'Is Hollywood racist?' comedian and MC Chris Rock asked at Sunday night's Oscars. Though the question was rhetorical, he provided the answer everyone already knew to be correct: 'You're damn right Hollywood's racist.'
It was a win-win culmination of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign in which no actual person had to take the blame. Instead, a faceless institution named 'Hollywood' was rapped over the knuckles for its racist approach while the flesh-and-blood, white faces that represented it could get on with the business of congratulating themselves.
But while all this mollification was going on, there was another, gargantuan prejudice saturating the very air these celebrities were breathing: sexism so rampant it pervades Hollywood's movie-making industry from root to tip.
Rock might well have asked this question: 'Is Hollywood sexist?' And the answer would have been a resounding, 'You're damn right Hollywood's sexist.'
Rock referred in passing to sexism, but there was immense irony in listening to this from a man famous for his misogynistic jokes. (One of Rock's past 'jokes' goes like this: 'Pussy is like Visa, accepted everywhere. Next time you ain't got no cash, say "Do you take pussy?"')
As much as people of colour remain largely absent from our screens and behind the camera, so do women — especially when they're considered 'old'. It's such a glaring omission in a world comprising 50 per cent women that the lack of a #HollywoodSoMale campaign to rectify the matter beggars belief.
Individually, women in Hollywood have spoken out about sexism. Cate Blanchett made headlines (and caused some pennies to drop — thunderously, one hopes) when she asked a red carpet cameraman panning up and down her body if he did the same to men. Patricia Arquette accepted her statuette at last year's Oscars by calling for wage equity.
And film producer Ross Putman is raising awareness by posting female character descriptions from Hollywood scripts — routinely posed in physical and sexual terms — on Twitter.
But still, Hollywood churns out its sexist fare: according to a study by the New York Film Academy, just 10.7 per cent of the top 500 movies made between 2007 and 2012 featured a cast that was half female. Almost 90 per cent of movies, in other words, contained a cast that was male-heavy, distorting the actual gender balance of the world's population.
Of the females who did star in these movies, almost 30 per cent wore sexually revealing clothes (compared to seven per cent of men), 26 per cent got partially naked (compared to 9.4 per cent of men), and roughly one third of those with speaking parts (another area in which women are underrepresented) were shown partially naked or wearing sexually revealing clothing.
And women of colour — who suffer the double humiliation of both racial and gender discrimination — made up just 13 per cent of characters in 2015, according to the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film (CSWTF) at San Diego State University.
If Hollywood is a world unto itself, then it is one in which women exist in far smaller numbers than men, and in which their purpose is clearly defined as that of sex object. It is a world at whose centre sits the revered Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which votes in Oscar winners, and whose member base is 77 per cent male (and, as the #OscarsSoWhite campaigners have noted, 94 per cent white).
The composition of the academy, of course, mirrors that of the industry itself, where older white males occupy most positions of power. According to the CSWTF, just 20 per cent of those working in key behind-the-scenes roles on the top 700 theatrically released films in 2014 were women.
It has to be asked, then: why do we, as the paying public, tolerate a movie industry that portrays people who are already discriminated against in real life — people of colour, LGBT people, women — in an unflattering, unrealistic and unrepresentative way? Why do we heap praise on this year's Oscar winner, Spotlight, while failing to notice there is just one woman in the lead cast?
And where is the campaign calling for Hollywood to quit making movies that mirror the fantasy lives of ageing white men and reflect instead the real and diverse communities we live in?
As the #OscarsSoWhite activists know too well, outstanding performers are distributed equally across genders, races, ages and shapes. But while those in power are white men, they will seek to portray the kind of world they recognise, and in which they would prefer to live. And every time we buy a ticket to see one of their movies, we will be giving them our tacit consent.
Catherine Marshall is a Sydney-based journalist and travel writer.