奥斯卡不再是风向标
经济学人 March， 2019
青澄青果 翻译
Green Book? Critics sneered when Academy Award voters named this saccharine tale of a friendship between a black pianist and his white, tough-guy chauffeur the Best Picture of 2018
评论界对于奥斯卡2018年最佳影片颁奖给【绿皮书】嗤之以鼻，它讲述了黑人钢琴家和有点糙的白人司机之间友情的煽情故事。
Yet rather than being a rare injustice, the award reinforced a trend. The top Oscar has increasingly gone to films that are soon forgotten.
无独有偶，这次颁奖进一步强化了有点不公的趋势，它越来越倾向于颁给那些容易被遗忘的影片。
A film's quality is in the eye of the beholder. Its influence, however, can be measured more objectively. IMDb, a crowd-sourced online database, contains a list of references to every film in subsequent films and TV shows.
一部影片的优劣取决于观众的观影感受。其影响力自然是有客观的衡量标准的。像IMDb这种在线数据库给出了每部影片之后被其他影片或电视节目引用的次数。
The data are spotty: films from the 1980s get four times as many references as those from the 1940s. However, the same bias presumably applies to all films made in a given year.
统计数据参差不齐，例如对于八十年代的影片引用次数是四十年代影片的四倍。不过这种偏颇对于摄制于同一年的影片是一致的。
So a rough proxy for a movie's cultural influence is to count how many times it was referred to in subsequent years, and then compare its tally with those of all other films made in the same year.
所以代表一部影片影响力的指标要通过分析它在之后被引用的次数以及对比其它同年摄制影片的得分值来得出。
Decade ago, Best Picture nominees were regularly among the most influential films. Fully 68% of references to films made in 1939 are to "Gone with the Wind" and “The Wizard of Oz". A statistical model shows that in the 1950s, Best Picture winners had a 20% chance of being the most-referred-to film.
几十年前入围最佳影片提名的一般而言都是最富有影响力的影片。 对于出品于1939年的影片足足有68%的分值归于飘和绿野仙踪。 统计模型显示五十年代的最佳影片有20% 的可能性名列最多引用名单。（概率）
That changed with the advent of "Star Wars", summer blockbuster and sequels. Since the 1970s the films most referred to have been commercial flicks. Oscar voters usually spurn such movies, the ones they do like have become commercially less successful, and thus less culturally relevant.
改变随着星球大战之类的暑期大片和续集而来。自从七十年代以来最多被引用的则是那些商业片。奥斯卡对于这些影片通常不屑一顾，而他们所青睐的却在商业上败北，因而与文化影响不再息息相关。
Best Picture winners today have just 2% chance of leading the references table. By snubbing "Black Panther" and the art film ”Roma“, this year's voters scoffed at both cultural influence and critical acclaim.
如今的最佳影片只有2%的概率领跑引用排行榜。今年，奥斯卡评委刻意冷落黑豹和艺术片罗马进一步表明了对于文化影响力和舆论赞誉的j讥讽和不屑。
saccharine --too romantic in a way that seems silly and insincere; unpleasantly sweet and sentimental; too sentimental in a way that does not seem sincere or genuine.
e.g. i hated the movie's saccharine ending.
e.g. a saccharine sequel to the Peter Pan story.
e.g. saccharine manner
spotty ------good only in parts but not in other parts; doesn't stay the same but sometime good and sometime bad; has spots on their face; lacking consistency;
proxy --- something used to represent something else that you want to measure;
e.g. Copper prices, a proxy for economic activity have performed strongly year to date, but might be vulnerable to a correction, especially if demand from China shows signs of slowing.
e.g. Smith is confident gold is a proxy for deflation and could be meaningfully higher.
e.g. Betting on container rates, which are a proxy for economic activity, may also appeal to speculators.
tally ---a record of how much you have spent, won etc by a particular point in time; a record os amounts or numbers which you keep changing and adding to...,
flick--an action flick, = film
sneer--smile or speak in a very unkind way that shows you have no respect for someone or something
scoff---talk in a way that you think they are stupid
spurn ----refuse to accept
snub----treat rudely, especially by ignoring them when you meet.
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