Husbands and Wives
Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 12:30PM Michael here from Serious Film. I’ve been posting analysis of all the Oscar categories one at a time so when the Supporting Actress category came up I naturally had to compose variations on the phrase "supportive girlfriend/wife" (Amy Adams and Helena Bonham-Carter) so as not to get repetitive.
Supportive Gals = Oscar Traction
You don't have to break out any such phrase for the guys. Just how lopsided is this situation? Do the fellas ever get nominated for staying home and cheering on the ladies?
I looked up some stats, and long story short, I didn’t think it would be that lopsided. Going back over the last twenty years there was only one, count em one, nomination for the traditional supportive husband/boyfriend role, Jim Broadbent for Iris. (He won.) If you want to stretch you can push it up to three by including John C. Reilly’s doofus husband in Chicago and Christopher Plummer’s Tolstoy in The Last Station, but if you ask me those don’t fit the type. After that…nothing. Just villains and character actor parts as far as the eye can see. Of course a few of the others play husbands but their wives have equal or lesser roles (Think Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire)
As for the ladies I stopped counting in the mid-twenties. The supporting actress category, as should come as zero surprise, is overflowing wives and girlfriends, including the entire 2004 line up, if you count Portman in Closer. They matched the guys’ total of three last year alone with the girlfriend parts played by Gyllenhaal, Farmiga, and Cruz. Throw in mothers and you’ve got the whole category covered.
Supportive Guys ≠ Oscar Traction
I’ll leave it to you to draw conclusions about the diversity of female roles in Hollywood but one conclusion I can say for sure: If you’re a guy looking to win an Oscar avoid playing the husband.
P.S. Remember Nathaniel's Illustrated Chart of Supporting Actor 'Types'? (click to embiggen)
Reader Comments (20)
The snubbed performance that leaps out at me here is Gordon Pinsent in "Away From Her." Arguably a leading role, but a pillar of support.
Amen on Pinsent. Beautiful performance. I definitely thought of him while writing this. Phil Davis's strong performance in Vera Drake is another one that got zero recognition
Michael -- DAVIS. I feel bad about that one too. That's one that sneaks up on you way after the fact like yes, he was great in that.
another guy it's happening to this year (though noone will notice since the ladies got no traction either: EDDIE MAYS in Made in Dagenham. He is really terrific in that (as well as being terrific in Vera Drake, too.
This is great, Michael. Seems to me this is all related to the fact that films with female leads don't seem to line up easily with best picture nominations, and definitely don't line up with best picture winners.
In the last twenty years the best picture winners are rarely centered on a female lead. The exceptions: "Silence of the Lambs" (set in the male-dominated world of the FBI), "Million Dollar Baby" (set in the macho world of boxing), "Chicago", (set in the world of murder and prison -- and, notably, didn't win for best director), and "Shakespeare in Love" (a woman in disguise as a man -- ditto on the no-director-nod). The only real female-lead-not-in-a-man's-world is "Titanic." That's a shaky five out of twenty.
This year, no one expects "Black Swan" to win best picture, and the conversation about which film likely WON'T make the top ten is mostly centered on: "Will 'Kids Are All Right" or 'Winter's Bone" make the cut?"
The Hollywood boys club doesn't like its ladies in charge.
It makes perfect sense because cinema is predicated on the male driving the plot and the female being the object of the gaze. A large percentage of films don't have a male supporting a female -- the male is typically active. Even when a woman in an action film is supposed to be "strong" and "well-versed in her field," she eventually becomes a ragdoll in a Me-Push-Pull-You situation.
So, the reason that these male roles don't get nominated as often as these female roles is because there are substantially fewer of them. I don't think you need to think about it more than that.
J -- i agree with the set up but not your conclusion. the question, when such roles DO exist is WHY they don't get traction. Take AARON ECKHART in Erin Brockovich as a perfect example. If you reverse the genders in that movie and you've got a moral crusader male lead and a supportive female boyfriend who ends up caring for his children and being frustrated but keeping on loving her man... she gets a nomination. Period.
Why is acting a supportive role considered a worthy achievement for a woman and not a man?
The fewer thing is one point, but it's that, ultimately, Critics want to endorse the normal gender roles. A male in a supporting category, thus, is a co-lead and/or extremely showy, while co-lead status is rare in supporting actress if the candidate is of the proper age. (Which is above 18.) Yet: Why have a supporting category if it's painfully obvious there's too many leads the studios want you to nominate?
If we are working off of the assertion that we're used to actors' driving the narrative as opposed to rooting from the sidelines, it might be that when we see them in the supportive-mate roles, we're tend to think they aren't doing much....ACTING...I guess.
It's all as absurd as it is interesting. I finally saw "The King's Speech" last night and walked out of the theater wondering what Helena Bonham Carter did that countless actresses of her comparable age and gifts couldn't have replicated or even bested to warrant her presumed Oscar nomination. That the type of role rather than performance will most likely land her a nod when so much better work has been done is truly disconcerting.
volvag -- i don't know if they "want" to. I just think these things are so programmed into people in this patriarchal heteronormative society that they have to be jolted out of complacency by TRULY great work to notice when someone is doing work outside of those comfort zones. In other words...
troy -- agreed that it's probably just assumptions.
but this is why i think it's important to talk about these things (and why i'm glad Michael wrote it) because the more we THINK about what we're rewarding the better i think the nominations become.
I thought of Eckhart in Brockovich right away, too. Not made any easier by what, for him, has proved to be a rare bout of acting without drawing any attention to the effort he's putting into it. A gorgeous performance, nominated nowhere that I can remember.
I hope we note, too, that male leads in "women's pictures" don't get any more traction. Benicio Del Toro should have been nominated for every award going for Things We Lost in the Fire a few years ago, and he got nowhere. Peter Falk is tremendous In A Woman under the Influence. Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter. Clint Eastwood in The Bridges of Madison County. Either of the guys in Far from Heaven, however they got categorized. DiCaprio in Titanic, if that's your thing. Even being a co-lead to a woman in a movie that skews "feminine" is an awful hard way to get an Oscar nod.
All these guys supported their main female character and failed to get an Oscar nomination
Ralph Fiennes in The Reader was sooo good but failed to get a nomination
Michael Sheen in The Queen was fantastic but failed to get a nomination
Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge was outstanding but failed to get a nomination
Dennis Quaid in Far From Heaven was phenomenal but he played a soft gay supporting character so he was doomed
Stephen Dillane in The Hours was fantastic but failed to get any recognition
Geoffrey Rush in Elizabeth was amazing but he was nominated for the god-awful Shakespear in Love
John Malkovich was phenomenal in Dangerous Liasions but failed to get a nomination
Michael Douglas was incredible in Fatal Attraction but failed to get a nomination
Kevin Kline in Sophie´s Choice was really really good but failed to get a nom
Kurt Russell in Silkwood was really good but failed to get a nomination
Eckhart is being dissed again this year in similar fashion for another supportive role being overshadowed by a great female performance (Rabbit Hole). No traction at all. Sad.
And you could argue that the main reason Broadbent won for his supportive husband is that he had two other big roles that year, one of which was even more of a no-no in even more of a "female" picture (a crazy, vaguely queer showman!).
Anyway, I think both the lack of roles in this category and the lack of awards attention for the ones there are are both indications of the blatant sexism at work.
Kurt Russell in Silkwood is the other one that absolutely demonstrates the trend. Big oscar film, total classic supportive boyfriend/spouse, overlooked. If the shoe was on the other foot, he would've gotten in AND the film would've been nommed for best picture. For sure.
and it's Kurt Russell's best performance! at least as far as I can recall. damn, Silkwood is a great movie.
I agree, the only one I can think of who came close was Stanley Tucci, but he wqas nominated for The Lovely Bones instead (a villain type) I think if not for TLB, be may have been nominated for Julie and Julia, but maybe thats wishful thinking.
And I consider Pinsent lead, but he was amazing nonetheless. I'll probably fry for this, but I thought he was better than Christie, and was my #2 that year afer Day Lewis
Brooooooke, i've heard that from a few people so you're not alone but to me JULIE CHRISTIE FOREVER.
I guess its because being supportive for a man is being submissive and obviously men, "real" men are aggressive. they lead not follow. following is for people who take it up the butt. im sure if there was a critically acclaimed heavy dramatic movie with a female lead with a gay supporting character( i guess the performance itself has to be impressive too) then an oscar nod would be shining at the end of the tunnel. of course the light would be someone in the distance stressing over being in a tunnel and just lighting up their last cig. anyway, its not just about men supporting the female lead but the category pretty much belongs to villains. (why are villains always supporting anyway?) A badass fag should do the trick!
If Mark Ruffalo gets nominated for "The KIds Are All Right," would that buck the trend? Would a sperm donor count as a "supportive husband/boyfriend"?
I lean on Big Trouble in Little China myself. Not "Best of the Year" (that's Feldman, from Stand By Me) but definitely silver. Although Silkwood would be second. (And The Thing third. But that showcases a minimalist, absolutely no frills, kind of acting.) And no, San FranCinema, Mark Ruffalo would not be "bucking the trend." The character is pretty clearly played as an interloper and a disturbance to their family dynamic. Certainly not a "supportive husband/spouse."
Excellent post, Michael, and terrific discussion; thank you for writing it.
@Manuel - your list makes me want to cry, especially McGregor, Malkovich, Kline, and Dillane. I was amazed Dillane got absolutely no traction, none, the year of The Hours, but that railway station scene (and all Kidman's interactions with "Leonard Woolf") are absolutely unimaginable without him. I loved Kidman in it at the time, but the further I get from the film (I haven't rewatched in several years) the more it's Dillane, not Kidman's, performance that lingers in my memory. (THe only one on your list I might cross off is Douglas in Fatal Attraction - I could be wrong about that, but I'm interested enough in the film or the actor to revisit either one.)
On the other side of the coin, I was completely dismayed last year that Maggie Gyllenhaal got a nom for playing "supportive girlfriend" in Crazyheart for what I believe Nathaniel referred to as "one of her least interesting performances".
//Anyway, I think both the lack of roles in this category and the lack of awards attention for the ones there are are both indications of the blatant sexism at work.//
@Adam - I think you nailed it in one sentence. The question I suppose, once the issue is recognized (as we're attempting to here) is not so much "why" then, but "how do we change it?" But then that is really asking "how do you change 10,000 years of human cultural conditioning, doesn't it?