Hot Air: In California, you can’t publish actors’ ages on IMDB anymore
So the stated purpose of this law is supposedly to prevent age discrimination in employment. Seriously? First of all, we’re talking about famous people in the case of IMDB. It’s not as if you could just go on Wikipedia or any of a million fan sites and look up their ages, right? But even if this were having some sort of positive effect (which it’s not), is that really how we’re supposed to go about preventing discrimination in hiring? Shall all web sites now be banned from showing pictures of people so as to prevent prospective employers from figuring out their race? And what about gender? If an employer is unsure of your gender there must be countless ways to figure that out.
From: In California, you can’t publish actors’ ages on IMDB anymore « Hot Air
And the law is blatantly unconstitutional and is unlikely ever to take effect.
I am surprised that Jerry signed it.Report
A politician signing a blatantly unconstitutional law? That NEVER happens.Report
Aye. Prohibiting the publication of truthful information does not strike me as the least restrictive way to prevent age discrimination.Report
That’s my read on it as well. But then I’m not convinced that Citizens United was wrongly decided, so I may not be a liberal in good standing on this stuff.Report
I understand what they’re going for, I guess, in the same way that “Ban The Box” is something that I understand what they were going for.
I just am not certain that this will fix the problem that they want fixed.
On one end of the spectrum, the problem is one of verisimilitude and while Andrea was the reason to watch the first season of 90210 and indistinguishable from the other “high schoolers”, by the last season, she was distinguishable from the other “high schoolers”. To what extent is verisimilitude important?
Underneath that, though, is the much uglier problem of a youth-obsessed culture that rewards physical beauty disproportionately and has an insatiable hunger for more and more and more beautiful youths.
And it’s not fair to the people who were yesterday’s flavor of the day who now find themselves at the ripe old age of 28 being told that they’re too old to play a love interest but, maybe, they could play the wise-old-auntie? And why are they told that? Because that sells. And it sells because the culture is ugly.
And there’s no real way to fix that last problem.
But, I suppose, maybe letting 28-year-olds just get to the audition and read the line is a necessary step in the direction of changing the culture by changing the pop culture.
Maybe.Report
Jay,
This is Hollywood. If you grow up enough to no longer be a love interest to the director, you ain’t bending over for the audience either. In fact, you generally aren’t getting hired at all.Report