Role model behaviour
FROM her breakthrough performance in Zero Dark Thirty to her recent starring role in Molly’s Game, actor Jessica Chastain tends to specialise in what are generally called “strong women” — smart, forthright, no-nonsense.
While it seems like a compliment, Chastain — who would seem to be just as outspoken off-camera as many of her characters are onscreen — views it another way.
“Every time someone writes that I play ‘strong women’, what they’re implying is that most women aren’t,” she wrote on Twitter late last year. “How about I just play well-written parts?”
It’s a really good point, and also a really complicated one.
Because in recent years, consumers of culture have been made more and more aware of the importance of representation on the page, the stage and the screen, and how encouraging or even empowering it can be to identify with a character whose race, gender, orientation or whatever mirrors your own.
As a result, audiences are getting a more diverse array of heroes and role models, which benefits everyone.
At the same time, however, being a role model can be something of a straitjacket, especially for the creative individuals portraying such characters.
Returning to Chastain’s social media post, “wellwritten parts” doesn’t necessarily exclude parts that highlight positive qualities.
But any actor who takes their work seriously generally wants to explore the full spectrum of human action, reaction and feeling, and express that as vividly as they can.
And sometimes that involves playing characters who behave badly or act rashly. Who are bad, sad or even weak.
(While we’re talking about well-written parts for women, it’s heartening to note that the five nominees for Best Actress in Monday’s Academy Awards give performances that run the physical, psychological and emotional gamut, from steely resolve to tender vulnerability.)
That’s one of art’s great purposes, isn’t it? Showing us aspects of the human condition so we can possibly gain a better understanding of how they exist within other people or even ourselves.
Of course, not every character we read or watch has to meet that requirement.
Sometimes their personality or their deeds are cogs in a storytelling machine — they are a certain way, or act a certain way, so the plot can get from A to B.
And when we get used to characters being role models — and by extension, the actors playing those characters also being role models — there’s the occasional backlash as a result.
Which brings us to Jennifer Lawrence, and her new film, the espionage thriller Red Sparrow.
Lawrence is about as hot and high-profile as an actor can get these days.
Of course, no one hits the bullseye every time. And Red Sparrow, in which Lawrence plays a Russian ballet dancer pressured into becoming a spy who uses sex as a weapon, is a competent but unmemorable piece of work — the big-screen equivalent of one of those pulpy mystery novels you buy at the airport to help while away a long flight.
Still, that hasn’t stopped some critics from viewing Lawrence’s involvement in a film that doesn’t have her character constantly and conspicuously calling the shots as a bit of a betrayal.
In Red Sparrow, Lawrence’s Dominika is manipulated, patronised and occasionally brutalised by men. But it’s a shallow reading of the movie, and of Lawrence’s work, to see this wholly as victimisation.
“Dominika lies when she needs to and tells the truth when it’s a better weapon, and barely half the time can we guess which is which,” wrote US critic Amy Nicholson. “This is a film about a woman faking polite to save her own neck while remaining alert to how everyone else sees her.”
Conveying those complex states is a tough task for an actor, and it’s admirable that Lawrence accepted the challenge.
Because constantly pushing yourself to be better at your chosen profession, even if you’re not always successful when you do, is the sign of a role model.