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Lex Jurgen - August 1, 2017
The cool thing in Hollywood is being a female producer and declaring you want to only hire women. Men who try this get fired, sued and run out of town. Context is everything in discrimination.
Women like Reese Witherspoon and Blake Lively who are both extremely white and rich are moving into producing as a means to break through the glass ceiling they've never personally experienced. They do so by hiring Nicole Kidman to star in their productions. She's even whiter and richer. It's an odd exercise that a couple hundred years ago would've taken place on a plantation with mint juleps and slaves dressed as trees off to stage left.
Following on the heels of HBO's Big Little Lies, produced in part by Witherspoon, Blake Lively has taken up the adventurous task of adapting The Husband's Secret, a book from the very same author about a group of middle aged, but decidedly still sexual and whip-smart women surrounded by loser men. It's the female version of an Ernest Goes to Jail reboot. Though with bigger budgets and hip alt-music soundtracks 40-somethings imagine themselves listening to while running their disruptive ad agencies.
Says Lively of The Husband's Secret:
"It's a little bit pulpy; that makes it really fun. And there are a bunch of women at the center of it—strong women, flawed women. Any day you employ women, to me, is a good day."
Black Americans, who are statistically far more put upon than your average seven-figure salaried Brentwood living celebrity, wouldn't say the same quote out loud about their demographic checkbox. It sounds cringe-inducing coming off the tongue. Maybe Spike Lee. But everybody hates Spike Lee.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. White women are the largest single demographic in the country, with the largest number of college and professional school graduates, yet can say without challenge how they're the most put upon minority. That's a huge advantage. If we all accepted that Leonardo DiCaprio had trouble getting laid simply because he said so, the universe would explode in a reverse big bang. The infinite can handle only so much anti-matter.
Photo credit: Getty Images
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