03/23/2006

Sexism in Hollywood

Sharon Stone's Stab at Tinseltown

By Daniel Haas

Sharon Stone is 47 years old -- a difficult age for a Hollywood actress. But in "Basic Instinct 2" she proves she's still able to challenge Tinseltown's inherent sexism.

Sharon Stone at the Berlin premiere of "Basic Instinct II."

The organizer of Sharon Stone's Berlin press conference on Wednesday unintentionally brought her struggle with Hollywood straight to the point: "Help me welcome a talented, intelligent, and most of all beautiful woman." In the end, it all comes down to looks, doesn't it?

But the man's announcement captured perfectly not just the image Stone has been associated with since the erotic thriller "Basic Instinct," but also the macho culture that continues to dominate the film industry. It's a culture that women -- no matter how intelligent or talented -- haven't been able to change very much over the years.

Stone is currently touring Europe to promote "Basic Instinct 2." Her image preceded her in Berlin, turning photographers into noisy fans -- "We love you!" they hollered -- and journalists into stuttering admirers. But neither her legendary IQ, nor her iron self-discipline or her biting humor prevented her from being ostracized by Hollywood during the 1990s -- or from being welcomed back only halfheartedly.

Talent and intelligence won't buy you anything in Tinseltown. It's no accident that so-called "bankable stars" -- those who bring in the money -- are selected for their beauty more than for anything else. And their youth -- hitting 40 means getting treated "like a leper," Stone remembers. A fate many of her colleagues have suffered, and not just since the 1990s: Greta Garbo disappeared from the scene at age 36, and Bette Davis placed her notorious "job wanted" ad in 1961.

The situation hasn't gotten any better since those days. In 2002, women under 40 were cast for 78 percent of female roles; actresses such as Debra Winger (50), Jessica Lange (56), and Holly Hunter (48) either disappeared from the scene entirely or appeared only in minor roles. The roles given to women over 40 are those of mothers, nurses and teachers. Whoever doesn't want to play this game has to either start her own production company, like Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan, or she can do voice-overs for animated films, like Whoopi Goldberg.

Stone didn't want to get shoved aside or relegated to a second-class TV series like Glenn Close ("The Shield") or Kirstie Alley ("Fat Actress"). "I didn't want to end up staging a comeback as the crazy grandmother and then having everyone say: 'Great -- you're alive!'" Stone explained at the Berlin press conference. She referred to her role models Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve, pointing out that Moreau and Deneuve got great roles at every age, and that she had always thought it would be the same for her.

But Hollywood and Europe's auteur cinema are worlds apart, even if there is now a "Coalition for Age Fairness in the Media" in the United States. While European directors such as Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon are discovering mature femininity as a film subject, US blockbuster cinema continues to recognize only two stages of a person's development: youth and old age. Beauty and a sex life are the privileges of teenage actresses and of romantic heroines aged 28 to 38. After that actresses often face the blandness of badly written scripts and clichéd roles.

A self-empowering mediocre thriller

That makes "Basic Instinct 2" a gesture of self-empowerment. Never mind that the film, directed by Michael Caton-Jones, is only a mediocre thriller. Stone is playing Catherine Trammell again, the novelist who wreaks havoc on the men around her by a combination of sex appeal, intelligence, and coolness. The only difference is that this time her victim is not a policeman, but a psychoanalyst.

The opening scene announces the film's theme: control. It's more than clear who's in charge as the heroine drives her sports car through town while masturbating herself with the hand of the man in the passenger seat. "You enjoy being in control -- just like me," Tramell later tells her adversary (co-star David Morrissey), and it's this urge to be in control that the entire film stays focused on.

In an interview last year, Stone didn't even rule out an eventual "Basic Instinct 3" and she joked about a fourth installment in the retirement home at the age of 74. Of course, the real scandal associated with such a film wouldn't be any graphic imagery -- the female body has long ceased to exist at such an advanced age according to the advertising and cosmetics industries -- but with a female star consciously determining and publicly exploring her status as an older woman. In Hollywood, a woman's age is not just a matter of how many years she's been alive; there is also a cruel and cynical calculus for determining a star's shelf life.

Stone has had to learn more about the treachery of Hollywood than most actresses. In "Catwoman," she played the role of a corrupt female boss who tries to cheat her way to eternal youth by way of cosmetics -- an infraction for which she is mortally punished by a younger adversary (Halle Berry). Stone's character was a perfect reflection of a patriarchal logic of exploitation that brands the woman who refuses to age as contemptible, such that the viewer can hate her even as he takes pleasure in her arduously salvaged beauty.

Younger women make appearances in "Basic Instinct 2," but they are killed off as casually as the male extras whose deaths bring Stone's character Tramell her thrills. In the end, two women are left: Stone and Charlotte Rampling (60), who plays a psychologist. In the final scene, Stone embraces Rampling protectively as her former lover succumbs to insanity. It's an emblematic moment: the relationship between the two actresses is not determined by the market's logic of competition, but by solidarity. There's no pecking order, but only a vision of cinema in which female desire goes beyond the limits imposed by "American Pie" and "Pretty Woman."

"Basic Instinct 2" is not a beautiful film, but it's certainly intelligent. And it's not just a film with Sharon Stone, it's also a film about her.

Article...

For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol.

Post to other social networks: