Gender Neutral Oscar Acting Categories?

[Big Magilla]

Singling out distinguished performances regardless of sex is nothing new. The Drama League has been doing it for Broadway and Off-Broadway performances since 1935, the same year that the New York Film Critics started handing out awards. Its first recipient was Katherine Cornell for her revival of Romeo and Juliet. Alas, the Drama League has long had the prestige of the Tonys as well as the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle but not nearly as much interest that those highly competitive awards bodies have always had.

[anonymous1980]

Another awards organization that could conceivably do this is the Emmys. They've got a shit-ton of categories already so they could use some pruning.

[Okri]

The Jeff Awards (Chicago's biggest theatre awards...our Tony's), made this change about 5 years ago. They merely doubled the number of nominees and have two winners every year.

Overall, the parity in the categories has been fairly equal. Female and male nominees have been roughly 5:5 every year, although some years skew a little more one way or the other. And in general, I think there have actually been more female winners than male winners. Plus, it makes things more comfortable for non-gender conforming artists, of which there is a growing number in the theatre and who have been nominated several times.

So, if a group like the Academy were to take this on, they could merely have 10 Best Lead Performance nominees every year and give out two awards. It means that if we have a weaker year in one gender versus the other, maybe it would give us a stronger list of nominees. And I imagine that most years we would still end up with two winners of different genders.

I think you can get away with this with smaller awards bodies, but not larger ones. Smaller groups, especially juries, will be thoughtful about the process - we saw that with the BAFTA nominations. But larger groups... I don't know. We have already seen that the "greater than five" aspect of the best picture race has narrowed down what gets nominated outside of best picture. I genuinely think we'd see more years where you get a 7 men/ 3 women split than anything approaching consistent (over time) parity.

[FilmFan720]

The Jeff Awards (Chicago's biggest theatre awards...our Tony's), made this change about 5 years ago. They merely doubled the number of nominees and have two winners every year.

Overall, the parity in the categories has been fairly equal. Female and male nominees have been roughly 5:5 every year, although some years skew a little more one way or the other. And in general, I think there have actually been more female winners than male winners. Plus, it makes things more comfortable for non-gender conforming artists, of which there is a growing number in the theatre and who have been nominated several times.

So, if a group like the Academy were to take this on, they could merely have 10 Best Lead Performance nominees every year and give out two awards. It means that if we have a weaker year in one gender versus the other, maybe it would give us a stronger list of nominees. And I imagine that most years we would still end up with two winners of different genders.

[OscarGuy]

GALECA has already adopted the change as well.

[Sabin]

anonymous1980 wrote
Some people think it's time to combine Actor and Actress into one gender neutral category of Best Lead Performer and Best Supporting Performer.

I disagree of course for two reasons: 1. It will lessen the number of actors honored every year and 2. It will strongly favor men as illustrated below.

Here's a question: If all the past Best Actor and Best Actress winners were up against each other in one category, which one of them do you think will win?

Looking over the list of the past 21 years, I can see only Julia Roberts, Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep. most definitely winning over the Best Actor winners of their respective years. I'm 50/50 on Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore, and Olivia Colman. But the rest, the Best Actor winners most definitely will triumph in a combined gender-neutral acting category.

One group has done this: the Gotham Awards. Why? I think to carve out a niche for themself. This awards group is largely irrelevant. By tackling this conversation, it carves out a lane for themselves. More people will pay attention to the Gotham Awards than at any point in history beforehand. It's possible that the Independent Spirit Awards adopt it in time but even then I doubt it.

But it's never going to go anywhere else because it will result in fewer performances nominated total. I have no idea if today's up-and-coming actress want to be in the same tradition of Vivien Leigh, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, or if they know who they are, but I'm pretty sure they all want to take home an Academy Award for Best Actress. This will go nowhere mainstream.

[Reza]

But why would someone even come up with this idea? What are they trying to prove?

[Big Magilla]

It's an asinine idea. Even if there were to be more than one winner per category, the odds would favor male actors since most films give the more interesting roles to men. Take any year and name the ten best leading performances that come to mind, then pick the top three. How many of those choices would be female?

[anonymous1980]

Some people think it's time to combine Actor and Actress into one gender neutral category of Best Lead Performer and Best Supporting Performer.

I disagree of course for two reasons: 1. It will lessen the number of actors honored every year and 2. It will strongly favor men as illustrated below.

Here's a question: If all the past Best Actor and Best Actress winners were up against each other in one category, which one of them do you think will win?

Looking over the list of the past 21 years, I can see only Julia Roberts, Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep. most definitely winning over the Best Actor winners of their respective years. I'm 50/50 on Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore, and Olivia Colman. But the rest, the Best Actor winners most definitely will triumph in a combined gender-neutral acting category.