It’s no secret that the Academy Awards, despite being a ceremony dedicated to recognizing the best in cinema, has some serious oversights in terms of its categories. Several core elements of many films just aren’t represented here, depriving talented artists of numerous fields of a critical opportunity to get an appreciation for their hard work. For many years, one of the most discussed missing Oscars categories has been one for stunt performers, which is very much needed. The Emmys recently awarded their first stunt performer. However, another shocking absence from the Academy Awards is a category for Best Voice-Over Performance, which needs to be rectified for a slew of important reasons.
Among these reasons is how the Academy itself views the world of voice-acting. It’s bad enough how this domain struggles to garner respect in mainstream pop culture. It’s just pouring salt on the wound, then, to see how Oscars themselves have often acted dismissive towards the profession of voice acting. Most notably, Chris Rock introduced the Best Animated Feature category one year by decrying voice work as “the easiest job in the world.” Understandably, this comment inspired ire from longtime members of this community, including a memorable joke from Tara Strong on Twitter challenging Rock to a competition over who could do the most voices.
The perception of voice acting as a laid back job that anyone could do has become so permeated in the general consciousness that it’s now a part of hack Academy Award ceremony routines. This underlines the importance of having an annual category where a selection of voice acting talent can be recognized for their hard work and dedication alongside the nominees for Best Director and Best Supporting Actress. Performing as a voice actor is far from “the easiest job in the world” and having this profession recognized through a Best Voice-Over Performance category could go a long way to challenging that perception.
Another of these upsides would be how a Best Voice-Over Performance category would help combat another artform often given short thrift by the Academy; animation. Typically, this category is seen as lesser-than and rarely competes in categories beyond Best Animated Feature or Best Original Song. The former category is even still seen as a point of contention by many who view it as emblematic of the lack of appreciation the Academy has for the medium of animation. Meanwhile, only a trio of animated features has ever been recognized in the Best Picture category in the nearly 100-year-long history of the Oscars. It’s a gross oversight reflecting how hard it is for animated fare to get taken seriously here.
A Best Voice-Over category would not be restricted to just fare crafted in the medium of animation. It would have to include live-action films that feature vocals-only performances, such as the work of Scarlett Johansson as the A.I. Samantha from Her, to ensure that it’s incorporating the entire voice-over acting community. But the majority of these nominees would be from fully animated motion pictures, that’s just where so much voiceover work gig resides. Delivering another category where an aspect of animated filmmaking could be appreciated would go a long way towards making this medium feel appreciated at the Oscars.
Meanwhile, a Best Voice-Over category could be a great way to allow long-standing veterans of the voice-acting field to get some much-deserved recognition. Folks like Tress MacNeille, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Cree Summers have been around for ages in this industry and have secured their fair share of Emmy’s or Annie’s. However, they’ve never scored Oscar nominations, let alone wins, despite their vocal performances being a critical part of why certain motion pictures worked as well as they did. Could Christopher Robin have proved anywhere near as emotionally affecting if it weren’t for Jim Cummings delivering such poignant work as Winnie the Pooh?
The current Oscars acting categories don’t leave any opportunity for these artists to get the kind of Oscar nomination recognition that folks like Jared Leto can secure with ease. But with a Best Voice-Over Performance category, there could finally be a way to correct this oversight. Once again, the ideal version of this category would be open to all artists, so live-action actors engaging in voice work could still qualify for this category. However, a Best Voice-Over Performance Oscar category should be seen first and foremost as a way to recognize undervalued talent in the voice-over field rather than just finding a new way to give Meryl Streep another Oscars.
Speaking of recognizing achievements in this field, the Oscars have often made time to briefly illuminate how certain cinematic behind-the-scenes processes function. These offer viewers a glimpse into people and jobs that moviegoers may not always be thinking about when they’re seated in a movie theater. In many cases, the artists live under the old creed of, if you do your job well enough, nobody will even notice it. However, they’re just as important as any other part of the puzzle of putting a movie together and they deserve to have the effort that goes into their craft recognized on a massive platform.
That’s just as true for voice acting like anything else. Having a Best Voice-Over Performance category could lead to brief explanations during Academy Award ceremonies illuminating the finer nuances of the voice-over process. Through these details, viewers at home can fully understand why it’s necessary to devote a category to recognizing folks like Tom Kenny. Plus, it can erase the notion that voice-over work is “not that hard” from existing in the minds of future generations of moviegoers. After all, how could that perception still if the Academy Awards set a sliver of time aside during one show to recognize how much effort someone like Tom Kenny puts into a vocal performance?
Of course, implementing this category won’t solve all the woes related to artistic departments currently left out in the cold by the Academy, even regarding works in the field of animation. The institutional issues with the Academy Award are so deeply ingrained into this ceremony that they cannot be solved by just adding one new category. Resolving those problems require years of more in-depth work if those issues can be resolved at all. This is just as true for problems in recognizing voice actors as it does for intersectional issues related to the ceremony properly making space for queer, international, and non-white artistic voices.
But at least adding a Best Voice-Over Performance category would feature several immediate advantages in the field of voice acting. It’s particularly exciting to contemplate the opportunities this would afford to recognize legends in the voice acting field, people that the public may be enamored with without even realizing it. After all, these artists put in a lot of hard work into the vocal turns that define cinematic characters that we all know and love. It’s time for the Oscars to create a way to acknowledge the contributions of such artists on an annual basis.
About The Author
