Talk:Actor

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Infobox

I've removed the infobox recently added to the article as it serves no useful purpose that I can see. If I've missed something, please feel free to explain. Thanks, DionysosProteus (talk) 11:50, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Good day, I added the "occupation infobox" to enhance this really nice B-class article. The ultimate goal is to have a uniform look and in a common format in all articles related to occupations and professions. The infobox exists in other languages and is really successful.

The implementation is quite difficult sometimes, especially with people that worked a lot on an article and feel that it's their way or no way. Wikipedia is for everyone and written by everyone.

WP:SILENCE: "Consensus can be assumed to exist until voiced disagreement becomes evident"

WP:CON: "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale"

If you keep reverting the infobox, you take full ownership of the article and don't give any chance of exposure. Obviously, if the consensus is that this "Actor" article should not be like all other occupational articles, consensus wins.

Thanks, --ŦħęGɛя㎥ 00:56, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

The article with infobox is available here. My objection to the infobox has nothing to do with a sense of ownership over the article - I've contributed something in the region of a single sentence to it myself. Rather, I object to it because it makes the article look stupid. It gives undue prominence to some, let's say, "highly debatable" and at best extremely "marginal" ideas (since when has an actor anything to do with the circus? actors busk now?). The rest of the "information" presented in that way gives the article an air of self-parody. I find it difficult to imagine what need of a Wikipedia browser/reader is served by it. Who needs to be able to confirm at a glance that an actor needs "skills"? I read that "An infobox on Wikipedia is [...] in articles with a common subject to provide summary information consistently between articles or improve navigation to closely related articles in that subject." Neither of those aims appear to be served by this box. As far as I can see, it only serves to "diminish Wikipedia's reputation as a high-quality encyclopedia" without any compensating gain. DionysosProteus (talk) 09:55, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm late to the party, but I do agree with Dionysos, the occupation template is too much of a stretch to be truly useful here. It ought to be removed. Carl.bunderson (talk) 05:22, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree having looked at the infobox version it looks really dumb.Jezhotwells (talk) 02:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Have removed it again.  • DP •  ^{huh?}

Semi-protection

Article protected temporarily, vandalism/blanking. --Dweller (talk) 15:05, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Refs for "actress"

I've just removed a {{cn}} tag because of Wikipedia:Citation overkill. With all the points referenced (before I changed my mind) it looked like this. If it's going to be tagged frequently, perhaps I should go back to the original version. Suggestions? --Old Moonraker (talk) 08:41, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

That form look pretty good except the fact that it is stated twice in the same paragraph that the term actress remains "common in general usage." I would think that this could be stated once and the two refs put with that one mention. I'm not even sure how accurate that is anymore. DVD commentaries as diverse as Mad Men and Doctor Who (and these are only two examples of many that I have heard) and talk shows Like the Graham Norton Show have all switched to using the term "actor" for both genders. Even a show as goofy as Tru TV Presents the World's Dumbest relies solely on the original word. But I know that passions can run high over this so I think leaving in just the one mention would be a positive for the article. MarnetteD | Talk 11:54, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem is the phrasing. I don't have access to the online OED (only my shorter material version), so I can't check what the entry says for Actress. Is it possible to reproduce the entry here? Or, I seem to remember seeing a template on a talk page yesterday that said something about storing a webpage in an archive that wikipedia could then reference... Do you know about that? The contention is about whether Actress is the most common term today for a female performer in theatre/film. In my experience, it tends to be regarded as anachronistic. So if the article is going to argue that it's the most common, I'd like to examine the evidence. With the phrasing "actress became the usual term", it implies not merely an historical development that has since been superceded, but a change that is still with us today. I seem to recall that the last time I looked at this page, which was a while ago (because it brings me such pain to even look), there were sourced citations supporting the opposite view. I suspect that it's something that will come up again and again with this article. So, I'm thinking that it might be worth creating a sub-page talk article that gives the evidence for terminology.

I was going to propose that this article became the subject of the WikiProject Theatre collaboration drive, since it gets pretty much the most hits in the area: 70,000 in the last 30 days. That's about 2,500 people every day looking at this. It brings shame on my house. But the current proposal was for Theatre, so that's first.

With regards to terminology, I have tagged in the back of my head somewhere that when I do get around to trying to tackle this one, to look at Andrew Gurr's book The Shakespearean Stage. He has an interesting narrative of the shift during the Elizabethan/Jacobean era from "player" as the most common to the emergence of "actor", and how this is related to a decrease of the presentational aspects and an increase in the representational illusion, specifically in terms of the performer "becoming" the character more and more. Can't remember the exact term off the top of my head. Anyhow, worth flagging here if someone else feels brave and wants to work on this article. There's also all the actor/puppet debates in modernism arising out of symbolism and people like Edward Gordon Craig, Vsevolod Meyerhold, etc. We should certainly mention the Übermarionette. Olga Taxidou's work is excellent in this area.  • DP •  ^{huh?} 12:16, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I can see from DP's comment that a closer referencing of the OED quotes is needed: self revert follows. --Old Moonraker (talk) 07:06, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

All biographies that I have seen in the last month or so on "The Biography Channel" now use the word actor when identifying both male and female interviewees. It looks like a reference is going to be needed for actress remaining in "general usage". Please see the Merriam Webster Dictionary definition [1] which specifically uses a female in their examples section. MarnetteD | Talk 20:43, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps some distinction needs to be made between "general use" by the public, in which old habits die hard, and the acting profession and the media. I don't know how easy or hard that will be to find but it might but I am seeing more signs of a shift towards gender neutrality as this past decade has gone by. MarnetteD | Talk 20:56, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Date from Lizbeth Goodman added. --Old Moonraker (talk) 22:21, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks for your time and efforts. I think the addition helps to explain the direction that the usage is moving (too fast for some and too slow for others I am sure) towards. MarnetteD | Talk 22:27, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

It is fair enough to say that some people use the word actress to refer to a female actor but phrases like usually actress for female written on the opening line are not good unless you have some evidence for it. Never used the word actress myself, I've heard it used obviously. Even the American Oscars uses the word female actor and that's America - not exactly the most socially liberal country!--ЗAНИA ^{talk WB talk}] 23:09, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Re-reading this I can see why you feel it jars, but we're reporting what is, and not what we'd like. The statistics are given in "Terminology", lower down. Is there way of expressing this less bluntly? --Old Moonraker (talk) 06:31, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

"Acting awards" section

Is it time for a WP:SS spinoff yet? --Old Moonraker (talk) 16:19, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing as the last couple of awards were added. Since there are wikiarticles for the awards they would seem to meet notability requirements but I don't think we need an ever expanding list in the middle of this article. Hopefully others will add their thoughts but I would be in favor (or per WP:ENGVAR favour) of you handling this in the way that you think best. Thanks for bring this up and cheers. MarnetteD | Talk 18:30, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The suggestion may be superfluous: List of awards in theatre includes performances. Transfer any not already there, delete the rest, add the wikilink to "see also" section. --Old Moonraker (talk) 09:33, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Transferred to List of awards in theatre and List of film awards. --Old Moonraker (talk) 12:21, 1 November 2011 (UTC)