MTV: "Yes, we're still here."

There's this article that popped up on Facebook for me about MTV Movie and TV Awards are now going to non-gender categories. Link is here. I have one major problem with this move. It seems like a desperate attempt to make MTV look relevant again. Maybe they really are concerned with having categories that fit all gender identities, but I doubt it. Especially when they are also adding two new categories: Best American Story and Best Fight Against The System.

The article also questions if other award shows should do it. My initial reaction was, whatever, I don't care. Which is still my reaction. But, if the Oscars were to do that, it would be a disaster and roles that should have been nominated might not be and the whole thing is going to be more political than it already is.

Let's say they do it and just call it Best Acting Performance in a Drama. There remain 5 nominations like their are now. It's a male dominated industry, so the first year it's 3 males and 2 females. It stays like that for a few years. Then one year, it's 4 males and 1 female. There's outrage and because the Supporting Acting Performance was 3 males and 2 females, and only 1 female director was nominated (because that generally seems to happen, as there aren't that many female directors in Hollywood, which is a different conversation all together) the Oscars are deemed sexist and too male heavy. The masses want to boycott this one and even though they get Ellen to host, it's deemed a dated ceremony and the worst part of this country. Now, the following year, to recoupe their image, The Academy actively makes sure that the nominations are 4 females and 1 male in the Best Acting, 3 females and 2 males in Supporting, and their are 2 female directors. It doesn't matter what performances were out there. Maybe David Spade finally broke through in Dramas and Danny DeVito directed the best comedy since Airplane, but it doesn't matter because now we have to make sure the Oscars don't seem too gender-bias. And we caused all of this, because someone wanted to fix a problem that wasn't really a problem, because you can technically submit into either gender-based category.

So, I can see all that happening. Or, I can see them going, okay, we'll combine them and have 10 nominations and they basically just keep splitting it down the middle with 5 male nominations and 5 female nominations. Then it's just a hollow gesture that does nothing except increase the number of people saying "It's an honor to be nominated" by one actor/actress.

I imagine we won't have to worry about this ever actually happening as The Oscars probably aren't taking Award Ceremony Advice from MTV, otherwise we wouldn't have Best Foreign Language Film and there'd be a Best Shirtless Scene category in it's place. And my prediction is that in a couple years or so, MTV will make the annoucement that they are going back to gender-categories just to make sure they pop up in people's news feeds again.