Having absolutely no actual knowledge of what the world of being a stunt person is about, I always assumed that the criteria for getting a gig was the ability to perform the stunt plus some sufficiently close appearance to whomever the stunt was for. If you were replacing the female lead, you would be a female. If the lead was a black woman, the stunt double would be a black woman.
But Deven MacNair said her most risky move has been speaking out against “wigging,” the age-old practice of stuntmen donning wigs and women’s clothes to double for actresses. And she’s done more than just complain – she alerted her union and filed an EEOC complaint. She was accompanied to the event by her attorney, Brenda Feigen, who’s trying to get more stuntwomen to come forward to file a class-action lawsuit.
Is there a dearth of women willing to risk their lives and limb, thus forcing stuntmen to wear women’s dresses?
“There are qualified people of every ethnic group and gender,” said Black Panther stuntwoman Janeshia Adams-Ginyard. “Wigging should not be taking place.”
But it’s not just putting a wig on a guy.
“It’s blackface, but they call it paint down,” MacNair said.
“It’s going on every week,” Shaffer said. “It’s the return of the minstrel-era blackface. The rightful owner of that job didn’t get it, or didn’t even get a phone call.”
And this is where a bad thing goes bad. Stunt people aren’t the stars of the show, but the support staff. It’s not that they don’t perform a vital function, but they’re fungible. If there are qualified black women stunt people available to do a job calling for a black female stunt person, then it makes no business sense to hire a white guy, or even a white woman, to do the job. Hire the person who will best, and with the least unnecessary “fixing,” perform the function.
But it’s not blackface. Movies, by definition, are pretense and illusion. Spoiler alert: Chadwick Boseman does not actually have super powers. He’s an actor. It’s a role. So stunt people wear make-up to make them appear more like the person for whom they’re doing stunts? Who knew?
Adams-Ginyard, who like Shaffer is African-American, said that painted-down stuntmen are clearly visible to everyone on the set. “How many guys did this guy pass and not a single person said a word? Hair, makeup, wardrobe – nobody said a word. There’s the problem. So many people don’t want to make waves, but when you are silent, you are profiting the guilty. We have to be leaders. We can’t be followers. Let’s talk about the change that needs to happen.”
Profiting the guilty? Guilty of what, working? Calling it “blackface” could be a cynical ploy to play upon the outrage over racism to accomplish the end game of getting more work and, of course, more money.
Added veteran stuntwoman Sharon Shaffer: “It’s our right to do a job that was created for us. It’s inexcusable and wrong. Every time you lose a job, you didn’t get the opportunity to grow into the woman you were meant to be.”
Oh cool, a totally new “right,” the deprivation of which deprives you of the opportunity to “grow into the woman you were meant to be.” Except nobody owes you a job, and your growth is your business. But then, what exactly does “growth” mean?
Wigging, she said, “robs us of our pension and health, robs us of the experience we need to get the next job.”
What’s wrong with the argument that women want to work just like men, that where a stunt is done for a woman, denying the job to a woman means she doesn’t get the money, the pension, the experience that she otherwise would? There is nothing wrong with making this about basic employment discrimination, failing to use women to do stunts for women, black women to do stunts for black women, when they exist, have the skills and are the best choice for the job.
There is no justification for denying the work to the person best suited for it. But keep the argument real rather than cries of “blackface” or some non-existent right to womanly growth. It’s just a job, but there’s nothing wrong with calling out casting the wrong people when the right people want to earn a living, be successful, as well.
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Along with the “non-existent right to womanly growth”, there’s the completely idiotic idea that “the rightful owner of that job” is someone other than the person cast for that job.
There may well be a viable employment discrimination claim in there, not to mention some serious nepotism, but they lose the force of their argument when they start claiming “rightful ownership.”
Sure–on its face, they’re stating a valid complaint despite themselves. Which makes me question how accurate their underlying assumptions are, as my assumptions (to the extent I’ve thought about the subject at all) would be the same as yours: the studios/directors/producers/whoever would choose the available, capable* stunt person who most closely resembles the real actor in question.
I’d assume this because making movies is business, and controlling costs helps you make a profit. It’s going to cost less (hair, makeup, wardrobe, etc.) to make one woman look like another woman than it is to make a man look like a woman. It’s going to cost less to make one black woman look like another black woman than it is to make a white woman look like a black woman (Rachel Dolezal notwithstanding). And so forth.
So, since this is business, and there’s a financial incentive to do what these folks are demanding, why aren’t the studios (et al.) doing it? Sure, it’s possible that *ism outweighs the financial incentive. But maybe there are also issues in demographics or capabilities of available stunt people. Maybe, for example, the folks who make movies haven’t yet divorced themselves from the reality that men are, on average, stronger than women. Or maybe the issue isn’t nearly so widespread as they suggest.
And therein lies both the cause of action and potential defense. These are the issues to be decided.
I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the cost of makeup and a wig is low compared to hiring an inexperienced stunt person at union wages.
The old experience conundrum rears its ugly madeup, bewigged head.
How long until all the stuntmen come out as gender-fluid?
I thought about that too when writing this. Why do they hate men in wigs and dresses?
Goddamned Hollywood fascists. The ABA House of Delegates shall hear of this!
I really think this is more an issue the Marshal of the Supreme Court needs to take up.
Ms. MacNair is just sayin’ howdy to her demise: computer animation never gets whiny or hysterical unless it’s told to.
Tech is a bitch. Or a bastard. Or whatever I’m allowed to say.
I was also flabbergasted by the sheer ignorance of the “blackface” comments. “Painting down” is a makeup technique designed to give the players the ordinary appearance of a person with darker skin tones. In contrast, “blackface” usually was employed to present a mocking, exaggerated and completely obvious caricature of a black person per standing minstrel-show stereotypes of the day. These are completely different things. People who confuse them are simply demonstrating that they have no idea what “blackface” was or why it was offensive. far from being “woke,” they don’t even understand what an average old white guy understands.
Mel Brooks taught me about wigging when I was kid, though I did not know that’s what it was called.
“You idiots! These are not them! You’ve captured their stunt doubles!”
Still makes me laugh.
If Mel Brooks made a movie today, he would be burned at the stake.
Done by proxy in the 2,000 Year Old Man–he dated Joan of Arc, and she got cooked. I remember he felt bad.
But if anyone could turn that in to a funny scene, it’d be him.
Damn it, Greenfield!
SHG–Did you purposely do this on Plessy v. Ferguson day?
Pure coincidence.
SHG,
Thinking of blackface and Plessy. Just for fun, your readers should pull up a photo of Homer Plessy.
He was seven eighths white. It was only when he told the conductor that he was of a mixed race that thing went south, so to speak.
That got me thinking. Is there such a thing as “white face?”
All the best.
RGK
There is. It’s not pretty.
Sister Olivette was the nicest nun at Our Lady of Sorrows.
Sure
https://youtu.be/l_LeJfn_qW0