Taraji P Henson doesn't have the solution to her problem

[richardmurray]

after reading the article, sharon stone said six months ago after receiving an award in nyc that she wants pay equity. she said that black women need to get ay equal to white women and women need to get aid to men. She said it is the law in the usa but isn't adhered to. 
So, Taraji Henson isn't lying but, I must say, the issue is the community of workers a well as the willingness of people to produce films. 
I will give an example. 
The reality is, every single film taraji p henson has made recently, like hidden figures, if she would had said no, for the wage offered, another black female thespian would had said yes. That is the blunt truth. That is how labor works in the usa, ever since the war between the states ended, employers always find laborers who will work for less. And that is allowed as each laborer is free to do the one thing that people underrate, as I have done more times than not, say no. If you feel someone isn't paying you correct or the fiscal terms of the deal are incorrect, simply say no. 
And, it is also the production of films that has to change. Taraji isn't a no name thespian but does she roduce films? At the end of the day, you have to risk and invest your own. robert redford, clint eastwood risked what they earned as actors and made great careers producing and directing. But they took gambles, like films downhill racer, the outlaw josey whales. 

I learned of this from Movies That Move We

https://www.facebook.com/groups/162792258578547/permalink/738804597643974/?mibextid=oMANbw

Taraji P. Henson Breaks Down In Tears As She Confirms She's Considered Quitting Acting
The "Color Purple" star became visibly emotional in a recent interview while sharing the reason behind the potential move.
Curtis M. Wong
By 
Curtis M. Wong
Dec 20, 2023, 07:09 PM EST

As she returns to the big screen in one of this year’s most anticipated films, Taraji P. Henson is getting candid about the pay inequity she faces as a Black woman in Hollywood.

The actor became visibly emotional in footage that went viral Wednesday following her recent conversation with Gayle King on SiriusXM, alongside fellow “Color Purple” star Danielle Brooks and the film’s director, Blitz Bazawule.

When King asked about a report that claimed Henson was considering quitting acting altogether, the Academy Award nominee began tearing up.

“I’m just tired of working so hard, being gracious at what I do, being paid a fraction of the cost,” Henson said. “I’m tired of hearing my sisters say the same thing over and over. You get tired.”

The actor also pointed out that her profession required her to have a team of people supporting her behind the scenes.

“I hear people go, ‘You work a lot.’ I have to. The math ain’t mathing,” she said. “Big bills come with what we do. We don’t do this alone. The fact that we’re up here, there’s a whole entire team behind us. They have to get paid.”

Henson endeared herself to a generation of television views as Cookie Lyon on “Empire,” for which she received a Golden Globe. She made her film acting debut in 1998’s “Streetwise,” and nabbed an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Queenie in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” starring Brad Pitt. In 2016, she starred with Janelle Monáe and Octavia Spencer in the smash film “Hidden Figures,” which received three Oscar nominations.

In “The Color Purple,” Henson is part of all-star cast that also includes Fantasia Barrino. Early reviews of the film, a musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s 1982 novel, have called it an “exhilarating, larger-than-life journey” and “a joy to watch.”

Yet despite the many accolades she’s received, Henson told King that she’s treated like a novice when it comes to negotiating contracts for film and TV roles.

“It seems every time I do something and I break another glass ceiling, when it’s time to renegotiate, I’m at the bottom again, like I never did what I just did,” she said. “And I’m just tired. It wears on you, you know?”

Henson has touched on her experiences with pay disparity in a number of previous interviews. In 2019, she told Variety that she’d asked for “half a million” before signing on for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” only to ultimately receive $150,000 for the role.

And in an interview published earlier this month, she told The Hollywood Reporter that she’d been “fighting tooth and nail every project” for adequate pay.

“Listen, I’ve been doing this for two decades and sometimes I get tired of fighting because I know what I do is bigger than me. I know that the legacy I leave will affect somebody coming up behind me,” she told the outlet, before going on to reference other Black female actors.

“My prayer is that I don’t want these Black girls to have the same fights that me and Viola [Davis], Octavia [Spencer], we out here thugging it out.”

Among those to express support for Henson this week was her “Think Like a Man” co-star Gabrielle Union.
URL
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/taraji-p-henson-black-actors-pay-inequality_n_65835ba5e4b03e698a11e8ae

 

This is something S Stone said recently about the pay gap, I tried to find the local news but i failed

Sharon Stone Says She Just Turned Down Big-Budget Movie Over Gender Pay Gap, Talks Saudi Arabia’s Emerging Film Market – Red Sea Studio
By Diana Lodderhose

November 30, 2023 1:00pm

The year’s highest-grossing film, Barbie, may have been the first billion-dollar movie directed solely by a woman, but Sharon Stone isn’t confident the gender parity issue has improved vastly in the last few decades. 

Speaking exclusively at Deadline’s Red Sea Studio in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the actress said the gender pay gap was still a huge issue in Hollywood today and she recently felt the brunt of it again last year when she was offered the lead role in a big-budget studio film. 

“Thirty years ago, when I did Basic Instinct, Michael Douglas made $14 million and I made $500,000,” she said. “Last year, there was a $100 million film being made by a studio and the actor, who was new, was going to be paid something like $8 million or $9 million – someone we don’t really know – and the studio offered me again $500,000 to be the female lead. And I thought, thirty years later this is still happening. So, I don’t think it has changed much. So, I turned it down and the studio head said, ‘Well, good luck to you Sharon.’ And I said, ‘Well, good luck to you.’ And two weeks later he was fired.” 

Stone is a returning guest at this week’s Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia this week, after having visited the festival last year for the first time and she said that the KSA “is so intriguing because it’s an emerging country.”

“As our country [USA] is sort of divesting itself from being a first world country – now we’re considered a second world country on the global map – it’s really interesting to see as we, as women, lose our rights, here in Saudi women are gaining their rights and it’s so intriguing to watch how this is happening.”

She continued, “When I did Basic Instinct, I wanted to direct a film and I got laughed out of the studio. And now you see that two out of the six women that had their films nominated in Cannes, were women that were funded out of Saudi Arabia. And so, people say, ‘Well how could you go to Saudi Arabia and look at all of those injustices in Saudi Arabia?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know – I think it was pretty unjust that I couldn’t direct in America.”

When pressed about stepping back into the acting world again, Stone admitted she would “love to do a television series” and hinted that “it’s quite possible that I will do one in the not-too-distant future.” 

URL
https://deadline.com/video/sharon-stone-gender-pay-gap/

 

[ProfD]

Pay disparity will always be an issue especially within a capitalistic framework. 

 

Then, there's the racism and gender piece of it too.  There are a few elephants in a small room.

 

Most Americans are taught to get an education so that they can get a job working for somebody else.

 

People need to become educated in how to go from 1) trading labor for wages to 2) becoming producers instead of merely consumers.

 

There's a huge difference between working for someone else and working for yourself.  It starts with self-investment.

 

Take the two women mentioned above.  As A-list actresses, there's nothing to stop them from separately or joining forces to produce and direct their own projects.

 

But, it's easier to let someone else do the heaviest lifting whether it's financing the project or building the business. 

 

Then, workers want to demand better pay or fair pay.  Their effort is misguided from the beginning.  It starts at the negotiating table. 

 

Of course, as long as someone else is willing to work for less there's never a labor shortage.  Catch 22.

 

Unions and other efforts have been undertaken to resolve everything from pay disparity to working conditions.  Even in that regard....follow the money.

 

Nonetheless, I could write a book on the subject of labor and capitalism but I'll stop here for the Q&A.

[Pioneer1]

What I'm about to say may SOUND like a contradiction...but it certainly is not if you examine it with experience and insight.


I'm a big supporter or labor union and the right to organize.
I'm also  a big supporter or private businesses and profiteering.

In a Capitalistic society such as this, labor wages and working conditions in general rise when GOVERNMENT offers a viable alternative as competition.

This is what Franklin D. Roosevelt did back in the 30s and 40s with his various worker programs.
The wages offered were so high that if the private sector wanted to have a work-force, they HAD to raise their wages in order to lure people back to their jobs.

Infact, we saw a recent example of this on a more minor scale with the Pandemic relief a couple years ago.

With the government helping people to pay rent and giving them such large unemployment checks, companies HAD to offer higher wages, sign-on bonuses, and other deal sweeteners just to get people off the dole and back to work....lol.

So yes, you can allow people the freedom to work for any wage they AGREE to work for.
Infact, they SHOULD have the freedom to do this because you never know who all may be in a pinch and need to take anything they can get.
But if the government does IT'S job by offering alternatives, then the wages will still increase.

Also the government can help by suppressing INFLATION so that your dollar will stretch further, then there would be no need for constant wage increases.

 

[ProfD]

3 hours ago, Pioneer1 said:

In a Capitalistic society...GOVERNMENT offers a viable alternative as competition.

Capitalism is built on free markets. It thrives with limited government. There's supposed poised to be balance moreso competition between them. 

3 hours ago, Pioneer1 said:

With the government helping people....

Too much government makes people lazy and stifles innovation and industry.

 

The pandemic allowed folks to sleep in and have less motivation to worka job. Stores didn't have enough folks to work warehouses or stock shelves.

 

Capitalism isn't perfect but it's better than the alternatives (Socialism and  Communism).  

 

3 hours ago, Pioneer1 said:

Also the government can help by suppressing INFLATION so that your dollar will stretch further, then there would be no need for constant wage increases.

Suppressing inflation would flood the market with cheaper and inferior goods. Imagine dollar stores everywhere.

[Pioneer1]

ProfD

 

 

Capitalism is built on free markets. It thrives with limited government. There's supposed poised to be balance moreso competition between them. 

 

I support a limited government however I support and EFFECTIVE government that steps in when it's needed and supports it's citizens.

 

What we have in the U.S. and in the West in general isn't truly "free" markets.
The racists IN the government help the racists IN the private sector.

 

 

 

 

 

Too much government makes people lazy and stifles innovation and industry.

The pandemic allowed folks to sleep in and have less motivation to worka job. Stores didn't have enough folks to work warehouses or stock shelves.

Capitalism isn't perfect but it's better than the alternatives (Socialism and  Communism).

I agree.
I personally would prefer a decent mix of Capitalism and Socialism leaning more heavily on the Capitalism.
However we definitely need balance.

 

The Pandemic did make a lot of people lazy, but BEFORE the Pandemic the opposite occurred where Big Business were having it TOO easy.
They had an OVER surplus of workers to choose from for cheap labor, wages were low, not too many benefits.
Now they're slowly RETURNING to that with the ending of Pandemic relief.

 

 

 

 

 

Suppressing inflation would flood the market with cheaper and inferior goods. Imagine dollar stores everywhere.

 

You don't have to.
Just go to the average hood in the U.S.....lol.

Landscape is dominated by Dollar Generals,  Family Dollars, Popeye Chickens, liquor stores, and weed shops...lol.

 

Not even DOLLAR TREES that really do offer half-way decent but cheap goods for a dollar.....but these Family Dollars and Dollar Generals where the prices are often higher than Wal-mart.

 

[Troy]

Didn't the actors union go on strike; what was that all about, if it can't ensure pay equity for people like Henson?

 

I have not listened to the interview, but it hard for me to understand why a critically acclaimed actor like Henson is brought to tears over the prospect of having to leave the profession over money.  Does she wield any power at all? Does she have no support within the industry?

 

 

[Pioneer1]

 

I also forgot to mention......

Whether she's sincerely crying or not, she should know that White people don't react to the tears of a Black woman the same as they do a White woman.
So she can tear up and cry and hold boxes of tissue all day long, but I'm not sure if that will motivate the men who run Hollywood to even feel sorry for her let alone change things.

 

 

 

Troy

It's not so much about having power or garnering support from your other colleagues; it's about the MENTALITY most AfroAfricans have today.

Although I'm no fan of the Republican Party and prefer the Democrats over them IN GENERAL (because I really trust neither one)....there are certain things they do get right.
Lol, let me explain...........

The Republicans complain about the Liberals promoting an "entitlement" society where people want things for free and without working for them.
That's propaganda for the MOST part because some things like basic life necessities SHOULD be supplied by the government.
However, when it comes to mass wealth and entertainment.....it should pretty much be every woman/man for himself.

In other words, you don't have a "right" to make millions or make as much as a White or Asian or Black person.
You have a "right" to get whatever you NEGOTIATED for in your contract.
And that's the message a lot of Black entertainers don't get.

They see White millionaires getting good Hollywood deals.
They see the racism.
But instead of understanding that those ARE the rules in private industry, they start marching and crying talking about how "unfair" it is as if Hollywood is part of the government and has a constitutional mandate to give every actor the same amount of money or opportunities.

Hollywood is a PRIVATE INDUSTRY ran by RACISTS.
You either get in where you fit in and juice it for as much as you can OR start your own entertainment sector like the Indians did with Bollywood and treat YOUR SELF right.

 

[ProfD]

4 hours ago, Pioneer1 said:

Hollywood is a PRIVATE INDUSTRY ran by RACISTS.
You either get in where you fit in and juice it for as much as you can OR start your own entertainment sector like the Indians did with Bollywood and treat YOUR SELF right.

Facts.

 

Bro, I see you're "still learning" from these discussions.

[richardmurray]

@Troy i am not intimate to the strike's affairs but from what I comprehend from a distance one goal was to provide protections for unionized thespians from the producers using what is commonly called AI to undermine or diminish or delete payment of human labor in the film industry. Another goal was to restructure the film industry as places outside the usa have the technology to produce most mid to low budget films , plus have lower labor cost or lower cost of production that the hollywood section of the film industry in the usa will never be able to compete with. 

 

No industry in the usa has pay equity so...

 

Quesiton, do you think  absent government interventions that the industries in the usa can have an ownership as multiracial as the labor pools?

I have said to women that the true problem with women in the usa is very simple. men own everything and i don't care how smart women are or merited, or how many women exists but the legacy of ownership can not be beaten through  legal fiscal capitalistic means. Either women figure out a way for the government to reboot an industry , i think all industires in the usa need it, or women find illegal fiscal means to gain advantages to leverage and usurp the male dominated ownership groups in all industries. but college education/contracts/deals/merit will never lead to women ownership and the labor respect that comes from ownership. 

[ProfD]

11 hours ago, richardmurray said:

 

No industry in the usa has pay equity so...

 

...men own everything...

 

...legacy of ownership can not be beaten through  legal fiscal capitalistic means.

 

...find illegal fiscal means to gain advantages to leverage and usurp the male dominated ownership groups in all industries. but college education/contracts/deals/merit will never lead to women ownership and the labor respect that comes from ownership. 

Entire post can be applied to every marginalized or disenfranchised group of people.

[richardmurray]

@ProfD well,you cut up my question to Troy... I wasn't trying to make a generalization cause in the context of the usa variances matter. 

 

non white european immigrants post 1965 came to the usa willingly but were never enfranchized. 

native americans were enfranchized and had their franchise taken.

The descended of enslaved I will argue still aren't even mostly convinced they are part of the usa in a positive way. 

white women were the first female group accepted as citizen but never had power.

 

yes I don't know if it was you or another who said they don't like speaking on the past, but the problem with generalizations with these issues is the path to today varies. The usa wasn't started as a government where all peoples were empowered , represented and white male chirstian hetero people took. the usa was started by one group , and one group only and no other group had any power, outside the native american whose land was continuously taken by the usa in its emperial growth from sea to shining sea. 

 

You know all this, I am not educating you or anyone else,  but going forward about solutions, the details matter and I am 100% convinced that people don't come to the same conclusions about the past, including in this topic, women. I am certain many women don't see a path to equality in the usa.  And while some can oppose their position. I can argue in their defense, the usa was never made for women to have power. And if the usa can never be a place where women have power then discussing womens power in the usa is not as important in how women can carve a bit of the usa or the usa entirely into a place that they can. 

 

[ProfD]

1 hour ago, richardmurray said:

@ProfD well,you cut up my question to Troy... I wasn't trying to make a generalization cause in the context of the usa variances matter. 

 

...the usa was never made for women to have power.

 

And if the usa can never be a place where women have power then discussing womens power in the usa is not as important in how women can carve a bit of the usa or the usa entirely into a place that they can. 

 

@richardmurray, it wasn't my intent to carve up your post/question to Troy out of context. 

 

However,  stand by my opinion that it could be applied to all groups of people who were never meant to have power in the US. 

 

Otherwise, if you want the focus of the thread to remain about women's empowerment, I respect that too. 

 

Back to the regularly scheduled program.

[richardmurray]

@ProfD 

THis is the 100% truth more than an opinion

Quote

stand by my opinion that it could be applied to all groups of people who were never meant to have power in the US. 

The USA was created by white european male christian hetero enslaving humans:)

all other groups have been pushed into a corner/an enslaved space/an isolated space or impotent from the usa's inception.

The post a question to you: can the usa be changed into a place where all humans in its legal bounds can be potent/free/owners? 

[ProfD]

24 minutes ago, richardmurray said:

The post a question to you: can the usa be changed into a place where all humans in its legal bounds can be potent/free/owners? 

It's possible but would require bloodshed and a significant loss of life. Not a sacrifice too many people are willing make.