This year's Academy Awards was a jarring mix of glam and glum, starting with the contrast between the ultra-elite posing on the red carpet and the array of down-and-dirty films that walked away with the coveted golden statues. On March 8, Brooks Barnes of The New York Times observed:
"The Oscars telecast exposed an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in full-fledged identity crisis. Almost everything about the ceremony was big and commercial; almost everything about the winners was small and arty."
Barnes could just as easily been describing the Dow Jones and its own identity crisis. A quick look at the Dow price chart over the past few months reveals that it has moved largely sideways, with little jumps upward here and minor dips downward there. With the flatness of the market, it's hard to know if we are headed towards a fabulous recovery, or on the verge of another inglorious drop.
Socionomics, the science that looks at events through the lens of social mood, uses the stock market as a barometer to measure social mood and make social predictions.
A look at the 2010 Oscar winner's circle suggest that social mood may be in flux. While Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock walked away with the best actor nods for inspiring movies about country music and football, it was the supporting actor and actress winners that told the grimmer story: Christoph Waltz for his portrayal of a Machiavellian Nazi "Jew-hunter" in Inglorious Basterds and Mo'Nique for her role as a hateful, abusive mother in Precious.
Putting aside debates on the makeup of the Academy, the priorities of the movie-going public, and the significance of an Oscar statuette, the darkness of Waltz and Mo'Nique's characters illustrates a declining social mood. The larger mood of the populace has not yet become negative enough to award the "best actor" title to a character of such a dark nature. But let's remember how much more uplifting the Best Supporting Actor awards were in 2007 when the Dow was on its way to an all-time high. Alan Arkin won for his performance as Grandpa Edwin in the blunt-but-uplifting comedy, Little Miss Sunshine, and Jennifer Hudson was honored for her portrayal of a 1960s pop star in Dreamgirls.
Just as the Oscars were a mix of Hollywood glitz and glam pitted against relative unknowns, so too is the social mood -- the Dow in an upswing, but the backdrop of social mood of the masses turning darker and more negative. Socionomics is dedicated to social prediction, to predicting and preparing for the big shifts in politics and culture before they happen.
Find the idea of socionomics fascinating? You're not alone -- the folks at EWI's sister organization, The Socionomics Institute, share your passion. You can read their latest socionomic observations and forecasts every month in The Socionomist. Take a look at what's inside the latest issue.