The Mary Sue: We talk a lot around here about the gender wage gap in Hollywood, and how women not only get fewer opportunities, but are paid less when they do. Well, Variety collected some data on the the salaries our biggest TV stars get per episode, and it’s glaringly obvious that, despite how well a show is doing or how much critical acclaim a performer has, white TV stars make more than non-white TV stars. By, like, a lot.
8 comments:
Of all celebrities, Jennifer Lawrence suffers from wage inequality? I feel as though actresses as famous as she is would be paid more than others, if anything. I wholeheartedly agree with the article’s point that this wage gap is not about the amount the actors and actresses are paid, since they are definitely compensated well for their craft, but the discrepancies between salaries based on racial features. Because this is the article, focus, I am actually unsure as to why the author capped off the article with Lawrence’s woes because the article opens with a statement about how it will not be about gender age inequality. I also feel as though this article was too specialized in terms of the races it included in the wage gap discussion. Asians are not included, for example, and I had hoped that they would have some statistics from Asian actors or actresses (though it is also a problem that Hollywood is not inclusive when it comes to Asian actors/actresses), as that would have been very interesting to pair with the current uproar about the underrepresentation of Asians in Hollywood.
I agree wholeheartedly with this article. Teresa writes that "it’s not about the amounts themselves. It’s about the discrepancies" and I don't think a stronger point could be made. There is clearly an internal salary struggle here. It's probably because Hollywood is still ran by older "back in my day" conservative men who haven't been pushed out to let newer, more progressive people take the spot in their solid golden chairs. One thing that this article doesn't really do well is articulate some of the additional reasons for the salary differences. I know personally that Ellen Pompeo makes $400,000 per episode because Grey's Anatomy is now in its 14th season. She's been playing Meredith Grey for more than a decade. While the two compared, Kerry Washington (Scandal) and Viola Davis (How To Get Away With Murder) are nearing their 5th and 6th seasons. Ellen has been doing this twice as long *and* while the article says she hasn't been nominated for an Emmy, is the nomination of an award made by the ATAS which is a room of people who ultimately determine who gets an award--and that should ultimately determine another person's salary? I don't think so.
I completely agree with the article’s premise that there is a wage gap between genders and races and that the wage gap needs to be addressed. However, I am not sure about the article’s general argument. The examples used do not take into account how long the shows have been running. For example, Davis did win an Emmy for her role and is well compensated for that and the fact that the show just started its third season, but Ellen Pompeo has been on Grey’s Anatomy for 13 years. If she was not making more for her role, the job would not have appreciated in value, and she probably would have left causing the end of Grey’s Anatomy. Sofia Vergara makes the same amount as all of the cast members, which is industry standard for comedy shows. There is also something to be said for the fact that the article compares across genre rather than within the same network. I can see how Hulu Originals and shows produced by The CW might have lower incomes for all actors than those on ABC and NBC. I am not saying that the article is wrong; I just believe that the evidence is poorly analyzed for a result that is there in a variety of ways.
I guess I'll say it again, louder this time for the people in the back. THE RACE OF YOUR PERFORMER SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW YOU COMPENSATE THEM. Reading this article, the sheer amount of per-episode discrepancy was simply shocking. Maybe it's because the amounts being discussed (amounts in very glaring excess, of my family's combined income, being brought in by lone performers, per episode) are so large, or because the discrepancies are so glaringly there, but I know I had to reread a few of the numbers.
That being said, I didn't want this post to turn into a purely reactionary rant about the systemic racism and sexism so prevalent in Hollywood (and believe me, I can go for a while on that topic), so I decided to scroll up on the comments page. Reading the comments that my compadres have made makes me realize how cognizant and well-informed my generation is of these issues, something that gives me considerable hope for the well-being and fairness of future entertainment industries.
Before reading this article I had no idea that the wage gap for Hollywood actors was as bad as it was. When people think of actors not getting paid enough, their minds typically go to the ones who are out of jobs, which makes this problem easy to overlook. I do wish this article had provided data on how much each show made per episode more, because that can come into play when looking at this data. But the example that showed Jennifer Lawrence not receiving nearly as much as her co-worker is appalling. I would not even argue that she deserves more because of how much more popular she it, just that there should be equal pay. It amazes me that gender equality is still lacking when it comes to pay checks. The number of people who talk about it and bring it up constantly, it would seem that more would have been done to fix this ongoing problem. Nevertheless, if people keep discussing the issue and printing articles like this, there is bound to be gender/race pay equality sometime in the near future.
This is an incredibly well-written article, just impressively so. I thought it was going to run through the rankings of pay per category or other general statistics and then conclude with the fact that the wage gap is messed up, but this article did so much more than just that. I wish that it did have some charts so that I could actually see the rankings right there, but without them, the readers cannot just look at those and make assumptions about the results the article has found. The readers have to actually read the article to discover the information about the topic. And then there are direct comparisons made, not leaving any questions left in the reader's mind about the vitality of the information being provided. The author took out the variables of opportunity for the various races mentioned since that is another entire article in itself. There is an even playing field expressed in the article and the only explanation — therefore — for the disparities in pay must be their race. On top of all of this, the standard response to this article would be shock as to the gap, but I'm honestly surprised it's not worse. I'm also surprised about the gender balance which was able to be expressed in the article.
Even though celebrities make way more than our ordinary people, it is still of huge significance when it comes to wage discrepancy based on gender and race. I always feel like theatre, TV and film industry, because of so much exposure and spotlight on it, will indirectly set a cross-field standard for wage equality. What this article points out has been an issue as long as gender inequality exists. It is important to realize it is not just the lack of equal opportunities between men and women, white and POC, but there's also this glaring wage gap that we should not avert our eyes from.
Good though its intention may be, similar to the previous comments, I feel like this article does not do a good job making the argument. There's no really good data analysis but a list of some individual example of pay difference which I'm not even sure they are scientifically comparable.
The fact that the entertainment industry is still facing problems like this will never cease to irritate me. There's no reason non-white actors aren't paid as much as their whit counterparts, and there's also no reason women should be paid less than men. As much as producers paying the actors need to wake up, so do the consumers of the entertainment industry. The wage differences between actors points to the inherent favorability of white men in our society. Producers are ultimately going to pay those that they find to be of higher value more money. That value generally comes public opinion and general marketabilty of that actor. Consumers need to show producers that minority's and women are just as valuable to them as white men are so we can start to push past this ancient mentality.
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