There's a popular meme on social media that says, 'Stop imagining fake scenarios and hurting your own feelings.' We'd post a screenshot of one here, but most of them are just that text, and that text alone, so you are welcome to Google it.
In fact, we encourage you to Google it, save one of the memes to your phone or laptop, and share it on social media every time you see some of the most privileged people in the world pretending they are 'oppressed' or 'marginalized.' Because this kind of thinking needs us to be mocked.
Which brings us to Jodie Foster. Now, make no mistake, this writer loves Jodie Foster, the actress and director. She's brilliant in so many of her roles, starting out as a child in Taxi Driver, through her Oscar-winning performances in The Accused and Silence of the Lambs, and even in many of the films she directed, such as her directorial debut in the underrated movie Little Man Tate.
Foster is Hollywood royalty, and she deserves every bit of that for her talent.
So why, we must ask ourselves, is she still pretending that women are marginalized victims in Hollywood in 2024?
Jodie Foster says the $1.4 billion success of #Barbie has changed everything in Hollywood.
— Variety (@Variety) January 19, 2024
"In the old days, they saw women as a risk. Not sure why they saw us as a risk. 50% of the population! That thinking has changed now. With a big success like ‘Barbie,’ they gave Greta… pic.twitter.com/zYCRBMUyOe
Here is Foster's full quote on the subject:
'I've had the beauty of being able to be in the business since the '60s, '70s, ’80s, ’90s and so on. The progression or bettering of our audiences translates into a kind of new thinking about who our marginalized voices are. In the old days, they saw women as a risk. Not sure why they saw us as a risk — 50% of the population! That thinking has changed now. With a big success like ‘Barbie,’ they gave Greta Gerwig, who had made two mostly independent films, they gave her the keys to the kingdom and said ‘We’re going to give you our most important child’ and all the money to support it. That’s new for women. I hope that continues.'
Wait a tick. Did she actually just say 'bettering of our audiences'? Good Lord, the smug, superiority complex is so very real.
But let's stick with her point that women were viewed as a 'risk.' Hey, Jodie Foster. Have you met ... Jodie Foster? You were never a risk, nor were women. Let's talk for a minute about women actors and directors. There has been a 'Best Actress' category since the very first Academy Awards. Those awards have been won -- multiple times -- by similar Hollywood royalty: Katherine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Olivia de Havilland, Gloria Swanson, Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Elizabeth Taylor, Sally Field and so many more.
But maybe Foster was talking only about women directors. OK, let's look at that. Foster herself directed Little Man Tate more than 32 years ago. We'll grant that in the '40s, '50s, and '60s, women weren't really directing a lot of movies (or at least being awarded for them). But the first woman nominated for Best Director was Lina Wertmüller in 1976, when Foster was 14 years old. Since then, women have been nominated for the award eight times and won three times. Not huge numbers, no, but hardly indicative of women being blackballed from directing.
If we step forward to the 21st century, women have been handed the keys to billion-dollar cinema franchises long before Barbie. Kathleen Kennedy at Disney, for example (whether she is destroying Disney and Star Wars is a topic for another article).
In short, Jodie Foster, the only place women are seen as a 'risk' in Hollywood, especially over the last 40 years, is in your brain.
What is a woman, Jodie?
— Jules! (@sparkly_jules1) January 20, 2024
Yes, let's start with that very basic question. Foster, who came out as gay in 2013, has long been a supporter of transgenders. So, which 'women' are a risk? Do Lilly and Lana Wachowski (formerly the Wachowski brothers) count as women who are risky?
It starts to get complicated playing identity politics when you don't know what some of those identities even mean, doesn't it?
No one saw women as a risk. Why was Alien/Aliens made if women were seen as risk? What about Bring it On, Mean Girls, Bridesmaids, Thelma and Louise, Girl Interrupted, Erin Brockovich, Clueless, 9to5, A League of Their Own, Now and Then, Steel Magnolias, Practical Magic...
— idrawrobots (@idrawrobots) January 19, 2024
Man, look at all those 'risky' movies that were made. Hollywood is so stunning and brave. We really should worship them.
I swear these people think it’s perpetually 1970 https://t.co/RBaz6L4pyu
— Good Tweetman (@Goodtweet_man) January 20, 2024
Life is so much easier when you can live in more luxury than 99.9 percent of all Americans but still claim to be a victim at the drop of a hat.
A movie with a woman as the main character?!
— Chad Felix Greene 🇮🇱 (@chadfelixg) January 20, 2024
What kinda future world are we living in?!! https://t.co/xlBbAYwQoX
LOL. Next thing you know, they'll be telling us to eat bugs because they're good for us. Oh, wait...
So this, basically https://t.co/u24l12dp6S pic.twitter.com/O2JfA7BNxl
— Tex Orandi 🇨🇿 Tex Credendi (@textexantex) January 19, 2024
You had to know we wouldn't write this article without a South Park reference.
Foster won a best actress Oscar 35 years ago but apparently needed Barbie to convince her that women can be in movies or something https://t.co/cGkSSBjr3A
— Keith Maniac, from Guatemala (@from_maniac) January 20, 2024
Congrats to Barbie for being the first movie with a woman https://t.co/qQi43P5bh4 pic.twitter.com/dQbiUmtXsK
— Happy Mantis Shrimp 🦐 (@HappyMantShrimp) January 20, 2024
AND the first movie directed by a woman. Apparently. Don't forget that.
“Our most important child”, the MOST important movie for women EVER.
— ❤️🔥Unicorn T. Fren🇻🇦 (@UnicornFren) January 19, 2024
I am yet again BEGGING on my hands and knees that women STOP acting like feeble-minded children. https://t.co/1JvDHr3MWO
Ah, that's a good point. We don't want to forget that. Barbie was very successful at the box office. But to call it your 'most important child'? Way to negate your own entire career, Foster.
Old enough to remember the ‘90s when Barbie was still invented by a man and had such outlandish and unrealistic “proportions” that this “male fantasy” was a threat to womankind everywhere. https://t.co/xlvvUGr5gW
— EyeOnDenver (@youreyeondenver) January 20, 2024
No, don't you see? Barbie WAS bad. Barbie NOW is good. It's easy when you play by Calvinball rules.
just think, someday there might even be female CEOs https://t.co/cxyqdshYfS
— Anime Kaiser Willy II (@praesto04) January 20, 2024
OK, you just stop right there. That is going WAY too far. LOL.
Hopkins still vindicated. https://t.co/Iv4zkkwgCD pic.twitter.com/oh2gCVgHii
— YWNBAW_0451 (@YWNBAW_0451) January 20, 2024
Anthony Hopkins may be on to something. Then again, he's an actor, so we probably shouldn't listen to him.
DAMN YOU, PARADOXES.
Why do we insist on fighting this fake battle every single time a female-led movie is successful? https://t.co/Qs1wAlyupq
— Some Random Conservatarian (@violacesario_) January 20, 2024
Yep. They said the same thing when Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director for The Hurt Locker way back in 2008. The cycle of imagined oppression must always continue, even though it was broken long ago.
For our sake, we just hope Foster can make more movies we love to watch. We're not that confident though. She stars in the new season of True Detective on HBO, but it is so cloyingly woke as to be unwatchable.
Oh well. We'll always have her in Bugsy Malone. Now that was a great movie.
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