Category Confusion '24: COMEDY or DRAMA – Part One
Wednesday, November 6, 2024 at 12:00AM 
Is THE SUBSTANCE a comedy or a drama? What gives?
This year, I am part of the voting body for the Golden Globes, which gives me access to a cornucopia of screeners and FYC material that was erstwhile inaccessible to me. This also means I get a front row seat for the absolute circus that is category fraud from studios and distributors alike. Not just in terms of finagling distinctions between lead and supporting performances. Because this is the Globes, there's also the matter of which films compete in Drama, and which others battle it out in the presumably less competitive realm of Musical or Comedy. Because we all need distractions right now, let's ponder these inconsequential genre divides and enjoy some benign polls whose results don't really matter beyond these awards obsessive circles of ours…
Because some outlets have been reporting things that don't match with what voters get access to, I'm only going to present films already submitted and on the Golden Globes screener services. I will also keep this to works that have already been released, whether theatrically or digitally, so the readership's vote on stuff like Nightbitch will have to wait until December.
DRAMA
With all that out of the way, here are some movies presently running as Dramas whose categorization might raise some eyebrows. Sometimes, it's a matter of musical elements. In other cases, we've got tonally complex pieces that shapeshift across their runtime. And then there's the genre conundrum of action and horror films and others that don't quite fit in this present binary but need to go somewhere. So, here we go – do you agree with the official Golden Globe classification for these "dramas"?
MUSICAL or COMEDY
The Drama field is nothing compared to the chaos of Musical or Comedy. You got your psychosexual melodramas, your horror satires, your bildungsroman-esque dramedies, straight-up horror, animated weepies, behind-the-scene panic attacks stretched to feature length, camp, and cruelty, and India's official Oscar submission. In other words, it's a lot, and one mind reels to fit all these movies under the Musical or Comedy umbrella. Let's assess!
What movies would you like to see in future Category Confusion polls?
Reader Comments (2)
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There really is no winning with the separation between Drama and Musical or Comedy. For example, I remember the confusion of Bjork being nominated for Leading Actress in a Drama for Dancer in the Dark when the film is quite literally a musical. But it's not a musical comedy, as one would expect most musicals to be, so the film might have struggled to garner support in that category.
Horror films, for whatever reason, do tend to default to the Musical or Comedy submission, which teeters between "comedy isn't as serious" and "horror is commenting on society like satire." Neither is always true. I can see the argument for The Substance tilting that way as it is a scathing satire of how the industry treats women after 50, but I'm not exactly chuckling at that level of body horror. The Horror films that get pushed to drama are the ones that take critical response, wave their magic wands in marketing, and transform into a psychological thriller or suspense film for awards season.
I just like that they try to spread the love and let a wider variety of performances into the conversation.