This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Wuffles Would Alan Arkin's win for Best Supporting Actor over Eddie Murphy in 2006 count as a snub or am I reading too much into it? I would've thought that Murphy's unusually-serious role (and some of the best acting in his career) would beat out Arkin playing a creepy old man.
- Mac Phisto: The consensus view is that Murphy doing Norbit almost immediately afterwards ruined any credibility he had in the eyes of the voters. Truly, What Could Have Been...
Rogue 7: Correct me unless I'm very much mistaken, but Brad Pitt did get nominated for best actor (in the Oscars, at least), for Benjamin Button. And I don't think he deserved it. Nothing came to mind so much as Nagato Yuki in terms of the amount of emotion he displayed.
Rothul: IMDB confirms it.
R Taco: Would The Golden Compass beating out both Tranformers and Pirates Of The Caribbean for best special effects count? The latter two are still considered some of the best special effects seen in film so far, while the former is mostly regarded as "above average" at best.
Indigo Violent: It seems to me that most of the complaints over Star Wars not taking the Oscar come from bitter fans of the film and its franchise, not the population at large. Star Wars had more popularity and more influence in the end, but the latter couldn't have been foreseen and the former shouldn't determine what wins awards that are at least nominally about artistic value.
- Landstander- THANK YOU! Sure it was popular and influential but can one really say objectively it was a better film than Annie Hall?
- Rothul: Well, no, but no one can really say that Annie Hall was "objectively" better either. That kind of decision is inherently subjective.
KJMackley: I moved the Wall E example in the Best Picture Oscars down to the repeated mention in the Annie Awards. Complaining about Wall E not getting a Best Picture nomination is like saying The Dark Knight should have gotten a Best Documentary nomination. You may not like how the categories are organized, but as of now Best Picture in animated and live action films are separated awards.
R Taco: I disagree. A film being animated is no reason to disqualify it from being a Best Picture nominee; It's one of the best films of the year, regardless of whether it was animated or not.
Freezer: Removed this entry from The Grammys:
The former actually has an explanation: The Rock-oriented voters were split betwen Purple Rain and Born, allowing the block of voters that prefer, say... "more soothing" sounds to push Can't Slow Down to the win. And frankly, the albums cheesy reputation comes more from the videos for "All Night Long" and "Hello" than from any of the songs themselves. As for the latter: It's not hard at all. Superstar collaborations are the musical equivalent of Oscar Bait. Not to mention that many voters considered the song a decent compromise award, given that Dire Staits' Mark Knopffler was the only nominated artist who wasn't already in USA For Africa. And pro-BRUUUUUCE! bias aside, the song's pretty good on it's own merits.
Sapphire Forever: Would Roberto Bengini's Best Actor Oscar win for Life Is Beautiful in 1998 be an inversion of the trope? While I've never sensed a particular consensus on who exactly should have won instead of him that year, it's a win virtually no one seems happy with, especially in retrospect.
Ronfar: Say what you like, but I loved that performance, and I think the award was well deserved.
Prfnoff: Took this out of one of the examples:
(Later) I don't think this counts, since the couple of films named represent two-thirds of Dean's career as a film actor:
- Despite being the only actor to receive more than one posthumous nomination, for Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, James Dean never won an Oscar.
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Raemie: "1982: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Tootsie losing to Gandhi." - a snub? really? I wouldnt consider the Gandhi win suprising or undeserved
Ouroboros: I agree.
Whogus The Whatsler: I propose deleting the Marisa Tomei entry, because while her win was a surprise which many feel undeserved, it's untrue that this was a "snub" of Vanessa Redgrave. Redgrave had in fact received no awards attention whatever for her work in Howard's End until her Oscar nomination — she wasn't nominated for the Golden Globe, she wasn't even nominated for a BAFTA, which (being a British award) has traditionally been kinder to British actors and films than the Oscars. Thus without anybody snubbed, Tomei's win doesn't fit under "snub". If you were to say somebody was snubbed, it would have to be Judy Davis, who was nominated for the Globe and the BAFTA, and won the NYFCC, the LAFCA and the NBR (which are the most highly-regarded of the critics awards), as well as several other critics awards such as the London Critics Circle, Boston Film Critics, National Society of Film Critics and others.
Machiavellienne: Regarding this:
- The all-encompassing example: no foreign film has ever won Best Picture. Every other year or so for the last two decades, one has accomplished the amazing feat of even getting nominated, and there are often considered by critics to be the best film of that year (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Babel are famous examples).
- This Troper would like to point out that, while Slumdog Millionare has a lot of flaws, and is definitely not an Indian film, it's very much a British production, so this example holds. No non-anglophone winners, maybe, but there are non-American winners.
I've deleted the second point for the moment. How are we defining foreign film?
Mistrx75: I would think that another reason other than the Cy Young that pitchers don't generally get nominated for the MVP, or at least in the case of starting pitchers, is that they only play once out of every five games. And usually not even the entire game at that.
Mac Phisto: This Troper can atest that immediately after Sean Penn was announced as the winner of Best Actor for Milk, every forum on LGBT My Space groups exploded with outrage. The consensus view was that Mickey Rourke gave the best performance of the year, but the Academy was just kissing spoiled Penn's ass for being "courageous" enough to pretend to be gay. In fact, that is how most of us tend to view any heterosexual actor who receives critical acclaim for playing a homosexual.
- Mutatis mutandis, all those homosexual actors who played heterosexuals were cowards?
- Count Choculitis: Interestingly, all the LGBT forums this troper hangs at were quite satisfied with Penn's win. Given that even the example on the trope page describes it as an "equally great performance", it's not clear to me why it should stand out as a particularly egregious snub. Honestly, I got the impression that most of the anger at Penn's win had more to do with the Reality Subtext of the two actors' personalities and situations, with Rourke being the eminently more cheerable person. Rourke's personal story as a washed up underdog who finds redemption and achieves greatness is inspiring. Penn OTOH, is kind of a douche, and has already won an Oscar for a performance that has not held up well over the years at all (Mystic River).
Count Choculitis: Also, can we talk about this, from the edit history page?
- Deleted line 16: As this is a borderline Subjective Trope please limit examples to cases that have been Vindicated by History so to speak. And even then, understand those films are often widely loved now, not when they were released. Of course, one would hope that box office and studio politics have nothing to do with recognizing achievement. One would hope.
- Reason: As the original writer of the trope, I wish to make the call that the trope is subjective. Even a consensus from a critical establishment against a choice must be a subjective opinion.
If this is a Subjective Trope, then perhaps we should advertise that fact on the top of the page? Although, personally, as a nobody who had nothing to do with launching this page, I think making this a Subjective Trope could devolve this page even further into just Complaining About Award Choices You Don't Like, and I'm not sure we need that.
Rothul: Huh... I thought putting it in the subjective trope index added that thing. Let me work on that.
Vert: Someone has to clean this page up a little bit, there's quite a few examples that aren't talking about snubs, but instead complaining that X won Y, when X clearly didn't deserve it. For example, the Nobel peace prizes for Obama, Asrafat and Kissinger. Not that they weren't/aren't controversial, there's just no snub presented in any of these cases.
Hello86: I think that in that case, we should make a troper tales page for this entry where all that griping can go. What do you think?
