Oscar neutrality?

March 17, 2006 7:36 AM

Belated Oscars question: In this age of political correctness and gender-neutrality, why are there still gender-based Academy Award categories?

There are not awards for, say, best male director and best female director. And most female actors shun the term "actress" in favor of "actor", but the Academy is still officially for the "Best Actress." The Screen Actors Guild has switched to "best male actor" and "best female actor", but they and all the other award programs still have gender differentiation in the acting categories. Nobels and Pulitzers are not given out on the basis of gender. What inherent difference mandates the continuation of separate but equal awards for male and female actors rather than a single "best acting" award?

posted by beagle to media & arts (22 comments total)

There will be no demand from the actors if it means their odds of winning will be halved.
posted by pracowity at 7:40 AM on March 17, 2006

Additionally, the average age of the Academy voter is rather high, and there's a certain inherent resistence to change amongst them.
posted by WCityMike at 7:45 AM on March 17, 2006

My guess would be ski jumping.

I agree that it's odd, especially since children have to compete with adults. Don't even get me started on the craziness that is the foreign language category. What I want to know is the demographic makeup of the MPAA voting membership. Do any children vote for the academy awards?

But seriously, I have no practical answer for you.
posted by billtron at 7:48 AM on March 17, 2006

less awards to give out, shorter show, less ad revenues, and so on.

not a definitive answer, just a guess
posted by poppo at 7:49 AM on March 17, 2006

well the nobel and pulitzer prizes are merit based prizes that people earn, they give out fewer of them so that they are actually *WORTH* something. The acadamy awards are just hollywood giving awards to itself...obvously more awards makes you look better, so they give out twice as many.
posted by I_am_jesus at 7:49 AM on March 17, 2006

And I think there would be no demand from the audience -- there isn't one now, is there? -- because... hmm. Because of tradition (you can't compare old winners and new winners if the system completely changes) and because people like a guaranteed mix. I don't think it would please the audience emotionally to have all women or all men win the top awards in a given year.

(Like I know. Still, that's what I figure.)
posted by pracowity at 7:54 AM on March 17, 2006

Because movie star is not gender-neutral.
posted by jouke at 8:09 AM on March 17, 2006

I think it has to do, frankly, with the relative balance of "good roles" for men and women. All the awards groups -- including the relatively recent Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) awards -- divide their awards in this way.

The roles that women will be offered are (often) very different in character and type than the roles that will be offered to men. And, honestly, there are fewer "juicy, award caliber" roles available to women.

The gender-specific awards have more to do with this than any other single point, I think.
posted by anastasiav at 8:09 AM on March 17, 2006

I think there are two answers to this-

1. Tradition.
2. At least in the theatre, there are significantly fewer good roles for women (something other than the ingenue or the henpecked wife), and my gut tells me the same holds true for film. I think the recent rise of indie cinema has tempered this somewhat (and if you look at where the Female vs. Male nominations are coming from, I think it bears this out), but I think separate categories are a way of acknowledging that disparity.
posted by mkultra at 8:15 AM on March 17, 2006

Or, what anastasiav said. Also, think about this:

There are not awards for, say, best male director and best female director.

How many films that came out last year were directed by women? Or written by them?
posted by mkultra at 8:17 AM on March 17, 2006

It's Hollywood's version of affirmative action. And if you don't believe it, count how many females have ever won best director: Zero. In fact, I believe there have been only three females even nominated (Lina Wertmuller, Sofia Coppola & Jane Campion).
On preview: What anastasiav said (though I'm not sure where Linda Hunt fits into that theory).
posted by sixpack at 8:19 AM on March 17, 2006

Don't have time to back up my statistics, but in eligible movies in any given year, there are at least three times as many roles for men as for women. (Will keep looking for statistics to link)
posted by rainbaby at 8:19 AM on March 17, 2006

See this column from the Guardian in 2002, which apparently first appeared in the NYT. It considers -- but does not necessarily definitively answer -- the same questions you raised.
posted by pardonyou? at 8:22 AM on March 17, 2006

The nature of movies is that they will more often than not have a female lead and a male lead playing opposite each other, human relationships being what they are. So, it makes sense to split up awards along those lines.

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense for this year's crop of movies, I grant you, but traditionally it's probably been the fairest way to divide things up. No doubt there's some cultural assumptions about gender and sexuality wrapped up in this issue, but I don't personally find it insulting to my intelligence or sensibilities, at least not beyond the basic absurdity of giving out "best of" awards anyway.
posted by Hildago at 8:25 AM on March 17, 2006

Well, you can think about it this way: Jane Campion could have directed Brokeback Mountain instead of Ang Lee; but Catherine Keener couldn't have played Jack Twist instead of Jake Gyllenhaal. Hence, gender-based categories for actors.

Agree with everything said above about the lack of good roles for women in Hollywood. I think it's wrong, however to blame "Hollywood" alone for that; Hollywood is interested in one thing -- making money. If weightier roles for women actually did well at the box office, we'd see a lot more of them. Audience bias among Americans is just as much to blame.
posted by junkbox at 8:35 AM on March 17, 2006

From the article cited by pardonyou:
Spectacle and hype. No offence to the male actors in their monochrome tuxes but, on Oscar night, actresses bring the glamour. Audiences want to see this year's dresses and hairstyles. Studios want female stars to help them sell tickets. That is all the Academy Awards really mean, and all they ever will. Unless they decide to eliminate best actress.
This explanation offers the essentially sexist rationale that the women are just eye candy. If that's truly the case, it makes any move toward gender neutrality even less likely to happen.
posted by beagle at 8:41 AM on March 17, 2006

If you just gave out "best actor" (or "best performance") awards you would have to give out two of them so that the number of awards would not be halved. And if you're giving out two of them, the Academy will feel compelled to give one to a male and one to a female in the interest of "equality." So you might as well call them "best actor" and "best actress" anyway.
posted by kindall at 8:41 AM on March 17, 2006

What anastasiav said.

Also, as far as I know, if you're a member of the academy, you vote, regardless of age. Quinn Cummings, who was nominated when she was 9 (I think it was), used to be an acquaintance of mine. She voted.
posted by dobbs at 8:57 AM on March 17, 2006

Well, you can think about it this way: Jane Campion could have directed Brokeback Mountain instead of Ang Lee; but Catherine Keener couldn't have played Jack Twist instead of Jake Gyllenhaal. Hence, gender-based categories for actors.


Yes, but Anthony Hopkins couldn't have played Jack Twist instead of Jake Gyllenhaal. Nor could (God rest his soul) Christopher Reeve. Why not distinctions for any other physical element that defines a role, then?
posted by WCityMike at 9:11 AM on March 17, 2006

Because men and women are different, the gender difference creates an actual difference in the type of role whereas a director is pretty much a director.

All the PC "well we're all the same so why separate it" is crap.

Just because a woman CAN be cast in a 'male' role doesnt mean she'd be as convincing or natural... Terminator 3, for example.

Although each person brings their own strengths and weaknesses to a role, some of it is also based on how the character is written, which if it is specific, narrows down at least the gender.
posted by softlord at 1:33 PM on March 17, 2006

When the Oscars first started being handed out in 1929, dividing the category into male and female branches would have seemed perfectly natural. Women and men had very different roles in society, and would generally have played different roles in the film.

Society has changed since then, of course, but--as Kindall points out-- making the acting roles gender-neutral would effectively cut the number of acting awards in half.

Now, the Academy has certainly made various changes over the years. But I'm guessing that the main reason most viewers tune in is to gawk at stars. If the Academy merged "Best Original Screenplay" and "Best Adapted Screenplay" into one category, I doubt that it would affect viewership. But cutting the number of acting awards in half almost certainly would. (I'm not trying to imply that the Academy cares only, or even primarily, about viewership; the fact that they continue to recognize outstanding achievement in important but non-glamorous fields like Sound Design shows that they're serious about trying to improve film arts and sciences. But they can't afford to ignore viewership, either.)
posted by yankeefog at 6:44 AM on March 18, 2006

More awards keep more people happier.
posted by limeonaire at 11:51 PM on March 19, 2006