Wednesday, February 24, 2016
“You can’t make up the viciousness of Hollywood”: Zoe Cassavetes skewers the family industry and how it treats women over 40
Salon.com: Writer/director Zoe Cassavetes’ grew up in the rarefied air of Hollywood. Her late father is the maverick independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, and her mother is the incomparable actress Gena Rowlands. Her sophomore feature, “Day Out of Days,” now available on VOD, is a caustic look at the life of Mia Roarke (Alexia Landeau), a 40 year-old actress struggling to make it in Hollywood.
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Female actresses basically being deemed useless after 30-something years of age is just another example of how sexism is rampant and prevalent in every area of our society. Ask anyone for an example of a successful older TV actress, and Meryl Streep and Maggie Smith are probably the only ones they will be able to think of, in comparison to the endless list of old white men who continue to land big starring roles in blockbuster films year after year. And it isn’t because men age any differently than women; it’s that men are “allowed” to age past the age that women are. Far too often, films show old and not-conventionally attractive men paired with beautiful young women, who are a ridiculous number of years younger than them. Our society has been normalized to think that this is okay. I remember when there was a huge media frenzy when the Bond girl was only a few years younger than Bond himself. It seemed strange even though it definitely showed a much more common age difference for an adult relationship. I like what Cassavetes comments on how “you become desensitized” to the awful things that happen to girls and women, in the industry and just in general. We need to acknowledge that these things aren’t okay before we can make any real progress.
Women over the age of 40 have constantly been passed over and ignored in almost all areas of performance. Like Sasha was saying, this is because our society has normalized on-screen relationships with huge age gaps. For female actresses this means that once they reach the age of 35 (or 40 if they're really lucky) their chance the play a romantic lead is gone, while male actors are still free to play this type of a part. It's not uncommon for a couple in a movie to have an off-screen age gap of over ten years, while in real life this much of an age difference is frowned upon. This phenomenon also helps to reinforce the harmful ideal that a woman's value deteriorates as she ages, as only very young women seem to be success. Of course there are a few women, such as Meryl Streep, who have been able to work from a young age to an old age, but most of the time actors who work for their whole life are men. I think that one of the most obvious examples of this can be found in the most recent Star Wars movie. Both Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford (Princess Leia and Hans Solo) aged the same amount between this movie and the last, yet only Fisher recieved criticism about how old she looked. The moment that they could no longer objectify her she lost her worth to a mainstream audience, and that's something that needs to change.
I think this article is really indicative about women over 40 in most work environments - between the ages of 40 and 55ish, men are seen as mature while women are seen as spoiling. I've watched women in my family be turned down for jobs where they have the most experience simply for being "too old". I guess that might make sense if they were 80, but they were 50. Even in standard work places like offices and such, I feel there is always a desire for younger, attractive women, in a different way than the desire for young men. Younger women are more desirable because they are essentially on the lowest rung. They are easily "overpowered" and their status can be justified by a lack of experience. This is not the case with older women. Their experience leaves them with social credit that threatens men subconsciously. There is also the fact of a woman's body after 40 - she begins menopause, losing what society deems as her main purpose - bearing children. In a starkly evolutionary standpoint, after 40, women lose their value. And I think this subconscious ideal may effect women in the modern era as well, where men see older women as less useful than a young woman.
Honestly, the movie industry’s treatment of women aging is disgusting. Because women are mostly treated as sex-objects in the industry, older women (who are still sexy, just not in the stereotypical, male-gaze kind of way) are immediately pushed aside. And by older, I don’t mean 60, or 50, or even 40, I mean 35 and up. And it’s just women, men do not get treated the same way. If you chart a male actors age compared to their love interest’s, you often get charts not unlike the one's here: http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/leading-men-age-but-their-love-interests-dont.html#
This article shows that though a leading actor has aged, the age of his love interests hasn’t. Why is it that older men can still be considered sexy, or at the least valid actors, but once a woman hits 35 or 40, she now limited to playing a witch or the leading lady’s mother? It’s a terrible message to be broadcasting. It not only contributes to women’s insecurity about age, but reinforces the idea that younger is better in men. And many female actors are speaking out about their issues with this (Meryl Streep and Carrie Fischer to start). I’m glad that people like Zoe Cassavetes are making films that challenge this notion and highlight the problem. If we as consumers also start to speak out, maybe things can actually change.
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