Hollywood hypocrisy is as big a problem as sexism
The sombre dress code was Hollywood show-ponying, but don’t sneer, says Celia Walden – these Golden Globes had substance
Wow!” exhaled Best Actress winner Nicole Kidman on Sunday night – gazing down at the sea of black in the Beverly Hilton ballroom with something akin to maternal pride. “The power of women…”
By the end of 2017, it was already clear that the 75th annual Golden Globes would be showcasing that new female power in all its incarnations. As the first major award ceremony since the industry was rocked by a succession of sexual harassment scandals, the Globes had a tricky tone to strike. Patting yourself on the back while admitting to the mistakes made by entering into a pact of silence that enabled predators such as Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey to thrive for decades is no easy feat – not to say the ultimate act of contortion – which is why the winners and attendees chose to ignore that last part, and selflessly devote themselves to the back-patting.
Having been a Hollywood-watcher for years, I have observed how mistakes make A-listers uncomfortable. Admitting to them still more so. Humility is a tricky act to pull off, even for an Oscar-winning actor, and there isn’t much in Hollywood that can’t be solved with a little timely gimmickry. Ribbons, pins, hashtags: these are all easy things to wear and embrace. They come, they go, and crucially in a year or a month’s time nobody in Tinseltown is ever going to ask: “Hey, whatever came of that blue ribbon/ equal pay/oscars So White/planned Parenthood boycott/initiative?” But since you ask, Sacheen Littlefeather – the Native American actress sent out by Marlon Brando to refuse his Oscar 45 years ago in protest at the industry’s treatment of Native Americans – was subsequently blacklisted by Hollywood and long ago abandoned all ambitions to act. This year, the gimmick was the all-black dress code: “Enough of the show-ponying”. “Don’t stand out, stand up”, that kind of thing. Time’s Up – the anti-sexual harassment initiative launched earlier this month by stars such as Natalie Portman, Emma Stone and Reese Witherspoon to help support women in less privileged professions – took up the theme, and when Dwayne Johnson, Tom Hiddleston and Armie Hammer announced that they too would be wearing black in solidarity with women, no one had the guts to tell them that, what with it being black tie and all, men had in fact been wearing it to the event since 1944.
That the women of Hollywood picked the colour of bereavement to herald a new era, and a colour traditionally associated with asceticism, to attend one of the most self-indulgent gatherings on the industry’s calendar is a detail best overlooked. Relieved the statement colour wasn’t pea green or custard yellow, A-listers chose activists rather than Judith Leiber box clutches as their statement accessories (Meryl Streep walked the carpet with National Domestic Workers Alliance director Ai-jen Poo, Michelle Williams brought along Tarana Burke, founder of the #Metoo movement, and Susan Sarandon paired her black tux with Green Party activist Rosa Clemente), redirecting their red carpet interviews to their “dates”, much to the consternation of many TV hosts.
It’s hard not to weep with laughter at the thought of A-list assistants furiously “calling in” high-profile do-gooders from across the globe at the last minute: “What do you mean Clemente has already gone out to someone? Well, who else do you have that might go with a black Gucci gown?” But out there on the red carpet, the mood was sober and sanctimonious as the stars conjured up a new united sisterhood devoid of competition and anticipated a night that would be “bigger than a best-dressed list”.
Much as I hate to drop the sneering tone Hollywood makes it all too easy to adopt, that is precisely how the 75th Golden Globes will be remembered. Not because of the black dress protest, which created only visual solidarity and a symbolic potential that might amount to nothing more, but because of the words spoken both on the red carpet and up on stage.
Streep admitted to “feeling emboldened in this particular moment to stand together” against abuse, while, accepting her award for her performance in The Handmaid’s Tale, Elisabeth Moss celebrated “no longer living in the blank white spaces at the edge of print… We are the story in print. We are writing the story ourselves.”
But it was really Oprah Winfrey who drew the room to its feet when, accepting the Cecil B Demille Award for Lifetime Achievement, the star reminded the audience in her rich and reassuring baritone that although “this year we became the story”, there were victims of sexual harassment and abuse “whose names we’ll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work
As she stepped off stage, ‘Oprah for president’ was trending on Twitter
in restaurants and they’re in academia, engineering, medicine, and science. They’re part of the world of tech and politics and business. They’re our athletes in the Olympics and they’re our soldiers in the military.”
She reminded the audience what we were all thinking at home: that Hollywood is a bubble, and that in order to be taken seriously it needs to acknowledge the world beyond. By the time Winfrey stepped off stage, “Oprah for President 2020” was already trending on Twitter. And they could do worse – much worse. They already have.
But just as the garb remains a gimmick without words, the words are empty without action. The pay gap is still glaring in the film industry, with the highest-paid actress, Emma Stone, out-earned by no less than 14 male actors, and women still comprise just 28.7 per cent of all speaking roles in movies and only a quarter of roles for characters over the age of 40.
Despite the cynically motivated and virtue-signalling women who have enjoyed their moment in the sun thanks to #Metoo, there is no doubt that something has shifted, and Time’s Up will be an overall cause for good. Hollywood in particular will have to change because, as Seinfeld writer Peter Mehlman pointed out, “the animals have no choice but to be civilised now”. But what’s important – as Tarana Burke, the Me Too founder, said last summer of the non-profit organisation she set up to help victims of sexual harassment and assault – is not to build change around “a viral campaign or a hashtag that is here today and forgotten tomorrow”.
Better still – said Winfrey in what sounded an awful lot like the first speech of her presidential campaign – to look forward “to the time when nobody ever has to say ‘me too’ again”.
As the garb remains a gimmick without words, the words are empty without action