Hollywood is destroying itself.
Not literally, of course, but they are diminishing the value of the very art their directors and actors are capable of producing.
As we all know, society is ever-evolving, with the current trends and beauty standards doing complete 180s every decade. In the 90s and early 2000s, thin was in. “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” a quote infamously popularized by model Kate Moss rang through the ears of many young people across the globe. Weight Watchers haunted household pantries, children who hadn’t even hit puberty were being forced on diets, and countless women came under attack for having the audacity to have fat on their bodies. I mean, can you imagine being so selfish and indulgent that you don’t make intense changes to your body and starve yourself to please strangers?
Of course, as the common person finally found a means to fit the beauty standard, Hollywood changed again — now, we want thick women, curvy in all the right places — which of course, just means a fuller hourglass figure. Not too much weight on the stomach, not too much weight in the arms, and a tiny, tiny waist — surely it can’t hurt to sacrifice a few organs to look a bit more like the Kardashians.
But, amid this change, a major wave of body positivity hit people again, so celebrities were a bit… stuck. Many people have access to the gym, so they had to go above and beyond weight loss changes — enter cosmetic surgery.
Now, I want to take a moment to discuss a few things about cosmetic surgery. First of all, cosmetic surgery — depending on what aspects you want to look at — has been around for hundreds of years. However, most of what many people think of when they think of cosmetic surgery has been honed in the last 100 years. Shockingly enough, war helped speed up the progress and understanding of cosmetic surgery, developing new practices to try to restore soldiers to their previous condition after suffering from life-changing injuries. Though, it’s believed that it only started being used for more personal use in the 60s – ironically, around the same time that one of the first body positivity movements is believed to have started.
But, in a more modern context, it’s becoming heavily normalized at rates I personally find concerning. According to a 2023 Procedural Statistic Report conducted by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, there was a five percent increase in plastic surgeries from 2022 to 2023. The top five most common surgeries were as follows: liposuction, breast augmentation, tummy tucks, breast lifts, and eyelid surgery. Surgery seems to be most popular amongst millennials, with ASPS reporting that, “while this generation prioritizes movement, diet and overall wellness, they have popularized the concept of using cosmetic procedures to address issues that diet and exercise alone cannot fix, such as loose or sagging skin from weight fluctuations, addressing stubborn fat and adjusting their silhouettes to fit them,” which is… a horrifying way to put it, in my eyes. The refusal to allow bodies to grow and change and age, the normalization of modifying your body to fit unnatural standards is downright gruesome.
Regardless, it’s clear that this practice with a history stained with blood separates multi-million dollar celebrities from the average citizen; and this blood taints the very art they create.
‘iPhone face’ is a term recently coined to describe actors who look “too modern” for roles in historical pieces — oftentimes, they look too modern because of the cosmetic surgeries they’ve had, given that they live in our modern century and feel they must conform to our standards.
Some people don’t mind much how an actor looks, so long as they can perform well and they’re decently attractive — the human mind is vain, don’t deny it, but this absolutely cannot be the way it is for film. Art is not meant to be conventional, or easily understood, or well-received every single time. For immersion purposes, for storytelling purposes, for the integrity of art itself, we must stop casting the wrong people for the wrong roles.
First and foremost, it simply looks wrong. I’m not saying that these people are unattractive or bad actors — they just ruin the immersion of the movie. A few popular examples of this phenomenon in recent films include Dakota Johnson in Persuasion, Michelle Randolph in 1923, and many of the main cast members of Daisy Jones & The Six. When comparing these actors to real people from these time periods, the difference is striking — however, I don’t think the issue lies with the actor choices alone. And, yes, humans have slightly changed over the years, but we have not evolved within the past hundred or so years to make such a significant change. Michael Sheehan, a behavioral ecologist and associate professor at Cornell University, says, “The perceived differences in appearance of people between the mid-20th century and now is almost certainly the result of stylistic, grooming or diet changes rather than facial evolution.” He also says that he believes cosmetic dentistry itself has a very significant role in these changes, since “These fake teeth simply did not exist in the 70s.” Once again, when putting the Daisy Jones cast beside actors from the 70s, Sheehan’s theory does seem to ring true.
Issues of ‘iPhone face’ are often accompanied by poor, ill-researched wardrobe and makeup choices — and sometimes even dialogue that isn’t quite right. One example of this, spanning across multiple films, is the depiction of flappers – oftentimes, their costumes depict what we, modern viewers, depict as scandalous. While this does help viewers understand why society reacted to these women the way they did, I feel it also assumes the viewers to be, for lack of a better word, stupid. This may be a sweeping statement, but I feel like most people understand the change of standards over the course of a hundred years; and, if anything, I feel like treating something that we consider modest now as inappropriate garb only further develops the setting. By assuming viewers don’t understand the context of your story, bending things to make it easier to digest, stories are cheapened.
Of course, poor wardrobe choices can even be found in well-loved movies; take the 2019 adaptation of Little Women, for example. –Before I proceed any further, I must admit: I’m biased and much prefer the 1994 adaptation, simply because I believe the actors in the 2019 version, though talented, are far too old to pass as young teenagers– but, I digress. For a film set in the 1860s, having a character wear UGG boots seems a bit… out of place. However, beyond that, one thing that stood out to me was the hair choices. All four of the girls rarely wore bonnets and oftentimes donned loose hair: all of which is entirely inaccurate for the 1860s. To me – and, maybe I have this take because of how personal this story is to me – Little Women is a very feminist story – and part of what makes it so feminist is the time period it’s set in. All four of the March sisters proudly make their own decisions on how they want to live their lives, how they decide to conquer their battles, and they do this while receiving judgment from other people. Personally, I feel like by keeping their hair accurate – a small, yet dearly important feature for most women – by having the sisters wear bonnets, it reminds viewers of the time period, of the dozens of battles these girls have to face that we no longer battle. Watering down the accuracies of the time period you’re choosing to depict just to conform to more modern standards takes away the complexities of what the characters live with, and I – quite frankly – am tired of pretending that this isn’t annoying.
Let’s say you don’t care about immersion, though. Let’s say you want every piece of historical media to burn, that you want society to forget itself and live in the here and now — dramatic, but whatever.
You only want to see people you think are hot — you want the perfect bodies, the most symmetrical faces; you want humans that represent the peak of society with how many inhumane alterations they’ve made to reach this peak.
You aren’t going to remember a single actor’s name going down this route. Classic actors, such as Audrey Hepburn, Dean Martin, and Judy Garland didn’t have any sort of procedures performed — and they all have unique, human features that make them easily identifiable in their roles. At one point, actors would embrace these features, letting one become the very trait that helped identify them — prominent, crooked noses, perfectly villainous faces, startling eyes — all of these used to be features we hailed, features we celebrated even as the passage of time wore them on. Would the role of the cruel-hearted Bellatrix Lestrange be the same if not played by the unique Helena Bonham Carter? Would Pennywise the Clown still be nightmare fuel, if not portrayed by the eccentric Tim Curry in the nineties, and later by the intriguing Bill Skarsgard in 2016?
No! Every individual is a piece of art, a unique aspect to someone else’s creative vision — and rarely do differing styles clash well when done carelessly, in vain.
If you take nothing else away from this argument, though, please — consider this. As our sea of actors grows more and more monogamous each day, our representation dwindles to meager amounts. And, I know, many may be tired of hearing others complain about a lack of representation: but this annoyance often stems from a place of privilege, a place of never knowing what it’s like to feel othered, to feel cast aside and misunderstood because you can’t find anyone — real or fiction — like you. In certain ways, it may even be questioned whether the iPhone face conformity has motives beyond just aesthetics; many of the people who conform to this standard of beauty are white, straight people. It raises questions for other people in the industry who will never be able to conform themselves to this standard: will roles for people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and disabled people, dwindle to numbers more pathetic than before?
Of course, as much as I sit here criticizing ‘iPhone face,’ I hesitate to bash it further; after all, I fear to start treading on misogynistic grounds. I’d like to take a moment here to address this. Trying to find examples of this phenomenon, I noticed that many of the examples were women; which isn’t terribly surprising, since, as I mentioned earlier, beauty standards drastically and unrealistically change, so no woman can stay beautiful for too long without cosmetic surgery. Although I do feel pity for the women of Hollywood who feel pressured to undergo invasive surgeries, I also feel that they need to take responsibility for only worsening the conditions other women face; celebrities are idolized, and their every action is taken as what those below them should do. Hollywood controls the beauty standard – the packmates of the wild wolf may know the pain of his teeth, but they will never know how deep his fangs can go; women, no matter their status, will still deal with misogynistic beauty standards, but status will provide a shield to the depths of cruelty these ideas create.
‘iPhone face’ is — ironically — the face of modernity ruining film, in my humble (and, regrettably poorly-argued) opinion. However, a greater beast has silently stalked Hollywood for decades as well, an “art” that has been beaten to death, especially in recent years.
CGI.
First and foremost, I believe I can speak for everyone when I say that we are tired of the “live-action” remakes from Disney, where lifeless CGI jumpscares viewers at every turn. It’s amazing, really, how a company built upon dreams and imagination, and the beauty and wonders of animation, proudly presents such emotionless movies now.
Personally, my biggest gripe with CGI is the fact that it’s often so jarringly fake-looking. Even the best CGI still pains me, to some degree; and, yes, while I know I must suspend my imagination while watching fictional movies, I’d still appreciate feeling a sense of cohesion throughout the film — which is why I suggest a tried and true method, something that Hollywood depended on years before modern computers were available to them.
Practical effects. It’s not that filmmakers have abandoned these effects entirely — after all, it would be a waste of time and energy, however, I fear they’ve forgotten the beauty of large-scale practical effects.
Once again, I must admit bias before I divulge into another rant. To me, Jim Henson was one of the most influential creators of our generation, and his work — though often reduced to just The Muppets — deserves heartier credit than it receives. Two of my films were produced by the Jim Henson Company in the late 70s and mid-80s, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, respectively. I watched both of these films for the first time in middle school and was almost immediately entranced. Sure, the movies are a bit goofy, but the thought put into each and every scene is incredible — to me, it’s something so perfectly done that you don’t realize how amazing it is until you sit back and truly study it — and that is the very purpose of practical effects. Everything should feel believable, and the audience should feel themselves getting sucked into the world they are viewing, instead of groaning at yet another emotionless CGI animal flapping its mouth about.
Unfortunately, this is another issue that boils down to money yet again. There’s just enough difference in price between CGI and practical effects that CGI is cheaper, making people swarm to it. But, one other interesting aspect of the battle between CGI and practical effects involves unions. Only recently have VFX artists started gaining traction with unions – for years, they were unionized. On the other hand, practical effects artists have been unionized for years, meaning that hiring them involves paying fees, and, more unfortunately, adhering to safe work practices and making sure workers are fairly treated and compensated. I mean, how dare they ask to be treated well when they pour hours of physical labor into the details of films? In a 2022 Gizmodo article, where VFX workers who worked on Marvel projects were interviewed, one of the interviewees, Sam, reported, “I didn’t have a day off for five weeks. And those were not eight-hour days. They were ten-plus-hour days. And that was because they did a reshoot a month before the show was due. So we literally got shots in at the end of December for a show that was due at the end of January.”
As a means of convenience and modernity, many creative aspects of film are being ignored or lost entirely. Decades from now, will our children, our grandchildren, be able to proudly recall any classic films of their time the way our grandparents and great-grandparents so proudly cherish The Wizard of Oz? The way our parents speak so fondly of The Godfather? What is left to hold dear when your art is no longer an accurate representation of what it’s supposed to convey?
Support any and all local artists, small artists, aspiring artists, and anyone in between; creativity burns out when spread across all corners of the world.
