Things got weird on Feminist Twitter today when news broke that actress Elizabeth Banks mistakenly called out Steven Spielberg for never directing a movie with a female lead, despite the fact that he directed “The Color Purple.” When an audience member pointed that out to Banks, she reportedly just moved on.
What to do.
The woke feminist wants to support Banks’ larger point about sexism in Hollywood, but cannot be complicit in White Feminism’s systematic erasure of women of color.
In fairness, contemporary feminism is largely governed by the country’s most privileged women (college graduates living in urban coastal enclaves), an ironic reality when you consider how much time they spend railing on others for failing to acknowledge their own privilege. It also insulates them from the struggles of women living in poverty, be they members of any race. And the ratio of Spielberg’s female-to-male leads is noticeable. But isn’t it fair, though, to assume men are inclined to tell stories about men? Honestly, that’s a debate I’m not sure I even care enough about to engage.
Plus, to be realistic, if Spielberg were regularly directing films with female leads, feminists would gripe about his taking jobs away from women and wrongfully imposing a male perspective on female stories.
That Banks charged full steam ahead into a fallacious argument that overlooked a glaring highlight of Spielberg’s career (“Sorry, Steven. I don’t mean to call your ass out but it’s true,” she snarked), probably says more about her research skills than anything else. Although I’m also inclined to see it as an example of the habit feminists have of peddling ill-informed opinions as unimpeachable fact. If Banks’ detractors in this case were not her liberal peers, I suspect her inaccuracy would not be getting much attention, as is the case with the multitude of myths progressive feminists routinely frame as fact.
And that all of this debate is raging over a comment made by a rich actress during an awards ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hilton should tell you more about the priorities of feminist Twitter pundits than anything else.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
