So…which one is true, feminism?
Basically: One movie doing great doesn’t remove sexism.
Both are true. Hayek’s quote was referring to Hollywood’s well-documented gender pay gap. Women are not getting the equal recognition and compensation they deserve behind the scenes.
The fact that female-led movies like ‘Pitch Perfect 2′ and ‘Max Max: Fury Road’ did well doesn’t suddenly make the aforementioned inequality go away. These films show that women are good for business in Hollywood — and can make studios a lot of money. But the industry hasn’t come to realize it fully yet.
The first quote references to
how much money women make, not whether or not the films are successful. The movies I’ve researched contract offers have usually shown the men get paid more than the women. Sometimes this makes sense given experience, other times not so much.
They really thought they dropped the mic, didn’t they? I also love how they addressed “feminism” as if its a monolithic entity.
In January of this year, a mere 4½ months ago, Charlize Theron made headlines when she, after 20 years in film, an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Silver Bear and numerous other awards and nominations for her acting, demanded that for the Snow White and the Huntsman prequel she receive the same $10 million salary that her co-star, Chris Hemsworth, was getting.
There was an outrage. Charlize was called greedy, grasping, and people tried to make an argument that she, despite her well-documented skill as an actor, was not the box office draw that relative newcomer Hemsworth is. This was of course built upon the box office for Chris’ Marvel films, but his first big post-MCU flick, Blackhat, the film that was supposed to establish him as an action star separate from the comicbook juggernaut, was an abysmal failure, netting a mere $17 million worldwide. His “Snow White” prequel paycheck is more than half of the worldwide box office of the film. Meanwhile, Charlize is the protagonist of Fury Road which has made $280 million in 2½ weeks, which isn’t comicbook movie money, but very few films make comicbook movie money and films from other genres shouldn’t necessarily be compared to them.
In 2014, the highest earning actor was Robert Downey Jr, who raked in $75 million courtesy of his multi-picture MCU contract. His two 2014 feature releases, The Judge and Chef didn’t make it into the top 50 on the yearly box office list. The second highest earning actor was Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, whose $52 million in earnings don’t really correlate with box office as his sole feature film release was Hercules which ranked 46th for the year with a cumulative box office of just $72 million.
The third highest earning actor was Oscar and Golden Globe winner Sandra Bullock, who made $51 million in carryover from her 2013 release Gravity for which she was nominated for all the major awards, and also from her production company and restaurant and event planning endeavors.
To get to another woman you have to skip all the way down to #11 on the overall list, where you find Oscar and Golden Globe winner Jennifer Lawrence, who made $32 million. To get that, she had to star in two of the Top 10 grossing films of the year, (#2 Mockingjay and #9 X-Men Days of Future Past) and the #1 film of the previous year (Catching Fire).
Compare her to men who ranked higher: Leonardo DiCaprio, the aforementioned Hemsworth and Will Smith, whose earnings were all carryover from prior years.
Men in Hollywood outearn all but the highest echelon of genre-crossing, award winning, highly acclaimed and personally economically diversifid women in years when they haven’t even made any movies.
If pay equity in Hollywood existed, the 2014 highest earnings list would include Zoe Saldana, Cate Blanchett, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Elizabeth Banks, Nicola Peltz and Sienna Miller, and not just their male co-stars from the top 10 highest grossing films of the year. The only other woman on the top 10 earning actress list with a top 10 film was Angelina Jolie, whose $18 million in earnings doesn’t even put her in the top 25 of actors overall, and includes her earnings from directing Unbroken as well as starring in Maleficent.
Numbers don’t lie. In Hollywood, the wage gap is writ in large scale.
The Archery Range 