In the late 1970s, video-age film fanatics began celebrating “bad” films, buoyed by publications like the Medved’s “Golden Turkey Awards” and the compilation film “It Came From Hollywood.” As part of this new celebration of bad cinema, the Golden Raspberry Award (“The Razzies”) began as a playful “anti-Oscar,” recognizing the year’s least and worst big screen efforts. But an examination of the films that have earned Razzie nominations and awards reveals many surprises - a few considered good films, if not classics - prompting questions about how the value of some films shifts over time. This presentation examines the Razzies as part of an ongoing cultural and industrial discourse concerning artistic quality, and how our initial judgments about which films are “good” or “bad” is often the product of forces and elements having little to do with the films themselves.
About the presenterJason Davids Scott
Jason Davids Scott graduated from NYU with a BFA in Cinema Studies, worked for over a decade in feature film publicity and development, and eventually earned and MA and Ph.D. in Theatre from UC Santa Barbara. Dr. Scott’s first textbook, Everything But the Script: Professional Writing in the Entertainment Industry, was published in 2019 by Cognella. Dr. Scott is a past president of MAPACA and helped launch the online journal Response.