"Jodie Foster speaks out; Not that there’s anything wrong with that" by Ty Burr | Globe Staff, January 15, 2013
So what exactly was it that Jodie Foster did at the Golden Globes on Sunday night? Did she come out of the closet without actually saying she was coming out of the closet?
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The six-minute-plus speech the actress gave upon receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award was as profoundly personal as we’ve gotten from her or likely ever will get. That it was emotional, at points borderline incoherent, is understandable. She was simultaneously addressing a room full of good friends, her ex-partner, their two sons, a nation of busybodies, and a culture that is addicted to both “celebrity” and “reality” without having a firm grip on what either of those constructs means. The speech held multitudes while barely holding itself together.
Thanks to the ma$$ media.
Yet it also came in the context of a much-discussed “new casualness” about revelations of sexual orientation, where celebrities like Frank Ocean or Anderson Cooper can mention they’re gay and it’s no big deal to anyone except, predictably, the media. The post-game reaction to Foster’s declaration/not-declaration has, predictably, been all over the map. Big whoop, we always assumed you were gay and why didn’t you say so 20 years ago when it would have made a difference? Or: Remind me again why we should feel sympathy for rich, successful Hollywood stars, especially ones who walk through doors others have opened?
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To really parse this particular pop moment, though, you have to take a step back and understand what makes Foster unique as an actress and, more important, a public persona. If there is a single word that has always defined her, it is “professional.” Foster has never been a sob sister or a diva, a glamourpuss or a fame whore. Our perception of her, correct or not, is that she is all about the work....
At the same time, Foster has long been invested in maintaining her privacy, to an extreme unusual for public figures....
It bears remembering that the star was 18 in 1980 when John Hinckley, a young man obsessed with her performance in the 1976 movie “Taxi Driver,” tried to assassinate President Reagan to prove — actually, it doesn’t matter what he was trying to prove, he was insane. The global media descended on Foster, then a student at Yale, and imprisoned her in a news story she had no choice in joining. Aside from a 1982 article in Esquire, she has rightly refused to discuss the incident. Why should she? Who she really was had nothing to do with the Jodie Foster in Hinckley’s head....
Hinckley looking like a Manchurian Candidate, as Reagan was starting to back off the campaign rhetoric. He raised taxes in California, you know?
That alone would make a young woman paranoid about attracting attention; now factor in that Foster had been professionally acting since she was 3 and — based on the roles and movies she chose at the time — appeared to be going through a very natural re-evaluation of who she was as both a person and a performer. On top of that, factor in her sexuality, which was nobody’s business to begin with and would have been a radioactive subject in the closeted 1980s....
Then why so much pri... never mind.
The culture has allowed her to maintain the duality. On some level, we just don’t care....
Right.
It’s harder to maintain that position as a public figure when the culture’s homophobia is gradually thawing around you, though, and Foster has over the years been called out by activists for not making an overt public proclamation of her assumed sexuality. She did so within the castle walls of the Hollywood creative community, praising her then-partner, Cydney Bernard, at a 2007 industry event. But until the Golden Globes speech, she had no interest in engaging us, the consumers. Maybe she was terrified of being consumed.
Still, when does the need for privacy become an act of hiding? What does a public figure owe to her public, to the culture wars, to people like her?
Every where you look in the paper there is a war.
The sphere of persona around Foster has prompted these questions even as she has seemed unsettled, uncertain, or uninterested in addressing them. She is a rarity: a movie star who resists being locked into a public image. That’s a culturally perverse stance, and one with which you can argue all day, but it’s also her right as a human being. Thus the Golden Globes dodge....
She doesn’t care what you think of Mel Gibson; he’s her friend and that’s that.
(Blog editor smiles. He's often commented about Mel. Mel knows. The drunken rant, the movie progression from Signs to the Edge of Darkness. Mel knows)
And when we spoke prior to the release of her most recent acting-directing effort — that brave, foolish movie called “The Beaver” — she allowed that if she were 18 all over again and knew what she knows now, she probably wouldn’t choose to be an actor....
So maybe her speech was about coming out of the closet....
And maybe she is calling it quits....
Maybe....
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Apparently, Ricky Martin, Rosie O’Donnell, and Kathy Griffin are gay. Rosie will always be remembered as a hero for protesting the Iraq war on Donahue's last show on MSNBC and for bringing up WTC 7 on "The View."
Also see: Jodie Foster’s Golden Globe speech and the state of coming out
