same time, the Oscars are increasingly seen as an elitist institution disconnected from the cultural mainstream. This year, Dunkirk and Get Out were the only nominees to earn more than one hundred million at the domestic box office, and neither was considered a viable contender for the top prize.
Movies like Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name speak to neglected and ignored audiences. In the right circumstances, they can find those audiences and resonate with them. In Dublin, for example, the Lighthouse Cinema was still hosting sold-out screenings Call Me By Your Name thirty weeks after its original release and more than a month after its home media release. However, they are not accessible to all audiences, in terms of simple geography. The mechanics of the awards season mean that these films are traditionally rolled out very slowly, and primarily in metropolitan areas. Particularly in the United States, rural cinemas very rarely get access to these films, and often quite late. Those people who actively want to see films like The Dallas Buyer's Club and Tangerine may have to drive for hours to find a cinema screening them. Call Me By Your Name earned less than twenty million dollars on its domestic release in the United States, with analysts picking over Sony's distribution schedule.
In contrast, movies like Bad Neighbours 2 and Blockers have a much deeper penetration. Both Bad Neighbours 2 and Blockers earned more than double either Moonlight's or Call Me By Your Name's domestic totals. However, the difference becomes more pronounced in terms of opening weekends; the opening weekends of Bad Neighbours 2 and Blockers earned more than ten times the wide opening weekends of Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name. This is because their reach was much wider. Call Me By Your Name opened wide in 815 theatres and Moonlight opened wide in 650 theatres; Blockers opened in 3,379 theatres and Bad Neighbours 2 opened in 3,384 theatres.
More than that, the films appeal to radically different audiences. Films like Moonlight or Call Me By Your Name are very consciously aimed at sophisticated and liberal audiences; the awards-qualifying theatrical runs of these films tend to focus on coastal metropolises like Los Angeles or New York, before slowly reaching inwards. While it would be unfair or unreasonable to stereotype the target audience for these films, it seems likely that they would likely have a progressive outlook, by virtue of being the kind of audience that actively seeks out stories about the young gay experience. While Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name are profoundly empathic and accessible works, they seem highly unlikely to change minds; they may widen the audience's frame of reference and invite them to consider new perspectives, they are to some extent preaching to the converted.
In contrast, the target audience for films like Bad Neighbours 2 and Blockers is radically different. These movies are consciously skewed towards a wider audience that is younger and traditionally male. It seems unlikely to skew heavily towards audience members that are politically inclined one way or the other. Instead, these movies seem likely to speak directly to audiences that have never really questioned their perspectives on sexual and gender politics.
36 CinÉireann / June 2018