Are we really so interested in Renée Zellweger's "new face"?

wrath
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Well, there goes your chance of working with the Coens. :wink:

Not that I want to turn this into a thread where we compare women’s looks, or that I’m disagreeing with your general point but I certainly wouldn’t single her out for being noticeably less attractive than many others on your list. I dunno, YMMV.

Also, I don’t remember that much debate that the winners you do list only did so because of their looks, so perhaps (actually, definitely) the issue is upstream of the awards and symptomatic of there not being as many good roles available for older actresses. Although, that said, when Helen Hunt won she did beat Judi Dench and Julie Christie (and Helena Bonham-Carter, and Kate Winslet - bloody Academy anti-British bias!).

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Heh. That’s my brother’s problem, not mine.

Hey, I’m not saying she doesn’t clean up well. Nor is she remotely unattractive, AFAIC. But even in pictures from the beginning of her career, it would seem she wasn’t cast for the drop-dead gorgeousness angle.

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And the role for which she got her Oscar in '97?

When she was 39 years old. She ain’t ugly by any stretch, not even a little bit, but she’s not cast for her looks, and her Oscar was well-deserved (though I hated Fargo, she was about the only thing I loved about it).

Yeah, that was indeed my point. The winners don’t win because they’re pretty, as a rule (stop me if I’m giving the Academy more credit than it deserves), but because their performances are deemed best. Surely Charlize Theron’s win for Monster wasn’t because of prettiness (though a cynical argument could be made for her winning just because she so utterly transformed her looks, but that’s not my argument to make). But in any event, as you point out, the issue is upstream of the Oscars. I don’t necessarily think it’s a conscious choice on the part of studio execs, that they actually say, “Nobody wants to see an older lady do anything in a movie,” but I do think they have a predilection for scripts with roles for hot young things, since they naturally (if subconsciously) think that the audience wants to see what they themselves want to see… and so there’s a greater demand for said hot young things. And when the hotness and youngness fades, so does interest in casting them, unless they have Streep-esque talent to keep them in demand, and Streep-esque luck to keep that talent in the minds of directors and producers.

But why in God’s name anyone still wants to see someone like, say, Jack Nicholson in a movie is beyond me. Guy hasn’t acted in decades, and certainly isn’t easy on the eyes.

Heh. For What That’s Worth. :wink:

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Funnily enough, when you were talking of long cuts earlier and particularly A Touch of Evil, put me in mind of Snake Eyes, and Brian De Palma’s predilection for technically difficult stuff, just because. Also Bonfire of the Vanities, I guess.

Seems to me it might fit in here too, anyway - leastways as far as I remember, when a pretty (totally?) unknown Carlo Gugino was cast alongside Nic Cage and then promptly disappeared until she popped up many years later in Sin City.

Reminds me of this. One of those OKCupid blog things, from the Guardian.

Most attractive age for men, according to women, by age:

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Most attractive age for women, according to men, by age:

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I wonder who controls the casting in Hollywood, by and large?

I’ll let your perverse opinion of Fargo pass…for now.

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Damn. My lifelong suspicions confirmed.

I’m 44.

The Powers That Be. Depends on the size of the project and the money at stake, really. Casting Directors receive buckets of resumes and headshots. They sift through them and keep interesting finds in mind. When a movie or TV show is being cast, the Casting Director will call in a bunch of actors for an audition. Preliminary rounds might not include directors and producers. For lead or certain key supporting roles, you’ll find a studio’s casting executives exerting a fairly heavy hand. But it depends on the stakes; if they’re low, the director will have freer rein. If they’re high, the studio (and, for TV shows, often the network) will need to sign off on casting, and may well have a shortlist of pre-approved names from which the director will be strongly pressured, if not obliged, to choose.

It’s not a fun process. Somewhat degrading to the actors, often quite grueling for directors and producers. I imagine some masochists might enjoy that process. Personally, I’d be digging my eyes out with spoons after six hours of auditions.

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These spoons?

…also, the demand/supply in ages is rather unfair. (It’d may be more truth-close to show the bars not as bars but as histograms, showing not just the average but also the distribution.)

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Aptly enough, to return to the subject of Frances McDormand.

“We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species,” she said. “There’s no desire to be an adult. Adulthood is not a goal. It’s not seen as a gift. Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 — sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally. Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face.”

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I totally get your point, and this is one of the reasons I’m glad that I’m not and never will be famous.
I do seem to recall a certain famous singer, Michael Jackson something or other :wink: who got a lot of attention for his looks and changes to them. The tabloids and media are ruthless and will do this to anyone who anyone gives a fuck about, although I agree they target women more precisely because the public cares more about what women look like.

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those videos were surprisingly awesome…i love me a good intelligent ramble and he has spades of both intelligence and rambling :smile: . i guess i need to watch more russel brand “trews”, i haven’t really had much exposure to him, so thanks for the tip.

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I disagree with this and here’s why… just because most movies aren’t made in hollywood, doesn’t mean they aren’t influenced and shaped by hollywood, even many foreign film industries have internalized the modes of production that was created hollywood, including image. Think about how often, especially large budget films or productions, go for the star, rather than someone who fits the part. For decades films produced in hollywood had a problem of casting whites playing non-whites, especially with parts for Asians. This was even true with the recent live action treatment of the Last Airbender. This is true of transgendered actors too, who often get passed over for big named stars essentially in drag (there was a recent movie where they cast Jared Leto as a transgendered woman, I think, which he got an award for? - why not actually cast a transgendered woman in that role? Certainly, they must exist, because Laverne Cox). Another example, is to be found in, of all films, Schindler’s List. You’ve seen it, right? There are numerous things that irritate me about that film, but there is a scene where a group of Jews are being brought to one of the camps, and this group of women go into shower for an actual shower. As they begin to take off their clothes–amazingly, they are all perfect size twos… there is no body diversity to be found. How likely do you think that is? They were casting for extras in that scene, and they can’t find a representative sample of actual lived humanity rather than hollywood’s idealized woman? Now, I think you have a point that many who go into film or whatever are image concious and seek that sort of body—but that comes from somewhere, they aren’t coming up with that image out of nowhere. Our notions of what a proper figure/face should be is inpart created from our culture. I’d argue that, yes, the MAINSTREAM movie industry is intensely image oriented over story-telling oriented. Do I think that this impacts men and their body image as well? Yeah, I do. But in different ways to women. The reason why women in hollywood are more often seen as getting plastic surgery is because aging is considered detrimental to women’s careers, more so then men. Men are seen as aging gracefully, while women are just seen as getting old…

Making a living makes most of us feel like Zombies, I think… Also, always relevant:

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Nah…THESE spoons:

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What interested me about this story and the photos, was not what Rene had done to her face but what appeared to be shining forth from her countenance – peace, and maybe vulnerability. She’s had her eyelids done, she’s wearing very little make-up, and she’s been out of the limelight for a while, so she’s gotten a little older. That said, she’s not projecting into the cameras; there’s a ‘take me as I am’ expression about her. Actors (and actresses) these days are walking talking sales people; they’re always selling something, especially their own image. Now I may be wrong here, but Rene has the look you see from an actress ever so once in a while, of a woman who’s gone through some long internal struggle and come out the other side at peace with her choice, if it could be said to have been a choice at all. What we see in Rene’s face is some private changes so deep they make her look like ‘an entirely different person’. Seeing such a change in someone so public is rare.

I’ll end this posting with a video of Ruthie Foster singing, ‘Phenomenal Woman’. I’ve been hearing it in my head for weeks, as earwigs go, it’s outstanding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkYh2BYONms

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Agreed. I think part of that was the apparent radicalness of the changes to his face and skin, but also the other issues in his life–first his weirdness and later this crimes in regards to molestation. I think for a lot of people, it became about what happened to him and how did he falll so far from that young kid everyone loved. It’s so deeply tragic, it’s hard to fathom (which of course, doesn’t excuse his crimes in anyway).

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You are emphasizing film industries. This is, I think, the crux of the problem. What you are referring to sounds more like “image” as meaning identity than anything to do with optics per se. My reference to Hollywood films not being image-conscious is that they tell stories primarily in words, rather than pictures. When one’s films and identity are thought of as commodity rather than artistic expression, the person presented becomes a dehumanized product. I would argue that this also applies to men who are hired as stars rather than actors, they are merely forced to groom themselves according to different - perhaps less superficial - criteria. My point was that most movies made are not large-scale industrial projects in the first place, but people seem to have a more difficult time accepting this than with truly independent and experimental music, for instance.

The balance here I think is that of trusting “acting” itself as a discipline, versus a willingness to provide opportunities to people. There is no reason why an actor should need to physically resemble whoever they are meant to portray. This is superficial in the same way the beauty is! Being Asian or transgendered is not a “talent”, after all. My only experience with acting is voice acting, where it is more obvious to me that it doesn’t matter what ethnicity or gender the actor is. This does not excuse refusing to consider or cast people of any type. Hollywood has always struggled even with hiring actors or licensing content from other countries. They tend to be adverse to even hiring a famous French or Chinese person to play a real French or Chinese person, or airing a British television series, because they fear that they are pandering to viewers provincial attitudes.

[quote=“Mindysan33, post:29, topic:43655”]
Schindler’s List. You’ve seen it, right?[/quote]

No, I have not seen it.

What is “proper” appearance? It seems to me that beauty, not unlike art, is completely subjective. Two superstitions which I think people would benefit from letting go of are personal image/identity as commodity, and the concept of "mainstream’ itself. You can’t have both. Mainstream is merely a (purportedly) benevolent cultural totalitarianism. Once one asserts that there is A Standard Way people should be, subjectivity goes out the window. And this subjectivity is precisely what makes the difference between a movie being art versus a commodity.

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I think this is a tricky line here… I agree that probably many if not most films are made outside the hollywood system… that being said, I’d argue that due in part to hollywood wielding such a powerful economic and social power in the realm of culture over the course of the 20th century, that the logic found there about films being a for-profit commodity has influenced filmmaking overall, even lower budget indie films, that aren’t necessarily commercial. Commercial culture came to be the predominant form of cultural production globally, and that has certain implications. Additionally, just because something is independently produced, doesn’t mean its not produced to turn a profit or can’t be made into a commercial product. I assign no value judgment to that, just making an observation about how culture is produced in our modern society. Commercial cultural production is not the only game in town, but it is something that is predominant in our culture, like that or not.

And I’d argue that even indie or art films are visual over linguistic medium. Film rests on the visual interactions with the viewer in a way that a stage play does not. That doesn’t mean that ALL films are not concerned with language at all, just that I think the visual is the primary mode of storytelling in most cases, but the two do intersect as well.

No, but are you seriously suggesting that films are cast solely on talent, as opposed to a whole host of biases? Would you put a white person in a film to play an African American character if the scripted specifically called for that? Of course we wouldn’t, because we’d recognize that the race of the character was integral to the story being told… I hope you’re not suggesting that there aren’t a vast number of super talented Asian or Asian American actors, because of course they are. Same I’m sure with transgendered actors. The fact that they aren’t being cast says something about the state of filmmaking. If we flip this and started casting women or people of color in “white” roles, people would be pissed… people HAVE been pissed, when a character they imagined or read as white or male was cast with someone else.

My point is not that our individual standards of attractiveness doesn’t vary, of course it does, but that our society also tends to come up with some sort of aggregate of what an ideal standard is and it constantly pushes people into that standard. this is not new or in anyway confined to the modern period of the production of commercial art. Historically, we can look at beauty trends that came and went - something like footbinding in china, the blackening of teeth found in pre-Meiji Japan, neck lengthening in the Kayan culture, corsetry in the Victorian period, high heel shoes, the wearing of make up, losing weight, gaining weight, tattooing, piercings, etc and so on. Beauty is not so much a physical ideal, but a set of practices, which influences how we look. Any manner of body modification, including plastic surgery like we’re discussing are tied to cultural norms about how people should look physically. I’d say now in history, we probably have the most diversity in what’s considered beautiful, but its also the most commoditized. All manner of objects are on sale to help us transform our images for everyone else. I’m not suggesting that this is good or bad, rather that it’s socially constructed through these sorts of things we’re discussing here.

Also, you keep shifting to talking about film only as art… I think you’re missing the point. Sure art films and indie films (two separate realms, to my mind) have a different sensibility and goal to hollywood films (by which I mean films made to create a profit and this can include films that are made outside the system and then distributed inside the system - this says really nothing about the artistic importance of a film, just about the intention of its creation - a hollywood film can be art… the two realms are not mutualy exclusive and that’s part of my point on that). But what we’re discussing here is the commercial system of cultural production and the impact it has on our views of beauty.

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I think I understand what you mean. But your repetition of "we " and “our” seems to indicate that you interpret all people as necessarily inhabiting the same “society”. Commerce and identity are certainly not my society, since I consider them to be both impersonal and antisocial. If you posit a totality for us to belong to, then you are stuck with this aggregate and whatever its emergent properties may be. This problem is overcome by networking and being willing to create smaller societies which are not subdivisions of nor reactions to a monolithic whole. Get rid of “mainstream” and the problem takes care of itself.

It would not concern me one way or the other, provided that there was (loaded phrase, perhaps!) equal opportunity. Consider also, that some Africans are white, so white African Americans are probably a real demographic.

Like I said, there is no excuse for refusing to consider or cast any type of person.

This is, I think, a symptom of superficiality. And a lack of respect for the craft of acting itself. The whole point of it is that the actor needn’t be cast as somebody like themselves. The greater their skill, the more able they are to bridge that gap between the role and their own person.

[quote=“Mindysan33, post:34, topic:43655”]
But what we’re discussing here is the commercial system of cultural production and the impact it has on our views of beauty.[/quote]

Precisely why I said what I did, getting commerce and commercially derived norms out of movies solves this and a variety of problems. Otherwise, you are stuck with actors as commodity.

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I’m not trying to make assumptions about who you are or where you live, etc, but do you live out in the woods, with no contact with the outside world (clearly not, cause here we are!)? Even if you live in a completely different culture from the Western/US culture, you’re still impacted by this culture, even if you actively work to inhabit an oppositional cultural space, because the creation of oppositional spaces are tied direct to what they are opposing. You may not agree, but I’m arguing that we are all involved and impacted by a certain kind of neoliberal geo-culture. The fact that we are having this conversation in the first place, where we are clearly speaking a common language (not in terms of actual language, english, but in terms of the ideas we are batting around) only underscores that point. If you didn’t at least have some familiarity with these concepts and ideas, then we couldn’t even have this conversation, correct? I think just because we don’t like or accept the systesm we live in, doesn’t mean we aren’t shaped by them.

I’ve struggled with this the notion of creation of subcultural spaces is the answer to our problems. I fear that more often than not, we still don’t manage to get out of the consumer capitalist space. If you are consuming non-mainstream culture, you’re still consuming. Subculturaling seems to stem from two positions–that of the social outsider who is building spaces for themselves (see African American or queer history in the US, where the only option was to be outside the system) and that created by insiders who are so upset with the system that they seek out outsider positions and spaces (hipsters, beats, hippies, socialists, white feminists, anarchists, punks, etc). But we’ve seen what has happened with a consumer republic that we live in–consumption has become an important defining feature of modern life. Unless you literally go off the grid, you have some sort of interaction with consumer culture, even if its a bare minimum. If you hard-core DIY almost everything, you’re still going to be engaging with consumer culture. It is, as Foucault might say, the complete colonization of human life… Again, this is another case that is less about morality and more about a point of fact.

Casting actors is not solely based on talent and it never has been. Even with non-commercial films, its likely based on a variety of criteria, both conscious and unconscious. Plus, you’re dealing with the problems of racial and gendered privilege here, which are again both conscious and unconscious. If a casting director has an unconscious racial bias, they are going to be less likely to cast a person of color. But if they are able to examine their unconscious biases, which are in part informed by the culture they are part of. Plus good acting is not objectively definable, much like good music. Some people think Tom Cruise is a fantastic actor. I think he’s meh at best. There is still an overall problem in hollywood with seeing starring roles as generally connected to white male actors, even if the role does not specifically call for white male actors. This is not because the majority of casting directors are all card carrying members of the KKK, but because they are driven by what they feel is going to sell in theaters, and their own unconscious biases about what “normal” is.

Except film making from nearly the the beginning was a commercial enterprise - its hard to deny that. You had this new medium, this new ability to create a story that spoke to people, but its not cheap and how do you fund it? Does the state or do you work within the industrial model that was transforming the world at this time? Compare the success of Hollywood vs. the Soviet film system, for example. There is some academic university support for films as well as support from state institutions, but its clear that commercial production of films is the predominant form of films that most people interact with… I’m also suggesting that there is no firm division between commercial and non-commercial production of culture. commercially made films can be art and artistic films can be commercial successful. Where does one draw the line.

Edited to add Dorothy Gambrell’s take on this issue:

http://catandgirl.com/?p=1094

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Why can’t what be in the service of why?

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I don’t think we live any longer in a world where casting a white actor like Orson Welles to play Othello in a major studio film adaptation can go unchallenged, much less a character based upon a real historical personage such as George Washington Carver or Malcolm X. It would be disingenuous (and career suicide) for a director to claim that he cast, say, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Frederick Douglass simply because “Hoffman turned in the most fiery and true-to-life audition.” You wouldn’t cast Maggie Smith as the lead in Little Miss Sunshine simply because her talent and years of experience make her an objectively better actress than any 10-year-old you could find in a year of auditions.

As you can see, I think your argument needs some modification. To a certain extent, I think casting can and should be thrown open as widely as is practical. One of the things I like about James Cameron’s action heroines is that there’s really no reason at all why Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley needed to be women. In fact, some old-school studio heads probably complained that the target audience of young males might not come out to see an action movie wherein the ass-kicking lead hero is female. But Cameron likes to prove them wrong on this point.

Now, if a character’s gender or race or nationality does not directly inform who the character is and what the story’s about, then one can largely disregard it when casting. But if you’re making a movie about kids, you should cast kids; if you’re making a movie about the American Civil War, you shouldn’t cast many white actors as slaves (unless you’re specifically depicting characters who are actually white African slaves, and I don’t think that movie’s been made yet), and if your troupe of Shakespearean actors still employs young men to play all the female roles, as was the custom in Shakespeare’s day, you’re going to need a much better reason than “There is no reason why an actor should need to physically resemble whoever they are meant to portray. This is superficial in the same way the beauty is!” There is simply no shortage of hugely talented actors in every single demographic, so claiming that Blake Edwards just couldn’t find a good enough Japanese actor to play Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s so he figured Mickey Rooney would do just fine is not a supportable argument.

Voice acting, as you say, is a discipline in which there is much more leeway. Heaven knows James Earl Jones doesn’t look remotely like Dave Prowse, Sebastian Shaw, Hayden Christensen, or even Jake Lloyd, and yet Jones is more identifiable as the character of Darth Vader than any of those four far more visible actors. But voice acting is a huge exception to the rule.

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I wonder if Rusty has some shit to hang on this utter drivel:

…Gotta get around to re-installing Adblock Plus.

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That keeps hanging around my gmail, too… >_<