Prejudices, or why does Nicole Kidman work so much?

According to Steven Sailor:

A couple of decades ago, I began noticing that the leading lady in a movie was almost always fairer-skinned than her leading man.


It appears filmmakers and their audiences subconsciously associate lightness of complexion with femininity. Yet, nobody ever seems to talk about it.

Medieval Europeans referred to women as "the fair sex," but in contemporary discourse, skin color is associated only with race, not with sex.

We don't behave like that, however. You may have wondered, for example, why Nicole Kidman seems to have a film coming out every few months. She starred with Sean Penn in The Interpreter in April, will be in Bewitched with Will Ferrell on June 24th, and is slated to be in five more movies scheduled to come out over the next year and a half. Yet, the only film she was ever in that earned $100 million at the domestic box office was Batman Forever a decade ago.

Kidman is a perfectly adequate actress. But one reason she works so much is because of her extraordinarily light complexion. A producer can hire her knowing that no matter which actor he signs to play opposite her, she will be fairer than him.

In 21st Century Hollywood, surprisingly enough, skin tone seems to matter more than height in pairing romantic leads. Kidman is 5'10.5," which you might think would cause casting problems, but that doesn't keep her from working nonstop. She is considerably taller than many popular actors, including her ex-husband Tom Cruise, with whom she made three movies.

Audiences famously want their leading men to look "tall, dark, and handsome" (a phrase first applied to that epitome of male glamour, Cary Grant) when they embrace their leading ladies. But, apparently, "dark" is even more important than "tall."

My impression is that female fans are more insistent than male fans that their favorite actresses be fair. Conversely, male fans don't much like pale actors, as Jude Law's problems shedding the dreaded "pretty boy" tag demonstrate.

While black actors like Will Smith can reach superstar status, it's much harder for black actresses, especially ones darker than the half-white Halle Berry, to win massive popularity. For example, in his hit romantic comedy Hitch, Smith was teamed with a fairly obscure Latina actress rather than a black one.

Sailor points out the scientific fact that women are indeed the "fairer sex" and that men seem programmed to prefer lighter women.

I've always noticed that redhead generally, particularly male redheads are comics and comedians, but not romantic lead. The only pale redheaded actor who managed to play against type is David Caruso, who has not had an exactly first rate movie career.

We're in the very best of hands






This is being described as Obama's "My Pet Goat" moment:

"It took Obama almost two full minutes from the time he began speaking until he got around to mentioning the shooting at Fort Hood — the reason everyone tuned into Obama’s speech. The nation wanted some leadership at a time when it appeared that a terrorist attack may have taken place on American soil — and Obama was apparently more concerned about giving a “shout out” to his friends at the Tribal Nations Conference. Indeed, he tells the audience above that he’s been inconvenienced out of delivering his lengthier remarks because the shooting has intruded itself on his daily business."

This comment by Archbishop Dolan was not fit to print in the New York Times:

October is the month we relish the highpoint of our national pastime, especially when one of our own New York teams is in the World Series!


Sadly, America has another national pastime, this one not pleasant at all: anti-catholicism.

It is not hyperbole to call prejudice against the Catholic Church a national pastime. Scholars such as Arthur Schlesinger Sr. referred to it as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people,” while John Higham described it as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” “The anti-semitism of the left,” is how Paul Viereck reads it, and Professor Philip Jenkins sub-titles his book on the topic “the last acceptable prejudice.”

If you want recent evidence of this unfairness against the Catholic Church, look no further than a few of these following examples of occurrences over the last couple weeks:

On October 14, in the pages of the New York Times, reporter Paul Vitello exposed the sad extent of child sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. According to the article, there were forty cases of such abuse in this tiny community last year alone. Yet the Times did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records, and total transparency. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so . . . but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage.”

Of course, this selective outrage probably should not surprise us at all, as we have seen many other examples of the phenomenon in recent years when it comes to the issue of sexual abuse. To cite but two: In 2004, Professor Carol Shakeshaft documented the wide-spread problem of sexual abuse of minors in our nation’s public schools (the study can be found here). In 2007, the Associated Press issued a series of investigative reports that also showed the numerous examples of sexual abuse by educators against public school students. Both the Shakeshaft study and the AP reports were essentially ignored, as papers such as the New York Times only seem to have priests in their crosshairs.

There's more.

I've finished up the thread on Victor Reppert's blog, and there are two commentors there who have descended into polytheism and Nestorianism because of their unshakeable conviction that I worship Mary.

Ironic.

Home Coming

The Traditional Anglican Communion of Great Britain has requested incorporation into the Catholic Church under the new dispensations.

If only Amish Bishops could marry....

4 Amish bishops charged with not reporting abuse:

Four Amish leaders in southwest Missouri who chose to "shun" an accused child molester in their community rather than report him to authorities were charged Tuesday with failing to report the sexual abuse.


Webster County prosecutor Danette Padgett said all four are bishops and face one misdemeanor count each of failure to report child abuse as a mandatory reporter.

Under Missouri law, people with "responsibility for the care of children" are required to report suspected child abuse. Examples of mandatory reporters under the statute are doctors, nurses, social workers and teachers and ministers who are not engaged in a "privileged communication."

The bishops were identified as Emmanuel M.S. Eicher, 44, Peter M. Eicher, 59, Jacob P. Schwartz, 79, and Christian J.F. Schwartz, 41, all of rural Webster County.

How to take Notes

This "how-to" tip sheet on how to take notes on philosophical texts is worth reading for any text.  I like the John Newman approach on how to locate the point you want to find on a page.

This would have been useful in law school.  As I recall, many of the second text books I purchased had every line on every page highlighted.  The previous owners apparently used a roller to make sure that they didn't miss a key point.

New Fresno Blog

Becky Cinema - KYNO Radio Personality - is blogging about movies and snarky Hollywood stories.

Recreating the History of Early Christian Theology in 40 Comments.


Victor Reppert at Dangerous Ideas posts a comment about whether Marian devotion does not constitute "worship"simply because the Catholic Church says so.


 Dialogue ensues.  The logic of the comment thread requires those who want to depict Catholics as "idolatrous" are subsequently forced to deny that Mary is the "Mother of God" and eventually to recreate the Nestorian position that Mary was the mother of a human Jesus but not of a divine Jesus. This, of course, is an unwinding of basic Trinitarian and Christological doctines held by virtually all Western Christians from the 5th Century and thereafter.

My mission completed, I abandon the field.

Update:

Mark Shea offers his pithy Marian analysis.

In the Hell Dimension, Kurt Russell Won the Oscar for his portrayal of Han Solo

Watching Sausage Being Made