Awards Season

Another entertainment awards season is here. Which means that half of America will be watching to see who wins, while the other half will be watching to see who's wearing what. So many award shows, so little time. Of course the big daddy of entertainment awards is the Oscars, which air at the end of February, but there are several others before then. We've already had the People's Choice Awards and the Golden Globes. Coming up next is the SAG Awards.

If you think that the SAG awards are trophies given out to performers who haven't had facelifts or breast implants yet, you would be incorrect. For one thing, SAG stands for Screen Actors Guild, and for another thing, using that criteria it would be difficult to find enough people to fill up an entire awards show.

One big difference between the SAG Awards and the Academy Awards (besides the viewership) is the sexual designation within the nominee categories. While the Academy Awards designate Actor and Actress, the Sag Awards make no such distinction. SAG uses Male Actor and Female Actor. They evidently are of the opinion that referring to women who act as "actresses" is somehow demeaning.

But why is "actress" demeaning? All the word does is distinguish between a male actor and a female actor without having to say male actor and female actor. It's a short cut. If "actor" and "actress" offend you, then you should be offended by the very words "male" and "female," since they too distinguish between the two sexes. In that case one would have to say "human being A" and "human being B" or maybe "human being with a penis" and "human being with a vagina."

But if the people who want the actress designation eliminated because they don't want to make a distinction between male and female actors at all, then fine, go all the way with that. Use the term "Acting Person" and drop the male and female designation altogether. Just have one category, "Best Performance by an Acting Person" and give the award to the best one performer for that year, whoever it is, man or woman. That would be 100% blind unisex equality.

Of course this will never happen because my idea would eliminate the number of awards they could give out by half, and SAG wants to hand out as many as they can. So here's another idea. How about going the other way? INCREASE the awards by adding even more designations. That's right. Let's really expand this thing big time to cover everyone. Leave nobody out. The all-inclusive lineup could look something like this:

• Outstanding Performance by a White Male Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a White Female Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Black Male Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Black Female Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Latino Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Latina Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Male Asian Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Female Asian Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Homosexual Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Lesbian Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Transsexual Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Bisexual Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Male Disabled Actor

• Outstanding Performance by a Female Disabled Actor

And you can double all these by adding in the supporting role awards. Also, I never even got into the age categories, you know like Young White Male and Old White Male and so on. So there you are, everybody included, no one left out, problem solved. Oh, wait a minute! This is racial/sexual identity/gender/ PROFILING!! Well, that's no good. We've got to come up with another solution.

How about this, we go back to the good old "actor" and "actress" designations and get over the politically correct nonsense. Or we can ignore the entire SAG Awards show altogether and just wait for the show that has no controversy at all, The Academy Awards.

Ooops.

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JWR contributor Greg Crosby, former creative head for Walt Disney publications, has written thousands of comics, hundreds of children's books, dozens of essays, and a letter to his congressman. He's also a Southern California-based freelance writer.