I first became aware of the relevance and influence of the Cannes Film Festival in 1976 when Taxi Driver won its most prestigious award, the Palme d’Or. Cannes seemed to be the place where films were recognized more for their artistic merit than for their potential box-office receipt. By way of foodie analogy, back then the Oscar was to fast food what the Palme d’Or was to haute cuisine.
The point is that, but for winning the Palme d’Or, some of my favorite films would probably have never gotten funding for worldwide release. For example, imagine films like All That Jazz, The Mission, The Piano, and Pulp Fiction all being relegated to art house theaters.
But, just as the proliferation of cable-TV stations has diminished the relevance, influence, and quality of network-TV stations, the proliferation of film festivals has done the same to Cannes. In fact, it’s arguable that film festivals like Sundance and Tribeca are providing as formidable a challenge to Cannes in this respect as HBO and AMC are providing to ABC, CBS and NBC. And 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.
It’s hardly surprising therefore that Cannes 2013 will be remembered more for the art of titillation than for the art of film making. For never before in the history of film festivals has more been written about major stars, such as Eva Longoria and Rosario Dawson, flashing their side boobs and Brazilian wax on the red carpet than about the quality of the acting onscreen.
But, appropriately enough, nothing provided more titillation than the graphic lesbian sex – with its hint of pedophilia – depicted in, Blue Is the Warmest Color, the film that won this year’s Palme d’Or. Not to mention the transitional significance of no less a Hollywood mogul than Steven Spielberg heading the jury that made this decision.
Of course, sexual chauvinism dictates that we see two chicks going at it onscreen – no matter how graphic – as artistic. But this film’s artistic merit is somewhat betrayed by having renowned reviewers, such as the Daily Mail’s Baz Bamigboye, exclaiming that it “leaves nothing to the imagination” (i.e., the way hard-core porn does).
Then, apropos of chauvinism, there was the way Roman Polanski not only upstaged the winner of the Palme d’Or, but made his own film, Venus in Fur, seem irrelevant. He did so by declaiming as follows 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:
Imagine the shock and scandal back then when he was arrested for plying a 13-year-old girl, Samantha Gailey (now Geimer), with drugs and booze, and then raping her.
Imagine further that, after being arrested, pleading guilty, and copping a plea, he flew the coop on the eve of sentencing to avoid having to do (any) time for this unconscionable crime; and that, far from living the life of a fugitive, he has lived and worked openly and notoriously in France, even receiving an Oscar in absentia in 2002 for ‘The Pianist.’
(“Cold Justice for Confessed (pedophile) Rapist Roman Polanski,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 28, 2009)
Is there any wonder, then, that this male chauvinist and unrepentant child rapist would resent liberated women expecting sexual intercourse to be about more than just making babies and catering to the sexual peccadilloes of men?
Not to be outdone, Jerry Lewis launched a formidable challenge to Polanski by providing this chauvinistic reply when asked who his favorite female comics are and what he thinks about women like those in Bridesmaids doing his kind of comedy:
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, though, if you think about it, this is the funniest thing Lewis has said since his performance in The Nutty Professor in 1963. Indeed, one gets the impression that, like Polanski, Lewis has been sleeping, ironically enough, like the hen-pecked Rip Van Winkle for the past 40 years. All the while, women were not only demanding gender equality in every facet of life, but actually demonstrating to all sensible men how much better off we are too for the progress they’ve made in this respect.
Continuing this theme, I might as well comment on how the American media pilloried billionaire hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones last week for saying that breastfeeding is a killer to 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 of the ability to think straight….)
Actually, I found his chauvinism a little more sympathetic after taking the time to review his remarks in context. He made them during a panel discussion last month on the undeniable predominance of White men in top positions on Wall Street. But there’s no gainsaying the phenomenon of women leaving Wall Street firms in their prime to marry and become stay-at-home moms:
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.” Not least because 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 latterday Leave-It-To-Beaver fashion) than with breastfeeding making them lazy and ineffective.
After all, women like Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo! (who famously returned to work two weeks after giving birth) clearly belie his notion about breastfeeding sapping women of their professional ambitions and abilities. Moreover, by granting far more generous perks to new parents (i.e., mothers and fathers), Mayer is in the vanguard of CEOs who are 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)
Enough said.
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Roman Polanski…