Hollywood’s Secret Rape Culture
Several years ago, Kate Beckinsale
was conned into signing a movie contract that required nudity—something she
didn’t want to do. With her acting career in jeopardy, she found herself
browbeaten by the director. “I was really disturbed and I was sobbing and
begging,” she said.
At long last, she gave in to intimidation and performed the nude scene, which
made her feel
“violated and horrible.” Afterwards, she secretly urinated in
the director’s thermos in revenge.
In more recent history, one
actress from the HBO show Game of Thrones mustered up the courage to refuse doing any more nude
scenes. She is reported as saying
that she wants to be known for her acting, not for her body parts. (It’s a
sorry state of affairs that requires such a statement to be made in the first
place.) When the show started, she didn’t have nearly enough clout to buck the
system. A season of the show’s overwhelming popularity may have been what put
her in a better position to bargain with the producers.
Would you believe me if I told you
that stories like these are numerous? Sadly, it’s true. The amount of pressure
and intimidation Hollywood places on actors—especially women—to undress for the
camera is commonplace. It’s well known in the entertainment industry that if
you want to make it as an actor, you won’t be taken seriously if you have qualms about taking your clothes off.
What finally opened my eyes to
this culture of sexual abuse was Wayne A. Wilson’s book Worldly Amusements. In one chapter, he gives seven examples from
media interviews of female actors who express reservations about getting naked,
or at least make some reference to the pressure placed upon women to undress
for the camera.
Wilson himself became aware of the
issue after watching a movie in which the director had his own daughter perform
sex acts on screen. The fact that a director would sacrifice his child’s
dignity for the sake of a movie changed Wilson’s perspective. He now implements
what he calls the “law of love” in his movie watching habits: he refuses to
support films that sexually objectify or degrade actors. He now asks himself, “Would
I approve if my sister [or wife or daughter] were asked to behave or expose
herself in any way that undermined her purity?” (p. 112).
That is a question we would do
well to ask ourselves. It’s a question that comes to the mind of Melissa
Ortega, an acquaintance of mine with ties to the entertainment industry. She
recently shared her experiences in a Facebook discussion:
I know how many of the women in these scenes (and probably men too, you
just don’t hear from them) have talked about throwing up in the bathroom
between scenes, crying, stressing out constantly, etc. So basically, I’m paying
for that person to do that for me? . . . . There are perhaps no handcuffs involved
with these performers, but social constraints/expectations/demands/culture can
be equally, if not more, powerful. And that’s the problem. I’ve lived in
Hollywood. I’ve worked with prostitutes one on one. The line between the two
worlds is thin. I know no other culture more willing to use people and throw
them away.
The movers and shakers in
Hollywood have acquired what seems to be an almost limitless amount of power to
enforce the sexualization of actors. To cite another example: director Neil
Marshall once commented on how he was pressured by an HBO executive to put more sex and
nudity in an episode of Game of Thrones:
It was pretty surreal. I’d not done anything
like that in my films before. But the weirdest part was when you have one of
the exec producers leaning over your shoulder, going, “You can go full frontal,
you know. This is television, you can do whatever you want! And do it! I urge
you to do it.” So I was like, “Okay, well, if you—you’re the boss.”
A little later, he added:
This particular exec took me to one side and
said, “Look, I represent the pervert side of the audience, okay? Everybody else
is the serious drama side—I represent the perv side of the audience, and I’m
saying I want full frontal nudity in this scene. So you go ahead and do it.”
Notice the implicit acknowledgement that the nudity had
nothing to do with art—that it was designed solely for the satisfaction of a
perverted audience base. The producer pushed his weight around, and the
director (and everyone else) acquiesced. All of this to appeal to the lowest
common denominator.
What gives entertainment
executives the authority to force others into such compromising situations?
What gives a producer the power to manipulate a director into catering to
perverse fantasies? What gives a director the right to deceive an actress into
agreeing to do more than she meant to? If your computer screen was a mirror,
you would be looking at the answer.
You see, when average folks like you
and me support films and TV shows like these, we are perpetuating the sexualized
culture we say we deplore. My guess is that, because it’s often hard to see how
“A” eventually leads to “X,” we think little of doing “A,” even if we abhor
“X.” We may complain about the objectification of women (and men) in our
culture. We may complain about how movies are ruined by sex scenes and
gratuitous nudity. But if we then turn around and financially support that
culture, something is askew.
As I’ve pointed out before, it doesn’t matter if you avert your eyes during sex scenes. At
the end of the day, Hollywood counts ticket sales. Both prudes and
perverts give equal support for a film when they buy a ticket (or a DVD). The truth is, if people stopped financially supporting the
abuse of actors, the industry would change. But producers follow the money, and
there’s money to be made through the objectification of entertainers.
Tinseltown is harming the
consciences of actors, wreaking emotional and spiritual havoc on them—all so we
can enjoy a couple hours of amusement. Hollywood has created its own (incredibly
profitable) version of sex slavery, degrading actors as human beings.
Comments
[This obligatory comment is designed to make Facebook recognize my article’s content. Thanks for your understanding.]
I attepmt to not support trash which is what most of TV is. Whether homo, hetero, or worse, that's what its made of.
I don't think God is pleased.