Submitted by chrisbokiul t3_z4dli0 in television
Raffy87 t1_ixr3vrg wrote
Reply to comment by Anatar19 in 'The Crown' Star, Emma Corrin, Calls for Gender-Neutral Acting Awards by chrisbokiul
For bias you have to be 'unfairly prejudiced' for or against someone or something, simply preferring the performance of one person over another does not constitute bias.
Anatar19 t1_ixr4c8c wrote
No you don't need to be unfairly prejudiced. But even with that in mind as a common use of the word, define "unfair" in a way that doesn't include bias. The example you gave before about "best" somehow implied that "popular vote = best" and if that's what you're going with, I don't know what to tell you. It used to be popular to believe some people were witches and that they need to be burned at the stake. Does that make it thr best? Fair?
Raffy87 t1_ixr4usj wrote
>you don't need to be unfairly prejudiced
that is the definition of bias.
We are talking about awards achieved through votes, so yes, most popular wins. No it's not fair, if it was everyone would get an award but then what's the point?
Anatar19 t1_ixr5mom wrote
You've made up your own definition of bias then. Every dictionary I can find talks about personal judgment, sometimes unfair/unreasoned but not always.
As for your definition, then maybe we should stop calling awards "best performance" and relabel it "most popular performance." While there will always be elements of bias there it doesn't mean they can't be identified and we can't strive to put some of them aside. Otherwise we might as well just have the people's choice awards and be done with it.
Raffy87 t1_ixr6fgp wrote
Well it's art, it can never be judged objectively and to call people's preferences bias is wrong, without preferences they wouldn't be able to choose between two performances. I agree the award is really most popular performance but I think most people know this so the name doesn't need changing.
Anatar19 t1_ixr7fmd wrote
Interesting, you picked the word biased as an adjective similar but if I drop it down for "bias" I get"
"cause to feel or show inclination or prejudice for or against someone or something"
as the first definition
Your source, not mine.
But lets add some others for fun.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bias
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bias
Turns out bias actually does mean that.
And yes, it's the arts. They can't be judged fairly. That was exactly the point in my very first post if you scroll up. These awards are basically nothing but bias in and of themselves. That doesn't make them bad or anything, just biased. And given enough information we can figure stuff out about what kinds of biases are there, of which women and men is a rather obvious one but there are also many others.
Anatar19 t1_ixr4z9x wrote
And just as an added point, explain how personal preference as a judgment of someone else is fair in any way? That's entirely arbitrary and up to an "other." These awards aren't designed to be fair from the outset for a whole number of reasons. I don't see why you have such an issue with the idea of looking into the potential for one specific bias along with many others.
Raffy87 t1_ixr5nua wrote
I was merely pointing out that just because a population (the voters) don't come to a 50/50 result on something as subjective as other's acting performances doesn't mean there is an inherent bias.
Anatar19 t1_ixr69yx wrote
And I was pointing out that you were dropping the "over time" part of the equation and skirting the definition of bias. Yes, if over a large enough sample size over time things don't break down 50/50 (or 52/48 or whatever) it DOES mean there is a bias there. Then we have to explain that bias. Is it because directors are centering roles around one gender more than another? Are writers writing more characters over another? Are voters skewed one direction in ant number of ways for any number of reasons? That bias might be coming from places we don't expect but just because we don't know all that stuff yet doesn't mean we should deny it exists and avoid looking into the potential causes entirely.
Raffy87 t1_ixr6ocw wrote
We will have to agree to disagree, have a good night
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