A recent report from Women's Liberation Front cites a source telling them that the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s nixing of sex-based acting awards categories wasn’t unanimous; in fact, it was far from it.
A whistleblower came to WoLF telling them that last month’s vote “was very close”. "There's a lot of dissent" from the planned change, the source added.
Of course, the dissenting members of the LAFCA will remain quiet and not publicly express their negative attitude towards the gender-neutral switch. If they did then they’d probably be ridiculed and even booted from the group.
WoLf executive director Mahri Irvine went on to add something that seems a little wobbly to me, but she claims to base this on research data:
"What a lot of research has shown is that a film will end up being much more successful and making more money, if an actress wins a Best Actress Award. So when a woman wins awards, it ends up helping everybody involved in that particular film, which means that directors are going to have more incentive to try to cast women in starring roles."
"What this is going to do, is end up disincentivizing directors and producers from even casting women in the first place, so we're really concerned about this. We were approached by someone who was really worried about the erasure of women's career opportunities and was thinking about all the little girls out there who might want to go into the film industry and thinking they're not even going to have a chance to win awards at this point for acting."
With their gender-neutral announcement, the LAFCA virtue-signaled how boldly resistant they were to the patriarchal norms. The Oscars cannot afford to do this, as their ratings are already tanking, and by going gender neutral they will further isolate whatever, albeit small, audience they currently have.
If I had to bet, the BAFTAS are next, and for sure the Golden Globes, as they are already on thin ice with the social media hounds and they need to virtue signal their way out of the socialist prison they dug themselves in.
In "Last Meals," Mikkelsen stars as Walter Karat, a disgraced former White House chef now preparing final meals for death row inmates at a maximum security prison.