stumpcity t1_jaex01j wrote on February 28, 2023 at 11:01 PM

Reply to comment by mikeyfreshh in Awards Without Gender Categories? Celebrities Debate by CactusBoyScout

> The real reason not to do it is that you'd be removing two awards from the show. People watch the Oscars to see famous people win awards.

So don't remove two awards. Increase the number of people who get to win.

Basically, turn the acting awards into a top 5 instead of a top 1. Nominate 10 people for lead, and 10 people for supporting, and then reward the top 5 in both categories. Now you have 10 pretty and famous people all standing up and winning statues and smiling like the Prom Court they are.

Gender categories - removed

number of famous people being rewarded - increased.

mikeyfreshh t1_jaf0sdr wrote on February 28, 2023 at 11:28 PM

5 speeches is a lot and and giving 5 acting awards for lead and supporting waters down the value of the award. I'd be into adding more acting categories, maybe separating drama and comedy like the golden globes do, but just awarding the top 5 seems dumb.

stumpcity t1_jaf1roh wrote on February 28, 2023 at 11:36 PM

>5 speeches is a lot and and giving 5 acting awards for lead and supporting waters down the value of the award.

I disagree that it "waters down the value of the award" for a couple different reasons.

The Oscars are self-marginalizing and self-devaluing in general. Hence our agreement that the reasoning people even show up has nothing to do with merit and everything to do with superficiality. We want to see pretty famous people get happy for being pretty and famous. That's the drive.
Picking single winners has also, by this logic, "devalued" the award because if you fuck up and pick someone that shouldn't have won it, you end up making the award mean less. The evidence for this POV is seen by, once again, our shared recognition that people don't tune into this thing to see movies win things based on merit.

As it stands, the acting awards are the ONLY awards anywhere near as delineated as they are already. Not only are they split into Supporting/Lead categories, they're the ONLY awards split by gender role as well. If giving more people statues for being among the five best performances of that year is dilution of the award, then the decision to make "Best Acting" into four separate trophies was already dilution.

The awards are, themselves, an advertisement (and historically, an anti-labor union measure, LOL). Their status as a legitimate designator of merit has been in question longer than we've been alive. This is not an institution known for great judgment, and it's accepted for that.

The biggest hurdle isn't a supposed devaluing of awards whose key reason for existing is superficial advertising. It's just getting over the artificial "tradition" being changed going forward.