Well, I don't know if I agree, but it's a thought

[trinityvixen]

The Academy Awards = Sexist!

It is an interesting question. Does gender-segregating an award automatically create a separate-and-therefore-inequal metric? On the one hand, we don't segregae major awards that recognize talent, as the woman in the video says. On the other, we do segregate awards for achievements of physical natures--men and women's sports, for example. Acting is in the unfortunate category where we sort of demand both. I'm not saying you must be an athlete to win one (Jack Nicholson certainly isn't), only that your body is honed to best express your craft as much as your mind is. Your mind ennervates your body to bring about the performance you wish. If I had to compare it to a sport to defend the sex-segregation of awards, I'd say acting is closest to rhythm gymnastics or ice dancing.

But acting isn't ice dancing. The nuances of physical difference of typical muscle mass hardly play into determining who is the better actor. Yes, you use your body to act, but your body's set of dangly bits hardly has an impact on how well you use it to emote and carry across a scene. In this case, the body is a tool, not a temple. Or perhaps it is an instrument, and while you get lovely sounds out of different instruments and it's hard to pick a favorite, you can certainly choose the best from among them based on how well they're played. A Stradivarius played poorly is nothing to a master on a cheap trombone, is my thinking here.

Do I want them to give out only just the one award for Best Actor? Honestly? No, I don't. In the video I linked to, the woman mentions the paltry showing of women among Nobel laureates. I fully expect, with the current climate in Hollywood, that the singular Best Actor award would go to a man every year until I am eighty. They might have the token female award, but that would be it. Because there is a serious crisis over roles for women in film, has been for nearly thirty years, with no immediate end in sight. I like her phrasing it as the "hookers, victims and doormats" problem because it is. Helen Mirren's win for The Queen was one of few roles to break that stereotype of late, but she is friggin' Helen Mirren, and I'm sure if she stooped to playing a hooker, we'd all be looking for horses two, three, and four of the obviously imminent apocalypse.

Does maintaining the segregation of awards mask this dearth of meaty roles for women in film? Possibly, but I think the change will not come by reforming top-down. It has to come from the bottom up. Better scripts, to start. Promoting films with female leads who aren't Angelina Jolie would be a big change. I'm such a pessimist, however, because Hollywood is a fantasy factory. The dominant fantasies of our day continue to demand women be skinny, busty, beautiful and everything else is secondary. Literally, even though they might be fabulous in a role and have serious skill, the first thing mentioned is their looks (Remember the fuss about Charlize Theron uglying it up for Monster? I'm sure many people couldn't tell you anything about A Mighty Heart other than Angelina Jolie had frizzier hair than she normally does.) All that has to change before the Oscars will have a chance to reflect upon the great performances of the year and then give out awards proportionate to populations of people.

For now, I'll take my token "papered-over" awards for women. If they can use it, as they do, every year, to complain about how there were so few to nominate, even, maybe some day the complaint will resonate down to the ground floor from whence change must come. Maybe.

Comments

[ahab99.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy if they took the baby step of switching around the order in which they're awarded: the Best Actor award (in any number of shows, not just the Oscars) always magically seems to be awarded second, much closer the final categories of Best Director and Best Picture. Given that the entire evening is sort of built as a progression of less important to most important, it would help the cause if they could admit that Best Actor should be awarded first about, oh I don't know, half the time. And of course if they started writing an equal number of meaty and interesting roles for women, which is much closer where the real injustice in that arena starts.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

If we're trying to feng sui the Oscars so they sit right with feminism and equality, it would be best, perhaps, to do the acting awards all at once or else equally spaced out from the finale, which should remain Best Picture/Director. Then order wouldn't matter so much to my mind.

But the reason they don't just do the Best Actor/Actress together in a one-two punch is because no one cares about any other categories. People know exactly four categories maybe in each broadcast--Picture, Director, Actor, and Actress (if you're really, really good, you might know the Best Supporting). No one gives a shit about editing, sound editing, documentaries, or all the small, niche-market films, songs, crafts, or technical things. That's why they have a separate ceremony for anything less than the tremendously unspecific "Best Special Effects" et al. It's not good that people don't care about the technicians, but it's true: they don't.

[ahab99.livejournal.com]

Right, but do they always have to do Actress before Actor? I know people only care about the big awards, but it's precisely because of that that always putting Actor later is problematic. Well, that and a thousand other reasons...

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The thinking might be that because they put Best Supporting Actor first, Best Actor should be last. By the theory of "first is less important, later is more," that would make Best Supporting Actor the least important acting Oscar.

Which? Might be true. I'd certainly argue that with the dearth of great female lead roles, there are so many supporting roles that are important and fabulous (whereas there are so many sausage-fest movies, there are duplicates of roles to pick a Best Supporting Actor from).