By now, everyone who gets near the internet has read something about the rampant sexism at this year’s Oscars. Jokes about rape, domestic violence, and topping the great dripping patriarchy cake, like some sort of grotesque bridal figurine: a song, “We Saw Your Boobs,” reducing some of the greatest film performances in recent memory to an infantile, sexist joke. So I’m not sure I really need to write about Seth MacFarlane’s sexism, as it seems to have been (rightfully) pointed out enough.
(a refreshing dew of silver lining in all this? It wasn’t just feminist-aware publications, like Jezebel, writing about this. It was the New Yorker, it was the New York Times, it was Slate).
Talking to Jamie the other evening, he mentioned a discussion on the internet (the place that, by it’s highly intellectual and well-cited nature, nurtures to some the most fruitful discussions of our age) about sexism and this year's Oscars. It wasn’t directly about MacFarlane, but was rather speculated on whether the actresses’ reactions shots were prerecorded, and if they were, what that meant for the whole debacle.
At first, I was pretty shocked to consider this. On a second examination, I wondered why I would be at all - in this current technological age, words like “live” and “real” are descriptors not to be trusted. Heading back for a third go-round, it was simple and easy to see that, at the bottom line, it didn’t really change anything. Did the actresses know this was going to happen? Did they prerecord reactions? Did they, in doing this, somewhat condone MacFarlane’s sexism?
Maybe. Probably yes. But it doesn’t so much matter.
Because whether or not the actresses were in on it, there’s a bigger narrative at work. Do I think Seth MacFarlane is an idiot? Yeah, sure. Do I think what he did was shitty and sexist? Duh. But that’s not really the problem. Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Halle Berry: these are not the problem.
There was a team of producers behind this. I know nothing about how the Academy Awards are structured or developed, but there had to be. There was a creative team, fellow artists, co-writers and friends and whoever else that knew this was happening, and in not saying anything, condoned it happening. There was the entire Los Angeles Gay Men’s Chorus singing backup, and the entire Academy Awards establishment who, with the gift of their stage, literally gave MacFarlane his platform to stand on.
Part number two? Part number two is the rest of us. The audience, both at the academy awards and at home, the people who laughed at this, who tweeted about the “awesome list of movies to see, thanks Seth,” who, in response to articles like those in the New Yorker and Slate, muttered defenses like “well, it was just a joke,” or “chill out, it’s not that big of a deal.” Anybody who doesn’t see this happen and say “Wow. That’s incredibly fucked.” That’s part two of the problem.
Harking back to an earlier post, I’m not trying to place blame about this, but merely to say: this is indicative of something bigger. MacFarlane, the actresses, the people backing him, you, me: yeah, we may have screwed up, but that’s less important than the fact that we live in a world in which such a thing like this can happen. You want proof of patriarchy? You want proof of ingrained sexism? There it is.
Because whether or not the actresses were in on it, and who was the blame for what, the story that everyone saw was the same, the message disturbingly clear.
You make art? Doesn’t matter: you’re a sex object. Committed to your craft? Worked decades to get to where you are? Doesn’t matter: we value you for your body, and even then, only so far as it pleases us. Have you won, for films dealing issues of sexual violence and misogyny, the most prestigious awards possible? Don’t care. For that, we will humiliate you, publicly, at the very awards ceremony from which you received said accolades. Go home and look at them, sitting on your shelf, these golden and glinting statuesque men, and know what we really think of you.
Whether or not those actresses were really going through those experiences is, in one light, irrelevant (on a purely human-empathy level, it sucks if they were, and is... really sort of skeezy if they were somehow planned, but again, that’s less important). What we saw at home, and what the country watched, was a narrative. It was a cause and affect. Want to be an incredibly successful woman in this industry? This is what you get. Ridicule. Humiliation. Reduced to your body, and there’s nothing, no amount of money or fame or recognition that will change it.
There’s a great article from cracked about why the stories we tell in movies are important, why they shape who we are. Expanding from this, the stories we tell on live television, the supposedly “real life” stories, can't be any less important. And this - this is the story we tell. It doesn't matter if it was meant as double-ironic, or to make some convoluted less-shitty point (as the Slate article, admittedly, alludes to a little). Sexism and misogyny is the story every little kid watching the Oscars understood. This is how we are teaching them to see women, even the most successful women.
A fried of mine posted this on facebook, about a day ago:
And I’m with him. But I’d amend it, for my own post-it, a little, to say this:
I need feminism because we live in a world where someone can make it to an international stage, and sing songs about seeing women’s breasts in brutal rape scenes, and anyone at all laughs for even a second. I need feminism, because this should only ever happen in nightmares.
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