An Unfortunate Introduction: Barbra Streisand’s Oscar Night Faux Pas

By ALEXANDRA BRODSKY

March 13, 2010

Every time I hear Kathryn Bigelow’s name, I remem­ber Bar­bra Streisand’s face. At the Oscars this week, it was Streisand who pre­sented Bigelow with her Best Direc­tor Oscar. Botoxed and smug, Streisand’s face bright­ened at the opened enve­lope and her lips opened to intone, “Finally, the time has come.”  Then she uttered Bigelow’s name, hav­ing suc­cess­fully affixed a per­ma­nent pref­ace.  The next day, news wires and film blogs would declare, “First woman to win an Acad­emy Award for Best Direc­tor, Kathryn Bigelow.”

I think Sun­day night was great.  I always enjoy it when women win hon­ors pre­vi­ously monop­o­lized by men.  And the jour­nal­ists who noted that Bigelow’s was the first female win in the award’s his­tory did so appro­pri­ately.  Streisand’s mis­guided com­men­tary, how­ever, imposed a fem­i­nist story arc onto the win that under­cut Bigelow’s per­sonal accom­plish­ment— and intro­duced a ten­sion between progress in gen­der and eth­nic politics.

How nice of Bar­bara to share “Bigelow’s award” with all of us wom­en­folk.  After all, as the aging star per­fectly showed through her per­sonal the­atrics, this win really belongs to her—and every­one else with a vagina.  Why else would she dis­tract us from Bigelow’s per­sonal vic­tory in the very moment of its announce­ment?  A woman of such under­stated demeanor could have no ulte­rior motive.

Yet despite Streisand’s self­less shar­ing, it is unclear how, exactly, this Oscar con­sti­tutes a fem­i­nist vic­tory. It is won­der­ful that the indus­try has opened up from its explic­itly sex­ist early days to allow tal­ented women to rise to posi­tions of power, the sort of posi­tions that allow them to pro­duce Oscar-worthy films.  How­ever, the trends of the Oscars are not nec­es­sar­ily indica­tive of trends in the work­place: the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle reports that there were pro­por­tion­ally fewer women direct­ing top-grossing films in 2009 than in 2008, drop­ping down to the same per­cent­age as in 1987.  Nor does Bigelow’s win pro­vide a height­ened plat­form from which to fight for women’s issues (as, say, a pres­i­den­tial win would).  Fur­ther, this win does not set a prece­dent that allows more women to achieve, like Eliz­a­beth Blackwell’s admis­sion to med­ical school; it seems highly unlikely that what­ever old boys’ club men­tal­ity keeps women out of direct­ing will dis­si­pate because of this award. 

Fram­ing Bigelow’s win as a fem­i­nist vic­tory was par­tic­u­larly ill-advised in this case, given that African-American direc­tor Lee Daniels was also up for the award.  Polit­i­cal movements—even those with­out mutu­ally exclu­sive goals—will always com­pete. The resources at stake are scarce; there is only so much polit­i­cal will to go around.  And when every vic­tory by a mem­ber of a mar­gin­al­ized group is a vic­tory for the move­ment asso­ci­ated with that group, any com­pe­ti­tion between peo­ple who are not mid­dle class white men takes on undue sig­nif­i­cance.  Daniels could have been the first African Amer­i­can direc­tor to win the award for his film Pre­cious, so when Streisand declared that “the time has come” with a tri­umphant grin, we knew it had come down to the black guy or the chick.  Of course, only one of the “times” could have arrived, and Streisand’s ecsta­tic pref­ace made it clear she was more con­cerned with a sup­posed “fem­i­nist win” than a “racial equal­ity win.” And her pos­tur­ing asked us to choose as well.  Obvi­ously, the Acad­emy was not choos­ing which cause it cared about more; it was judg­ing the artis­tic work of Kathryn Bigelow and Lee Daniels.  To paint this award as any­thing more is both incor­rect and unfair.

Next time, Bar­bra, let the woman speak for herself.

Alexan­dra Brod­sky is a sopho­more in Yale Col­lege. She is a staff writer for Broad Recog­ni­tion.