BINIRA ni Salma Hayek ang sexism sa Hollywood na aniya ay tinatrato ang mga aktres na parang mga unggoy at sa sandaling mapagtanto na matatalino pala ay gusto nang burahin sa industriya.
Binatikos ng Mexican star ng Frida at Desperado ang “macho” attitudes ng Tinseltown, na wala pang pitong porsiyento ng mga pelikula ang gawa ng kababaihan.
“Hollywood is not going to change and give it to women because it is all guys,” aniya.
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“From the beginning I realised I wasn’t being treated equally as an actress,” aniya sa pag-uusap sa Cannes film festival.
“It is true that maybe if you are pretty you can get parts easier but it’s really violent to assume if you are pretty you are stupid.
“Hollywood’s particularly macho. If they realise that you are smart, their anger gets multiplied,” ani Salma.
Aniya, para sa maraming movers at shakers, ang mga batang aktres ay mga laruan lamang.
“They say ‘Get a monkey’ and then the monkey talks and they say, ‘Oh my God, maybe we are going to make money.’ Then one day they see the monkey doing algebra and they say, ‘Kill the monkey!’
“It’s very violent, this natural force to try to suppress. That is why we have a problem with women behind the camera as directors and producers,” sinabi niya sa isa sa mga forum ng “Women in Motion” na kanyang inoorganisa taun-taon sa festival.
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Sa kabila ng pagiging soap star sa Mexico, hindi naging madali ang pag-akyat ni Salma sa tuktok ng Hollywood.
“Imagine, I came not only as a woman to Hollywood but as a Mexican Arab. People would laugh at me for having the dream of being able to work in Hollywood,” sabi ng aktres, na ang ama ay isang Lebanese.
“I was the only Mexican or Latino in the drama school except for Benicio Del Toro, who is Puerto Rican, so kind of American, and he’s a man. And nobody laughed at him. They were laughing at me in Mexico too for having the idea of trying to break into that market. For every single agent and every single studio, it was a laughable concept.”
Sinabi ni Salma na binabalewala at walang paggalang ang Hollywood sa female market.
“They have not realised that women are a great economic power. These people don’t understand we are a huge audience.
We have been neglected for so long they don’t know what we want to watch.
“We don’t even know, because we always think of who we will be watching the movie with -- the husband, the family, the children,” aniya sa forum, na sponsored ng Kering, ang luxury goods empire ng kanyang asawang si Francois-Henri Pinault.
Sinisi niya ang pagiging ignorante ng movie executives kaya bigo ang mga ito na mapansin ang female demographic.
“Today almost 80 percent of the decision-makers of what movie or television show to watch are female. Women work, we make money and we all want to go out and have fun much more than before, and they have not capitalised on that.”
Pinuri ni Salma ang Europe, partikular na ang France, na halos isa sa apat ng mga pelikula ay idinirehe ng kababaihan, ngunit hindi nakaligtas sa kanyang mga pagbatikos ang Cannes.
“In the 70 years of the Cannes film festival only one female has ever won the Palme d’Or and she only got half the Palme d’Or, not even a full one -- she had to share it with a Chinese man,” pahayag niya.
Ang New Zealander na Jane Campion ay nanalo ng top prize ng festival para sa The Piano noong 1993 kahati ang Chinese director na si Chen Kaige para sa Farewell My Concubine. (AFP)
