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Social-justice complaints about the Oscars are as old as the ceremony itself

Even this was a carefully crafted compromise chosen after ultra-sensitive negotiations, and no one can deny that hair and makeup are Oscar essentials that bring in attentive viewers. But stunt work, possibly the single most macho profession on Earth, isn’t eligible for any awards at all. (The academy has given honorary Oscars to the legendary stuntmen Yakima Canutt and Hal Needham, and Jackie Chan’s disbelief-inducing stunt work was cited when he received one in 2016.) Gill always observes in interviews that people assume there is a stunt Oscar or two amid the non-televised scientific and technical awards, but it isn’t so.

There are traditional pretexts for the exclusion of stuntmen and -women from the Academy Awards. One is good old suspension of disbelief: Hollywood is said not to want to remind us that our favourite actors aren’t always in front of the camera when we are “seeing” them fall down the fire escape or get knocked down by an explosion. If this were so, one would think that the actors who do many of their own stunts would be discouraged from permitting endless slobbering coverage of the fact, thus casting shadows on their more rational colleagues. (Did Tom Cruise miss a memo or two? He is well known not to be a big reader. And if he is as good a stuntman as everyone says he is, having stunt categories would give him a crack at extra statues.)

Photo by Glenbow Archive

No one objects to other technical Oscars on grounds like this: it is, in fact, sexism — taking the form of a nervous, superstitious regard for the idolatrous perception of male leads — that makes a stunt double an outsider at award time, while hairstylists, makeup artists and costumers are celebrated. Yet absolutely no moviegoer is unaware of the existence of stunt doubles. They have been part of popular culture themselves for a half-century or more. Canutt, who was a technological pioneer in Westerns as well as a risk-taker, was already famous in the 1930s: the studios he worked for promoted him as a minor star in his own right.