I first became aware of the Cannes Film Festival’s relevance and influence in 1976 when Taxi Driver won the Palme d’Or. Back then, Cannes seemed to recognize films for their artistic merit rather than box-office potential.
That distinction mattered. Without winning the Palme d’Or, some of my favorite films would probably never have gotten funding for worldwide release. Imagine All That Jazz, The Mission, The Piano, and Pulp Fiction all limited to arthouse theaters.
However, just as the proliferation of cable TV has diminished network television’s relevance, influence, and quality, the proliferation of film festivals has had a similar effect on Cannes. Festivals like Sundance and Tribeca now provide as formidable a challenge to Cannes as HBO and AMC do to ABC, NBC, and CBS. Trust me, all festivals these days are more like bazaars, where producers selling films more than directors screening them is the order of the day.
Sex sells, even at Cannes
It’s hardly surprising that Cannes 2013 will be remembered more for the art of titillation than filmmaking. Never before has more been written about major stars like Eva Longoria and Rosario Dawson flashing their side boobs and Brazilian wax on the red carpet than about the quality of acting onscreen.
But nothing provided more titillation than the graphic lesbian sex — with its hint of pedophilia — depicted in Blue Is the Warmest Color. And, surprise, it won this year’s Palme d’Or. The transitional significance of having Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg head the jury that made this decision only adds to the cultural moment.
Taboos in society are becoming mainstream in film.
Of course, sexual chauvinism dictates that we see two women going at it onscreen — no matter how graphic — as artistic. But this film’s supposed artistic merit gets somewhat betrayed when renowned movie critics, like the Daily Mail’s Baz Bamigboye, exclaim that it “leaves nothing to the imagination” (i.e., the way hard-core porn does).
Roman Polanski’s regressive rant
Then, apropos of chauvinism, there was Roman Polanski, who not only upstaged the winner of the Palme d’Or but also made his own film, Venus in Fur, seem irrelevant. He did so by declaiming on gender equality:
I think to level the genders — it’s purely idiotic. I think it’s a result … of progress in medicine. I think that the Pill has changed greatly the woman of our times, ‘masculinising’ her. I think that it chases away the romance from our lives and that’s a great pity.
(Associated Press, May 25, 2013)
Mind you, it’s arguable that Polanski is merely pining for the kind of romance that would allow a grown man to molest underage girls. After all, this is the same man who was arrested for plying 13-year-old Samantha Gailey with drugs and booze before raping her, then fled the country on the eve of sentencing.
Yet, far from living as a fugitive, he’s worked openly in France and even received an Oscar in absentia in 2002 for The Pianist — cold justice for this confessed rapist.
Is there any wonder this male chauvinist and unrepentant child rapist would resent liberated women expecting sexual intercourse to be about more than making babies and catering to sexual peccadilloes of men?
Not to be outdone, Jerry Lewis launched his own formidable challenge to Polanski’s chauvinism. When asked about his favorite female comics and what he thinks about women like those in Bridesmaids doing his kind of comedy, Lewis replied:
I don’t have any. I can’t see women doing that; it bothers me
I cannot sit and watch a lady diminish her qualities to the lowest common denominator.
(Huffington Post, May 23, 2013)
For starters, this is the funniest thing Lewis has said since The Nutty Professor in 1963. Indeed, one gets the impression that, like Polanski, Lewis has been sleeping like the hen-pecked Rip Van Winkle for the past 40 years. Meanwhile, women have not only demanded gender equality in every facet of life but actually demonstrated to sensible men how much better off we all are for their progress.
Wall Street’s breastfeeding brouhaha
Continuing this chauvinistic theme, I should comment on how the American media pilloried billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones for saying that breastfeeding kills a woman’s ambitions and causes her to lose the ability to make rational decisions on the trading floor. (He probably also thinks masturbating saps men’s ability to think straight.)
Actually, I found his chauvinism slightly more sympathetic after reviewing his remarks in context. He made them during a panel discussion about the undeniable predominance of white men in top Wall Street positions. And there’s no denying the phenomenon of women leaving Wall Street firms in their prime to marry and become stay-at-home mothers:
In the past 10 years, 141,000 women, 2.6% of female workers in finance, disappeared from the industry, while the ranks of men in the industry grew by 389,000, or 9.6%, according to a review of data provided by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What’s more, most of the finance refugees are young women, many of whom have left finance to have children, economists say.
(The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2010)
Jones’s mistake was trying to explain why so many women are “opting out” instead of “leaning in.” After all, it’s almost always the case that this ironic reversal of The Feminine Mystique has more to do with women having rich husbands who can support them in latter-day Leave-It-To-Beaver fashion than with breastfeeding making them lazy and ineffective.
Not to mention that women like Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!’s CEO, who famously returned to work two weeks after giving birth, clearly belie his notion about breastfeeding sapping women’s professional ambitions. By granting far more generous perks to new parents, Mayer leads the vanguard of CEOs recognizing that attracting and retaining women in traditionally male-dominated professions is good for the bottom line.
Data show unequivocally that when women are in leadership roles in companies, those companies have better policies.
(‘Lean In,’ Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook)
iPINIONS thinks that’s enough said.
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