If you haven’t seen Jodie Foster’s acceptance/ coming out speech from this year’s Golden Globes then you’ve been missing out; here at HCX it’s been causing quite a stir! Her speech quickly turned from a generic acceptance speech into something quite marvellous where she spoke out about the speculation surrounding her sexuality and the public obsession with actors’ sexuality in general.
The fantastic thing about her speech was that she didn’t actually come out, stating that she had already made her coming out speech, years ago, to her friends, family, co-workers and all the people she’s actually met. She went on to say that “now I’m told that every celebrity is expected to honour the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a primetime reality show”.
Whilst her speech was littered with humour, she raised a serious point; why do we expect to know the ins and outs of celebrities’ sex lives, why should we care with who, when or how they’re having sex? In our age of celebrity, where reality stars like the Kardashians bare all (even giving birth) to the cameras, where leaked sex tapes can make or break a career and where tabloids trade on celebrities’ intimate moments leaked by so called “close friends”, it seems that what actors get up to in the bed room is increasingly impacting upon their career. Rupert Everett has complained that gay men get turned down for leading roles in Hollywood movies and Sir Ian McKellen has commented that “it is very, very difficult for an American actor who wants a film career to be open about his sexuality and even more difficult for a woman”.
Why should it matter to an audience if the leading man in their favourite rom-com is gay or straight, we all know they’re acting a character they don’t resemble in real life so why should they have to share the same sexual preferences as their onscreen personas? The point that Jodie Foster raises though is the right to privacy, particularly when it comes to a person’s sex life. The argument often made against celebrities privacy is that they ‘chose’ to be in the spotlight, that they’ve become a public figure and as a consequence they’ve given up their right to privacy. But this argument is a weak one; politicians have also chosen to become public figures but you don’t see David Cameron sitting down with a journalist and discussing how often he has sex and stories aren’t “leaked” about Harriet Harman’s bedroom antics.
The key thing to take away from Foster’s speech is that someone shouldn’t have to be pressured to publically come out about their sexuality and people shouldn’t be troubled by rumours about what they get up to in the privacy of their own home. Why should those in Hollywood have to shout about their sexuality, and more importantly, why should we care?
Sources: Jezebel.com, guardian.com
Image credits: about.com, hollywooddame.com, newsrealblog.com