Female conductor Marin Alsop has slammed the film Tár, saying it offended her “as a woman… as a conductor… as a lesbian.”
Cate Blanchett is tipped for an Oscar for her role in the film as Lydia Tár, a lesbian conductor who is accused of abusing young women.
In the film’s first act, Lydia Tár is being interviewed by real-life New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik. She namedrops Alsop: “As to the question of gender bias, I have nothing to complain about. Nor, for that matter, should Nathalie Stutzmann, Laurence Equilbey, Marin Alsop, or JoAnn Falletta. There were so many incredible women who came before us, women who did the real lifting.”
A number of people have spotted parallels between Alsop and Tár: both are Leonard Bernstein protegees, both are lesbians, both are married to orchestral musicians, and both were (for the time) the only women to lead a big orchestra.
The similarities don’t end there: Alsop and her partner, Kristen Jurkscheit, a horn player, have been together for 32 years, but Alsop was called into question when she led the Colorado Symphony while her partner was a member. Alsop answered the controversy by outlining that the relationship had predated her appointment to lead the orchestra and it had no bearing on her job performance.
Perhaps that’s why Alsop’s feathers are ruffled: the similarities between herself and Tár are apparent, so the accusations of abuse in Tár can misrepresent the bout of controversy in Alsop’s life.
“I first read about it in late August and I was shocked that that was the first I was hearing of it,” Alsop said in an interview with the U.K.’s Sunday Times newspaper. “So many superficial aspects of ‘Tár’ seemed to align with my own personal life. But once I saw it I was no longer concerned, I was offended: I was offended as a woman, I was offended as a conductor, I was offended as a lesbian.”
Ultimately, adults cannot help falling in love with other adults of their desired sex. I’m sure Alsop would agree. Love is even more likely when bonding over shared interests and hobbies, like making music. But, if a power imbalance exists, like between conductor and student, you leave the roles before starting a sexual relationship. If it’s true love then jobs–even lives–can be changed to suit what’s best for both of you. Because when you love someone, you respect them.
Alsop is especially disgusted by the ‘predatory lesbian’ trope. Projects like Tár have the opportunity to properly represent powerful lesbians in the media but often use the platform to depict women as bad leaders and lesbians as unethical deviants.
“To have an opportunity to portray a woman in that role and to make her an abuser — for me that was heartbreaking,” she continued. “I think all women and all feminists should be bothered by that kind of depiction because it’s not really about women conductors, is it? It’s about women as leaders in our society. People ask, ‘Can we trust them? Can they function in that role?’ It’s the same questions whether it’s about a CEO or an NBA coach or the head of a police department.”
The amount of ‘predatory lesbians’ in the media does not represent real-life statistics. Eva Green’s character gets obsessed with her female high school student, even raping her, in Cracks (2009). Billie Piper’s character dates and “sleeps with” her female high school student in True Love (episode 3, 2012). Then you’ve got Joan Ferguson (general psycho), Lucy Gambero (predatory butch) and Frankie Doyle (sexual assault) in Wentworth (2013-2021).
But Wentworth also shows how nuanced relationships that could turn predatory should be handled: despite mistakes, Frankie and prison psychologist Bridget both end up leaving the prison in order to be together without complications. Only then is their relationship healthy and equal.
Alsop argues that women are given leadership roles in films and television shows just to ‘prove’ that they’re as bad as men when in power, or else ‘too hysterical’ to handle the responsibility. There are rarely positive depictions of females in leadership, especially lesbians, who aren’t fucking the subordinates or having mental breakdowns. This is true in Wentworth: most women in power (either Top Dog or Governor) are either predatory lesbians (Ferguson, Doyle, Marie Winter) or mentally incapable (Vera Bennett, Kaz Proctor, Ann Reynolds).
“There are so many men — actual, documented men — this film [Tár] could have been based on but, instead, it puts a woman in the role but gives her all the attributes of those men,” Alsop said. “That feels antiwoman. To assume that women will either behave identically to men or become hysterical, crazy, insane is to perpetuate something we’ve already seen on film so many times before.”
