Near ludicrous beauty: Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman. IMDB
Hollywood is late to Feminism. Its myths are filled with broken women, women made insane and women denied their own names. Marilyn Monroe was Norma Jean Baker but, as Marilyn, studio executives would expose her breasts in their offices. Judy Garland was Frances Gumm but as Judy she was eased into the drug addiction that would kill her; and, though the greatest actor in film musicals, she never felt equal to Lana Turner (“the sweater girl”). She knew the screen must glow with beauty. Hollywood took beautiful women, broke them and expelled them by 40, with exceptions so rare and pointed they seemed paranormal.
Female actors — “actress” has become a slur, a nicety so meaningless it amounts to denial — are trying to change cinema, or at least their own relationship with it, which is not the same thing. The actor Keira Knightley says she will no longer appear in sex scenes directed by men because she can no longer tolerate “the male gaze”. The actor Carey Mulligan has complained about a Variety review of her new film Promising Young Woman. “Cassie [Mulligan] wears her pickup-bait gear like bad drag,” is the wrongful passage, “even her long blonde hair seems a put-on.” That is kindly, compared to Pauline Kael’s late reviews in the New Yorker but Mulligan was angered.
I don’t know what she heard in that line – I heard a rebuke of a costume – but she wished the critic was, rather, “looking at the art” and “looking at the performance. It didn’t wound my ego,” she said, “but it made me concerned that in such a big publication an actress’s appearance could be criticised and it could be accepted as completely reasonable criticism”. She told the New York Times that the review, “was basically saying that I wasn’t hot enough to pull off this kind of ruse”.
Variety apologised for its “insensitive language and insinuation” — for cruelty to drag? — and this is troubling. Cinema is a visual medium. What critic will not use its eyes? Was it a bad wig? I don’t know yet, but no one would describe Mulligan as anything but beautiful except perhaps, I suspect, Mulligan herself.
If this felt like something else – self-hatred, opportunism, a too small gaze? – the complaint to Variety is part of the legacy of Harvey Weinstein’s exposure. Hollywood was shown to be, quite often, a factory of abuse. Female actors complied and survived; or they refused and were exiled from the screen. Weinstein was exposed by the courage of a small number of women: chiefly Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd.
Now others – Mulligan, Knightley – refuse to be broken by institutional sexism, and that is excellent, but they have yet to admit that to even be made worthy of being broken by Hollywood they must first have beauty. It is not enough to say that one refuses to be objectified nowadays. That would only make sense if merit was all that mattered, and that is absurd. Hollywood imposes very narrow parameters on its leading female actors: they must be beautiful. If I have to tell Mulligan and Knightley they cannot really act — or rather they can act, but they are drawn from a tiny pool and many outside it can act much better — I will. Too much sexism depends on the politeness of women. We must be truthful.
The truth is: verisimilitude has its limits among even the righteous. In 2015, for instance, Mulligan starred as a laundress in Suffragette. The film had Feminist credentials: a doughty Feminist subject-matter; a female writer in Abi Morgan; a female director in Sarah Gavron; a female producer in Alison Owen. It also had, in Mulligan, a laundress of near ludicrous beauty. No laundress at any time looked like that; if she did, she would not be a laundress. I thought: why Mulligan, who was more suited to Daisy in The Great Gatsby? Have female film makers internalised sexism to such a degree that their laundress must be an Aphrodite with artful smudges? Did they fear that, if they cast a woman with an ordinary face — if we could see ourselves in the generic suffragette, which is surely the hope of the experience? — we would not believe it?
I lament the sexism of Hollywood. It harms women within, and it tells women without they cannot matter because they do not have a perfect face. It also creates a monoculture in which the female, a tedious archetype, progresses from maiden to mother to crone like a menstruating clock. But it cannot call sexism even partially resolved when Carey Mulligan amends a bad review in Variety for describing her appearance in a costume. It is an awkward truth, but Mulligan and Knightley have profited from sexism because they are beautiful. They have suffered for it too, but not everyone has that potential.
You may think I place the emphasis on the female to change the culture; that I punish her for her gifts and the wrongs of men. I don’t; and I don’t suggest they go into exile carrying their beauty like Dick Whittington’s bag on a stick towards a place where they can be pure again. Nor do I suggest they maim themselves or get spuriously fat.
But storytellers should be capable of honesty at least, or what are they for? It is possible, we know after Weinstein, after #MeToo and #TimesUp, to tell the truth and these women have told a very partial and intimate truth. Can they tell a more universal truth – that the gifted and unlovely are, for now, unwelcome in Hollywood and cinema is, for now, neither a kind nor useful mirror? Or will they practise only the most fashionable and smallest kind of Feminism, the one which comes with such ease and no cost — the Feminism of oneself?
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SubscribeWhether you’re a man or woman, you don’t go into the business of acting if you don’t like to be looked at. And you don’t go into acting in Hollywood is you aren’t also hooked on the glamor, excitement, and exclusivity of it all. So call me harsh, but I have very few f***s to give for women in Hollywood; they’ve come a little bit too late to the party. Everyone knows about all the abuse that goes on, and has always gone on there, right from the beginning. It’s why they all excused Polanski. As if Meryl Streep, who called Harvey Weinstein “God” at an awards ceremony a few years ago, just woke up to its ugly reality yesterday…they go along with it, put up with it, enable it, ignore it, excuse it, and, in some cases, perpetrate the abuse themselves (and plenty of young men and boys in Hollywood get abused too, of course, mostly by other men but sometimes by women). And feminism is never going to find its happy place in Hollywood, because it’s a philosophy that demands the erasure of men, or at least their subjugation. Can’t happen in an industry that depends for its survival on men’s money, skills, and talents. So tolerating the bad behaviour of those with necessary money, skills, or talent is never going to go away. People stay in this moral cesspool because the fame and the attention is their drug. Even Judy Garland, whose story was excruciatingly sad (I just watched the Renee Zellweger film about her final year of life) could have walked away from it all, as an adult. She chose not to. It’s called agency; women in Hollywood have this, as much as men do.
Well said.
Wow! Ms Prendergast, you nailed it!
Especially when hypocritical #MeToo leaders are the perpetrators of it. I know this was rationalized away but I will never see it as anything but grooming:
https://medium.com/iron-ladies/from-prey-to-predator-1b618cdb24c5
Feminism demands the erasure or subjugation of men? On what planet?
Feminism as an ideology – as opposed for the advocacy of women’s rights and equality before the law, which goes back at least as far as John Stuart Mill and Mary Wollstonecraft – is closely aligned with Marxism. There’s no getting away from that, no matter how much you try to water it down to “liberal equality feminism” as I tried repeatedly to do in the years when I moved in feminist circles (and even worked for feminist organizations). Every feminist organization I was ever involved with contained a strong element of this radical contingent that had power beyond their numbers, the embittered, fanatical man-haters determined to indoctrinate liberal equality “feminists” like I was into their twisted, separatist ideology. It’s why I gave up on the feminist label altogether; it’s irredeemable. It’s a political philosophy, like Marxism, with something fundamentally anti-human, anti-nature and anti-life at its core, along with its authoritarianism and censoriousness.
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe many of the suffragettes at least in the UK were later on attracted to the fascists. After all they were revolutionaries and fascism people forget was revolutionary from the conservative norms.
Woketopia
Great comment.
And feminism is never going to find its happy place in Hollywood
Indeed, and we can extend this to say that feminism will never find it’s happy place anywhere.
It is a recipe for unhappiness, as it is based on the fundamentally negative assertion that men have always, and will continue to, oppress women and that our western society should be characterized as a patriarchal tyranny. Where does one go with that?. I suspect it leads to nowhere worth going to – especially for women.
The idea that women are objectified for their beauty because of Hollywood or some other facet of our culture is ridiculous. Men like looking at beautiful women, they always have and they always will. It is not my choice to be straight, I was not corrupted into straightness by the media. I am a straight male which means I find women attractive. I do not choose to do so to annoy feminists. There are also such things as straight women and they find males attractive. These males are overrepresented in Hollywood (the average man certainly does not look like The Rock). Is this because of some global conspiracy against men? No, it is because we are primarily visual creatures and we like looking at each other.
This sort of feminism is the perfect example of the pathology of the left: I am losing at the game so I’ll try to smash the system. Unfortunately, there is such a thing as objective truth. Every culture has it’s beauty standards but some people will always be considered more attractive than others. This was true before Hollywood and it will be true once it’s gone.
And it will be gone a lot quicker than expected if it carries on down the long and humiliating road of trying to please woke millennials and their puritanical religion…
I don’t think we should blame millennials exclusively for this. The seeds were planted by the 1960s, if not before.
The objectification of women is a complex subject and is not just about ‘finding someone attractive’ and nor is it just about beauty standards.
Unfortunately for most men it really is that simple..
….Kay, the complexity and significance you presuppose is merely a passing intellectual artifice There are plenty of examples of other species where it is the male which is the subject of appearance objectification, notwithstanding the females’ similar reproductive role.
What you are overlooking here – to take a side step – is that film making needs to have more to it than lovely faces to look at, whether it is Jude Law or Keira Knightly or Ava Gardner. There are character types in a story where beauty is important, plausible, part of the plot. And there are more characters where it is not. Part of the problem is that too many people are prepared to consume film and TV where being nice to look at, overdressed, perfectly-made-up-version-of-yourself and with implausible muscles, boobs and teeth, distracts and compensates for quality of plot, dialogue and character.
And now most people are so brainwashed by the low quality they don’t see the tricks anymore. It has always existed but maybe is even more exagerated now in the “must not fail” committee produced offerings of industrial Hollywood.
If I start a film with an actual normal looking bunch of people in it, whenever it was made, I know at least that the director has some brains and credibility. Hollywood hasn’t had much of that since the 1970’s era of “Five Easy Pieces” for example.
The healthy, successful Hollywood actresses who resisted or overcame drug and alcohol problems and lived to a ripe old age, far outnumber the tragedies.
Fame and vast amounts of cash seem to create a dangerous situation around addiction for both se xes.
This article requires me to care about a successful, very pretty, young woman’s objection to some untoward criticism. I don’t really, but she can complain if she wants to, it’s good publicity.
The article also requires me to accept the feminist theory of Sexism, ie, that treating the s exes differently is on a par with treating people with different coloured skins differently, which it is’nt, so obviously I do not accept it.
There are many and good reasons for distinguishing between, and treating men and women differently. But it’s too late now, ‘sexism’ theory has been put into our law, and the problems that raises are not about to go away.
‘This article requires me to care about a successful, very pretty, young woman’s objection to some untoward criticism. I don’t really, but she can complain if she wants to, it’s good publicity.’
It does indeed take a special skill to conjure – and presumably get paid for – a few hundred words on a subject that is not even on the radar of more than 0.01% of the population. I only wish I possessed that skill myself.
That made me smile.
It’s a pity because Tanya Gold can write very worthwhile pieces such as the one recently about poverty in Cornwall.
….but it’s up on the Read This At Once click bait list online at the Graudian, so I guess that means 0.02% at least.
I am woman! Hear me whine!
Someone already made the point about John Wayne. Michael Caine changed his name too and they were far from unique. I don’t think Katherine Hepburn was a beautiful woman, but it doesn’t seem to have held her back. The history of Hollywood is littered with men who it chewed up and spat out as well. McCauley Caulkin, River Pheonix, James Dean, Jack Wilde, Corey Feldman who relied on boyish good looks all have a tragic story. Hollywood is not the only gig in town…Shirley Temple became a successful diplomat. These women should try working in a factory. An actual factory, with minimum wage, long hours and no prestige.
So stop it girls. It’s tiresome.
Or to borrow a word from the woke left….Exhausting.
women denied their own names. Marilyn Monroe was Norma Jean Baker . . . Judy Garland was Frances Gumm
You’ll be shocked to learn that most male actors were given stage names too in that era. It’s almost as if it’s . . . not a gender thing
Shhhhh don’t bring up facts it’s not the done thing.
Mulligan seems to have missed something crucial about acting: that how she wears her costume is an essential part of her performance and hence an essential part of “the art.” Her complaint merely reveals her own insecurity – which is presumably why she was so unconvincing in this role.
Ok, I stopped reading at “female actor”. WTF???
…
Pretty soon words like “male” or “female” will be forbidden too.
Already done in Pelosi’s Congress, day 1
Amen, and A-women too.
Yeah I saw that on a video. Pure ignorance. Those are your representatives! (Not that ours are anything to be proud of)
People who menstruate
Or as the BBC put it recently: People with vaginas. (oh how I wish I was making that up)
Well menstruating child bearers do now chest feed their ungendered small humans
It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so widespread.
Only in the minds of the perpetually offended is the word ‘actress’ in any shape or form derogatory. It’s entirely in these people’s heads.
So, Cloris Leachman has just passed; in all the reports I have read she was referred to as “actress”.
Cicely Tyson has just passed too, and I have noticed that at least in one paper she was referred to as “actor”.
Quite butch-looking, though.
Rubbish! Neither Leachman nor Tyson were “butch-looking”! Get your eyes examined, mate.
You must have them confused with someone else.
Amusingly, in English we are getting rid of specifically female terms, while in french they are introducing them! And largely for the same reason – to end sexism.
French being a gendered language women often end up having a masculine term applied to them. And they are not happy. So specifically female terms (a bit like actress) are being introduced.
I’m no expert on the French & this may be a stereotype, but is being beautiful & glamorous not something rather valued in France?
And what about “character actress Margo Martindale”? 😀
I upvoted your comment because it made me laugh, Andrea, but it’s not so stupid as you think. The great Henry Fowler railed against the elimination of “feminine designations” in “Modern English Usage”: “any word that does the work of two by packing several notions into one is a gain”, so logically “actress”, with two syllables, is a much more useful phrase than “female actor” with four. But a lot of the words that Fowler categorized in his book as “established feminine titles”, like “ambassadress” and “songstress” have largely disappeared, and I suspect, even “actress” is on its way out. Tanya is just bowing to the new normal. I don’t like it myself, but then I would feel silly calling a female runner a “runness”, although if you want to make a sex distinction, with “runner” indicating a male, isn’t this what you would call a female?
As far as I’m concerned, Ambassador and Runner are neutral.
Unhappy people try to change things because they think it will make them happy but it won’t. There is no point in changing things to please them.
My wife wanted to be a Mrs., but we get official letters addressed to Ms. Women abuse their power just as readily as men.
I never heard of ambassadress but I can think of “seamstress”, not to mention “mistress”. 😀
Actress has been a widely used word from, I think, ever, so even if songstress is forgotten, it doesn’t follow that actress will, or indeed should. A bit like oxen and children. Why don’t we have childs and oxes? After all the other plurals like that have disappeared.
Mistress is the female form of Mister, or at least was.
Now that Variety has apologised for a sentence that clearly critiques costume and acting, are film and theatre reviews even possible any more?
The reviewer has answered back…
https://www.theguardian.com…
“actress” has become a slur
Well, until we get to awards ceremonies. “Female actors” are then happy to identify as actresses for the evening when there’s a bauble in it for them.
Personally I think there should be one best actor Oscar, BAFTA or whatever, especially since the type of airhead who stands to win one is the same type who will also get exercised about the current shocking assumption that there are only two sexes.
Then we need to look at Wimbledon. Let’s have one singles final, five sets, all 300 sexes eligible.
Shouldn’t that be Cervixed actresses?
At this point accusations of racism and sexism most often function as all purpose counterattacks when a person is criticised for any reason. Doesn’t matter how specious the charges may seem, few people will be brave enough to acknowledge as much. Seems clear that is the case here with Mulligan. For all of the nonsense in this article, I’ll give credit to Gold for calling BS.
Attention, I am a victim, Attention, i am a victim, Attention .. such a horrible life for the poor Hollywood starlets, now all we will have to watch from Hollywood is trans men playing woman, fat girls who are body positive and butch lesbians making out and we will have to pretend they are beautiful and brave for sake of the woke, while the young hot things don’t even get a look in.. it’s pretty impressive how the land of make believe has decided to destroy its self for the joy of a generation that would prefer to watch themselves dancing on their phones and if they watch a movie it either stolen or comes for free on a subscription channel.. oh well good for them at least we don’t have to pay to watch this garbage..
To say that beautiful young working class women would not be working in menial jobs is simply not true. Without education, leaving school at around twelve years of age, there were no other jobs available to them. I dare say their clothes and hair styles were not up to date but that does not preclude beauty. Photos of my working class mother and grandmothers, working in factories and shops, even paintings like Millais’ paintings of peasants, show beautiful young workers. Their beauty might not last as long as that of more privileged women but it existed.
Neither Mulligan nor any other woman is less disqualified from speaking for women by beauty than by its reverse.
I think you’re somewhat missed the author’s point. Women like Mulligan and Knightly are extraordinarily beautiful, or at the very least their attractiveness is considerably above average, like nearly all women (and men) in Hollywood. It’s the nature of the beast. The point the author made was that casting Mulligan as an early 20th century laundress didn’t ring at all true. Only a tiny minority of such women would have had Mulligan’s pristine (and youthful, and healthy) beauty, and if they had it they would have lost most of it by the time they were Mulligan’s age when she made that film; work like that aged people very quickly. One thing I loved about British TV series of the past, like Upstairs Downstairs, is most of the actors looked like ordinary people, some of them even quite homely. And even cinematographers for those older series tended not to use the kind of lighting Hollywood and American TV does, that makes people’s faces look younger and smoother and covers up flaws; it was warts, wrinkles, and all. Helen Mirren, being a definitely above-average woman looks-wise, looked great in the 1990s series Prime Suspect, but she also looked her actual age.
Knightley attractive? Her self-absorption and vanity permeate her every expression. Awful woman! I cannot bear any film in which she appears.
I don’t find Knightly at all attractive. And, like Cameron Diaz, will not age well!
The point of the article was that, regardless of talent, the movie industry requires its female actors to be good-looking. That is not just because of the Weinsteins; it is also because audiences demand it. A movie, even a commercial on TV, would get nowhere beyond the art house without unusually good-looking women, because that’s what the audience wants to look at.
I remember the 1970s when they used to let ugly people on television.
The trouble is that meant that the success of the production was dependent on the quality of the writing and acting
I love Mirren, thank you for mentioning her! I did too!
Mulligan is not “speaking for women”, she has launched a diatribe against a film critic because she didn’t like his criticism, spinning into a “misogynistic” attack. The result will likely be his loss of his career because he said something she didn’t like.
This is now what “equality” looks like through a feminist lens.
It also gives her some woke insurance from the mob and a bit of power to wield. I can see it now ” if I don’t get the part it’s because you are a fascist.” The new female casting couch.
This is next level pointless navel gazing
How about just watch the film for what it is? Enjoy it (or not). Celebrate the fact that it had a female writer, director and producer. There’s no need to dig around and try and find some nonsense offence and grievance.
It must be even more exhausting to think like this than it is to read it…
Why would I celebrate the fact that it had a female writer, director and producer?
That would be sexist, surely. I would not even consider such things when deciding if I liked a film or not.
Not saying you personally or anyone should if they don’t care much – all good
But for such a male-dominated industry to have a few more females in is a good thing and a reason to celebrate for many- and why not?
It’s certainly not a reason to whine and complain like this article however – because they don’t espouse the “right” type of feminism
I am glad to see that someone has noticed the ludicrous casting of Mulligan in “Suffragette”. Yes, it’s unfair that such a talented actress had to go to a £25,000 a year school in Surrey, but somehow it’s not the type of school which might prepare you for a role as a downtrodden prole.
Ah, the luxury of hand-wringing over first-world problems. And I’m sorry, but Hollywood productions are full of women, many in featured roles, who are anything but raving beauties. Yes, appearance matters to a degree; it is a visual medium, after all, but this also applies to men. Is there a homely leading man making the rounds? Of course, not.
I don’t know…Jack Nicholson?
Lots – Michael Caine, Philip Hoffman, William HMacy… no doubt more I can’t think of now
Good article, but it misses the larger picture.
The real game here is following what has become a tediously predictable script. Mulligan complained about the review, which critiqued the costume the actress was wearing, not her real-world looks. But that gave her the opening to spin the criticism with a claim of “misogyny”, a moral violation. Therefore the critic had to be fired, and someone else elevated to his position. According to the Guardian, this demonstrates the need for more “diversity” ( read “female”) voices in film review.
So here’s the game: parse anything said by any man in power for any comment, now or in the past, which can somehow be spun as an insult to women- even if criticism is the job film reviewers do. Claim that an insult (real or not) to one woman is somehow an insult to all women, and therefore reveals a “sexist” bias. Call for the firing of the man, and demand he be replaced by a woman.
In the interest, of course, of”diversity”. And if anyone objects, just claim that he too must be a “sexist” and have the Twitter mob descend on him also.
Joseph McCarthy would have been green with envy. Hopefully Variety will have the courage to push back and defend their employee, who is guilty only of doing his job. Alas, given the tenor of the times, they probably won’t, fuelling more of this kind of vicious, unethical behaviour by feminists. This is what feminism has degenerated into.
I’m afraid I don’t agree that Carey Mulligan is beautiful. Pretty yes, but not beautiful.
Quite. I have not seen Suffragette, but I have seen The great Gatsby and I could never understand why Gatsby would be so obsessed with THAT Daisy who is not only petulant, but also not that great a beauty.
I have just watched “the dig” and I though she was quite suited for that role.
Funny how the best actresses are all so beautiful?
Of course that’s not the case. The most beautiful actresses are the ones that get the best roles and the acclaim. The best actresses, most of them at least, are grafting their way through supporting and character roles without any cover shoots for glam magazines. Precious Carey Mulligan is happy with sexism when it works for her.
Reading the offending review, it’s difficult to see what’s so offensive. The comment clearly suggests that Mulligan lacked the acting ability for the role rather than the looks. Presumably it’s that that hurt or perhaps the suggestion that she was second choice.
It’s curious how some are so easily offended. There was a time people could take criticism and a bit of name-calling, but no longer it seems.
Whatever happened to the rhyme ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.’ Perhaps they should teaching this at schools.
Words are violence has been the calling card of the wacky left for almost a decade now, where have you been?
And now silence is also violence!
Shut up and get beaten, open your mouth and get beaten,
war is peace etc..
I prefer the classic Hollywood sexpots. They at least had the honesty of their trade.
Knightley can’t act and owes her career to the fact that she’s decorative through an accident of nature and to family connections. Without the latter we’d never have heard of her. What does she feel about the “male gaze” of film crews or does she make them wear bags over their heads? Is it okay for men to buy cinema tickets to gaze on her or is that a source of permanent torment? She’s also assuming that every male gaze is lascivious. Is she sure she’s right about that? The entertainment business no longer requires physical perfection from woman as any tv show or film shows and that’s fine. Women on screen look like the women we know. But no amount of feminist whining will change the fact that both men and women are programmed to appreciate female beauty despite the 20th century’s assiduous cultivation of an aesthetic of ugliness that has spilled into the 21st. Mulligan says we should concentrate on her art and she is undeniably a talented actress but the way she looks is a component of how we perceive her portrayal of a role. The reviewer thought she’d got her look wrong and that’s a legitimate critical opinion.
Spot on… It reminds me of the ludicrous casting of Al Pacino and Michelle Pfieffer in Frankie and Johnny as two down-trodden losers!
Oh, one other thing I’d like to separately point out in defense of all of this “only the pretty people count” talk is that the thespians who get the most work are character actors like DJ Squalls or the late Eilleen Heckart. The NOT-pretty people who often play interesting side characters, they’re known as “character actors.” They’re probably more famous than big-name thespians, too, because even though we may not know their names (unless you’re a movie geek like me), these are the thespians that when we see them we say to our friends, “Hey, that’s the guy that was in [insert movie here]! He was great!” I bet every one of you who actually reads this comment can think of at least one other thespian like this, even if you don’t know their name. These are the REAL thespians of Hollywood, not those big-name prigs with the pretty faces. They’re just eye candy.
I just re-watched The Queen of the Stardust Ballroom starring Marueen Stalpleton and Charles Durning – neither of whom were easy on the eyes as the old saying goes. However, the story about two older “plain” people finding love was a joy to watch.and as often happens, both became more beautiful as the story progressed. I expect today their roles would be assigned to two of the reconstructed actors/actresses who populate Hollywood these days. Of course, the whole movie would lose its poignancy and would not be worth watching once let alone twice.
Hmm, and would a new feminism also admit that the gifted and unlovely are not welcome in the massively lucrative world of film star appearances in numerous magazine photo shoots, adverts and product endorsements ?
Some will no doubt argue that feminism isn’t concerned with such things (the gifted but unlovely men don’t feature in such things and get fewer films). It is perhaps just a sad aspect of our shallow lives
Will this be deleted. Meanwhile Uyghur women are systematically raped by the Chinese. Where is the uproar by the modern feminists. Where is the outrage by the Hollywood glitterati. Uyghur women must not have currency in today’s feminism or perhaps China’s money trumps moral integrity. Actors do one thing well and that’s act.
Re the first paragraph: taking a stage name wasn’t restricted to women. Many famous male Hollywood actors had stage names. I’m sure readers can give examples.
Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, Cary Grant, Rodolfo Valentino.
Need I go further back?
John Wayne (Marion Morrison)
All American hero (Draft Dodger)
Gratuitous slight from a keyboard warrior.
Kirk Douglas ( Issur Danielovitch )
Something I have to dispute about Knightley’s prudishness is the number of older women who are doing nude or sex scenes, or at least showing off very spectacular elder bodies, especially on television.
One cannot watch The Expanse on Amazon Prime (formerly SyFy) without admiring the power, grace, and intense beauty of the character Christjen Avasarala, who is not only played by 68-year-old Shoreh Aghdashloo, a woman of color, but who is a character of color as well, being Indian. However, get that woman in one of the fabulous outfits the showrunners love to dress her in and you also see a sexy, desirable body adorned by a beautiful face that easily shows up younger thespians like Kiera Knightley and this Carey Mulligan.
A second wonderful example actually includes a (safe for TV) nude scene by thespian Veronica Falcon, as Camila Vargas on Queen of the South‘s American version on USA Network. Forget the fact that when she’s clothed the woman always looks fabulous (even during a stint in prison scrubs). Falcon is 54 and was 52 when she did an after-sex nude scene between Camila and her husband Epifanio. She is sitting on the bed in such a way as you can see everything but what you shouldn’t, and oozes sex appeal in ways her younger lead, Alice Braga, does not.
Both of these women, and many others that I’d probably facepalm for not mentioning (like Helen Mirren) are seizing feminism by proving women over 40 can be as beautiful and sexually appealing as their younger counterparts. Yes, this skates your overall point about how Hollywood has no room for plain-looking women, but the fact that we’re moving into an era where Avasarala can wear skin-tight suits and Camila can be nude after sex even though they’re both over 50 is as liberating to female thespians as the exposure of Harvey Weinstein as a sexual predator. I think that should be recognized far more than Kiera Knightley being prude about doing sex scenes.
If actors male or female don’t want to do nude sex scenes, then they shouldn’t do them. Any magic there is in a bedroom scene is lost if the woman drags the duvet off the bed when she gets up or keeps her bra on during sex. Or if she looks like she doesn’t want to be doing what she is doing. If the actors aren’t up for nudity, it is better to make do with the post-coital chat and smoke.
Nudity or no nudity a sex scene depends on the acting. There is nothing sexier than an actress, dressed or not, smouldering with sexual desire. Evoking a sense of uncontrollable desire is however beyond Keira Knightley’s acting ability. Kathleen Turner managed it often and I don’t think she ever did a nude scene.
Directors and writers often see the purpose of sex scenes as mild titillation. What they usually fail to appreciate is how sex scenes can build the characters. Nowhere else is it so obvious if a character is generous or selfish, dominant or submissive, confident or reserved. Nudity in a sex scene can be used to show that a woman is confident with her body and her sexuality. It is perhaps even more important for older characters. Many 50-somethings are not sexually active; for many others sex is still an important part of their lives. Sex scenes show how important sex is as a motivation for their actions.
As an aside, why is it that in so many ‘bedroom’ scenes the woman keeps her bra on? I wouldn’t expect good, or even mildly reasonable, sex with my bra on, and I’d bet my partner(s) would say the same, too.
Just a personal gripe, whinge over.
The same reason the blokes keep their boxers on, I suppose. It does look ludicrous.
It is probably quite a test for an actor to simulate sex convincingly. Timothy Dalton in his James Bond films was so hopeless he convinced me that he must be gay, as he’d clearly never fondled a woman in his life.
I suspect the older women you speak of are still conforming to conventional beauty norms?
When was that ‘convention’ signed off by everyone? Beauty is a perception made instantaneous by repetition over millennia. The interesting thing is: what is it exactly that is being perceived? And for that read Sir Francis Bacon, who hit on the right answer by accident. He said ‘There is no true beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion’. One starts from there.
I would mention Monica Bellucci and Jenny Agutter as women who were fabulous long past 50.
There is something not quite right about Jenny Agutter’s face. Her eyes and nose are somehow too narrow. She’s pretty but far from perfect, yet she has always been spectacularly, unselfconsciously attractive, and she projects it without you noticing. Mulligan in contrast is a walking scowl of anger who wants to feel outraged either at being noticed or at not being noticed.
Ugh, please, can it never end? I’m a perfectly alright-looking fiftysomething and so pleased to be giving up the bullshit.
It’s interesting that Knightley says this after appearing nude with other actresses on the cover of Variety. I thought it was disgusting. That didn’t dawn on anyone back then? The irony is that during the golden age, actresses seemed to get top billing. Bette Davis was no beauty. Many others weren’t either. Attractive but no Lana Turner. They had great parts too. It seems after WWII something happened and women were relegated to second fiddle.
…zigackly, they were fiddling the other boys forst.
If you want to find films made about/with/by women who don’t all look like “film stars” you need to look outside of Hollywood, probably outside of the USA. Nothing makes me happier than watching a decent European film for example where ordinary characters have appropriately ordinary faces and bodies, men and women.
A small story. Many years ago whilst sitting in a parked car with my octogenarian father a lovely young woman walked past and a gust of wind blew her dress up in the Marilyn Monroe style. My father said ” thank god for little gusts of wind”. I gave him an incredulous look. He looked at me and said, ” you’re never too old to remember or appreciate.” I think feminists should remember this, beauty is beauty and many a beauty has used it as currency. It is easy to be offended when you’ve made it and have the money in the bank and the accolades on the mantle and plus it just might be a little bit of woke insurance to keep the mob off you.
A small story. Many years ago whilst sitting in a parked car with my octogenarian father a lovely young woman walked past and a gust of wind blew her dress up in the Marilyn Monroe style. My father said ” thank god for little gusts of wind”. I gave him an incredulous look. He looked at me and said, ” you’re never too old to remember or appreciate.” I think feminists should remember this, beauty is beauty and many a beauty has used it as currency. It is easy to be offended when you’ve made it and have the money in the bank and the accolades on the mantle and plus it just might be a little bit of woke insurance to keep the mob off you.
One way to not be objectified by men is to be born ugly. Now is this misogynistic; no it can’t be because that would mean these strong powerful independent women would be hypocrites working in an industry that puts beauty front and centre. Surely not as they are paragons of female can do attitude no matter your looks, its the substance of a woman that counts.
Perhaps actresses should just stick to radio.
Francis McDormand great film star but not a typical Hollywood beauty
Typo; apologies: “is less qualified to speak for women because of her beauty than she would be by its reverse.”
I defer to woke on this one. Thin and beautiful are over represented in Hollywood. Even in the fountain of fat, the fast food advertisements, thin is on display ALL the time. The rawest kind of cultural appropriation – even if it does require an emoticon! Surprisingly, none of the beautiful waifs have knowingly fallen upon their swords that the impoverished may prosper.
Mary Harrington’s associated article on ‘Clinton feminists’ currently here on Unherd provides ample riposte to these privileged, dare I say narcissistic ladies mentioned above who doth protest too much and have merely added it to their leverage arsenal.
All I can think of when I hear this sort of nonsense is the ‘don’t look at me!’ sketches from BBC3’s patchy, but occasionally brilliant noughties comedy, Tittybangbang.
Did Norma Jean Baker or Frances Gumm have any choice in the matter? Did their desire to be famous or popular play into the matter? People crave attention and want to be “important”. People make unhealthy choices for fame and celebrity. If you make a deal with the devil you pay the consequences. As true today as it was yesterday. Males face the same struggles. Just ask Robin Williams or Kurt Cobain