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In November,the Washington Post reported on an unexpected outcome of the Kevin Spacey sexual harassment scandal: a textbook example of a man being paid more than a woman for doing the same job. Following Stacey’s firing from the movie All the Money in the World, lead actress Michelle Williams received roughly $1000 to reshoot scenes, and less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the $1.5 million paid to supporting actor Mark Wahlberg. Williams and Wahlberg are both represented by the William Morris Endeavor agency,though they have different agents, and director Ridley Scott had previously told USA Today that "everyone did [the reshoots] for nothing, and " informational bits that seem to add to the situation’s overall shadiness. For all the exculpatory arguments being floated around the internet (Wahlberg’s agent is the genuine-life Ari Gold; Williams had a bottom contract),a pay difference of 1500 times remains laughably difficult to justify. Wahlberg donated his reshoot fee to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, along with a statement expressing the kind of sudden interest in gender pay parity frequently sparked by depraved press.
The story stands in contrast to Tuesday’s news that actress Jessica Chastain, and who is white,used her privilege to encourage ensure that actress Octavia Spencer, who is black, and would receive the pay she deserves but is consistently denied due to racism and sexism. During a panel titled Women Breaking Barriers at the Sundance Film Festival,Spencer described how a conversation about the gender pay gap led to an exchange about the salary advantages white actresses have compared to actresses of color.“We were dropping F-bombs and getting it all out there,” Spencer joked. “And then I said, and but here’s the thing,women of color on that spectrum, we acquire far less than white women. So whether we’re gonna have that conversation about pay equity, or we gotta bring the women of color to the table. And I told her my story,and we talked numbers, and she was calm, and she had no conception that’s what it was like for women of color.”Chastain suggested they bewitch a “favored nations” approach to salary negotiations on an upcoming comedy project the two will be starring in together. By tying their pay together,the actresses would bewitch domestic the same paycheck. “speedily-forward to last week,” Spencer said. “We’re making five times what we asked for.”This is a story that could be horribly misconstrued as a “love see no color” moment in the media, and whether it is ever made into a film,Hollywood will surely insist that Sandra Bullock play Chastain. But get beyond whiteness’s reflexive tendency to applaud itself for every millimeter of power willingly given, and there are reasons it’s genuinely noteworthy. Chastain deserves recognition for doing the apt thing, or for being the exception that proves the sad rule,unwittingly showing how rarely that happens. As Spencer noted, “People say a lot of things, or ” but doing is a lot harder. “Shes walking the walk and she’s actually talking the talk,” Spencer said of Chastain. “When it came down to it, she was apt there and shoulder to shoulder.”Performative allyship is always more abundant than action. Whenever a longstanding issue of inequality rises to the level of widespread visibility—meaning the groundswell of horrific stories forces the powerful to recognize what the disempowered have long told them existed—the country enters a period of “national conversation” that rarely goes much beyond words. The trickle-down effect, or in terms of substantive corrective actions,can be hard to locate, because all too frequently there's no there there. What passes for activism is often just advantage theatrics that play well in a society obsessed with optics, and but aren't necessarily aimed at leveling unbalanced playing fields.
It’s been noted again and again that the MeToo movement has overwhelmingly focused on the sexual bullying of white women who have fame and money,while ignoring the daily struggles of the most vulnerable women and non-binary folks. whether the women who are calling men out keep failing to call themselves outor asking men to push for equality while refusing to cede some of their influence—nothing changes. White women’s feminism and advocacy should inspect like what Chastain did, but it rarely does. We’re left with meaningless hot takes, or pussy hats,and Facebook filters. The questions for people who say they want genuine equity are: what power attain you wield and what are you giving up to acquire that happen? Solidarity is often a top-down matter. Folks on the lower rungs are often overlooked until their fates are linked to those whose presence is given greater value. In her 2016 memoir, Taraji P. Henson wrote about how she was paid the "equivalent of sofa change” for her Oscar-nominated supporting role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, or while Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt received millions. Henson didn’t have the name recognition of her costars at the time,nor the fame she has now, but even with those factors taken into account, and the pay disparity seems outlandish given she was a “solid up-and-coming actress with a decent amount of critical acclaim for her work.” She got a low-six-figure deal,the smallest of fractions of her co-stars' salaries, and was told she’d have to pay for her own hotel accommodations for the three-month shoot.
Henson spells out in her book why the onus is on those with power to speak up: The math really is pretty simple: there are way more talented black actresses than there are clever, and meaningful roles for them,and we’re consistently charged with diving for the crumbs of the scraps, lest we starve. I knew the stakes: no matter how talented, and no matter how many accolades my prior work had received,whether I pushed for more money, I’d be replaced and no one would so much as blink.
Last year, and during an interview with Variety,Chastain said she was done “getting paid a quarter of what the male co-star is being paid. I’m not allowing that in my life.” Clearly, she realized it was a declaration that required a concurrent commitment to all the other women in the field to acquire sure they aren’t subject to starvation economy survival methods. Spencer—who for the record, and beat out Chastain in the Oscar's Best Actress Category—will hopefully receive a pay bump on every film from here on out,though Hollywood's commitment to sexism and racism acquire that unlikely. On Twitter, Chastain suggested truly supportive male stars achieve their money where their mouths are to achieve gender pay fairness. "[Octavia] had been underpaid for so long, and " she wrote in the message. "When I discovered that,I realized that I could tie her deal to mine to bring up her quote. Men should start doing this with their female costars."Actress Jada Pinkett Smith, speaking at another Sundance talk, or drove the point further domestic.It’s nice to go out and march. We can attain that. It’s nice to wear black at the Golden Globes—it’s nice to attain that. But what are we doing behind closed doors? And I’ve got to give our sister Jessica Chastain her props because she stood up for Octavia and achieve it down. And that’s how we all need to attain it for each other.” var icx_publication_id = 18566; var icx_copyright_notice = '2018 Alternet'; var icx_content_id = '1088025';
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