Yesterday, Variety posted a video interview with Kristen Stewart at the Sundance Film Festival. The question posed to the 25-year-old actress was one pertaining to gender equality in the film industry: “A lot of people that have come through have been like ‘there’s a lack of great roles for women,’ or ‘there aren’t enough female directors.’ Do you feel like it’s changing, though?”
But that wasn’t the subject Variety originally conveyed. The website uploaded a snippet of Stewart’s video interview that did not include this question, and the original interview’s headline suggested that Stewart was speaking about the industry’s disgusting diversity problem rather than its repulsive sexism problem. Variety has since published a correction and uploaded a version of the interview containing the original question.
“Any business that’s so old, is gonna have a somewhat narrow view. And it’s expanding, quickly, on so many levels,” Stewart said. She then pulled something of a Macklemore: she recognized the gravity of the problem (as she’s done in the past), but openly acknowledged her position of privilege, and thus, her difficulty speaking about said struggle: “It’s hard for me to speak to that — it’s awkward — because I’m so fucking lucky. I’m so stimulated and driven and not bored. I have something in front of me all the time, so it sounds weird for me to sit around and be like ‘It’s not fair!'” Stewart said. “Instead of sitting around and complaining about that, do something. Go write something, go do something for yourself,” she urged. “The subject is just so prevalently everywhere right now, and it’s boring.”
It is definitely refreshing when someone checks their privilege honestly before engaging with an issue with empathy and respect, but having “something in front of [her] all the time” isn’t exactly a result of “luck.” It’s certainly contingent upon her talent and drive, but she’s able to have such option and agency in making compelling films because she is a well known actress whose attachment attracts competitive funding. In addition to being thin and white, she’s also young — which means that there are far more complex characters available for her to play.
And it’s easy to become both fatigued and frustrated when you feel a very important issue has become reduced to a point of buzzy dialogue rather than an actionable cause. But calling its prevalence in the media “boring” isn’t going to cut it, either. Issues of representation and workplace inequality becoming regular fixtures in the mass media shouldn’t need to be endured, they should be celebrated as a necessary step towards real change. “A little less conversation, a little more action,” is a good reminder, but not at the expense of the steam women have been building.
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Text Emily Manning
Image via Variety