Groups like the Television Critics Association and MTV have embraced equality among the sexes by condensing actor and actress categories into one, but major organizations like the Oscars have not. As society continues to evolve with concepts like equal rights and genderqueer identification, we could see a push in the not-so-distant future for major awards to have genderless acting categories.
The TCA Awards was the first notable awards group to adopt gender-free acting categories. Since 1997 they have simply awarded Individual Achievement in Comedy and Individual Achievement in Drama, with men and women competing against each other. Earlier this year, MTV announced they were doing away with gender-specific categories as well for their Movie & TV Awards, where Beauty and the Beast‘s Emma Watson won Best Actor in a Movie and Stranger Things‘ Millie Bobby Brown won Best Actor in a Show.
Watson addressed the genderless awards concept in her acceptance speech, noting that it reflects how society feels about the human experience.
“MTV’s move to create a genderless award for acting will mean something different to everyone,” she said. “But to me, it indicates that acting is about the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. And that doesn’t need to be separated into two different categories.”
MTV’s move prompted a dialogue about whether all awards should get rid of gender distinctions and simply have catch-all categories moving forward. While the intentions of this concept are good-natured in theory, I do wonder what exactly the implications would be if the Oscars did away with Best Actor and Best Actress. There are a number of factors that lead me to believe that having genderless awards would have a negative impact, particularly for women.
Genderless awards limit the amount of nominees
The most glaring of all reasons to not implement genderless acting categories has nothing to do with sex at all. Having just one acting category for lead performances and one for supporting performances would mean the total nominees drop from 20 to 10. The subject of Oscar snubs gets thrown around every year, but think about how many great performances would go unacknowledged if there were only 10 acting slots. Surprise acting nominations are one of the best parts of Oscar season, and how many of those would we even get with such a limited number of slots? We might eliminate undeserving performances like Jennifer Lawrence in Joy or Alan Arkin in Argo, but it would likely mean great surprise nominees like Joaquin Phoenix in The Master or Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would have never happened, either. They could hypothetically increase the nominations to 10 per category, but that would spread the vote so thin when it comes to voting for a winner that winners would almost always be decided by plurality.
Hollywood still has a gender issue
In many years, the pool of contenders for Best Actor is deep and full of performances from Best Picture contenders. Such is not the case for Best Actress, and that doesn’t necessarily lay at the feet of Oscar voters. Despite a proven track record of female-led movies at the box office, Hollywood executives tend to disproportionately target men. For teenage boys, that means superhero or action movies like Batman v Superman and The Expendables and for older men, we see revenge tales and war films like The Revenant and American Sniper. Films about men often get loads of Oscar nominations including Best Actor, while some of the women in Best Actress are the sole representatives of their films, like Isabelle Huppert for Elle, Rosamund Pike for Gone Girl, and even winners like Julianne Moore for Still Alice. Genderless acting categories would probably lead to voters picking the performances from the buzziest movies, which more often than not happen to feature male leads.
Gender would be brought up regardless of who won
The Academy has done its best to combat negative press in recent years, and they might face more negativity if a string of winners favored one gender over the other. If men won year after year, there would be cries of sexism. If it were actresses, people might say they only won because they were women. Look at how many people claimed others were only voting for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election because she was a woman. Regardless of how well-intentioned some voters may be, there’s going to be a gender perspective or bias for many members of the Academy, especially older ones. Awards for art are subjective enough already, and there are so many surface factors that come into play that shouldn’t, like age, attractiveness, and overall popularity, so why add another one into the mix? Identity politics is an undeniable component even in awards for entertainment.
Some inconvenient truths between lead and supporting
The prototypical Oscar movie centers on a male lead doing something extraordinary (A Beautiful Mind, Argo, The Imitation Game, etc.), while female roles in such movies are often “the love interest,” “long-suffering wife,” or “supportive mother.” Going with the general argument that men have juicier lead roles, at least when it comes to Oscar attention, we could run into a scenario where men continue winning the lead category while women win the supporting category. This is not to suggest that a supporting Oscar is any less legitimate than a lead award, but the optics are less than ideal. What kind of message would it send if men were predominantly winning Oscars for performances with major screen time, while women only got trophies for their supporting roles? Would this cause actresses to submit in supporting because they know they will have an easier path to victory, even if they have ample screen time? This goes back to the point about gender inequality being raised as an issue when the focus should be on the quality of the performances.
On the other hand…
If the Oscars were to embrace genderless categories in the future, there is a possible happy medium. The Academy could start by increasing the number of nominees from five to six, as the Primetime Emmys did in 2009. There are so many phenomenal performances every year that it’s beyond time for the Academy to consider expanding. After this, they could have Academy members vote on their favorite three male lead performances as well as their favorite three female lead performances, and the same for supporting. The top three of each would be folded into one category — the leads would compete in Best Performance in a Leading Role and supporting in Best Performance in a Supporting Role. This makes six per category, three of each gender, with the best of the best competing against each other. This is still a drop from 20 nominees to 12, but at least it prevents a lopsided gender dynamic and adds another layer of competition for each race.
What do you think? Should the Oscars create genderless acting categories or are things fine the way they are?
Plus, here are some fun hypotheticals — let’s say the Best Actor and Best Actress winners were competing against each other in a Best Performance in a Leading Role category. Who do you think would have won in each of the past 10 years?