Fat Actresses

Re: Just Wondering: Can we please give the Gabourey Sidibe body scrutiny a rest?



During the 2010 Oscars I was preoccupied with the possibility that Kathryn Bigelow would be the first woman to win Best Director. However, a close second on my radar was Gabourey Sidibe. I love her persona and unabashed self-confidence. When asked by E! how she felt in her dress she said: "Hot!" And not in a please get me a fan sort of way; no she thought she looked good. In a sea of Hollywood starlets who are trying to stay in the 0 - 2 size range, she still felt smokin'. Gabourey rules.

Now the article linked to above discusses how the scrutiny of Gabourey's size is the sole reason why she won't be a success in Hollywood according to the media. And how the media needs to tone it down. True. Howard Stern needs to stuff a sock in it, but the article is horribly short-sighted on the issue of women and weight in Hollywood.

In the early '00s I did my stint as a page at a major Hollywood studio. My outfit made me look a lot like Kenneth from 30 Rock and was 99% polyester; lots of fun to wear in the Southern California sun. One of the best parts of being the lowliest of the low on a studio lot is that you can go almost anywhere and no one will care that you are there. Hence, how I was able to survive working minimum wage in Los Angeles, by helping myself to every craft service table I was near. When I wasn't liberating Luna bars I was checking out the celebrities who were working on the lot. The one thing that startled me about actors and actresses in person is that their heads looked abnormally large in comparison to their bodies. We called them lollipops and they were everywhere. Aside from having abnormally large heads, it wasn't hard to see that the ladies of the silver screen are way too skinny. I also saw more protruding collar bones in my 8 months in Los Angeles than I've seen in the time since.

In recent years we've been trying to tell ourselves that a new type of woman is becoming more successful in mainstream media; a bigger woman, a real-looking woman. However, I don't believe that it is true. I am not saying this because I love to look at the scary skinny Hollywood actresses or models who subside on water and cigarettes, but because we are fooling ourselves into believing that there has been a massive cultural shift away from the super-skinny actress. For instance, Gabourey's story is so similar to another actress who burst onto the scene a couple of years ago - Nikki Blonsky - but then faded into oblivion.

"I'm not saying it's correct, but it's a simple fact that [Gabourey] will have to lose a lot of weight if she wants to keep getting parts," a casting director told Popeater. "The same thing happened to Nikki Blonsky from 'Hairspray.' Everyone said how great she was, and she hasn't worked since."

Ouch.

While some critics of the critics have said that Gabourey has already gotten her revenge by landing a reoccurring part on an upcoming Showtime series, I have to disagree that this indicates any sort of equity or larger cultural shift. For a comparison, let's look at the Best Actress nominees from last couple of years and see what they are up to:

2007
Marion Cotillard – co-starred in Nine with Oscar-nominated Best Supporting Actress Penelope Cruz. Has several forthcoming pictures including a new Woody Allen project.
Cate Blanchett – multiple high-profile film projects coming up including Robin Hood and the Hobbit.
Julie Christie – Hollywood legend who just starred in New York, I Love You. However, has no projects in development (according to IMDB).
Laura Linney – Has a couple of films in production. Also starred post-Oscar nomination as Abigail Adams in the acclaimed mini-series John Adams.
Ellen Page – couldn't be busier. Has several film projects in the works. Also starred in one of my favorite 2009 films - Whip It.

2008
Kate Winslet – has several projects in the works including a t.v. version of the film noir classic Mildred Pierce.
Anne Hathaway – has 7! films in development and two in post-production.
Angelina Jolie – multiple film projects on their way including Salt. A film where she replaced Tom Cruise(!) as the lead character.
Melissa Leo – has worked on several high-profile independent films since her nomination. Will also be working on Mildred Pierce with Kate Winslet.
Meryl Streep – has received the most Academy Award nominations of any person ever when she was nominated once again in 2010 for the 16th time!

While cable T.V. has been churning out some interesting shows in the past decade and half, it still doesn't have the luster that high-profile film gigs do. To prove point about how we have a long way to go to reach size equity in media let's look at the forthcoming projects of Carey Mulligan, who is newer to the Hollywood scene and was also nominated for a Best Actress Oscar in 2010 for her role in An Education. Forthcoming she is co-starring in Wall Street 2 which is directed by Oliver Stone. Also in the works is a re-make of My Fair Lady where she gets to play the role of Eliza Dolittle. Aside from those two projects she has two others in development.

If culturally we'd really reach a point of equity in Hollywood then Gabourey Sidibe and Nikki Blonsky would be co-starring in a film where their weight is not an issue and they still get to live happily ever after or, at least, go on a crazy adventure where men are not the focus of their mission. I hate to be the pessimist, but we have a long way to go before we reach that level of equity. For some intangible reason there is a belief that no one would watch this movie. However, I would like to say that I would put my $10 down to watch a film like this opening night. I look forward to finally seeing something a little different on opening night than the same ol' lollipop kid.

Kathryn Bigelow Becomes the First Woman to Win the Best Director Oscar!

And it only took 82 years.

I cried like I had won an Oscar when Barbara Streisand simply said, "It is time..." and Kathryn Bigelow was announced as the first female to ever win the Best Director Oscar. I can only hope that this is the beginning of a larger female presence behind the camera in Hollywood. May the "Celluloid Ceiling" continue to crack to allow space for a wider variety of voices behind the camera. Lots of love going out to all my female filmmaking sisters on this glorious evening!

Kathryn Bigelow speaks backstage about winning the Best Director Oscar and, yes, she finally addresses the gender question. I must say I totally agree with her answer!

Sex, Abelism, and the 80s: "Children of a Lesser God"

The 1980s were awesome in America. Or, at least, that is how I remember them. Granted, my vision of life and media was pretty narrow at the time. I was focused on how I could be more like She-Ra and Wonder Women and why the Skeksis in Jim Henson's film The Dark Crystal (1982) were so scary. Yep. I am a child of the 80s.

Recently I decided to watch Children of a Lesser God (1986). It was too adult for me when it came out in the mid-1980s and, realistically, I wouldn't have enjoyed it any way since I would have been totally grossed out by all the sex. Like. Totally. As an adult who doesn't believe in cooties any longer (most days) must admit that I found the film really interesting in terms of how it attempted to transform the image of the disabled from their usual villainous position as the cinematic other to something that is much more empathetic. Emmanuel Levy commented about Children of a Lesser God:

Not only Matlin benefited exposure-wise from the film: it did a lot of good for deaf actors and actresses in general. The hope of deaf actors and actresses at that time was that they could start getting parts in films that were not necessarily about being deaf people. The triumph of Marlee Matlin at that time, as well as others like Phyllis Frelich (who won a Tony award in the original play of Children of a Lesser God) and Howie Seagro were boosts for the National Theater for the Deaf, which had been fighting many years for such a breakthrough. Children of a Lesser God marked a breakthrough time for deaf actors.

However, that does not mean that the film was still not problematic.

Roger Ebert had an interesting comment about the way in which Children of a Lesser God was constructed to get around the fact that one of the characters, the deaf woman Sarah (played by Marlee Matlin), does not speak for most of the film:

The movie uses a strategy that works well - if you accept the basic premise, which is that everything said on the screen must be heard on the soundtrack. Marlee Matlin, who plays the deaf woman, signs all of her dialogue, and William Hurt, who plays the teacher, then repeats it aloud, as if to himself. "I like to hear the sound of my own voice," he says at one point, and indeed he does such a smooth and natural job of translation that the strategy works.

But think for a minute: Hurt can hear and can read sign language; Marlin's cannot hear or (she claims) read lips, and can only communicate by signing. In many movies about two major characters, there are scenes from two points of view. In "Children of a Lesser God," the scenes between the two of them are from Hurt's point of view, and none of them are played without sound.

I'm not suggesting silent scenes where we have to guess what the sign language means. But how about a few silent scenes in which the signs are translated by subtitles, giving us something of the same experience that deaf people have (they see the signs, and then the subtitles, so to speak, are supplied by their intelligence).

The feeling of seeing Hurt and not hearing him, of looking out at him from a silent world, would have underlined the true subject of this movie, which is communication between two people who speak differently.

By telling the whole story from Hurt's point of view, the movie makes the woman into the stubborn object, the challenge, the problem, which is the very process it wants to object to.

Regardless of how the film is remember - as a "breakthrough" for deaf actors or just another example of how women are perceived as stubborn - it is interesting to note that deaf characters in main roles have all but disappeared from popular cinema. Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) and The Family Stone (2005) featured secondary characters who were deaf, but aside from that there has not been much in the way of Hollywood films that feature deaf main characters. Even Marlee Matlin, who is deaf, has been relegated to mostly TV guest spots after her Oscar-winning turn as Sara in Children of a Lesser God. It as if the inclusion of hearing-impaired character has fallen on the deaf ears of Hollywood producers.

* Ebert, Roger. "Children of a Lesser God"

* Levy, Emanuel. "Children of a Lesser God"

Oops... I Didn't Know We Couldn't Talk About Gender, Kathryn Bigelow

With the Oscars just mere weeks away I finally just got the chance to watch The Hurt Locker (2009). Shameful, I know. But it was released with a squeak last summer and I wasn't listening. And let me say that it is so powerful I had to pause and take a break before the climax because I was too into the story and was feeling ill as a result. That, my friends, is powerful filmmaking. It literally made my gut wrench.



Despite Katheryn Bigelow being just the fourth woman in the history of the Oscars to just be nominated for Best Director she is reluctant, at best, to talk about her status as a woman in a man's world.

"I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about what my aptitude is, and I really think it's to explore and push the medium," Bigelow says. "It's not about breaking gender roles or genre traditions."

It is hard for me to sit back as a fellow female director (albeit on a much, much smaller scale) and listen to her not talk about the possibility that she could be the first woman to ever take home the Best Director Oscar. I want her to join up with the feminist army and laud her accomplishments. However, then I read about instances like this:

At the Q & A after a screening of The Hurt Locker at AFI Dallas, moderator Gary Cogill commented that his favorite book about the Iraq war was written by a woman (The Long Road Home by Martha Raddatz) and then asked Bigelow a question that essentially amounted to, “Isn’t weird that The Hurt Locker is so good, since you’re a girl?” Bigelow deflected the question, but the issue came up again when an audience member who introduced herself as a member of Women in Film gushed that it’s “almost miraculous” that Bigelow has “embedded” herself in the making of “big boys movies.” This is when I decided it was time to leave; as I made my way out, I heard Bigelow respond that he choice of material is chiefly “instinctual” and not motivated by a desire to step where she supposedly doesn’t belong by virtue of chromosomal difference.

Ah. Audience Q and A sessions. I swear - the bigger the director, the stupider the questions get. With queries like these no wonder Bigelow is deflecting the comments and queries about her gender.

However, issues of her gender abound in the way the the film and her directorial skills are reported upon in other ways:

Just before dawn one July morning, Kathryn Bigelow was setting up a shot for The Hurt Locker in the Jordanian desert. The movie follows an Explosive Ordnance Disposal bomb technician, one of the hundred or so soldiers in Iraq who dismantle roadside IEDs planted by insurgents. For the scene, the tech and two of his co--workers would detonate a bomb in the middle of the desert, and Bigelow wanted to shoot them from atop a high sand dune. This meant that the crew had to tote all their gear to the top of a hill in the brutal summer heat. "There were a lot of macho guys on the set, British SAS, not to mention all these young, studly actors, and all those guys were falling by the wayside," says Mark Boal, who wrote and co-produced The Hurt Locker. "I'm not walking this hill, no way in hell. I drive past one of the crew who's literally puking on the side of the road. People are dying on this hill. I drive up, and Kathryn is already at the top. She's beaten everyone up there."

In the great tradition of tough-guy filmmakers like Howard Hawks, Don Siegel and Samuel Fuller, Kathryn Bigelow is one of the finest living crafters of male-bonding genre films. It may seem an odd fit, as the beautiful, elegant, highly intelligent 57 year-old woman was educated at the San Francisco Art Institute with a background in painting; she's hardly the eye-patch-wearing, cigar-chomping type like her Hollywood predecessors.

Critics can't seem to get over the idea that a female director could devote herself to making adrenaline-charged films that owe more to Ridley Scott than Nora Ephron. They rhapsodize, in high academic prose, about the role of guns as phallic symbols in Blue Steel, a thriller about a female cop; or the homoeroticism of Point Break; or the androgynous female figures in Near Dark, a hybrid Western/vampire movie. At the same time, it's hard to believe that Bigelow would dedicate her oeuvre to genres that are typically made by, for and about men, and not have a few thoughts on the subject.

True. And while I want to hear Kathryn Bigelow acknowledge that she is a woman in no woman's land I completely understand her reluctance. After all, her directing skills are the result of years of working hard on her craft and have nothing to do with what is between her legs.

It is also interesting to note that the same rhetoric is not applied to male directors who have made careers making "women's films". In fact, Douglas Sirk, the man credited with initiating the "women's picture" genre was never seen as subversive or treading where he didn't belong when he made such classics as Imitation of Life (1959) and All that Heaven Allows (1955). In Bright Lights Film Journal Sirk's place as a male director of women's pictures is only questioned due to the questionable nature of the genre:

While the "action" movie had long had its defenders as poor man's Hemingway, most of Sirk's best-known films were "woman's pictures," a genre regarded by male critics as the domain of that mythical incarnation of bad taste, the "shop girl," and even (especially?) disowned by feminists.

As a feminist, I disagree. I thoroughly enjoy Douglas Sirk's body of work. But I digress...



George Cukor, another man who directed "women's pictures" was called:

...legendary 'women's director'; noted for The Women (1939) - a melodramatic comedy based on the hit play by Clare Boothe Luce with an all-female cast (Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Mary Boland, Paulette Goddard, and Joan Fontaine, among others) - a group of catty, back-biting, competitive, and richly-spoiled high-society women, although its tagline tauts: "It's All About Men!"; while seeking divorces in Reno, women learn of other affairs and infidelities and are forced to make tough decisions.

Despite my decrees that Kathryn Bigelow should flaunt her femaleness all over Hollywood I hope that when all is said and done and she becomes the first woman to ever win the Best Director Oscar (Pretty please!) that she is remember much like the quote above of George Cukor - legendary. After all, she is a director with an impressive resume that spans genre and decades. For heaven's sake - she directed Keanu Reeves to the point of believability in Point Break and I am pretty sure that most would agree that isn't easy! As a proud feminist filmmaker I channel Aretha Franklin when I say that all I want is R-E-S-P-E-C-T for my work and I get the feeling that is what Kathryn Bigelow wants too. At the end of the day we just want to be remembered as "legendary" for mastering our craft, not just because we were women. Oooooohhhhh. A little respect.

Quotes from:
* Kathryn Bigelow: Road Warrior
* "THE HURT LOCKER & Kathryn Bigelow's Girl Problem"
* Interview: Kathryn Bigelow on THE HURT LOCKER
* Imitations of Lifelessness: Sirk's Ironic Tearjearker
* Melodrama Films

CONGRATULATIONS TO KATHRYN BIGELOW!

This morning Kathryn Bigelow became the fourth woman in the history of the Academy Awards to be nominated for the Best Director Oscar for her work on the film The Hurt Locker.

Over the weekend she was the first woman to win the Director's Guild of America (DGA) award for directing. This award is seen as highly indicative of who will will the Oscar. I can only hope.

I wish her luck on her journey. I will be rooting for her from my Oscar party in Seattle with a whole bunch of other female filmmakers!

Regarding: For Your Consideration: Is Kathryn Bigelow a Female Director? - indieWIRE

For Your Consideration: Is Kathryn Bigelow a Female Director? - indieWIRE

Wow. Not even 24 hours later there are as Bill and Ted would say, "Strange things afloat at the Circle K" known as the internet regarding Kathryn Bigelow's chance at being the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director.

However, the article is not as controversial as the title suggests, but rather out there to controversially draw viewers into a discussion of the importance of gender in regards to the Best Director Oscar. Here is a snipit:

“The Hurt Locker” is an action film, a genre typically the preserve of male directors. Many critics have expressed delight that Bigelow is receiving such acclaim for a film that is so atypical to the type of films women are usually allowed to direct. Yet there are two sides to the story - film critic Caryn James recently suggested that “the many nominations for Bigelow play into the old idea that women get ahead by behaving like men, in this case making a movie voters might expect a man to have made”.

Undoubtedly, this person is not very familiar with Bigelow's history as a director. She has actually made a career out of directing non-chick flicks. She is one of the few female directors who regularly directs action films that star male protagonists. Her directorial resume includes: Point Break, K-19: The Widowmaker, and Strange Days. And why should she have to conform to the gendered norm that in film women direct comedies and "women's pictures" in order to be acceptable?

I take issue with the idea that her gender isn't important in regards to her possibly winning an Oscar for her work on The Hurt Locker because it is not a chick flick. While it is a film about men and therefore follows the tradition that to get ahead women "behave like men", there have been three women in the history of the Oscars to ever have been nominated for Best Director. Three. That. Is. It. If Katheryn Bigelow were to be the fourth and if she were to win that would be a huge deal for women in film industry.

But let us not loose site of the fact that the Oscars are a very prestigious award in the film industry, but they are also very biased in what they believe is a film worthy of acclaim. Generally, the major awards (Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress) go the works from the US that are in English. We can also get more specific and say that these films are usually feature-length narrative (non-documentary) dramas that are directed by a white American male and the main protagonist is usually a white male. Narrative shorts, comedies, documentaries long and short do not generally garner nominations for the "big" awards. Experimental films? Ha. They don't even have a category on the big night.

The truth is that the academy occasionally acknowledges great films, performers, and film craftsmen and women. However, there is this whole world of film and filmmakers that they also annually ignore, because they are a self-serving and conservative bunch. And, quite truthfully, there is a lot of great work out there past and present that has been snubbed by the academy just because it doesn't fall into their unwritten criteria of what is "Oscar" worthy. There have also been instances of blatant discrimination for films and performance that were nominated that were a little "out of the box". For instance, in 2006 Brokeback Mountain lost the Best Picture Oscar competition to Crash, because some academy members wouldn't even watch the film due to the fact that the story centered around two "straight" cowboys falling in love with one another. Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine, Academy members, even boasted publicly that they were proud of the fact that they did not watch Brokeback Mountain, because the content of the film "disgusted" them.

The topic of Oscar's tendency to discriminate against large sects of the filmmaking world based on content, form, and genre choice has, ironically, also been brought up at Oscar awards themselves. So I leave you with a link to the brilliant performance from Jack Black, Will Ferrell, and John C. Reilly from the 79th Academy Awards as I look forward to the very possibility of seeing just one more woman nominated for Best Director. February 2nd cannot come any faster!

P.S. In case you didn't know, the first three women to be nominated for the Best Director Oscar were Lina Wertmeuller for Seven Beauties in 1976, Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993, and Sofia Coppola in 2003 for Lost in Translation.