If you have 10 minutes and want to be quietly infuriated by the extreme lack of social progress in 2018, then take a look at the BBC’s latest short: Leading Lady Parts. Taking a darkly comic look at the prejudices that ooze out of Hollywood and corrupt the Silver Screen, this female-led production wants you to sit up and listen, and to ask yourself why you’re laughing.
The concept is simple: there’s a casting call for a ‘leading lady part’ (pun intended) and various recognisable White women, and not so recognisable people of colour (because, racism), struggle through the audition as various discriminatory comments are thrown their way. Let’s count them:
- Emilia Clarke is asked to look happier, prettier, and more submissive.
- Lena Headey is asked to de-age by 20 years.
- Felicity Jones is told to strip.
- Gemma Chan is asked to be White.
- Wunmi Mosaku is asked to get coffee.
- Stacey Martin is told to put make-up on.
- Florence Pugh is told to be thin.
These comments are so crass, so blunt, so appalling that you could almost be forgiven for thinking that they’re purely exaggerated hyperbole. Of course, they’re not; these are very real scenarios faced daily by women in Hollywood, but thanks to the Me Too and Time’s Up movements, we’re finally scratching the surface of decades worth of seedy goings-on. This short explores ingrained misogyny, subtle sexism, open racism, and blatant ageism, in a fiercely intelligent way.
To begin, we have a panel of two White women and one male person of colour – pretty diverse, huh? The choice not to have three middle-aged White men running the show is a clever one; we’d expect to see levels of ignorance from a panel of privileged carbon-copies, so it’s far more jarring to see how centuries of prejudice have corrupted us all. These panellists have internalised the misogyny and racism that is so ingrained, so crucial to Hollywood that they become mouthpieces for destructive and archaic rules of a bygone era – not the 2018 we want to see.
When the actors are asked to be submissive, naked, and pretty, we’re asked to take a look at the stereotypes of women in Hollywood. Often the catalysts for the male lead’s pain and anagnorisis – see any action thriller where ‘strong man’ saves ‘damsel’ and ‘damsel’ has one line – female parts are relegated to the tropes of Mother, Wife, Whore, and Virgin so as to not confuse and distress the male audience.
In 2017 and 2018, university-educated journalists spent actual time typing, editing, and publishing articles about the now bare-faced Alicia Keys and Frances McDormand. This was ‘news’ – real hard-hitting stuff – because a woman choosing not to wear make-up definitely trumps global affairs. We’re so used to seeing a standard of beauty, that going makeup-free gave these women a platform to shout ‘why is this unusual to us? Why is my skin news?’. When Stacey Martin is asked to put on blusher, lipstick, and mascara, and Florence Pugh is told to be thinner before auditioning, we’re being explicitly told that a woman in Hollywood is invisible until she plays the game.
The BBC’s Feud: Bette and Joan perfectly gored Hollywood’s talent for ageism against women with a poignant behind the scenes look at the 1962 hit What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. One fantastically agonising accurate quote is ‘men age, they get character. Women age, they get lost’, and we see this when academy award-winning Lena Headey is laughed out the room for being 44 years old. As Jessica Lange puts it, ‘you don’t often see women in their 60s playing romantic leads, yet you will see men in their 60s playing romantic leads with co-stars who are decades younger’; Hollywood has been no friend to women over 30.
If you hadn’t noticed, Hollywood has a habit of White-washing films (I’m looking at you Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson), and, thankfully, we’re very slowly reaching the point where these films fail spectacularly at the box office and everyone involved becomes an embarrassment to the Actors’ Guild. Progress is painfully slow, however, and it’s clear from the stark lack of roles, platforms, writing and directing credits, and recognition (Moonlight and Get Out, anyone?) that Hollywood is extremely uncomfortable with anything non-White.
Both Wunmi Mosaku and Gemma Chan are prevented from auditioning because they don’t fit the archetypal on-screen female we’re used to. This active obstruction is exactly what’s toxic to growth and change. Until Hollywood steps up its game and starts hiring people of colour who are writers, directors, producers, and actors, we’re only ever going to see one tiny portion of the diverse world we live in. Jay-Z’s video, inspired by the agonisingly awkward white-washed Oscars ceremony, perfectly encapsulates how we overlook, ignore, and dismiss other cultures.
Oh, and ironically, Gemma Chan is the only name missing from the cast list on the BBC website and IMDb. Problematic oversight or clever remark about the lack of actors with Asian heritage on screen?
When Tom Hiddleston comes in, exerts no energy, and wins the role of the Leading Lady Part, we’re looking at a very real scenario. Disney’s Mulan live-action remake has been the source of serious controversy, when its first draft replaced supporting character Li-Shang with a ’30-something European trader’ who defeats the bad guy and wins Mulan’s heart. The uproar was just, and the production company has, seemingly, realised they need to hire Chinese and/or Asian-American actors, and keep the ‘leading lady part’ a three-dimensional woman.
The nucleus of this depressing short is best captured by the brains behind the operation, Olivier Award-winning Jessica Swale:
The genesis for the film began with a desire to see women on screen who are as diverse, characterful, three dimensional and flawed as the women I meet in my daily life […]. Until we start seeing real women on screen, represented in all their diversity, we won’t get anywhere.
Progress is torturously slow, and the fact that it’s 2018 and we’re still producing comic asides to get across the need for feminism and equal opportunities is tiresome. Fingers crossed that Hollywood gets a soul.
”Leading Lady Parts: Stop giving all the roles to White men’ is an article written by Helen Tippell. You can find Helen on LinkedIn.
