The Atlantic: According to one Recording Academy official, the reason that the CEO of the Grammys was fired after just five months on the job is this: “What we expected was change without chaos.” Following years of public criticism, with its president stepping down after more than a decade and a half in the position, the academy hired Deborah Dugan—previously the head of Bono’s HIV/AIDS charity—with an implied mandate to make music’s top awards-giving body more inclusive, fair, and relevant.
5 comments:
I think that across the board, Award shows need to begin to recognize the inequality in their nominations. The problems that Deborah Dugan are attempting to face are problems that are not just within the Grammy awards, but across the entertainment industry as a whole. For example, I was really disappointed with the Oscar nominations this season, as several iconic female directors, who in my opinion put out really beautiful work this season, were not on the ticket for best director. Dugan calls on the facts in her report. One fact that was shocking to me was the percentage of women and people of color was so low, while white artists were on several ballads for several nominations. However, when looking at the "Top Charts", people are listening to these artists, which means that the Grammys are not accurately representing what listeners want. I really commend the work of Dugan, for working so hard to create equality in an industry that has been so male-dominated for so long.
This is just so incredibly frustrating. For years the public has been criticizing award shows for their lack of diversity, and yet as soon as someone tries to shake things up they are quickly ousted. It just feels like we are making big strides in the wrong direction now that the main surge of the #MeToo movement has died down in public interest. Reading about the rape allegations is especially distressing because it feels like as a culture we already kind of established that claims of that severity should be fully investigated and that we should be believing the women who have the courage to come forwards about these things. It brings me a lot of joy to read that Dugan is fighting back, but of course it is pretty terrible that she has to be fighting back in the first place. It is just really overwhelming to try and take on a group like the Recording Academy, so it is hard not to feel kind of helpless about this situation when looking at it from the outside.
I think that it's super frustrating that we're all so aware of these problems, of the diversity in most award shows being really terrible, and never having anything get done about it. The Grammys, Oscars, Golden Globes, and SAG awards ignore female directors and creators far too often. They disclude POC as well. This is just another problem that we are having with the entertainment industry, and it is one of many that talk about lack of equity and diversity in casting, awarding, and in general recognizing. Any man who is mildly attractive and can act kind of disgruntled with get a role and a nomination. While some of them are deserved, many of them were upstaged by a performance by a person of color. A great example of this disparity lies with Margot Robbie's double nomination in the supporting actress category, making it so that actresses of color can't fit into the category. Like, they couldst've just chosen one movie of her's they liked more???
Wow!! It is really sad that we are still dealing with sexism and racism in award show committees. I think that it is time for all the old white men if these committees to step down and be replaced by people of all sex and race. I can not tell if Dugan is really telling the truth about everything, but I suspect that she is. It is so sad that she claims she was sexually harassed at her place of work. And I am sure that her accusation that Neil Portnow, precious CEO, raped a foreign musician probably is true which is truly sickening. The abuse of power by old white men in these CEO positions is very distressing. You would think that by now these award show committees would make more of an effort be diverse since it’s been such a controversy and yet they have not changed anything.
Honestly, this whole situation just kind of sounds like an unholy disaster. It seems to be a relatively well known fact that all of the awards shows are in need of a cultural and political reboot. They - for the most part - seem to currently be full of a certain demographic who seem to be certain that their awards shows need to not only stay within but unhealthily promote the success of those who also fall into that demographic. The Grammys were definitely making strides by hiring a woman to overcome some of these issues (though it seems that they might not have actually wanted to resolve these problems and may instead have just been trying to cover themselves). It’s idiotic, too, that in their defense of some extraordinarily convoluted actions on the part of the Recording Academy, they stoop to calling Deborah Dugan as “self-interested and problematic”. This may be the case, but - to me at least - this reads as blatantly anti-female verbiage.
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