Oscars so gender neutral? Don’t count on it happening soon
The traditional award ceremony is not likely to follow footsteps of MTV, Emmys and Grammys
Oscar has always been happily naked, but is he willing to also be genderless?
The answer to that question may be found by simply looking at the little golden fellow himself: a gilded male who hasn’t changed much for nearly a century and only does so under pressure.
Other entertainment awards — MTV, the Grammys and the Emmys — among them — seem to be boldly going into the 21st century. MTV recently announced it is scrapping gender specific categories for its Movie & TV Awards on May 7, replacing its Best Actor and Best Actress categories with the gender-neutral designations Best Actor in a Movie and Best Actor in a Show.
This belatedly follows the trail-blazing lead of the Grammys, which decided way back in 2011 to drop the gender divide between prizes for male and female singers, groups and collaborations.
The Emmys, meanwhile, seem to be moving toward genderless TV awards, Variety reports. The Television Academy recently toldBillions actor Asia Kate Dillon, a nonbinary-gender actor, that Emmy rules don’t require a specific gender to be eligible for consideration under any of the actor or actress categories.
Dillon can freely apply for any of them, despite the category titles, the Academy determined.
But then there’s the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the one that hands out the Oscars, the Big Kahuna of entertainment prizes.
It is notoriously resistant to change, despite recent positive advancements prodded by the #OscarsSoWhite uproar of recent years.
This year’s Oscar nominations saw seven people of colour nominated in the acting categories.
That compares to none the previous two years. Two of the nominees won: Mahershala Ali as Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight (the first Muslim to win the category) and Viola Davis as Best Supporting Actress for Fences.
Moonlight’s win for Best Picture made it the first film with an allblack cast to win Oscar’s top category, as well as being the first with a gay protagonist.
The addition last year of hundreds of mostly young and diverse voters helped to foster change in an academy that is still dominated by men of an advanced age and hidebound opinions.
But the idea of dropping gender for prize categories may be a bridge too far for the academy, as it gears up for next year’s significant 90th anniversary awards.
Tradition means a lot to the academy, and not just to the old men who dominate it.
It has historically slotted actors and actresses into conventional categories, as when it insisted in 1992 that The Crying Game’s Jaye Davidson be considered for Best Actor, even though he’d done such a stellar job playing a woman.
I’ve interviewed many Oscarnominated and Oscar-winning actors and actresses in 20-plus years as the Star’s movie critic and not once have I heard one object to the binary classifications of actor, actress, supporting actor and supporting actress.
I’ve heard many express opposition to continued proposals for an Oscar for Best Motion Capture Performance, such as the fantasy figures brilliantly conjured by Andy Serkis.
The argument against a mo-cap Oscar boils down to a reluctance to honour something that many feel isn’t “real” acting.
There has also been resistance within the academy to creating an Oscar for Best Ensemble Performance, something the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) has — and SAG members make up a majority of Oscar voters.
Another strike against genderless Oscars, and this one is legitimate, is the fear that men would dominate the nominations just as they dominate the roles in movies.
Without five women guaranteed nominations for Best Actress and five for Best Supporting Actress, the Oscars could conceivably create an #OscarsSoMale ruckus by nominating 10 men for a gender-neutral Best Actor and the same number for a gender-neutral Best Supporting Actor. Few would consider that to be progress.
Ironically, the academy almost led the way with species-neutral awards in its very first ceremony.
Legend has it that canine star Rin Tin Tin had the most votes for Best Actor in 1929, but the academy decided the gold had to go to a human, so Emil Jannings won instead.
Who knows how history might have unfolded if the risk-averse academy hadn’t hit the “paws” button on Rin Tin Tin? Peter Howell is the Star’s movie critic. His column usually runs Fridays.
Dropping gender categories may be a bridge too far for Oscar