This was from the next movie after Desperado:
Posted on 03/03/2021 8:21:18 AM PST by SeekAndFind
During her appearance on the Armchair Expert podcast, actress Salma Hayek opened up about a traumatic experience on the set of her breakout film, Desperado. After Hayek went through six auditions and a screen test, securing her role as the female lead, the studio added something that wasn’t included in the original script—a sex scene:
I had a really, really hard time with that. . . . I started to sob: “I don’t know that I can do it, I don’t know that I can do it. . . .” I was not letting go of the towel, and they would try to make me laugh and things, and take it off for two seconds, and then [making crying noise] I started crying again. But we got through it.
Hayek is not the first movie star to face sexual coercion. In the entertainment industry, the pressure placed on actors — and women in particular — to undress or sexually act out for the camera is tragically commonplace. In the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s downfall, actor abuse has come into sharper focus, but the problem is far from solved.
The blame game
When evaluating a situation like Salma Hayek’s, it’s easy to simplify matters so as to lay the blame at the actress’ feet: “Well, she shouldn’t have done that.” The reality, however, is more complex, and Scripture can help us better discern this complexity. Consider the following stories:
Each of these situations shows men abusing their positions of authority and using women as pawns. And in each situation, God, through Holy Scripture, refuses to simply point the finger of blame first — or solely — at the women involved.
Coming back to Salma Hayek’s situation in Desperado: ignoring the blatantly coercive actions of those in control gives the appearance, if not the reality, of victim blaming. We can fault actresses all day long for caving in to pressure. They are, after all, moral agents just like the rest of us, culpable for their actions. Nevertheless, we fail to mirror our Savior’s heart for undeserving sinners when we refuse to even acknowledge the amount of coercion some actresses receive.
The ugly, the bad, and the good
We could lay the blame at the feet of the film’s producers. The studio executives who threaten and bully and intimidate share a hefty portion of the guilt. It is their position of authority and influence, leveraged against those under them, that has created what TIME Magazine has called “a tradition of objectifying female characters.”
And yet, merely blaming studio executives is still simplistic. Megalomaniacs like Harvey Weinstein are easy targets, but the obvious bad guys aren’t the only ones playing the role of bad guy. Sometimes even the good guys wear black hats (so to speak).
In the case of Desperado, Hayek shares how director Robert Rodriguez and his then-wife, Elizabeth Avellán, “were amazing” and “so magnificent” in how they didn’t rush her during the bed scene. But as two of the four producers on the film, Rodriguez and Avellán could have used their positions with even greater efficacy, fighting against the inclusion of the sex scene in the first place (which they apparently did not).
Even Antonio Banderas, whom Hayek says “was an absolute gentleman and super nice,” contributed to the problem. He treated the gratuitous sex scene as no big deal, which only exacerbated Hayek’s anxiety: “[F]or him, it was like nothing, and that scared me…and I was so embarrassed that I was crying.”
Furthermore, says Hayek, Banderas “was like, ‘Oh, my God, you are making me feel terrible.’” So here is a woman distraught over the situation she’s been forced into, and her scene partner layers on the guilt (inadvertently, to be sure) by proclaiming how uncomfortable her discomfort is making him.
Suppliers and demanders
At this point, it might be tempting to proclaim a blanket condemnation on all “depraved entertainers” and leave it at that. But there’s one more guilty party whose involvement warrants examination. This participant, while less obvious, is no less culpable. It is the collective entity of the viewing audience. In other words, it’s moviegoers like you and me.
Films and shows with problematic content exist because of supply and demand. The entertainment industry is a money-making machine, and it gives us what we ask for. We demand and it supplies.
“Demand” may sound like an unfair description, especially for those of us who decry hypersexualized entertainment. But here’s the reality: when we financially support a piece of pop culture that objectifies its actors, we are perpetuating the very thing we say we deplore. We may fast forward through the sex scene, or close our eyes during the nudity, or use a filtering service to avoid the objectionable content, but we are failing to recognize our role as consumers. From an economic standpoint, there is no functional difference between begrudging patronage and willing patronage. Both actions communicate to Hollywood what we consider acceptable fare.
In the hard-hitting words of Christian film critic Steven D. Greydanus,
You can justify your lack of empathy, or even sympathy, for women working anywhere in the world by shrugging and saying “They shouldn’t be rolling around [in the mud] with pigs.” . . . Incidentally. If you watch movies or TV? You are creating the demand for “mud.” Yes, women have a choice, but so do you, and if you’re paying for it, and you are in one way or another, then you don’t get to shrug your shoulders about what goes on in that world as if it had nothing to do with you.
“More like this, please”
According to the parable of the Good Samaritan, actresses like Salma Hayek are our neighbors. Even if we don’t personally know them. Even if we simply pass by them on the other side of the movie screen. Even if we only pay them indirectly to entertain us.
But they are our neighbors. And we are called, not to condemn them like self-righteous Pharisees, but to love them in word, thought, and deed. And those deeds involve the tickets we buy, the media we purchase, and the shows we stream.
There’s a saying worth remembering: “Hit movies will only ever tell studios one thing: ‘More like this, please.’”
“More like this, please.” Is that what we want the creators of sexualized entertainment to hear from us?
Cap Stewart is the author of the curriculum Personal Purity Isn’t Enough: The Long-Forgotten Secret to Making Scriptural Entertainment Choices. As a cultural commentator, he has contributed to Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues (Zondervan Acad
There’s a saying worth remembering: “Hit movies will only ever tell studios one thing: ‘More like this, please.’”
Probably not as objectionable to them as they let on.
Give the people what they want.
Acting is just another form of prostitution. You sell yourself for money. Hayek is a beautiful woman and was highly paid to display her body on camera. She could have chosen another career path. Her father was an oil company executive and her mother an opera singer. She can’t claim she was forced into disreputable work in order to support her starving family.
My gripe is not sex scenes in themselves, profanity and other crudities. It’s that the material goes in front of kids.
Adults have forgotten about the kids in the audience.
All ‘R’ movies should have nekkid titties, its what they All used to have.
PG is for kids, leave R alone to show the nipple, soft porn.
Bring back the 79s movies!
This was from the next movie after Desperado:
Best scene, ever.
bread and circuses.....
They push the envelope nowadays, with nudity ajd profanity.
There was a time when bedroom scenes wouldn’t be shown. They might be hinted at, but not shown. An example is the movie ,”A Thousand Clowns,”,in which the woman love interest of the Jason Robards character was still there with him the next morning, but they never showed them in bed together. They didn’t explain why she was there the next morning, it was just implied she spent the night.
Or in Urban Cowboy, John Travolta went to the apartment of a lady, they had her open the door to her bedroom, and that was the end of the scene. It was pretty darn clear that they were going to go to bed together, but they didn’t show John and the lady in bed.
Cancelling sexual attraction is right up there with declaring a man is a woman. Sexual attraction is innate. It’s genetic. It’s hard wired.
But that never stopped a leftist from trying to corrupt it with their science denial...
Did Hayek cash her paycheck?
RE: Did Hayek cash her paycheck?
Of course. You don’t expect her to do it for free do you?
She claims she had a problem with the snake, too.
You are so right, and so sensible in your post.
Everyone of us is here as a result of hetero-sexual sex.
Sex is beautiful when 2 individuals love each other.
There is good sex and bad sex. The worst sex involves sadism.
I am much more disgusted watching people getting shot or stabbed in movies than a sex scene involving a hetero-sexual couple in love. And we have ratings system, so any R rated movie should be a warning to parents to keep children away.
My impression is that actual nudity in mainstream hollyweird movies is way down from a few decades ago. Desperado was in the mid 90s I think? Probably just doesn’t serve the purpose it used to with on demand free porn available to almost everyone.
Freegards
Audiences
As Mark Twain’s Duke said, “If that don’t fetch ‘em, then I don’t know Arkansaw”
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