Post Oscar Thought(s)

So…one quick thought on the Oscar ceremony this year. Traditionally, the last three Oscars presented are Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Picture and in that order. This year, Best Actress was moved to the middle of the show. As far as I know, this was done in order to spread out the big awards, to put a popular award in the middle of the show. But doesn’t this, on some level, lessen the importance of the award? It would be totally different if the Best Actor award was moved as well or if Hollywood wasn’t notoriously disproportionate in gender representation. Now, I don’t believe that there was any intentional sexism involved in the decision to move the award, but in a country that is blatantly disproportional in gender equality and an industry that is particularly disproportional, in a town that claims to be so liberal and progressive, it seems like this was an insensitive and thoughtless choice, and in my opinion the wrong choice, to put the Best Actress award in the middle of the ceremony. Helen Mirren got it right on the red carpet when she pointed out that there are not very many good roles in Hollywood movies for women. In fact, in comparison to the roles for men, this is a gross understatement. Tradition aside, there is a psychology behind the order in which the awards are presented: the most important awards are saved for last. Traditionally, Best Actress goes first and then Best Actor which on a subconscious and psychological level (at the very least) indicates that the Best Actor award is more prestigious than that of Best Actress. Some may argue that setting the Best Actress award apart from the rest makes it special, but not when both tradition and psychology are taken into account and compared to the male version of the award which went just before best picture, the most prestigious award in movies (or so it is generally regarded).

Then there’s the argument for getting rid of the gender divides completely and having only a best performance catergory. I won’t get into that. I will give this link:

http://jezebel.com/360915/do-the-oscars-really-need-a-best-actress-category

Or this more in-depth article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/26/oscars.gender

And I will say that I think tradition is important to a lot of people and may be a strong enough of an argument against this. But it would send an interesting message if the Oscars decided that a performance is a performance and an actor is and actor and it has nothing to do with gender.

In closing, I don’t feel that moving the Best Actress award was intentional or blatant discrimination on part of the Academy. I know some people involved in the show and on the contrary they are genuinely good, progressive people. And in fact, I think the industry and the Oscars have come a long way since the first awards ceremony in which the only female winner was Janet Gaynor for Best Actress. I mean three women were nominated for best original screenplay this year, another for adapted screenplay and one of them won. But a woman has still never won best director (not surprising considering women only direct about 6% of Hollywood films) and I think only three have even been nominated. And most other roles in film (Cinematography, editing, producing, etc) are still dominated by men. So, we’re not quite there, but heading, maybe, slowly in the right direction… It’s just too bad that it’s in baby steps when there is really the potential and possibility for a much faster path to change. And if Hollywood could find that path, couldn’t they, of all industries out there, inspire the rest of the world to find it as well?