Talk:Oscar bait

A fact from Oscar bait appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 17 March 2014 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that a study by two UCLA sociologists found that the 1990 film Come See the Paradise was the most blatant Oscar bait released since 1985?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2014/March. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Oscar bait.

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Refimprove

I've tagged this for refimprove; we need sources (preferably multiple for each film named) saying that it was Oscar bait for these reasons. It's not enough to say "source says historical films are Oscar bait, Shakespeare In Love is a historical film, therefore it is Oscar bait" - that sort of syllogism is WP:OR. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 17:45, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This can be much better

Properly developed, this article could be as rich as (tooting my own horn alert) dump months. There's a lot of interesting discussion in the cited sources. We could have a lot more than just lists of films here. I think we have a shot at a DYK nomination if we act fast. Daniel Case (talk) 03:34, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Possible earliest use

This New York Times article from 1955. Beats the 1968 one we have at Wiktionary. Can someone look behind the paywall? Daniel Case (talk) 05:21, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Beat it. The New Republic in 1948 [1]. Daniel Case (talk) 05:29, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I beat that one too, here are some 1942 mentions: [2][3] (subscription is required to view full pages but can't do anything about that) Tehonk (talk) 01:49, 28 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

List of films considered "Oscar bait"

Is the list of Oscar bait films that failed to receive nominations truly needed? My reasoning is that it reveals little about the meaning of Oscar bait, its characteristics, etc. It can also give the impression that films perceived as Oscar bait never actually win anything (and there have been, i.e. Shakespeare in Love, Green Book, All Quiet on the Western Front, etc). I expect the list will get longer, and it is already such a specific topic.

Also, the list is almost word-for-word a list of episodes from the podcast This Had Oscar Buzz. The list could simply be removed and replaced with a reference for the podcast. @Espngeek Spectrallights (talk) 15:49, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

At the very least, as the main contributor to this article, I think it could be spun off into a separate list, as it has the potential to get very long. Daniel Case (talk) 18:30, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oscar bait list

I'm bringing this up again, but is the List of films considered "Oscar bait" that failed to earn any Oscar nominations section truly warranted in this article? The article is ostensibly to explain the concept of Oscar bait, its usage and history in awards culture, which it already did without the list. The list itself reads more as trivia without actually being informative of what is considered Oscar bait. By focusing on shutouts, the list gives the inaccurate impression that Oscar bait-type films do not win, when there has been much considerable bait (i.e. Shakespeare in Love, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Green Book) that not only managed to get nominated but even won major categories.

Furthermore, it appears that any film that had/has a degree of buzz but failed to score nominations is being added to the list. Sources are provided, but they are usually from listicle-type articles mostly noting shutouts on nomination day. Any film that gets shut out will commonly be referred to as "Oscar bait" by entertainment news websites, listicles, or content mills, but does that justify their inclusion in the article? The sources themselves are not about the concept of Oscar bait, it's just a passing mention. Thus, the list veers into WP:OR and WP:SYNTHESIS.

To @Espngeek and others who created the list, I propose removing it. The use of sources to infer a conclusion not directly stated by the sources (which there are examples of here and here) is a violation of WP:SYNTH. Spectrallights (talk) 16:29, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Come See the Paradise, a 1990 WWII film about Japanese internment camps which failed to get nominated in any category, was mentioned as Oscar bait according to a study done by UCLA and would you consider that a passing mention? Espngeek (talk) 16:33, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Come See the Paradise was already discussed in the article before the list was incorporated. Again, my concern is about the list. Spectrallights (talk) 16:49, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I deleted it already, so you don't have to worry about it again. Espngeek (talk) 16:53, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article content

The purpose of this article is to explain the concept of Oscar bait, its usage and history in awards culture, is it not? Yesterday, I removed these sections because they are not directly related to the topic of Oscar bait and go into specific controversies. The Animation section is best suited to Academy Awards#Remarks about animated films as children's genre, the Emilia Pérez section is more suited to the article for the film itself, etc.

@GeniusTaker, you added the sections back, so can you explain what they specifically have to do with Oscar bait? The fact that some the films mentioned were awards contenders does not totally justify the paragraphs' inclusion. If somehow the Emilia Pérez controversy contributed to a larger discussion about the meaning of Oscar bait, then maybe it would be merited.

Similarly, the Oscar bait#Underperforming films in 2022 section goes off-topic because it has to do with prestige films as a whole, not Oscar bait specifically. I should note this section first originated when @HM2021 used WP:SYNTH to explain the declining popularity of prestige films, which they also used on other pages. Spectrallights (talk) 16:04, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I did revert it for some reasons about animation and Netflix controversies. I was obviously concern over Emilia Perez's nominations campaigned by Netflix, who also campaigned previous non-English-language films like Roma and All Quiet on the Western Front. It has some sources found from the respective articles about the Oscar bait thing. For the animation, it's much more than a bait. GeniusTaker (talk) 16:23, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The concerns about Emilia Perez's nominations campaigned by Netflix are best suited to Emilia Perez's page, or Criticism of Netflix, or the 97th Academy Awards. If there are stated sources from the respective articles that discuss Oscar bait specifically, then they should be quoted. If the animation section is "much more than a bait", then why is it concluded in an article about bait? Spectrallights (talk) 16:32, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because of Disney's or I don't know. Some sources said that like Encanto's immediate win and the Academy's ignorance of animation medium, so the reason why this is much more a bait. I put up all the controversies to the article (Best Animated Feature category). GeniusTaker (talk) 16:49, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see anything Oscar baity in Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks/any animated films at all; I knew Encanto was going to win over the Annie Award-winning Mitchells vs. Machines (your preferable pick) even with or without the atrociously "cute" joke by the three presenters. Espngeek (talk) 18:48, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Having done a lot of the original work on this article, I add my support for removing this material from the article. I haven't had much time over the past three days to edit, but when I saw Espngeek's edits I wondered what I was missing, if anything ... I didn't see anything the text added, but I decided to reserve action until I had a chance to review the sources.

GeniusTaker's justifications for restoring the edits are unconvincing and sound more like OR on their part than anything else. Daniel Case (talk) 22:15, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing that two other people agree with this and GT's user page indicates that they have retired from Wikipedia, I have reverted to the version Spectrallights reverted to. Daniel Case (talk) 22:18, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]