Originally published July 9, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
Neil Calloway is unimpressed with new revelations this week…
Friday saw an interview with Emma Stone published, where she admitted that some of her male co-stars had taken pay cuts so that she received an equal salary to them.
Now, I’d happily appear in a film alongside Emma Stone for the price of a bag of chips and a couple of pints, but I’m not a major Hollywood star. After we’ve pored over her filmography and worked out who did and who didn’t take a lower salary based on our own personal prejudices, it’s worth having a look at that statement again. It would be easy to pat them all on the back and hand them a “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt, but instead of doing that, I was left thinking that far from lowering their own wage and reinforcing the pay gap, they should have just insisted Stone got paid the same rate as they were initially offered.
With Wonder Woman’s success at the box office we’re going to get a glut of female led action films in cinemas (well done to the producers of the forthcoming Tomb Raider reboot who will be ahead of the curve on that one), we need to make sure that the stars of those films aren’t being cheated out of what they would be earning if they were men. Jyn Erso and Rey from the recent Star Wars films and Wonder Woman are at least as interesting as their male counterparts, and the people who portray them should get at least the same money.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to say “it’s 2017, the gender pay gap shouldn’t exist.” but that doesn’t mean it’s any less true just because it’s a cliché. Marxist film academics (there are more than you’d think out there) often claim that Hollywood is an important – perhaps the most important arm of the machine that attempts to ensure American hegemony (and I’m still not sure if that’s pronounced with a soft or hard G). If that were true – and I tend to think that if it is, it’s more by accident than design – then surely they should help project what an equal society the US is by paying women the same as men.
It’s depressing that men even have to lower their salary so that Emma Stone can get parity. Next time some A-list star is negotiating his pay cheque for some movie, he shouldn’t say “yeah pay me a but less so we’re all equal.” He should say “pay her more so we’re all equal.” Then maybe he’ll get a pat on the back and a T-shirt.
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
