"... is an ongoing subversive agitprop immersive theatre piece orchestrated by Reese Witherspoon to make a point about the gender pay gap in Hollywood by illustrating how much harder the women of Hollywood have to work than the men to pass muster on the red carpet.... This year’s red carpet feels like a retrograde move for the women of Hollywood, even by Oscar standards.... The backwardness of the red carpet aesthetic was thrown into stark relief by the fact that, in the build up to and during the event, the Academy Awards’ regressive attitude toward race was very much on the agenda. By contrast, there seems to be an ongoing conspiracy of silence around infantile red-carpet fashion choices...."
Writes Jess Cartner-Morley in The Guardian.
I don't know if "infantile" is the right word. I could just as well see "matronly" or even "elderly." I mean, why are women infatuated with
lace these days? Something weird happening in the feminine mind, some resistance to modernity, a nostalgia for a time before their own time. Maybe that is infantile — dressing up in
mommy's grandma's clothes.
Posts
42 comments:
Again, they keep ignoring the issue that it isn't the "patriarchy" judging their fashions. It's other women. Men, generally, don't care.
If women have to "work harder" to pass muster on the red carpet, it isn't men driving the jackboot into them.
Oh, I am judging all right -- not the women, the designers. All of it looks horrible to me. But I am not their target audience.
Get off my red carpet.
That said, reactive feminism accompanies reactive parenthood accompanies confused femininity. Fortunately, most women are nimble enough to avoid the traps set by female chauvinism, abortion industry, and whatever transpires as the vanguard of their respective movements.
Is watching the Academy Awards still a thing?
Fashion is the least relevant aspect of an irrelevant spectacle.
The waif look is not endorsed by heterosexual males with a normal orientation.
"there seems to be an ongoing conspiracy of silence around infantile red-carpet fashion choices...." How does one judge degrees of infantility?
"why are women infatuated with lace these days?" Because they weren't infatuated with it last year.
"Maybe that is infantile — dressing up in mommy's grandma's clothes" Umm, I don't think great-grandma wore these kinds of clothes. Retro is PoMo, PoMo is retro, and nostalgia is cutting-edge until it isn't.
The backwardness of the red carpet aesthetic was thrown into stark relief by the fact that, in the build up to and during the event, the Academy Awards’ regressive attitude toward race was very much on the agenda.
Gotta love innumeracy combined with reflexive Leftism.
How many of the acting Oscars (since that's what we're talking about) over the last, say, 15 or 20 years have gone to black actors? Best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress, right? That's 4 categories, take 20 years, that's 80 total awards. Between 1996 and 2016 how many of those 80 went to a black person?
Using this list from Wikipedia I count 10. 10/80 = 12.5% So over that time period 12.5% of the winners were black.
This Wikipedia page gives the current black population in the US as 13.2% (currently).
This Census projection from 1997 lists the projected black population in 2000 as 12.9%
Without doing too much more digging it seems fair to assume that the population of blacks in the US over the same 20 year period was somewhere between 12% and 14%.
This Economist articlesays that the SAG membership is 70% white.
So, to recap: The number of Oscar wins obtained by black actors and actresses is roughly in line with their proportion of the US population. I didn't look at nominations (I don't have the time) but unless there's reverse racism going on in favor of black nominees it looks like black actors are winning just about exactly their "share" of awards if we assume the awards reflect film quality and actors are distributed normally w/r/t film/role quality.
Ooh, I could have saved some trouble, here's a quote from that Economist article:
For most of the past 15 years, the Academy has largely judged what has been put in front of them: minority actors land 15% of top roles, 15% of nominations and 17% of wins. Once up for top roles, black actors do well, converting 9% of top roles into 10% of best-actor nominations and 15% of the coveted golden statuettes, a bit above their share of the general population.
The Oscar outcomes over that time period aren't racist. It might FEEL racist to not have any black winners (or nominees, I guess? I don't watch that stuff) this year. When you're 1/8th of the population and you win 1/8th of the awards, though, that's not in any way evidence of racism!
Now, if the complaint was that Latinos are under represented...you'd have a case!
" I mean, why are women infatuated with lace these days? "
Supposedly it's a classier see through. Supposedly.
Olivia Munn, Cheeseheads. Olivia Munn.
I've got an idea for a great new rom-com starring Hugh Grant. Sort of a take off on Notting Hill and Pretty Woman. A movie star picks up a street hooker on his way back from an awards show. He is smitten with her honesty, good humor, and sense of fun. They arrange to meet again and then again. He's not bothered by her being black, but her choice of clothes and poor diction is something of a stumbling block. He gives her access to a diction coach and a fashion stylist. So dressed and with a slightl English accent, her true beauty shines through. They get married and live happily ever after.
Why would any woman voluntarily give up use of such a valuable tool as her physical attractiveness? That would be like a mechanic giving up using wrenches.
It's true some mechanics have a better socket set than others, but the world would not be a better place if the only way we could get our nuts off is with pliers.
Is the argument that there must always be a black nominee or black winner, and if there isn't that means the process is racist? Is it a "regressive attitude" to believe that getting roughly your group's proportion (w/r/t the population) of wins is what should be expected? Are statistics or statistical facts now racist?
Are we really arguing that if blacks as a group aren't OVER REPRESENTED (w/r/t their group's proportion of the population) then the process (and of course the nation) is racist?
It used to amuse me when the MTV show "Real World" went from reliably having 1 gay housemate to usually having 2 (one man, one woman usually). I think there were usually 10 housemates, so 1/10 implied that the underlying population (US young people) was roughly 10% homosexual, while 2/10 implies it's 20%. The actual number is more like <5%, but when surveyed most people assume it's >10%. Funny how that works.
The generations are changing, and the feminists have exposed their reactive underbelly.
Did women ever universally accept the female chauvinists' monolithic conception of an appropriate woman, fashion, vocation, etc.?
That seems very narrow-minded, reactive, even bigoted of the female vanguard movement.
It's not normal men who endorse waif-style (i.e. child-like or boy-like) women or seek to pigeonhole a woman in a class diversity hierarchy.
I never recognize any of the women. The makeup makes them identical.
I'd recognize Sandra Bullock I guess, or Kate Beckinsale, who is a dead ringer for Bullock in some hairdos, for instance in The Trials of Cate McCall.
None of them are as fine as Grace Kelly - in lace -
http://iheartgracekelly.tumblr.com/post/68083101263/jeannecrains-grace-kelly-at-the-cannes-film
By the numbers, blacks win in awards with a frequency that is proportionate to their share of the population. It looks like Hispanics and Asians are getting hosed.
But are blacks NOMINATED proportionate to their share of the population? It doesn't look that way this year - where there were no blacks out of 20 acting nominations - whereas there "should" have been 2.6 blacks nominated. Last year was similarly consistently pallid.
But here's something else to consider - the Oscars don't just go to Americans. Pommies and Diggers tend to be way over-represented, and then there's also occasional Frogs, Kiwis and Canucks in the mix. Plus white Africans (Charlize). So is the percentage of the US population that is black even relevant?
" I mean, why are women infatuated with lace these days? "
Downton Abbey
"He gives her access to a diction coach and a fashion stylist. "
So, a remake of "My Fair Lady"?
Audrey Hepburn was a plausible lady, and the "upgrade" worked because there was an aspiration to upgrade.
It may be difficult to do these days.
@buwaya
How about "Down to Earth" with - wait for it - Chris Rock?
The ghost of Joan Rivers stalks the Red Carpet seeking someone to ridicule.
The Spanish speaking and Asian actors have their own film industry to excel in. These industries are not really a farm team, but actors and directors who succeed there have moved on and achieved success in Hollywood........I haven't heard of any break out African or Caribbean film makers.....Black people have been a dominant force in music for generations. Maybe that's their métier and not film making. Why can't different people succeed at different things for different reasons?
I like lace. It's pretty and coy.
Is anyone really, really, REALLY sick and tired of identity politics? No? OK, how many genuine transgendered actors were nominated this year? Eddie Redmain doesn't count.
"How about "Down to Earth" with - wait for it - Chris Rock?"
Never heard of it, sorry.
Re: William:
The Spanish speaking and Asian actors have their own film industry to excel in.
I was going to push back on this, until I remembered how many Korean TV and film stars were born in the US and moved to Korea. More women than men, but there are a few men too.
President Trump will fix all of this.
Yes. A lot of the women looked like they were wearing drapes from a 70's JCPennys catalog.
Oscars...worst ratings ever. Who cares what a bunch of out of work waiters and waitresses think?
It seems like the lace is there to barely cover up nudity. Jennifer Lawrence's dress, for example. She might as well have come topless. It isn't your grandmother's lace, or even your mother's.
I did like Rock's Rihanna joke. And he might just get that invitation.
sydney:
A schizophrenic rebel starring in a "Lady and Tramp"-themed drama. Contrary to the sophisticates' belief, this is still a niche category.
"The Oscars red carpet has never been exactly at the vanguard of feminism."
Gosh darn it! That's pre-diddly-ictable!
""The Oscars red carpet has never been exactly at the vanguard of feminism."
For Feminists the 'Red Carpet' is the Patriarchal System's Fear of Menstruation.
I am Laslo.
I downloaded a copy of the telecast to see Chris Rock. I wondered how long the show would last if you eliminated all the fluff - snippets of films, performances of songs, etc. and just got it down to the host's pieces and each award. It turns out the whole show is about 1/2 hour.
George Kennedy is dead.
Cool Hand Luke will not die.
When it comes to abortion, blacks are 34% of the total.
So this means that at least 18,000,000 blacks have been aborted. Since blacks vote for Democrats about 9 to 1 this means that the Democrats would have had a permanent majority if they hadn't joined Margaret Sanger's eugenic campaign against the blacks. Lost black lives do matter.
"The Oscars red carpet has never been exactly at the vanguard of feminism."
I am utterly convinced that women spend hours fretting over hair, makeup, and clothes primarily for the benefit of other women, and not for men. Naomi Wolf wrote a whole book on the subject back in 1992 called The Beauty Myth that never seemed to reconcile the fact that these industries are often dominated by women and gay men.
The Oscars red carpet has never been exactly at the vanguard of feminism.
Every person I know who watches and talks about the Red Carpet is either a woman or a gay male. So don't blame this one on us, ladies.
@rhhardin: You seem to be a fan of romantic comedies. What did you think of "Cold Comfort Farm"?
"Cold Comfort Farm" is the finest English novel since Dickens.
The Oscars anymore are only representative of a few vanity films that the elite liberals of the coasts make to show each other how politically correct they are. The red carpet and the fashions of the wimmins are the only thing that normal people pay attention to, probably rightly so. I mean, if you're going to pay attention to something that is otherwise stupid and trivial it may as well be something that looks nice.
Post a Comment