Handmaiden to an idea

But Hollywood has a glut of young actresses who have more than that to offer—they have talent, and that talent isn’t being put to full use in Hollywood movies … The problem brings to mind Kierkegaard’s great 1847 essay “The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress,” in which he contrasts the gifts of the young actress (“luck,” “youthfulness,” “soulfulness,” and being “in the right rapport with the tension of the stage”—which I take for the theatrical equivalent of “the camera loves her”) with the “dialectical” element of acting, the “metamorphosis” that she undergoes when, no longer young, “in full and conscious, well-earned and dedicated command over her essential powers, she can in truth be the handmaiden of her idea.” I think immediately of Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Ida Lupino, and many others—actresses in an age when the idea was dominant, above all, the idea of adulthood. Now, the very question of the passage from youth to adulthood is the crucial issue of art—that’s why Hollywood has such trouble dealing with it, and why these actresses haven’t really had the roles they deserve.