• Cumberbatch says he will only take new projects if female co-stars get equal pay
    58 replies, posted
http://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/benedict-cumberbatch-equal-pay-female-co-stars-1201963662/ Benedict Cumberbatch has committed to only taking on projects in which his female co-stars receive equal pay. In an interview with Radio Times, the “Avengers: Infinity War” actor calls pay equality a “central tenet of feminism” and says he’s “proud” to be only one of two men at his production company — something he’d like to see replicated elsewhere. “It’s about implementation,” he says. “Equal pay and a place at the table are the central tenets of feminism. Look at your quotas. Ask what women are being paid, and say: ‘If she’s not paid the same as the men, I’m not doing it.’” Several high-profile examples of pay inequality between male and female co-stars have made headlines in recent months and years, ranging from projects like “The Crown” and “Westworld” to “Everybody Knows” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.” “I’m proud that [friend and business partner] Adam and I are the only men in our production company; our next project is a female story with a female lens about motherhood, in a time of environmental disaster,” Cumberbatch adds. “If it’s centred around my name, to get investors, then we can use that attention for a raft of female projects. Half the audience is female. And, in terms of diversity, ‘Black Panther’ is now the third most successful film of all time.”
Did you even watch the film? The entire fucking point was about Wakanda opening up to the entire world, with this being an explicitly good thing to do.
Aaaaand there goes the thread.
willy wonka is a movie about how greed is bad huh??? why are there characters in it that are greedy then?? damn i'm smart
Idk how it is almost every person who has the interpretation has it. The entire film aims to dispute that premise.
it helps to actually watch the movie before you start to talk like you know anything about it. i haven't seen it but my IQ isn't room temperature and i understand that the thing the movie says is bad (lack of diversity) is probably something the movie is against, so i can see why you're having trouble
Can bait be bannable on newpunch? This post isn't doing anything but trying to bait.
I thought actors are paid according to the value of their "brand" and ability to do their job. This seems very count to that, a mediocre actor shouldn't be paid the same as a good one.
This is true to an extent because how much actors and actresses get paid is typically down to negotiation between the studio and respective agents and managers. If Mark Ruffalo co-stars with Jennifer Lawrence or Emma Stone, they are definitely going to be paid more than he will. But taken as a whole, the highest paid women don't even come close to the highest paid men, and it's pretty much always been like that. This is a bold move by Cumberbatch and hopefully it creates some sort of momentum to at least equalize pay scales but my prediction is that he will simply start taking a pay cut unless he co-stars with a handful of actresses.
It's not even that, it's literally how the film ends. Tchalla changes his mind, and opens wakanda. That's the end of the movie. Then credits.
Dude what?
I'm glad he's doing this, this sexist standard is thinly veiled under "different people get payed differently"
His post was retarded, but i find it so fucking weird that Americans celebrate this movie as some kind of epitome of tolerance and diversity and representation, when all of the actors are Americans and Brits putting on lazy african accents. It's actually pretty respectless when you think about it. It also really doesn't represent anything to do with African culture in a non-caricature way.
I think it's "cultural impact" for lack of a better word is overhyped (the movie itself is quality), but consider the context: Africa is rarely a setpiece for films and as far as the mainstream is concerned, 9 times out of 10 it's as a backwards, war-torn hellhole. Black Panther itself briefly shows this in the opening action sequence and mentions it a couple of times in passing through the film but Wakanda itself really isn't a caricature. It's unrealistic and the tribal African elements are exaggerated for a society that appears to be far in advance of most others on the planet but it's done with a sense of optimism and power that African settings rarely get. It's a great superhero action movie and you are right when you say it's not really too respectful to actual African culture, but I don't think it entirely missed the mark at all, and considering the context of film in general I'd say it did a pretty good job representing the continent in a way that feels different.
I'm white and I literally don't understand this type of severe hemorrhoids people have about this film. It's likening the US-hyper advanced state to the state of wakanda and stating that instead of caring for people, the us would rather send arms to ethnic based cleansing groups. I mean Michael b Jordans character is literally a fascist in every sense of the word. The movie itself is about how outside actors can influence a state to adopt people who are bad for them through the use of fear and demagoguery. The attack on t'chalas father, and the theft of the vibratium are two examples of that. It's also playing out an example of how extremism is pushed to a limit in conditions like these. People let people take control who would normally have no right to through the use of fear. At the end, it shows that those ideas that bring issues like the one of killmongers end up being a tragedy. Either for the people involved or for the state itself. With them opening up and allowing the global world to benefit, you get the idea that ethnocentric and extremist views are something that when we all work together they can fade entirely. [Sp] not only that, but with the death of killmonger, it shows that the ideas present in the leadership of countries like those would rather die than be forced to coexist. It is a roundabout way of explaining and expressing views.[/sp] I got literally all of this from only watching it once. If you want to misrepresent something to the point of showing gross misunderstanding, pick a better film to do so because this was clear enough that I think even a naked mole rat would understand it.
That's just the natural bias of Hollywood and the American audience wanting recognizable movie stars as opposed to Joe Whofromwhere??? and Lady WhatsherfacefromGhana. Almost every country with a sufficiently large film industry will do this; Bollywood doesn't import Tom Cruise for their action movies, they have their own pantheon of movie stars to choose from that audiences want to see. China doesn't bring in Hollywood's who's who for their newest production, their domestic market has plenty of popular and familiar names. Sure, it'd be authentic if the production had actually cast actors local to the approximate setting, i.e. Africans (black or otherwise), but that's something I would expect out of a film destined for the art house circuit, made by "serious" filmmakers who view their craft as an expressive art. Expecting that out of the typical summer blockbuster is asking too much out of a profit-driven greedy shithole like Hollywood that knows that domestic US ticket sales will go up 25x if the star of their new hot film is Chadwick Boseman instead of Mr. David Hervieu from Burundi*. Plus, Hollywood has been overtly racist since forever, and in recent years pressure has been increasing for Hollywood to unfuck itself and put more non-white and non-hetero actors and actresses on-screen instead of the traditional wall of straight white men and women with occasional the pigeonholed black actor/actress who's sufficiently silent enough on the pervasive racism in the system. It may not be the "epitome of tolerance and diversity and representation" but for a famously terrible system like Hollywood it's a step forward. And when the retarded toddler succeeds in pooping in the potty instead of taking a shit on the hallway carpet, everyone throws a big party to encourage further advancement. * That's an actual dude somewhere in Burundi, btw. I went into Google Maps and zoomed in on a city and then looked up a random business' website, and he was listed as the bossman on the public contact page. I've been specifically vague about where he's actually from because I'm not trying to randomly dox this guy.
Wakanda, even at the very start of the film, is a diverse multicultural state made up of multiple different tribes. Just because they're all the same skin color doesn't make them a single ethnicity or nation, you tool.
Always hilarious to see this coming from people where what they get depends on their personal popularity.
What he's saying is the women he works with should be paid the same as himself rather than they be paid more fairly based on their ability and brand as an actor. It's an important distinction. I also suspect such a pay gap between male and female actors has more to do with the fact that women in general are less likely to ask for promotions and pay raises for various reasons.
In acting they have agents to do that for them tho.
This sounds just like a quip I've seen time and time again from 4chan which literally bares no relevance on actor's work and pay.
He says equal pay but in my eyes in depends on their quality of acting, if it's shit then the pay shouldn't be the same, if it's good, then yeah, I wouldn't pay someone more or less based on whether they're male or female, that's just dumb, I'd base it on actual fucking skill, because otherwise you could be paying both the same but either side does less work but equality is there at least or some shit.
You don't get a promotion or raise if you're an actor, you get a contract for that job, lmao.
That's based on subjective evaluations, which is pretty one the biggest area where bias rears its head.
You're right, I didn't think of that. I still think it would affect it somewhat. I can't imagine they wouldn't be involved at all in the negotiating process.
I would have imagined it would go without saying but I guess it needs to be said, reading some of these replies; the negotiation for billing in a movie for performers is nothing at all like the salary or hourly negotations for being hired at Burger King, Home Depot, or MIcrosoft. The conventional wisdom regarding the "gender pay gap" doesn't really apply, or if it does only tangentially.
The whole point of Wakanda is it's a federation of five tribes, each with different traditions, language, and religion, so it's about as much an ethnostate as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the idea of a "white" ethnostate but "white" people don't typically share the same religion, culture, language, or traditions.
Although a fair number of actors on black panther are actually from africa? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupita_Nyong'o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danai_Gurira https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Duke plus a few more in more minor roles.
Because it's finally a mainstream movie where black people can go to the theater, and seem themselves represented. Look at every other movie, and tell me the white person to PoC ratio. When you're one of those people, it hurts. Wakanda is a stage, a "metaphor" to make a movie featuring mostly black talent (including the director and writers) and give those black people in the audience representation they'll be (and were and are) very happy to see. Also, how was the African culture represented in the film caricatured? When I saw the film, it seemed to take researched inspiration from various African cultures in a respectful way. I admit I did not research this myself, but if you know something about how they caricatured African culture, feel free. It's not some epitome of tolerance, or even diverse in and of itself. But it created diversity in the industry. It created racial diversity of the movies you hear and talk about. Instead of every movie being all about white people with an occasional non-white person, now there's a movie about black people, and made even for black people. I don't feel like you can watch that movie and not think that the people made that movie without thinking about how good it's going to feel for the black community to see it, right down to the plot where Kilmonger's motivation is totally justified and reflective.
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