Wednesday, February 24, 2010
The Technical Academy Awards- For Guys Only?
Women & Hollywood: "If you didn’t know any better after reading this AP article on the Academy’s technical awards you’d think that only men worked in Hollywood. This piece is one of the strangest takes on the industry that I have seen in a while."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
First of all, a personal interjection - if the technical breakthroughs that are award-worthy were all made by men, why should we force essentially an affirmative-action female award into the ceremony? Saying "How can this be a celebration of everything when only men are recognized?" is an inane argument in an award ceremony based on merit and achievement.
That said, some of the comments on this article about gender discrimination in simply getting into the technology fields have solid numbers (85% male) and raise intriguing points to which we do not have clear answers. Are the low numbers of women due to a lack of personal merit, or is there truly a stigma here? Also, the choice to have Elizabeth Banks as host is brought up. I'm not surprised that they would choose a woman to host (especially since the televised awards will be co-hosted by two men), and though she did not seem to understand any of the achievements she awarded, the AP article noted how encouraging she was and how she did a professional job in a slightly unfamiliar situation. I'm not convinced there was a problem at all in choosing her to host.
I totally agree with the first part of Brian's comment. That was one of my first reactions to the article. Merit should be based on merit alone, and in this case there does happen to be a larger percentage of men involved, so the lack of a female winner is not surprising. There should not be a token woman if the honor is not deserved. I have noticed that there have been a lot of articles lately about the lack of women behind the scenes in Hollywood. While in many cases such as with writers, there is some discrimiation, I feel that in this particular field there just isn't as much interest. I'm sure it will change over time, as more women will use their talents and knowledge for film.
Post a Comment