Sunday, April 18, 2010

Oh, Hollywood, you're so silly...

I was just reading an article in Entertainment Weekly about Angelina Jolie’s summer movie Salt. Originally the character was named Edwin Salt and was played by Tom Cruise, but he bailed and Jolie stepped into the role of Evelyn Salt. Here’s the quote that has me bothered:
“In the original script, there was a huge sequence where Edwin Salt saves his
wife, who’s in danger,“ says [director] Noyce. “And what we found was when
Evelyn Salt saved her husband in the new script, it seemed to castrate his
character a little. So we had to change the nature of that relationship.” In the
end, Salt’s husband, played by German actor August Diehl (Inglourious Basterds),
was made tough enough that he didn’t need saving, thank you very much…
What the fuck, Hollywood? When is the woman going to be “tough enough that [she doesn’t] need saving?" Why is there no feminized metaphorical equivalent to “castrate” in art or psychology? How can Hollywood create a movie with a main character who is a female action hero, and still not see the irony in worrying over the implications of a man being rescued?
I have nothing profound or poetic to add here, I just can’t believe in this day and age, directors still say things like this and do things like this. They had to rewrite much of the script to accommodate men’s egos, yet it never occurred to them women might not want to see a woman “being rescued” by a brainwashed little person asshole actor?

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