In the wake of Amazon, Netflix, Time’s Up and others dismissing the foot-dragging, retrograde mindsets among members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association regarding issues of racial concern, Scarlett Johansson has become the latest voice to throw the besieged organization under the bus.
ScarJo has urged the industry to “step back” from the HFPA (i.e., think about refusing to attend the annual Golden Globe awards) until it does more than offer humanistic homilies and cosmetic changes.
No one would dispute that the HFPA is way too out of the swim of things by Hollywood standards, and that certain members, as Johansson mentioned in a statement to Variety earlier today, have asked “sexist questions” at press conferences “that bordered on sexual harassment.” The HFPA is a myopic outfit. The members live in their own world.
But I have to say that I’d become accustomed to Johansson being more of a headstrong thinker who’s occasionally swum against the tide (the 2018 Rub & Tug transgender thing, stating the following year that she “believes” Woody Allen). A voice is telling me that Johansson was probably urged by her team to speak out against the HFPA in order to shore up her woke credentials.