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
You may be on yo something. I’m male and think sex scenes drastically slow the pace. We know what sex is Hollywood. You don’t need to shoot every second of it! Plus if I want porn I’ll watch the real thing!
Whores will do what whores do.
A man spots a beautiful woman in a fancy hotel and approaches her saying, “You are one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. If I were to offer you one million dollars would you sleep with me?” The woman thinks for a moment and then smiles and says, “Sir, I most certainly would.” The man then says to her, “Would you sleep with me for a hundred dollars?” Woman is outraged and says, “No sir! What do you think I am?” The man replies, “We have already established that. Now we are just haggling over the price.”
How many movies have borrowed that exchange, intentionally or not?
Esther chooses to obey King Xerxes’ command to sleep with him rather than refuse and risk retribution (see Esther 2:12-14). For whatever reason, the Biblical narrative never comments on Esther’s failure to take a stand for sexual purity.
And how easily we assign sin to those whom Scripture does not, and which here indicates that the author is ignorant of the fact that concubines were wives, (Gn. 25:1; cf. 1Ch. 1:32; Gn. 30:4; cf. Gn. 35:22; 2Sam. 16:21, 22, cf. 2Sam. 20:3) if as a second class, and going into the king was not that of fornication, but consummation of marriage. How then is Esther guilty of sexual impurity? Does the author really think Esther never was married to the king? Indeed "the Biblical narrative never comments on Esther’s failure to take a stand for sexual purity" because there was none, regardless of an author who reads it into the text. F.B. Myer states,
Esther’s Hebrew name meant Myrtle. It could not have been easy for her to retain her sweet simplicity amid the corruptions of her time, but her Persian name means “a star,” as though she were a garden enclosed, encircled by the atmosphere of the divine purity and protection. We must not judge Esther by our own standards, but by the custom of her time. Each of these young girls was considered to be married to the king, was kept under his roof, and was his wife of a lower rank.
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