Man, we really are all Hollywood today.
Twice in one day, I read or heard someone suggesting that it’s weird and outdated for the Golden Globes, Oscars, and other awards like that to break up the acting awards by gender. They idly wondered why the separate categories on Overthinking It podcast and then I saw Sybil at Bitch, PhD post about it. Sybil’s points summarize the issue nicely:
Is it not so strange that all the awards shows for non-music, that is, all the completely performance based awards (because at least in theory things like Best Album are about writing) segregate the actual performance awards by gender? Not Best Screenplay by a Man or Best Cinematography by a Woman, but always and across the board Best Supporting Actress and Best Actor. What’s the deal with that?
It’s all about the performance aspect, no? The writing and directing and score and costuming awards we can think of as awarding a discreet skill. But performativity, as I figure it, is so inextricably linked to gender that we cant think of ways to compare performances across those lines. I admit it’s hard for me to conceive, because of conditioning, of the nominees being Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Kate Winslet, and Mickey Rourke. And if such a thing ever were the case, wouldn’t it be fascinating to see how the gender allocation of award winners broke down? How else to make clear the relative dearth of choice roles for women?