A few years ago, Sam Mendes made the case for gender-neutral Oscars. He admitted, to BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, "total sympathy" for the idea of nixing the Actor and Actress categories. “That’s the way it’s moving. I think it’s perfectly reasonable,” Mendes added.
Variety now has an interview with Academy President Bill Kramer, and this one will no doubt be making some waves on this slow news day. Kramer says he is “exploring” the idea of having a gender-neutral Oscar categories:
We are exploring this topic with our awards, membership, equity, and inclusion committees and soon with our Board of Governors. It’s in the early exploration stage and one of many conversations about the future of awards and the Oscars. We are still investigating how it could look.
Remember when the BRIT awards introduced an Artist Of The Year category as a gender-neutral replacement for Best Male and Best Female Artist categories, and all five nominees that year turned out to be male? Backlash ensued.
I’ve warned people about this. Going gender-neutral in a male-dominated industry leads to the possibility of women being sidelined. It's as simple as that.
Of course, now you have journalists doubling down on the gender-neutral categories and that, along with this switch, there should be a mandatory rule that 50% of the nominees are women. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Guardian columnist Owen Jones:
My view is gender neutral awards should reserve 50% of nominations for women. Women represent a majority of the music industry workforce, so the Academy making the nominations should also be weighted to be at least 50% women, too.
Sooner or later, this kind of gender ideology will infect the Oscars. It’s not a matter of if but when. Journalists will just be the relentless pursuers of this issue until it gets adopted. Remember when the L.A. Times called the Best Actress category a “sexist relic”?
In November, Patricia Arquette did make some very good points about the negatives of going gender neutral, saying it would detract female actresses from getting recognized.
Actress Emma Corrin, who identifies as “nonbinary”, has led the charge in installing gender-neutral categories, with written op-eds in major media outlets. Corrin played a female character in “The Crown” (Princess Diana) and was submitted under the Best Actress category at the Emmys — this infamously rubbed her the wrong way.
Meanwhile, a Goldderby poll of Oscar viewers had 80% of participants who answered AGAINST gender neutral categories. This is a number that reflects how industry people are completely disconnected from actual reality.
The Oscars are losing relevance on a yearly basis and turning them into a pointless cultural dumpster fire is not the answer to getting back their already-lost relevance. Hopefully, Kramer doesn’t succumb to this madness.
While James L. Brooks teased last year that "we'll soon be seeing" Jack Nicholson, 89, act again, and that he was "reading scripts," that idea has now been shut down by his close friend Michael Douglas, 82.