Tuesday, 23 March 2010

John Nolte's outraged on behalf of topless women everywhere.

It goes without saying that John Nolte will write something like this:

Annually we are showered with Leftist films created by morally superior beings who lecture us on human rights, civil rights, feminism, lookism, racism and any other “ism” they can conceive, when in real life they’re the very worst in all of these departments.

He honestly believes that because some people on the left are sexist or racist, everyone on the right is morally superior despite, you know, supporting policies designed to protect the interests of white males. In this case, his ire is raised by a New York Post article about the casting call for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie:

The filmmakers sent out a casting call last week seeking “beautiful female fit models. Must be 5ft7in-5ft8in, size 4 or 6, no bigger or smaller. Age 18-25. Must have a lean dancer body. Must have real breasts. Do not submit if you have implants.” And they warn that there’ll be a “show and tell” day. To make sure LA talent scouts don’t get caught in a “booby trap,” potential lassies will have to undergo a Hollywood-style jiggle-your-jugs test and jog for judges.

Nolte is outraged on behalf of surgically-enhanced women everywhere:

This isn’t some sleazy porn peddler in the valley doing this, this is…Disney. DISNEY is going to subject and exploit young women desperate to be stars to the indignity of a booby ”show and tell.” DISNEY is going to have them jog in place for producers and casting agents in order to keep score of the bounciness of their breasts.

Not only is this a case of discrimination against women whose only crime was undergoing a dangerous surgical procedure in order to enhance their appeal to sexists like Nolte, it involves a particularly dehumanizing "booby 'show and tell'" in which woman will be asked to "jog in place for producers and casting agents in order to keep score of the bounciness of their breasts." How does he know this? It says so right in the actual, unexpurgated casting call:

Must be 5'7-5'8, Size four or six - no bigger or smaller. Age 18 to 25. Must have a lean dancer body. Must have real breasts. Do not submit if you have implants. This is a show and tell of costumes with the director and the producers. Plan on an entire day of trying on clothes and being photographed.

Sticklers might insist that the prepositional phrase "of costumes" modifies "show and tell," and that there's nothing in the casting call about actresses being asked to "jog in place" so producers and casting can "keep score of the bounciness of their breasts." Since it's not in the casting call, where did this idea of a "booby 'show and tell'" in which a parade of topless women jiggle only what the good Lord gave them come from? Where else?

The imagination of John Nolte.

The man can't even defend hypothetical women without undressing them in his mind. This isn't to say the casting call isn't sexist, because like most items relating to Hollywood and the female form, it clearly is. The point here, as usual, is that conservatives who like to think of themselves as morally superior to liberals when it comes to racial or gender equality always reveal themselves to be purveyors of the very ills they decry. In this respect, Nolte is no different than affirmative action opponents who offer, as proof that we live in a post-racial society, the fact that there's a nigger in the White House.*

*Which reminds me: I really ought to write about that lovely conversation one day.

Mar 23, 2010 3:52:19 PM | Feminism, Film, Politics

10 Comments

Ahistoricality

Actually, I think "the imagination of Cynthia Fagen" is the issue: Nolte doesn't add anything to her anatomical musings.

Posted by: Ahistoricality | Tuesday, 23 March 2010 at 04:15 PM

John Emerson

I did hear one guy say "Well, I guess I'll have to vote for the nigger". There are degrees.

Posted by: John Emerson | Tuesday, 23 March 2010 at 04:19 PM

Bob Reed

I wonder what aesthetic dictates that they "not have implants"? I would think that the stipulation, "lean dancer's body", would already disqualify women with cartoonish enhancements. And truthfully, I know not of this John Nolte fellow nor generally read the website he posts at.

Posted by: Bob Reed | Tuesday, 23 March 2010 at 09:53 PM

SEK

On the LGM-version of this post, the guy who writes my favorite television show explains the logic:

In this case, with the age also called out, it seems to be for an acting gig. They may well be trying to cast someone as a teenager or adolescent girl, too. You see, you want an actor over the age of 18 so you don’t run into the child labor protection rules that limit your shooting hours, but want them to look quite a bit younger, hence the slender build and smaller, ah, development.

Posted by: SEK | Tuesday, 23 March 2010 at 10:06 PM

Bob Reed

Ah, I see now. Thanks for the insight Scott.

Posted by: Bob Reed | Tuesday, 23 March 2010 at 10:17 PM

J Rodolfo

And the films is a period story after all, the female characters cannot look surgically modified. Or can they and am I just a detail-obsessed person who happens to never haven seen any of the films?

Posted by: J Rodolfo | Wednesday, 24 March 2010 at 07:55 AM

james suhr

Nolte is not a sexist. He totally taken women seriously... from the neck down.

Posted by: james suhr | Wednesday, 24 March 2010 at 11:58 AM

SEK

Dan, I've got to say that this is the strangest iteration of the "when they came for X, I said nothing" statement I've ever seen:

On the other hand, if some racist producer wants to pick up market share in Mexico, he’ll openly discriminate against a white actor in order to hire a Mexican actor.

What? I mean, what?

Posted by: SEK | Wednesday, 24 March 2010 at 03:56 PM

SEK

Or can they and am I just a detail-obsessed person who happens to never haven seen any of the films?

You mean the one where the handsome rogue fights ghosts and animated skeletons while being chased by an immortal squid-headed pirate? No, I don't think a pair of implants will rock your belief from its suspension.

Posted by: SEK | Wednesday, 24 March 2010 at 03:58 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Andy McCarthy on the moral superiority of cheaters. Over on The Corner, Andy McCarthy unwittingly claims that Democrats are morally superior to Republicans: I know we tire of the hypocrisy, but I really think this is remarkable. We spent the eight years through January 19, 2009, listening to Democrats complain that President Bush had purportedly caused a constitutional crisis by issuing signing statements when he signed bills into law. Democrats and Arlen Specter (now a Democrat) complained that these unenforceable, non-binding expressions of the executive’s interpretation of the laws Bush was signing were a usurpation Congress’s power to enact legislation. But now Democrats are going to abide not a mere signing statement but an executive order that purports to have the effect of legislation—in fact, has the effect of nullifying legislation that Congress is simultaneously enacting? Democrats, he argues, were correct when they complained that signing statements were “unenforceable, non-binding expressions of the executive’s interpretation of the laws [and] a usurpation Congress’s power to enact legislation.” They were right to complain when the Bush administration appended them to legislation, but now they must defend the very principles conservatives have never had and stop President Obama from appending anything to H.R. 3590 when he signs it into law or be branded rank hypocrites. Consider this in baseball terms: It’s the top of the first, and McCarthy and likeminded conservatives—we’ll call them the Yankees—stride to the plate with a Reebok Vector O. When the liberal pitcher complains, the umpire merely shrugs his shoulders and shouts, “Play ball!” The pitcher opens with a wicked 12 to 6 curve over the heart of the plate. McCarthy stares at the mound in disbelief, then turns and says something to the umpire, who walks to the mound and informs the pitcher that there will be no more quote, bendy pitches, unquote. “What?” “You heard me,” the umpire replies. “McCarthy can’t hit anything but four-seamers, so that’s what you need to throw.” Dumbfounded, the pitcher steps on the rubber and launches a 95 m.p.h. four-seamer down the chute. McCarthy throws his hands in the air and again complains to the umpire, who again approaches the mound. “How is he supposed to hit a 95 m.p.h. fastball?” “Not very well, actually, is the idea” the pitcher replies. “I don’t want to see the gun touch anything over 80 from now on, we clear?” “You want me to throw batting practice fastballs?” “I don’t want you to, I’m telling you to,” the umpire says as he makes his way back to the plate. Needless to say, by the time the liberals record three outs, the Yankees are up by twenty-seven. In the dugout, the liberals notice that the grounds crew is not only relocating the mound 50 ft. from home plate, but raising it five inches; moreover, the Yankees’s starting pitcher is heading to the mound with a jar of Vaseline and an industrial sander. When they complain, the Yankees insist that this this non-regulation mound is actually regulation, and that they’re not doctoring balls so much...
PREVIOUS POST
What do you do in the wake of a crushing political defeat? If you’re Jeff Goldstein, you declare yourself to be way cooler than everyone else; if you’re Darleen Click, you draw a cartoon in which the President rapes a woman, then tells her that he and friends will be back to rape her again later. In the clinical sense, Click is the more interesting case because she thinks that the only problem with her cartoon is that it’s racist. I repeat: she drew a cartoon in which the punch line is a gang rape and the only potential problem with it she can see is that it might be racist. Don’t misunderstand me: it’s plenty racist—plays into tropes as old as slavery and everything—but the punch line is that the President and his associates are going to gang-rape the Statue of Liberty with, I kid you not, immigration reform. In service of the cheapest of laughs, Click asserts that the statue that symbolizes America’s commitment to the tired, poor, huddled masses of the world is about to be raped because of the President’s commitment to those selfsame masses-yearning-to-be-free. Talk about your industrial grade ideological incoherence—and I would, except for the fact that Goldstein, never one to be upstaged on his own blog, told a woman that the only way she would ever be cool was if someone raped her with an icicle. That’s not true, though. Goldstein never said that. What he said, and I quote, was: For instance, here’s Nishi, whose only hope of ever really touching cool would be to pay somebody to fuck her once with an ice dong. Such are the depths to which Goldstein sinks to maintain the illusion that he’s cool, which is sad, you know, because he’s a middle-aged man worried about whether people think he’s cool. Then, in yet another example of just how over me he is, he declares me to be the exemplar of uncool. Far be it for me, a 32-year-old blogger who sports a backwards Mets cap and is currently writing a scholarly book about comics, to complain when someone says I’m not cool, because honestly, I’m not cool. I grew up, got a job, and am working for the Man; however, forty-something bloggers who alternate between whining about how poorly jobs they don’t have pay and writing 10,000-word-long semiotic screeds about Alinksy and catch-wrestling? Not cool. Doesn’t matter how many people whose favorite film is Mr. Smith Goes to Washington say otherwise, because them? Also not cool. But you know what really, really isn’t cool? Unsubtle threats of politically motivated violence against women: I predict Nishi will look very surprised the first time she’s knocked down by someone who doesn’t much like the glee she takes in the losses of freedom we’re undergoing. I predict Nishi won’t have as much fun playing the griefer game once it becomes obvious that while she’s playing a game, many of us are not. I predict that Nishi doesn’t know who she’s fucking with. I predict Nishi will soon find it best...

Scott Eric Kaufman

The Typepad Team

Search

Become a Fan

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments