Fiction needs a basis in reality. Exercising non-fiction muscles once in a while benefits an active imagination, channeling creative energies as it focuses on a subject. So Serious Saturdays will be an active place for critical essays or writing about reality in the context of real events - even when it is not written on Saturdays.
Type: Commentary
Stories Told at the Oscars
It seemed a good idea to wait about a week to see what would rise, howling, from the bowels of cyberspace before posting any comment about Patricia Arquette's acceptance speech. It also helped to have some time to think about what aspect I could take and focus on, pick at, and expand on.
So here it is: Patricia Arquette is not a writer. Her speech in front of the Oscar crowd was polarizing, but her speeches behind the scenes were, apparently, even less clear.
Both the Washington Post and USA TODAY agree that people were angry. Why? Because in her call for equal pay she allegedly didn't include LGBT people, people of color, or women who could not or did not birth their own children. So individuals supporting these groups are voicing their frustrations that they weren't included in her generalized acceptance speech, in which she called for equal pay for women, but only named certain examples of what a woman could be. What she knew a woman could be, because she has been there.
Let's back up for a moment. What is "equal pay"? Is it everyone across every line of work getting the same amount of pay for the same hours worked? Is it an average of what every worker in your field is getting, regardless of talent or time put in? It's time to start talking about what we mean by "equal pay" when we talk about "equal pay". After all, we all know that wages give a skewed value to a person's time, energy, and labor anyway.
Then there's her examples. To get an idea about the types of things she was saying after thanking people, watch some of her onstage Oscar speech on Youtube.
Then watch some of her life story here, also on Youtube.
Then watch her speech again. It only takes one and a half minutes; I listened to it about ten times while playing a game.
She made people angry because of her narrow examples. Can you see why she could be so passionate about these certain examples: "beautiful, power nominees" in referring to colleagues working the same category, "women who gave birth to their children" like she did while raising her kids as a single mother; "to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation" is self-explanatory by virtue of "every", "taxpayer", and "citizen", men and women who are working, paying citizens of this nation, much like herself, These groups are some of the things comprising her identity. They also describe the character she plays in her award-winning "Boyhood" role. They are included in the story she can tell, because, again, it is her own experience. How can she speak for someone else's experience, one she has not had, with the same passion that fueled these words on Oscar night?
Her speech does not end there. She addresses all the groups listed above when she declares, "We have fought for everybody else's equal rights". Immediately some may think - some have already cried out about - of those identified groups of the 20th century that conducted large movements to claim or demonstrate for the "equal rights" of everyone in that group, which is another can of worms like "equal pay". What is equal? What does count as rights? What should count as rights? It is all very vague. Nevertheless, this is a controversial sentence because Arquette seems to have made two distinct camps, of the birthmothers and taxpayers and etc., and of "everyone else". Who could possibly lay outside of the first category she created? Someone outside of her own life experience, that's who. Someone whose story she has little hope of capturing, illustrating, or portraying. Someone for whom she cannot truly speak.
In the last line of the speech she states, "It's our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America." "Our" is the group she identifies with, while "wage equality" is the place where the equal pay debate enters the speech. I have already gone through the problems its meanings present. But the crux of her speech is here, when she says "equal rights for women" in the U.S. But does she use the "and" conjunction to separate the issue of "wage equality" and "equal rights" - does she consider them two separate issues? In the context of a speech made by a working mother who played a working mother in a role for which the actress won an award, she appears to consider the wage and the rights issues invariably intertwined.
So she isn't a writer. Words are not her forte.
But as an actress she is a storyteller, and what better role to play than one that you identify with in some way, whether it is a way you have felt - even once - or a state of being, a fantasy you had when you were a child, or your idea of what a villain could be. Her presentation of a story like her story, but not her exactly her story, should speak better than her Oscar words, if not louder, because of the power of storytelling.
Let's back up for a moment. What is "equal pay"? Is it everyone across every line of work getting the same amount of pay for the same hours worked? Is it an average of what every worker in your field is getting, regardless of talent or time put in? It's time to start talking about what we mean by "equal pay" when we talk about "equal pay". After all, we all know that wages give a skewed value to a person's time, energy, and labor anyway.
Then there's her examples. To get an idea about the types of things she was saying after thanking people, watch some of her onstage Oscar speech on Youtube.
Then watch some of her life story here, also on Youtube.
Then watch her speech again. It only takes one and a half minutes; I listened to it about ten times while playing a game.
She made people angry because of her narrow examples. Can you see why she could be so passionate about these certain examples: "beautiful, power nominees" in referring to colleagues working the same category, "women who gave birth to their children" like she did while raising her kids as a single mother; "to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation" is self-explanatory by virtue of "every", "taxpayer", and "citizen", men and women who are working, paying citizens of this nation, much like herself, These groups are some of the things comprising her identity. They also describe the character she plays in her award-winning "Boyhood" role. They are included in the story she can tell, because, again, it is her own experience. How can she speak for someone else's experience, one she has not had, with the same passion that fueled these words on Oscar night?
Her speech does not end there. She addresses all the groups listed above when she declares, "We have fought for everybody else's equal rights". Immediately some may think - some have already cried out about - of those identified groups of the 20th century that conducted large movements to claim or demonstrate for the "equal rights" of everyone in that group, which is another can of worms like "equal pay". What is equal? What does count as rights? What should count as rights? It is all very vague. Nevertheless, this is a controversial sentence because Arquette seems to have made two distinct camps, of the birthmothers and taxpayers and etc., and of "everyone else". Who could possibly lay outside of the first category she created? Someone outside of her own life experience, that's who. Someone whose story she has little hope of capturing, illustrating, or portraying. Someone for whom she cannot truly speak.
In the last line of the speech she states, "It's our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America." "Our" is the group she identifies with, while "wage equality" is the place where the equal pay debate enters the speech. I have already gone through the problems its meanings present. But the crux of her speech is here, when she says "equal rights for women" in the U.S. But does she use the "and" conjunction to separate the issue of "wage equality" and "equal rights" - does she consider them two separate issues? In the context of a speech made by a working mother who played a working mother in a role for which the actress won an award, she appears to consider the wage and the rights issues invariably intertwined.
So she isn't a writer. Words are not her forte.
But as an actress she is a storyteller, and what better role to play than one that you identify with in some way, whether it is a way you have felt - even once - or a state of being, a fantasy you had when you were a child, or your idea of what a villain could be. Her presentation of a story like her story, but not her exactly her story, should speak better than her Oscar words, if not louder, because of the power of storytelling.
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