The Dorian Awards are film, television and Broadway / Off-Broadway 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, TV and/or New York City stage productions for print, online, and broadcast outlets mainly in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. As of March 2024, GALECA listed approximately 500 members, including those on its advisory board.[1] The awards recognize the best in film, television and New York City theater, with categories ranging from general to LGBTQ-centric.
The Dorian Award is named in honor of Oscar Wilde, in reference to the main character from his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the Society's logo includes an illustration of Wilde. Winners were given a framed certificate with the logo until 2019, when the award was redesigned to mimic a cue card.[2]
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 printed canvas with an 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]
The Dorian Awards honor film, television and Broadway / Off-Broadway productions 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. The Dorian Theater Awards were added in 2023, with a separate wing of the society consisting of 31 members announcing its inaugural winners June 1 of that year.[5]
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.[6]
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.[7][8] 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.[9]
In September 2020, GALECA presented its first televised awards, Dorians TV Toast 2020, a pre-recorded two-hour special with appearances by performers and producers such as Hugh Jackman, Janelle Monáe, Billy Porter, Margaret Cho, Josh Thomas, Regina King, Dan Levy, Laverne Cox, John Oliver, Chad Michaels, Thomas Roberts, Fiona Shaw, Annie Murphy, Alex Newell, and Damon Lindelof. The program, shown on LGBTQ+ streaming platform Revry, was hosted by broadcasting veteran and LGBTQ rights activist Charles Karel Bouley, and included segments where he and other GALECA members discussed the merits of the contenders in various categories.[10]
Bouley, known simply as Karel, also hosted the group's Dorians Film Toast 2021, this time a three-hour special on Revry featuring Carey Mulligan, Daniel Kaluuya, Chloé Zhao, Lee Daniels George C. Wolfe, Radha Blank, Lee Isaac Chung, Cynthia Nixon, Gabourey Sidibe, Rachel McAdams, Isabel Sandoval, Colman Domingo, Rafael L. Silva, Harry Hamlin, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Deven Green, Leslie Jordan, Emerald Fennell, California governor Gavin Newsom, Charo, Cox and Michaels, and other stars. "Wilde Artist" recipient Dolly Parton did not appear in the show to accept that special award ("to a truly ground-breaking force in film, theater, and/or television"), but said in a statement: "I'm not sure I'm as edgy as past winners (in the Wilde Artist category) like Todd Haynes, Kate McKinnon, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Jordan Peele — but I am honored and humbled. I appreciate all of you entertainment journalists who are so passionate and are working so hard. Keep up the good work!"[11]
A third awards special, Dorians TV Toast 2021, streamed on Here TV and its YouTube channel Planet Out, and later on-demand on Tubi. Bowen Yang, Jean Smart, Ziwe, Jennifer Beals, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Stephen Fry, Nick Kroll, Olivia Newton-John, Tituss Burgess, Fran Drescher, Michael Cimino, Josie Totah, Big Freedia, Russell T Davies, Gottmik, Callum Scott Howells, Steven Canals, Hannah Einbinder, Jim J. Bullock, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Paapa Essiedu, Paul W. Downs, Jesse James Keitel, and Eurovision Song Contest host Edsilia Rombley were among the participants. In a unique moment, actor-comedian John Lehr impersonated gay cable news polling expert Steve Kornacki in presenting three categories.[12]
Honorary GALECA members and advisors include or have included esteemed former film critics David Ansen and Kevin Thomas, groundbreaking lesbian journalist Judy Wieder (former editor-in-chief of The Advocate), broadcasting veteran Jane Velez-Mitchell, columnist Michael Musto, former Jezebel editor-in-chief and Teen Vogue online executive editor Koa Beck,[13] Princeton University Dean of the College and feminist writer Jill Dolan, noted film critic and talk show host Bobby Rivers, and professor of literature Joseph Bristow, one of the world's leading authorities on Oscar Wilde.[14][15]
GALECA members who've authored new books on entertainment are occasionally interviewed by other members on the group's YouTube channel. Some of the authors who've participated are Tre'vell Anderson (We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film), Kristen Lopez (But Have You Read the Book? 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films), Michael Schulman (Oscar Wars), Matt Baume (Hi Honey, I'm Homo) and Kyle Turner (The Queer Film Guide: 100 great movies that tell LGBTQIA+ stories).
The channel also features members' interviews with Hollywood and New York stage creatives doing work the organization deems somehow special. Among the subjects: Kristen Wiig, Ricky Martin, Dominic Burgess and the creators of the Apple TV+ comedy Palm Royale; the stars and creators of Netflix's Dead Boy Detectives; and Longtime Companion cast members Bruce Davison, Dermot Mulroney and Stephen Caffrey alongside screenwriter Craig Lucas.
In addition, members' individual talks with such group "heroes" as Ziwe Fumudoh, Trace Lysette and Wilson Cruz are also presented.[16]
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.[17] 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.[18][19][20]
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.[21][22]
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.[23][24] Current and past elected Board members include former Pride Media CEO Diane Anderson-Minshall, Pulitzer Prize winner Walt Hickey, Variety editor Jazz Tangcay, and The New York Times columnist Trish Bendix.[25][26][27][28]
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).[29] GALECA's Dorian Award film and TV nominees and winners for 2010 productions were announced in January 2011.[30] Following suit, 2011's Dorian Award nominees and ultimate honorees were revealed in January 2012.[31][32] The Dorian nominees and winners for 2012 productions were announced in January 2013, and so on.[33][34][35]
In 2018, the group separated its film and TV awards' timelines, with Dorian movie award winners revealed each February and TV honors in August.[36]
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.[37][38] Time's Up, enmeshed in controversy, eventually dropped out of the alliance ahead of ceasing its programs in January 2023.[39]
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.
Also in 2023, GALECA introduced its Crimson Honors, a film and TV criticism contest for women and nonbinary of color attending a public college or university. The critics' reviews aggregate Rotten Tomatoes provided scholarship funds to three winners.[40]
In 2023, GALECA launched the Dorian Theater Awards, voted upon by members in the group who regularly critique, report on or assign coverage of Broadway and Off-Broadway stage productions. The contingent named honorees and two finalists per category that first year, and moved to first announcing nominees and then winners in 2024.[41]
The below lists of Dorian winners over the years do not note nominees or finalists.
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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.[55]
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."[56] 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.[57]
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