CELEBRITIES AT ISSUE
RHETORIC OF ENTERTAINERS AT THE GOLDEN GLOBES WAS STRONG AND LOUD
When Barbra Streisand took the stage at the 2018 Golden Globes on Sunday night to present the award for Best Drama, she was announced with an unmistakable tone of pride as the only woman to win a Globe for directing — ever. And that was way back in 1984.
At awards shows past, that is a comment that would typically go unaddressed. But because Sunday night seemed to follow an unrelenting theme, one of female empowerment, Streisand spoke up.
“We need more women directors and more women to be nominated for best director. There are so many films out there that are so good directed by women,” she said. “I’m very proud to stand in a room with people who speak out against gender inequality, sexual harassment, and the pettiness that has poisoned our politics. And I’m proud that our industry, faced with uncomfortable truths, has vowed to change the way we do business. Truth is powerful, and in a really good film we recognized the truth about ourselves, about others — and it’s so powerful that it can even change people’s minds, touch people’s hearts, and ultimately even change society, itself.”
Typically, when an entertainer dares to speak of social change, critics are quick to point out that people who pretend to be other people onscreen lack the authority to say much of anything on important issues. Weighing in on politics isn’t a part of their job description and, most of the time, the social issues celebrities champion have nothing to do with their own problems. However, the ongoing fallout of the Harvey Weinstein allegations has centralized an alarmingly prevalent issue in Hollywood. Certainly, men abuse power across all sectors, but the reckoning for this type of ill behaviour has begun in the entertainment industry.
Never has this been more obvious than at the first major awards show of the year. Just days before the Globes kicked off, hundreds of women in the industry signed up for the Time’s Up initiative, which includes a legal defence fund for victims of sexual misconduct in every field, from food service to farming, and plans to advocate for gender parity and amplify LGBT voices. To represent the initiative and the # MeToo movement, actors wore black and sported special pins at the ceremony.
Making a far bigger impact on the carpet, however, were the eight actresses who attended with social justice activists on their arms in an attempt to steer the focus of the awards broadcast toward victims and surviv- ors. This included Amy Poehler and Saru Jayaraman, an activist for restaurant workers, Emma Watson and Marai Larasi, the executive director of black feminist organization Imkaan, and Meryl Streep with Ai-jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. While this move was criticized by some on social media for turning women of colour into “accessories,” the actresses actively shifted the usual red carpet conversation on style to one of a more political nature.
This trend was seen throughout the pre-show. In an interview with E!, Debra Messing called out the pay disparity that led E! News host Catt Sadler to leave the network last month, saying to a stammering Giuliana Rancic, “I was so shocked to hear that E! doesn’t believe in paying their female co-hosts the same as their male co-hosts.”
This type of outspokenness went straight to the stage, where, while presenting Best Director, Natalie Portman opened, “And here are the all-male nominees.” As the stars of a series about women banding together to create change, HBO’s Big Little Lies cast made a major impact. While accepting the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series, Laura Dern said, “I urge all of us to not only support survivors and bystanders who are brave enough to tell their truth, but to promote restorative justice. ... May we teach our children that speaking out without the fear of retribution is our culture’s new north star.” Reese Witherspoon thanked “everyone who broke their silence this year” and Nicole Kidman declared, “I hope that we can elicit change through the stories we tell and the way we tell them.”
Another series that couldn’t have been more topical was The Handmaid’s Tale, based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel. In her speech for Best Actress in a TV Drama, Elisabeth Moss quoted the author: “We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edge of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the story.” Moss added, “Margaret Atwood, this is for you and the women who came before you and after you who were brave enough to speak out against intolerance and injustice and to fight for equality and freedom in this world. We no longer live in the blank white spaces at the edge of print. We no longer live in the gaps between the stories. We are the story in print. We are writing the story ourselves.”
In each of these cases, these women advocated f or those in leadership roles, calling for more f emale directors and writers, for more women’s stories. They not only spoke up for themselves but for survivors of abuse and inequality, for the marginalized many who have yet to see themselves represented on screen.
And, in the case of Oprah Winfrey, those who came before her. While accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award, she said, “I want tonight to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue. They’re the women whose names we’ll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they’re in academia, engineering, medicine, and science. They’re part of the world of tech and politics and business.”
Winfrey then told the story of Recy Taylor, an Alabama woman who was kidnapped and raped by six white men in 1944. Despite the men’s eventual confessions, no charges were ever brought against them. Winfrey noted, “For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up.”
For that to be true, however, more has to be done than simply wearing a pin or rendering a crowd- pleasing speech. With Time’s Up, which has already raised more than $ 15 million, these celebrities are putting their money where their mouth is, not just for themselves, but for those who do not have the advantage of their platform.
By actually doing something and committing to it in such big numbers, the speeches we heard Sunday night offered a lot more substance and promise for the future than any we’ve heard before. For once, it has become the place of actors and actresses to stand up and say something about a social issue, and in response, their rhetoric has been strong and loud; their actions consistent.
WE NO LONGER LIVE IN THE BLANK WHITE SPACES AT THE EDGE OF PRINT.