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      Kelly Marie Tran: ‘I’m Not Afraid Anymore’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKelly Marie Tran: ‘I’m Not Afraid Anymore’The actress has left the “Star Wars” bullies behind to star as Disney’s first Southeast Asian princess in “Raya and the Last Dragon.” She says, “I’m finally asking for the things I want.”Kelly Marie Tran in Los Angeles. Three years after enduring vicious online trolls, “I’m a much stronger person now,” she said. “And I have the tools to react to those situations.”Credit…Tracy Nguyen for The New York TimesMarch 5, 2021, 11:24 a.m. ETThere are two Kelly Marie Trans in this story.One is self-assured, confident and eager to show young Asian-American girls that, yes, women who do not have long blond hair, big doe eyes and porcelain skin can get major roles in films.The other is a distant, if prominent, memory.When Tran wrote a scathing essay in The New York Times in August 2018 excoriating a culture that had marginalized her for the color of her skin, she’d just deleted her Instagram posts amid online harassment from “Star Wars” fans. Her performance as Rose Tico, the first lead character in a “Star Wars” film to be played by a woman of color, had been a proud moment for her. But then, she wrote, she started to believe the racist and sexist comments from online trolls. “Their words reinforced a narrative I had heard my whole life,” the Vietnamese-American actress wrote. “That I was ‘other,’ that I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t good enough, simply because I wasn’t like them.”But recent box office successes like “Crazy Rich Asians” and critical hits like “Minari” that have focused on Asian characters have brightened her view of the film industry — and contributed to her own empowerment. “I’m finally asking for the things I want and learning to trust my own opinion,” she said in a video interview from Los Angeles last month. “And I wish so badly that I grew up in a world that taught me how to do that at a younger age.”Tran voices the starring role of the warrior princess Raya (which rhymes with Maya) in the animated film “Raya and the Last Dragon,” out March 5 on Disney+. That makes her the first actress of Southeast Asian descent to play a lead role in an animated Disney movie, a milestone she doesn’t take lightly. “I feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility,” she said. “To be honest, I haven’t slept in, like, two weeks.”Tran’s title character in “Raya and the Last Dragon.” She said she felt “an overwhelming sense of responsibility” as the first actress of Southeast Asian descent to get a lead role in a Disney animated movie.Credit…DisneyIn a conversation, Tran discussed how the “Star Wars” films prepared her for the pressure that comes with being a Disney princess, the boom in Asian and Asian-American screen stories, and the pros and cons of life without social media. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Do you intentionally target barrier-breaking roles?I wish! I never thought in a million years that I would be doing what I’m doing now. I was the first woman of color to have a leading role in a “Star Wars” movie; I’m the first Southeast Asian Disney princess — these are things that no one that had looked like me had done before.In your New York Times essay, you spoke out about the harassment you experienced after your role in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” Given the recent slate of successful Asian and Asian-American films, does it feel like things have shifted in Hollywood?I’m so [expletive] excited that more of these movies like “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Parasite” and “Minari” are being made. I’m really proud to be part of that change in terms of making movies that honor people from those parts of the world. But there have also been a lot of anti-Asian hate crimes recently, so there’s still a lot of work to be done.Would you still have done “Star Wars” knowing the harassment you’d face?[Long pause] I think I would’ve done it anyway. Doing that first movie was so fun — it was like being admitted to Hogwarts. It was like, “This is impossible,” and then I was doing it. I don’t really look back with that much regret anymore. “Star Wars” feels like I fell in love for the first time, and then we had a really bad breakup, and then I learned how to love again, and now I’m in a better relationship with “Raya.” I’ve moved on, and it feels great.Tran with John Boyega in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” After enduring online harassment over her role in the franchise, the actress said, “I don’t really look back with that much regret anymore.”Credit…David James/DisneyHow are you a different person than you were three years ago?I was so afraid and put so much pressure on myself starting out. You feel like you have to do it the right way or else no one else is going to get a chance. But I’m a much stronger person now, and I have the tools to react to those situations when they happen. I’m not afraid anymore. I’m finally making room for myself and asking for the things that I want. God, I wish I knew how to do that 10 years ago!What are some of the things you feel comfortable asking for now?I’ve been very, very loud about the projects I do and don’t want to be involved in. I never want to further a stereotype or take a job that makes me feel like I’m perpetuating some sort of idea about what it is to be Asian. And I’ve been really, really adamant about my boundaries. Leaving social media was so mentally healthy for me, even though I’ve been told over and over again, “Kelly, you’re not going to get brand sponsorships.” I just don’t care, because I know what’s best for myself, and I know that I’m happier than I ever was being on it.What is most encouraging to you about the entertainment industry right now?I’m most inspired by the people who continue to fight in order for their voices to be heard, and not just in the Asian community, but in the Black, trans, L.G.B.T.Q. and other underrepresented communities. On my dark days, when I feel sad and insecure about myself, those are the shows that I watch and the stories that I turn to. It brings me so much hope that people are speaking their truths and actually having people listen.Asked if she sets her sights on barrier-breaking roles, she said, “I wish! I never thought in a million years that I would be doing what I’m doing now.”Credit…Tracy Nguyen for The New York TimesAre microaggressions something you still encounter?I haven’t recently experienced outward racism in the way I experienced it when I was a young child, but now I experience subtle racism in terms of people who are publicly allies but privately complicit. In Hollywood, there are people who outwardly are like, “We believe in this,” and then when you’re actually in the trenches with them, they do things that show you they are actually complicit with white supremacy, and with institutions of power that have allowed specific types of people to get away with injustice over and over and over again.Your Vietnamese name is Loan. When did you start using the name Kelly?The name on my birth certificate is actually Kelly. My parents, who are war refugees from Vietnam, adopted American names when they started working — my dad worked at Burger King for almost 40 years, and my mom worked at a funeral home. And they gave their children American names. I didn’t realize it until I was older, but it was them protecting us so that people wouldn’t mispronounce our names. But I didn’t realize until later on that it was also an erasure of culture. It makes my heart hurt a lot to think about it.What advice do you have for young Asian-American actors?Do not blame yourself if someone is not educated enough to understand that there are different types of people in the world who exist and who deserve to be heard. Do not internalize racism, do not internalize misogyny, make space for yourself and ask for what you want, because no one else is going to make space for you.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Erica Faye Watson, Comedic ‘Hidden Gem of Chicago,’ Dies at 48

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostErica Faye Watson, Comedic ‘Hidden Gem of Chicago,’ Dies at 48Best known as a regular on a local morning talk show, she also wrote plays and acted in movies. She died of complications of Covid-19.Erica Watson  was a regular on “Windy City Live,” a morning TV talk show in Chicago. She also did stand-up comedy and acted in movies.Credit…Patti K. GillMarch 4, 2021, 6:23 p.m. ETThis obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.When a candidate for state’s attorney in Cook County, Ill., held a lunchtime fund-raiser in downtown Chicago in 2016, the campaign hired a local comedian and television personality named Erica Faye Watson to warm up the crowd.Ms. Watson had never met the candidate, Kim Foxx, but that didn’t keep her from diving into an extended riff about Ms. Foxx’s hair. “I had never been publicly roasted before,” Ms. Foxx said in an interview. “I was like, who is this woman?”But the jokes were just a setup for Ms. Watson’s real point: what it would mean to have a Black woman as the county’s chief prosecutor, and how proud she would be to see Ms. Foxx in that role. The two became fast friends.“She was very much about empowering Black women,” said Ms. Foxx, who is now in her second term. “She was fighting not just for herself but for people like her.”Ms. Watson was a Chicagoland celebrity, best known as a regular on “Windy City Live,” a morning talk show on WLS-TV, Chicago’s ABC affiliate. She also performed stand-up comedy, wrote and directed plays and acted in movies.Ms. Watson died on Saturday in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She was 48. The cause was Covid-19, Patti Gill, her former agent, said.“Erica was a hidden gem of Chicago and a voice for overlooked businesses and causes,” said Ms. Gill, who cast her in “BlacKorea,” a short film she wrote, in 2017.Erica Faye Watson was born on Feb. 26, 1973, in Chicago, to Henry Watson, a postal worker, and Willie Mae Watson, a homemaker.Her survivors include her parents and her brother, Eric.Ms. Watson attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was a fixture on the school’s Black arts scene.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Moufida Tlatli, Groundbreaker in Arab Film, Dies at 78

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTHOSE WE’VE LOSTMoufida Tlatli, Groundbreaker in Arab Film, Dies at 78With “The Silences of the Palace,” a story of oppressed women in colonial Tunisia, she was first female director from the Arab world to achieve worldwide acclaim.Hend Sabri starring in Moufida Tlatli’s “The Silences of the Palace.” In a film that explored the stifling of women, she played the daughter of a servant of Tunisian princes.Credit…CinetelefilmsMarch 4, 2021, 4:50 p.m. ETMoufida Tlatli, the Tunisian director whose 1994 film “The Silences of the Palace” became the first international hit for a female filmmaker from the Arab world, died on Feb. 7 in Tunis. She was 78.Her daughter, Selima Chaffai, said the cause was Covid-19.“The Silences of the Palace,” which Ms. Tlatli directed and co-wrote with Nouri Bouzid, is set in the mid-1960s but consists largely of flashbacks to a decade earlier, before Tunisia achieved independence from France.The protagonist, a young woman named Alia (played by Hend Sabri), reflects on the powerlessness of women in that prior era, including her mother, Khedija (Amel Hedhili), a servant in the palace of Tunisian princes. Alia’s memories prompt a revelation that she has not achieved true autonomy even in the more liberated milieu of her own time.“Silences” won several international awards, including special mention in the best debut feature category at Cannes, making Ms. Tlatli the first female Arab director to be honored by that film festival. It was shown at the New York Film Festival later that year. In her review, Caryn James of The New York Times called it “a fascinating and accomplished film.”In an interview, Hichem Ben Ammar, a Tunisian documentary filmmaker, said “Silences” was “the first Tunisian movie that reached out to the American market.”Its significance was particularly great for women in the Arab world’s generally patriarchal film industry, said Rasha Salti, a programmer of Arab film festivals. Though “Silences” was not the first feature-length film directed by an Arab woman, “it has a visibility that outshines the achievements of others,” she said.Moufida Ben Slimane was born on Aug. 4, 1942, in Sidi Bou Said, a suburb of Tunis. Her father, Ahmed, worked as a decorative painter and craftsman at palaces of the Tunisian nobility. Her mother, Mongia, was a homemaker. Moufida, one of six children, helped care for her younger siblings. As a teenager she spent nights at a local movie theater watching Indian and Egyptian dramas.She grew up during a period of social reform under the Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba, a supporter of women’s rights. In high school, Moufida’s philosophy teacher introduced her to the work of Ingmar Bergman and other European directors. In the mid-1960s, she won a scholarship to attend the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris. After graduating, she continued living in France until 1972, working as a script supervisor.In Tunisia, Ms. Tlatli became admired as a film editor, working on such classics of Arab cinema as “Omar Gatlato” and “Halfaouine.” “Silences” was her debut as a director.The movie’s theme of silence is dramatized by the refusal of the servant Khedija to tell Alia the identity of her father. Alia never solves this mystery, but she does glimpse a brutal reality: how her mother had quietly suffered through sexual bondage to the palace’s two princes.Silence is a hallmark of palace culture. During music lessons in the garden and at ballroom parties, aristocrats make small talk and servants say nothing. Discretion signifies gentility. Yet that same discretion also cloaks the palace’s sexual violence and muzzles its victims. Female servants learn to communicate with one another through grimaces or glares.“All the women are within the tradition of taboo, of silence, but the power of their look is extraordinary,” Ms. Tlatli said in a 1995 interview with the British magazine Sight & Sound. “They have had to get used to expressing themselves through their eyes.”Ms. Tlatli discovered that this “culture of the indirect” was ideally suited to the medium of film.“This is why the camera is so amazing,” she said. “It’s in complete harmony with this rather repressed language. A camera is somewhat sly and hidden. It’s there, and it can capture small details about something one is trying to say.”After “Silences,” Ms. Tlatli directed “The Season of Men” (2000), which also follows women of different generations contending with deeply ingrained social customs. Her final film was “Nadia and Sarra” (2004).In 2011, Ms. Tlatli briefly served as culture minister of the interim government that took over Tunisia following the ouster of the dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. “She commands respect not only as a filmmaker and film editor, but also because she was not co-opted by the system,” Ms. Salti, the film programmer, said.In addition to her daughter, Ms. Tlatli is survived by her husband, Mohamed Tlatli, a businessman involved in oil and gas exploration; a son, Walid; and five grandchildren.Ms. Tlatli was inspired to make a movie of her own after giving birth to Walid and leaving him with her mother, following Tunisian tradition, even though her mother was already caring for four sons of her own. Her mother had long been a “silent woman,” Ms. Tlatli told The Guardian in 2001, before falling ill with Alzheimer’s disease and losing her voice.Her mother’s life, she said, had become “insupportable, exhausting, suffocating.”Ms. Tlatli spent seven years away from film as she raised her children and helped her mother. The experience gave her a sense that unexamined gulfs lay between women of different generations, much like the one she would portray between a mother and daughter in “Silences.”“I wanted to talk with her, and it was too late,” she said about her mother in 1995. “I projected all that on my daughter and thought, Maybe she wasn’t feeling close to me. That made me feel the urgency to make this film.”Lilia Blaise contributed reporting from Tunis.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Woody Allen, Mia Farrow and What Popular Culture Wants to Believe

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookWoody Allen, Mia Farrow and What Popular Culture Wants to BelieveThe new HBO documentary revisits a 1990s scandal. What viewers take away from it may depend on the stories they trust about women and why.The family in happier days, with Woody Allen, third from left, and Mia Farrow, far right.Credit…HBOMarch 2, 2021Updated 4:45 p.m. ETThere are two stories. In one, a father molests his 7-year-old daughter. In the other, a mother coaches that daughter to falsely accuse the father. These stories, one proposed by Mia Farrow and her advocates, one by Woody Allen and his, clearly contradict each other. No sane person can accept both. Crucially, only one lets you feel mostly OK about watching “Annie Hall” again.I was a teenager in 1992 when this particular scandal broke, so I experienced them through the cracked prism of gender narratives absorbed from the movies and shows and stealthily read supermarket tabloids of the day: That a woman should be pretty but not too pretty, sexy but not too sexy, smart but not too smart, empowered but mostly in a way that means wearing boob-forward dresses and high heels — but for you! because you want to! — and doesn’t trespass on any actual power. A fun fact about high heels: They make it harder to run away. There were limitless ways, the culture informed me, that a woman could get it wrong — “it” being her body, her career, her accusations of abuse.I can still remember an article, probably from The National Enquirer, that pitted celebrity women against one another according to their knees. The only star with acceptable ones? The “Entertainment Tonight” host Mary Hart. Her knees are truly lovely, the article read.I thought about these narratives while watching — twice, in a “Clockwork Orange,” eyes-clamped-open kind of way — “Allen v. Farrow.” A four-part documentary by Amy Ziering, Kirby Dick and Amy Herdy, now on HBO, it centers on one of the more involuted scandals of the early ’90s, the breakdown of the relationship between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow and the accusations and counteraccusations and custody trial and appeals that followed. The couple met in 1979. They had a child together in 1987, Ronan Farrow (who changed his name from Satchel). In 1991, Allen formally adopted Mia Farrow’s two youngest children, Dylan, the daughter who has accused him of abuse, and Moses.Moses Farrow, Soon-Yi Previn, Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen in a scene from the documentary.Credit…HBOIn January 1992, Farrow discovered explicit Polaroids that Allen had taken of another of her daughters, her eldest, Soon-Yi Previn, then 21. That August, Dylan Farrow has said, she was abused when Allen was alone with her for perhaps 20 minutes during his visit to Mia Farrow’s home in Connecticut. Concerned by reports from babysitters and by statements that Dylan allegedly made, Farrow took the child to a pediatrician. The pediatrician reported the suspected abuse to law enforcement. Allen sued for custody. A criminal investigation began. The news media chronicled it all with the kind of fervid enthusiasm you mostly see in circus parades. (Allen has consistently denied the accusations.)Dick and Ziering’s previous work includes “The Invisible War,” an exposé of sexual assault in the military, and “The Hunting Ground,” which addressed assault on college campuses. Their last film, “On the Record,” explored allegations against the music producer Russell Simmons. (He has denied all accusations of nonconsensual sex.) So no, “Allen v. Farrow” isn’t exactly evenhanded. Then again, in cases of abuse allegations, is even-handedness exactly what we want?Allen and Soon-Yi Previn declined to participate in the series, recently arguing, via a spokesperson, that the filmmakers hadn’t given them enough notice. Not that Allen has made his own case particularly well. In a 1992 news conference he appears whiny, aggrieved. Later, in a “60 Minutes” interview, he says that he couldn’t possibly have abused his child in that moment, because it would have been “illogical.” Is this how most men approach predation? With careful pro-and-con lists? (Also, here’s the title of Allen’s 2015 movie about a murderous professor who sleeps with his young student? “Irrational Man.”)The documentary shows evidence supporting Allen, chiefly a report from the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of the Yale-New Haven Hospital, which concluded that Dylan was either fantasizing or had been coached by her mother. On the other side is the testimony, in court and for the camera, of babysitters, family friends and Dylan herself. The judge in the custody trial ultimately labeled Allen’s behavior “grossly inappropriate.”Dylan, left, and Ronan Farrow with Woody Allen, who has called the documentary “shoddy.”Credit…HBOBut at the arrhythmic heart of the matter were these two stories. Until very recently, the public preferred the one that allowed Allen to keep making movies, movies in which comparatively powerless young women willingly enter into relationships with older, more powerful men.This past summer and fall, as my marriage was very quietly imploding, I spent what little free time I had jogging around the park near my Brooklyn apartment, trying, I guess, to figure out my own story, 3.3 miles at a time. While I ran, I listened to “You’re Wrong About,” an irreverent, stiletto-sharp podcast that often discusses maligned women of the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s — Anna Nicole Smith, Tonya Harding, Janet Jackson, Monica Lewinsky, half a dozen more.These stories run a big-haired gamut in terms of individual culpability, but in every case, popular culture found a way to blame the woman, often to excuse a more blameworthy man. Take, for example, Janet Jackson’s Nipplegate, a scandal that never touched Justin Timberlake. Or Monica Lewinsky, portrayed as a slut, as though that somehow negated the outrageous power imbalance in Bill Clinton’s relationship with her. This recalls another lesson I learned from ’80s and ’90s media: The only good victim is a perfect victim. That otherwise it was probably her fault.This particular narrative re-emerges in the recent documentary “Framing Britney Spears.” That film shows news media at the turn of the century panting to tell a story about a star acting inappropriately, a party girl wilding out when she should have been at home. “Britney: Out of Control,” read an Us Weekly cover. Whose control? Conveniently, the tabloid framing lays Spears’s spiral at her own bare feet. It avoids impugning the people with actual power, the magazine editors and the record company executives who shaped and policed and profited from her image..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Understand the Allegations Against Woody AllenNearly 30 years ago, Woody Allen was accused of sexually abusing Dylan Farrow, his adoptive daughter. A new docuseries re-examines the case.This timeline reviews the major events in the complicated history of the director, his children and the Farrow family.The documentary filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering spoke about delving into this thorny family tale. Dylan Farrow wrote an open letter in 2014, posted by the New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof, recounting her story in detail.Our book critic reviewed Mr. Allen’s recent memoir, “Apropos of Nothing.”A.O. Scott, co-chief film critic, grappled with the accusations and his complicated feelings on the filmmaker in 2018. I asked Sarah Marshall, a journalist and a host of “You’re Wrong About,” why popular culture likes to portray women as complicit and deserving of contempt. “It justifies subjugating them,” she said. “If women are randomly taken down for possessing what we see as an alarming degree of power, even if it isn’t, then maybe they’ll be more fearful about how they wield it.”Mia Farrow — with her children Daisy, Fletcher, Soon-Yi and Lark Previn — cooperated extensively with the documentary makers.Credit…HBOHas popular culture finally moved on? In a recent telephone interview, Anne Helen Petersen, a celebrity gossip expert and the author of “Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman,” discussed sympathetic attitudes toward Allen, Michael Jackson and R. Kelly in the ’90s and 2000s. “I don’t think we were equipped to deal with stories of abuse at that moment,” she said. Now she sees “a larger shift in our apparatus of language to understand and condemn when it comes to abuse,” she said.We can perhaps trace that shift if we survey the celebrity scandals of the past year — involving Marilyn Manson, Shia LaBeouf and others. Then again, when it comes to gossip and censure, the scales for men and women remain differently weighted. Armie Hammer had to allegedly ask to literally eat women in order to provoke outrage. (He’s denied the accusations.) All Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion had to do was rap about female arousal. A few weeks after they released “WAP,” Megan Thee Stallion accused the rapper Tory Lanez of shooting her in July, a charge Lanez has denied. Some social media users then suggested that the shooting was somehow her fault.The “Allen v. Farrow” series, in part because it sides so unequivocally and uncritically with Mia Farrow, will convince some but not all. Still, no matter what did or didn’t happen in that Connecticut crawl space in 1992, and even though we know, or we should know, that child sexual abuse is frighteningly common and that false reports of abuse are rare, there was one story that our culture believed. Here’s how a now adult Dylan Farrow put it in a CBS interview from 2018: “What I don’t understand is how is this crazy story of me being brainwashed and coached more believable than what I’m saying about being sexually assaulted by my father?”How? Because that story reinforces norms of power and control. Because it supports an idea of women as conniving and untrustworthy. Because making women wrong — for their knees, for their autonomy — is what our culture loves to do. And if a woman like Mia Farrow — pretty, successful, comparatively wealthy — could be exposed as a villain, it becomes that much easier to delegitimize the rest of us, particularly women of color, who are more likely to experience sexual violence and less likely to report it.If you believe Allen, his story is a happy one, at least until #MeToo came along and complicated it. He marries Previn. He makes movie after movie. He even wins another Oscar. If you believe Dylan Farrow, you recognize she grew up knowing that her abuser went unpunished, that his career flourished. That’s a terrible ending. What attitudes would our culture have to sacrifice to imagine a better one?AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Chloé Zhao becomes the first Asian woman to win the Golden Globe for best director.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonGolden Globes: What HappenedMoments and AnalysisGlobes WinnersGolden Globes ReviewAdvertisementContinue reading the main story‘Nomadland,’ ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ and ‘The Crown’ Led a Remote Golden GlobesChloé Zhao becomes the first Asian woman to win the Golden Globe for best director.Feb. 28, 2021, 10:40 p.m. ETFeb. 28, 2021, 10:40 p.m. ETChloé Zhao accepts the award for best director, motion picture.Credit…NBC阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版Chloé Zhao, whose drama “Nomadland” offered an intimate portrait of itinerant Americans, won the Golden Globe for best director on Sunday, making her the first Asian woman ever to win that prize.In taking home the award, Zhao also became the first woman to be named best director since Barbra Streisand won for “Yentl” almost 40 years ago. It was the first time in Golden Globes history that three women had been nominated in the category.Earlier in the night, Zhao had also been nominated in the best screenplay” category. (Aaron Sorkin won for the “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”) “Nomadland” is also up for the best picture Golden Globe in the drama category, and its star, Frances McDormand, is up for an acting trophy.[embedded content]The much-praised “Nomadland” follows Fern (McDormand) as she travels the country in a van, picking up itinerant work (in an Amazon warehouse and elsewhere) and making connections with other American wanderers. Zhao, who adapted the movie from Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book of the same name, largely used nonprofessionals in the cast, including people from Bruder’s book.Zhao captured the essence of the story discussing it for Anatomy of a Scene, the New York Times series. She recounted the scene in which Fern (Frances McDormand) wanders through Badlands National Park. “She’s exploring,” Zhao said, “but she’s also lost at the same time.”Though Zhao has been known for indie dramas like this one and “The Rider” from 2018, her next film is on a much different scale: the Marvel superhero movie “Eternals.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Ad With Realistic Take on Breastfeeding Airing at Golden Globes

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonliveWhat to ExpectliveLatest UpdatesHow to Watch the GlobesOur Movie PredictionsGolden Globe NomineesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn TV, a Rare Realistic Look at BreastfeedingA commercial from the parent products company Frida, to be broadcast during the Golden Globes, is part of a wider effort to show the struggles of the “fourth trimester.”CreditCredit…Frida MomFeb. 28, 2021Updated 5:10 p.m. ET More

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      From Britney Spears to Janet Jackson, the Era of the Celebrity Reappraisal

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      Credit…Illustration by The New York Times; Texture Fabrik (torn paper)Skip to contentSkip to site indexSpeaking of Britney … What About All Those Other Women?Monica Lewinsky. Janet Jackson. Lindsay Lohan. Whitney Houston. We are living in an era of reappraisals.Credit…Illustration by The New York Times; Texture Fabrik (torn paper)Supported byContinue reading the main storyMs. Bennett is an editor at large covering gender and culture. She was previously gender editor.Feb. 27, 2021Updated 10:07 a.m. ETIn 2007, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton were apparently fueling enough of a debate among parents about children and “values” for Newsweek to publish a cover story titled “The Girls Gone Wild Effect.”The article described the ubiquitous images and stories about these women — their partying, their rehab stints, what they were or weren’t wearing — and how they could be affecting young fans.I was a junior reporter at Newsweek at the time, just a couple years out of college, around the same age as those so-called train wrecks. I wasn’t quite sure what bothered me so much about the article, but I knew I didn’t like it.Perhaps it was that the editors of the magazine at that time rarely seemed to put women on the cover, so the fact that it was these women said something. The article claimed, according to a poll, that 77 percent of Americans believed these women had “too much influence on young girls” — but weren’t these just young women? And then there was the male lens of it all, from the entertainment executives who molded them to the paparazzi who photographed them to the editors who put them on magazine covers.More than a decade later, we are once again talking about those women — this time through a modern lens. After years of fans fighting to #FreeBritney from the conservatorship over which her father presides — and now with a popular new documentary on the subject — the rise and fall (and rise again?) of Britney Spears is being viewed with fresh eyes.At the same time, a litany of other female celebrities of the ’90s and aughts are being — or perhaps ought to be — re-examined: Ms. Lohan, now out of the spotlight and living in Dubai, where for the first time in her life, she has said, she feels safe; Ms. Hilton, who in a 2020 documentary detailed emotional and physical abuse she suffered as a teenager; Janet Jackson, who was blacklisted after the 2004 Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” that left her breast exposed, while the man who exposed it, Justin Timberlake, went on to further fame (and was even invited back to perform at the halftime show in 2018). Brandy, the singer and “Moesha” star, has described faking her marriage for fear that being an unwed mother would threaten her career. Anna Nicole Smith, the troubled actress and model, was labeled “white trash” while she was alive and “obtrusively voluptuous” in her obituary when she was dead. And then there’s Whitney Houston, whose marital problems and battle with drug addiction were broadcast to the world in an early-2000s Bravo series.“I lived through Britney on television, and when she shaved her head, I remember thinking at the time, ‘Why is everybody acting like she’s OK? Like, how is this funny to people? How is this presented as entertainment?’” said Danyel Smith, the former editor in chief of Vibe magazine and the host of the podcast “Black Girl Songbook.”“I felt the same about Whitney,” she said. “It was astonishing to watch the amount of glee being taken in watching her fall apart.”Such reappraisals have become common over the past several years. In the midst of #MeToo and a reckoning over racial injustice, people have begun to re-examine the art, music, monuments and characters on whom cultural significance has been placed. But this current wave revolves not around individuals so much as the machine that produced them: the journalists, the photographers, and the fans — who were reading, watching, buying.“To me, the question is, what do we do when a whole culture essentially becomes the subjugator?” Monica Lewinsky said in a recent interview. “How do we unpack that, how do we move on?”‘It Was a Different Time’In his book, “The Naughty Nineties,” David Friend, an editor at Vanity Fair, described how the market for humiliation thrived in the early ’90s, a trend that can be traced, in part, to the rise of tabloid talk shows such as “The Jerry Springer Show.”Gossip magazines ruled during this time, which meant that the paparazzi did, too. They photographed under skirts, chased cars down winding roads, competing, often dozens at a time, for images that could fetch millions. But the race for the most salacious shot was never an equal-opportunity game. It was not young men who appeared in photos with their bra straps showing and their makeup smeared, or had their breasts enlarged in postproduction without their knowledge, as was the case for Ms. Spears on a 2000 cover of British GQ, according to the photographer, who recently posted about it on Instagram. While white women were scrutinized on the covers of magazines, Black artists were told, as Beyoncé was, that they’d never get covers at all — “because Black people did not sell.”“Magazines in that era were driven by damsel-in-distress narratives,” said Ramin Setoodeh, the executive editor at Variety and the author of “Ladies Who Punch.” “It was almost like a sport to watch a woman self-destruct.” This was the time before stars could talk to their fans directly, of course. There was no clapping back on Twitter, no hosting an Instagram Live to tell one’s side of the story.In a 2013 interview with David Letterman that has recently resurfaced, Ms. Lohan was grilled to the point of tears about a looming trip to rehab, for laughs. (“She’s probably deeply troubled and therefore great in bed,” Donald Trump told Howard Stern in 2004, when the actress was 18.) When Ms. Hilton’s sex tape was leaked without her consent, nobody was using the phrase “revenge porn” or talking openly about emotional pain as trauma. Terms like “accountability,” “consent,” “fat-shaming,” “mental health” — these weren’t part of the pop lexicon, said Susan Douglas, a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan and a co-author of “Celebrity: A History of Fame.”For the celebrity press, at least, such framing would have served no useful purpose. Disaster and personal tragedy sold.As Harvey Levin, the founder of TMZ, put it in 2006: “Britney is gold. She is crack to our readers. Her life is a complete train wreck, and I thank God for her every day.”“It was a different time,” Rosie O’Donnell, who interviewed Ms. Spears on her talk show in 1999, said in a phone interview. “You’re a level-headed girl,” she told her back then, “and I hope you stay that way.”‘We’re All Collateral Damage’In recent years, there have been Hollywood reappraisals of Anita Hill, a law professor who now leads the Hollywood Commission on sexual harassment, decades after her own high-profile case was dismissed; Tonya Harding, the former Olympic figure skater whose rivalry with Nancy Kerrigan, and its violent climax, were cast against a story of childhood abuse; and Lorena Bobbitt, whose physical harm of her husband has been reframed in the context of years of domestic abuse.Some women have retold their stories themselves. Jessica Simpson published a memoir in 2020 about her time in the spotlight, including her battle with alcoholism. Christina Aguilera described the feeling of being pitted against Ms. Spears — “Britney as the good girl and me as the bad” — in a 2018 story in Cosmopolitan.But Ms. Lewinsky was perhaps the first of this era of women to reclaim her story.After being excoriated in the press for her affair with President Clinton as a 21-year-old intern, she went on to earn a master’s in social psychology. She carefully re-emerged in the public eye in 2014, with an essay and TED Talk about public shame. Now she’s producing a documentary on the subject, and how it permeates society.“We tend to forget the collective experience,” Ms. Lewinsky said by phone. “We direct this kind of vitriol and misogyny toward one woman, but it actually reverberates to all women. We’re all collateral damage, whether we’re the object or not.”These days, that view is more widely held. Abuse and discrimination are now generally seen as systemic issues, and those who endure it are lent more credibility and sympathy. Contemporary artists speak candidly about mental health; their seeking help tends to be applauded rather than ridiculed. And social media has enabled stars to take back some control (while also opening them up to further scrutiny in other ways).“The legacy media star has dimmed,” said Allison Yarrow, the author of “90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality. Lizzo, for instance, posts photos on Instagram that align with the body positivity her fans admire. Billie Eilish speaks frequently and frankly about mental health. FKA Twigs, when asked about her allegations of abuse against her ex, Shia LaBeouf, and why she didn’t leave, can choose not to answer: “The question should really be to the abuser, ‘Why are you holding someone hostage with abuse?’”Now, entertainment journalists who worked through the tabloid era are looking back on their coverage through a critical lens; some are expressing regret and even issuing apologies.Steven Daly, who wrote the infamous 1999 Rolling Stone cover story on Britney Spears, said that in hindsight, having a 17-year-old girl show him, a man in his 30s, around her childhood bedroom was slightly creepy.But he is more troubled by the photos that appeared alongside his piece: Britney in a bra and hot pants holding a Teletubby; Britney in a pair of white cotton underwear surrounded by her bedroom dolls; photos the pop star — rather than the photographer or editors — was often asked to defend.“These were soft-porn pictures of an underage girl,” said Mr. Daly, now 60. “If you did that nowadays, you’d be put through a wood chipper.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Julie Delpy, Science-Fiction Filmmaker? It’s True

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJulie Delpy, Science-Fiction Filmmaker? It’s TrueBest known for romantic comedies, the creator of the cloning drama “My Zoe” refuses to be pigeonholed: “I love to mess up and not go in the direction that is expected.”Julie Delpy in Los Angeles. She wrote, directed and stars in the new film. Credit…Jake Michaels for The New York TimesFeb. 26, 2021, 11:49 a.m. ET“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” said a flustered Julie Delpy, who was a few minutes late for a video interview. “My son is doing online school, and there is always something complicated to sort out.” She paused and took a breath. “But it’s nice too, having this time together.”Motherhood, its deep pulls of love and its concomitant potential for terror, is the central subject of Delpy’s new film, “My Zoe.” It’s a tough depiction of an antagonistic divorcing couple who are struck by tragedy, but then (spoiler alert!) moves into futuristic terrain as Delpy’s character, Isabelle, a geneticist, searches for a radical solution: cloning the child she has lost with the help of a controversial fertility doctor, played by Daniel Brühl.Brühl, who has worked with Delpy previously and was also one of the film’s producers, said in a telephone interview that the questions the film raised about ethics and morality, “about what might be possible, or what is perhaps already possible,” were deeply interesting to him. His character was “driven by his scientific ambitions to hold these questionable moral positions, but also driven by a growing empathy for the despair of this one mother,” Brühl said.“My Zoe,” Glenn Kenny wrote in The New York Times, “is an unusually compelling domestic drama with sharp ears, a sharp eye, and up to a point, sharp teeth.”It’s probably not the kind of film that mainstream audiences associate with Delpy, 51, who may be best known for the Richard Linklater romantic-comedy trio “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight.” In those movies, spaced nine years apart, she played Celine, a strong, flawed heroine at the center of a compelling and equally flawed romance with Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke. (She also co-wrote the films, earning two Oscar adapted-screenplay nominations alongside Linklater and Hawke.)The French-born Delpy has been acting since the age of 14, when Jean-Luc Godard cast her in “Detective,” and she has worked in European art house cinema as well as mainstream Hollywood movies. But Delpy, whose parents were actors, has always wanted to write and direct, and she has done so since the mid-1990s: “My Zoe” is her seventh film and she has a number of writing and directing projects in the works, including a television series, “On the Verge,” in production for Canal Plus and Netflix.In an hourlong interview from her Los Angeles home last week, she talked about the genesis of “My Zoe,” the ethical questions around cloning, and whether conditions for female movie directors have improved. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Delpy with Sophia Ally as Zoe in a scene from the film.Credit…Blue Fox EntertainmentWhat made you take on a subject and a genre so different from your previous films?When I worked with Godard, he published a book of letters he had written to actors and never sent. To me, he wrote, be careful in your life because people will put you in a box. He knew I wanted to direct, not just be a pretty actress. For me it’s essential not to stay in one place, it’s just not interesting. I love to mess up and not go in the direction that is expected.The story of “My Zoe” comes from a few different places. I was witness to a terrible accident with a child who died at my school and to the grief of the parents. And then being a parent yourself, you always think about this and fear it. But I think I had the idea even before that. I remember talking to [Krzysztof] Kieslowski when we were making “Three Colors: White” and discussing the idea of fate, and whether you could change things.I have seen so many movies in which people deal with death, and the main idea is acceptance. When you think about it, loss is an ancestral burden, particularly for women, who for centuries routinely lost babies at birth or young children. Isabelle refuses that condition of loss; she rebels and tries to recreate a child who is only hers. That’s the No. 1 fear of men, and I think that’s partly why this idea upsets many people.You divide the film into three parts, and the first shows the grim, petty realities of divorce; why was it important to you to set up the story in that way?I was writing the film in the middle of a separation, and sorting out custody of our kid, and it was important to me to have the first act be all about that horrible stuff, because I wanted to show how people forget the big thing: the well-being of the child. Sometimes in films, you get the bigger picture of separation; they don’t do the minutiae of breaking up with a child [involved]. I wanted to build a story from something rooted in reality, so that when you move into the next act, it doesn’t feel like science fiction.The second part, after Zoe’s accident, is luckily less familiar to most of us but still grounded in reality, and then we move into the third part, to events that are a possibility in the near future if not now. I didn’t want to be judgmental about Isabelle’s actions, just show her point of view. I am not saying that cloning is a good thing, but I’m saying, let’s not blind ourselves: When I.V.F. was first done, people called it evil and now they don’t think twice. For me, it’s an allegory of what people are capable of doing.Daniel Brühl said that you can be “very nerdy, very precise, a real perfectionist” as a director. How did you manage that role alongside this emotionally draining part in “My Zoe”?Often I would really rather have another actress play my role, but I always do these low-budget films and it helps to have a bit of a name. It irritates people that I do everything, they think it’s megalomania. But it really isn’t, just necessity!Yes, I am a perfectionist, and this film was really hard. The actors and I talked a lot before takes, but it’s very hard to judge the quality of a scene if you are also acting in it. The main tool is the playback; you need time to look at your own performance and make sure you are giving very different colors to scenes. In this case, I was very conscious of not turning it into a melodrama. We had a low budget and limited time — not a good combination. But I am not scared of difficulty, struggling, even chaos. Perhaps that’s the one thing I have in common with Isabelle.You’ve been outspoken about the difficulties facing female filmmakers — do you think things have improved in the last few years?I am happy to say things have improved. Now I feel I’m at the same level as male directors, and probably have almost the same opportunities. I see this particularly clearly in France; America isn’t quite there yet for all the talk about feminism and racism and equality. But there has been change. When I made “Two Days in Paris,” at 36, I had to battle for a half a million dollar budget; talking to younger female filmmakers now, that’s not the case.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More