GALECA revised its tagline to The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics in 2017.
The Dorian Awards are film and television accolades given by GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, founded in 2009 as the Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association. GALECA is an association of professional journalists and critics who regularly report on movies and/or TV for print, online, and broadcast outlets in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. As of March 2023, GALECA listed approximately 420 members, including those on its advisory board.[1] The awards recognize the best in film and television, with categories ranging from general to LGBTQ-centric.
The Dorian Award is named in honor of the writer Oscar Wilde, in reference to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, the graphic for the awards features a picture of Wilde.[2]
In 2019, the award was redesigned to mimic a cue card. Since the group's first televised awards special, Dorians TV Toast 2020, presented on the LGBTQ streaming platform Revry on September 12, 2020, winners have received a small illustrated portrait of themselves or a memorable scene from their project.[3] During GALECA's Dorians Film Toast 2021 special (airing April 18, 2021), actress Carey Mulligan, in accepting the group's Best Film Performance—Actress award for her work in Promising Young Woman, said her Dorian "might be the coolest prize I've ever seen".[4]
Format
The Dorian Awards honor film and television at separate times of the year. Dorian film nominees and winners for the previous calendar year are announced in January and February, while TV nominees and winners for the previous television season are typically announced in June and August. In addition to more traditional categories such as Film of the Year and Best TV Comedy, the Dorians include more novel categories, including Unsung TV Show, Visually Striking Film, Wilde Wit, and Campy Flick, an honor that has generated amusement from The New York Times.[5]
Rather than present an official awards ceremony, GALECA typically hosts its annual "Dorian Awards Winners Toast", an informal day party in Los Angeles for members, winners, nominees, and associates.[6][7] For the 2020 Toast, Antonio Banderas, the group's choice for 2019 Film Performance of the Year—Actor, and actress-director Olivia Wilde, named "Wilde" Artist of the Year, were among the honored guests.[8]
In 2018, the group separated its film and TV awards' timelines, with Dorian movie award winners revealed each February and TV honors in August.[9]
To commemorate the 2015 film and TV awards season, GALECA revealed its first "Ten Best" list, The Ten Best Movies About the Academy Awards. Included were such films as The Oscar, California Suite, For Your Consideration, and The Bodyguard.[16] More recently, the group's lists include the Ten Best LGBTQ Movies Every Straight Person Should See, Ten Best Actresses of All Time, and Ten Best Films You Didn't Know Were LGBTQ.[17][18][19]
Dorians Toast theme songs
Four original songs have been written for GALECA's Dorian Awards Toast streaming specials: "Look Into the Light", a pop ballad about the power of movies, and "A Toast!", both sung by Morgan Mallory and written and composed by Mallory and Charles Karel Bouley; an expanded, faster-paced variation on the latter performed by Dave Rooney of The Black Donnellys with additional lyrics by Bouley and Rooney; and "Flickering Life", a pop rock tune about the power of TV also composed and sung by Mallory with lyrics by him and Bouley.[20][21]
History
GALECA and its annual Dorian Awards were created in 2008 in Hollywood, California, by John Griffiths, former long-time television critic for Us Weekly magazine and contributor to Emmy Magazine of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. As of 2023, Griffiths remained as the nonprofit's Executive Director.[22][23]
The first Dorian Awards, for the 2009's best in both film and TV, were announced in January 2010 (nominees were revealed the previous month).[24] GALECA's Dorian Award film and TV nominees and winners for 2010 productions were announced in January 2011.[25] Following suit, 2011's Dorian Award nominees and ultimate honorees were revealed in January 2012.[26][27] The Dorian nominees and winners for 2012 productions were announced in January 2013, and so on.[28][29][30]
In 2019, GALECA joined forces with the African-American Film Critics Association, Latino Entertainment Journalists Association (LEJA), the entertainment and features arm of the Asian American Journalists Association, the Online Association of Female Film Critics, and Time's Up Entertainment's CRITICAL initiative to form Critics Groups for Equality in Media (CGEM), to promote diversity in journalism.[31][32] Time's Up, enmeshed in controversy, eventually dropped out of the alliance ahead of ceasing its programs in January 2023.[33]
Due to COVID 19 pandemic's effects on the film business, for its 2021 film awards, GALECA adjusted its window of eligibility to movies released in 2020 and the first two months of 2021. The 2022 Dorian film awards considered movies released in the remaining months of 2021. In that two-year period, award contenders vied for "Best Film" rather than "Film of the Year," which the group restored in 2023.
George Takei, LGBTQ rights activist and co-star of Star Trek, thanked GALECA in a YouTube video for naming him their 2014 choice for Timeless Star.[45]
In 2013, Sir Ian McKellen expressed gratitude to members for honoring him with their 2012 Timeless Star career achievement honor, writing in a note to the group, "I shall try to live up to Galeca's approval."[46]James Franco, recipient of GALECA's special Wilde Artist of the Year award in 2013, thanked the group by posting a mini art piece noting his honor on Instagram.[47]
^"The Dorian Awards". GALECA : Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association : Home of The Dorian Awards. Archived from the original on January 18, 2017. Retrieved February 7, 2017.
