Film: Jessica Kellgren-Hayes
Fairness in film
The Oscar nominated, Golden Globe winning actress Maggie Gyllenhaal was recently told by a Hollywood producer that she was too old to play opposite a 55-year-old man… at the age of 37! A flurry of supportive articles were published, all condemning the continuation of actresses going straight from the 20-something love interest to playing the de-sexed mother, whilst male actors can be leads at any age.
Whilst it is good that Hollywood finds itself under increased scrutiny for failing to represent women fairly on screen, why is it still the case? Surely by 2015 something should have changed?
Hollywood’s love affair with old men romancing young women has history: Kim Novak was half 50-year-old James Stewart’s age whilst filming 1958’s Vertigo. 1942’s Casablanca tells of 41-year-old Humphrey Bogart reconciling his relationship with 27-year-old Ingrid Bergman! Bogart is part of my favourite screen couple with his real life wife Lauren Bacall- 25 years his junior. These pairings generally add to the story and are part of classic cinema history… but they shouldn’t be the norm.
I adore Film Noir’s tales of wise old detectives, beaten by life, and the endearingly innocent ingenues that bring them back from the brink. But why does this pairing need to be repeated in other genres, again and again? Why, in modern cinema, is the age gap rarely even a plot point? It is taken as given that young, beautiful women in their twenties will be attracted to much older men and that the men themselves will have no interest in women their own age.
This is not to say that there is something wrong with an age gap like that between Bradley Cooper (40) and his frequent screen partner Jennifer Lawrence (24) nor that between Emma Stone (26) and Colin Firth (54) in Magic in the Moonlight (a Woody Allen ‘classic’ if only for this reason). Older men are not innately unattractive and beautiful young women can attract older men. Yet there is clearly a problem with our media when it is convinced that this dynamic is the norm and there is a problem with our society when we accept it as the abiding reality.
The Centre for the Study of Women in Television, Film & New Media reported that, in the top 100 films of 2014, female actors took just 12% of leading roles. Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union announced it would investigate why major studios regularly fail to hire female directors for their films, citing “rampant discrimination” in the industry.
They promote the idea that older women are not beautiful, are not worth watching and have nothing to offer. The “older woman” in this case is only 37.
