Jane Fonda | Activism Through The Years | Who What Wear
Interview with Jane Seymour Fonda; actress and activist.
Jane Fonda's work spans several genres and over six decades of film and television.
Produced by Who What Wear
Jane Fonda's work spans several genres and over six decades of film and television.
Produced by Who What Wear
Transcript
00:00So, hi, I'm Jane Fonda, and I've been asked to very briefly talk about the role of activism
00:06in my life.
00:07It has helped me focus, and be a better actor, and be a better person, and be a happier person.
00:14So I invite you to join me.
00:21Right, this is kind of funny.
00:27I had just finished making Clute, and I was traveling around the country speaking on campuses
00:34where I would be paid $2,000 a speech, and all the money was going to fund the Winter
00:39Soldier Investigation, which was members of the American Armed Forces, all branches, came
00:45together in Detroit, Michigan to discuss what they had seen and done in Vietnam, and a documentary
00:52was made.
00:53Before I started making Clute, I became friends with a fashion designer who had a factory
01:00of knitwear in San Francisco named Alvin Duskin, and he gave me a lot of free clothes, and
01:05this coat, even though it's not knit, it was leather, but this was one of them, and so
01:11that's what I had on.
01:12It's fortuitous that I was wearing a very fashionable, long, suede coat.
01:17When I was arrested, the arresting officer told me, as he was holding me in his office,
01:23that he was arresting me under orders from the White House.
01:26That would be Richard Nixon.
01:29I had flown in from my first speech in Windsor, Canada, into Cleveland, where I was stopped
01:35at customs, and all of my notes, my address books, everything were taken.
01:40I had a lot of vitamins in little plastic bags, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they
01:47accused me of smuggling drugs.
01:50Right after this picture was taken, see, I have double-jointed hands, I slipped my
01:54hands out of the handcuffs and threw a fist.
01:58This was the early 70s, so I still had that iconic haircut.
02:02It was the wonderful Paul McGregor in Greenwich Village who gave me this haircut.
02:07I had been making a film in France with Jean-Luc Godard, and I went to Italy for a manifestation.
02:18That meant a political rally on behalf of women's rights in Italy.
02:22And I had my well-worn knitwear that Alvin Duskin gave me.
02:27He gave me a whole lot of clothes, and they were really my wardrobe for years.
02:31I see a little shredding at the cuffs.
02:33I wore them a lot.
02:34Oh, yes, well, this is a day when it was National Secretary's Day, and so I went out in support
02:43of women office workers and talked a little bit about them and the struggles that they had.
02:49I was in the middle of making a film that I produced called 9 to 5.
02:54I'm wearing the wig from that movie.
02:57The struggles that women office workers have today is even more difficult and more challenging.
03:02It's not just sexual abuse.
03:04The spying by employers is worse because they are given computers and cell phones, and so
03:11the bosses know everything of how long they take toilet breaks.
03:16They experience wage theft.
03:19It's really, really bad.
03:21In other words, the fight continues.
03:24That's Marlo Thomas.
03:25That's Whoopi Goldberg, Bella Abzug, me, Morgan Fairchild, Ellie Smeal, Glenn Close.
03:33This was a national march for freedom of choice for women.
03:40It was a huge march in Washington, D.C.
03:43It was a very important time.
03:45It makes me sad to look at this that we lost Bella Abzug because she was such a force to
03:52be reckoned with.
03:54This was around 1989.
03:58White clothing, we associate with the suffragette movement, and so we all wore white.
04:04Again, this is a movement that continues today, the right of women to control their bodies,
04:10because if women control their bodies, they control their lives, and we still live in
04:15a patriarchal society that doesn't want women to control their lives.
04:22This is now.
04:24This is now.
04:25I was in Big Sur with my friends Catherine Keener and Rosanna Arquette, and I was reading
04:30about Greta Thunberg, the Swedish student who began the Friday student school strike
04:37that became a global movement.
04:38Inspired by Greta, I decided to move to Washington, D.C. and hold what we're calling Fire Drill
04:44Fridays.
04:45You see, Greta said, we have to behave like we're in a crisis.
04:50We have to behave like our house is on fire, because it is.
04:54So Fire Drill Friday.
04:56And every Friday, we have a rally that focuses on a specific topic.
05:01Oceans, women, war and military, forests, human rights, migration, and how they are
05:09affected by climate change.
05:11We have expert scientists, people who are the most affected from frontline communities,
05:17and celebrity friends come and join me.
05:20And after the rally, we engage in civil disobedience, which means risking getting arrested.
05:26So I'm being arrested, note the white plastic handcuffs, whereas the arrest photo back in
05:321970 were metal handcuffs.
05:35These are white plastic and they hurt more.
05:38These rallies aren't in order to get arrested.
05:42They are to try to raise the sense of urgency around this looming disaster of climate crisis.
05:51For 40 years, we've marched, we've rallied, we've written, we've petitioned.
05:55We haven't succeeded in getting enough people and enough elected officials to really deal
06:01with this like the crisis it is.
06:03And so we have increased our activism to include civil disobedience, which is an extremely
06:10honorable thing to do, to commit nonviolent civil disobedience for an important cause
06:18like the potential destruction of human civilization.
06:22No kidding.
06:23So when we started meeting about these fire drill Fridays, we decided that we should try
06:28to wear something red every Friday, and I didn't have anything red.
06:32So I found this coat, I don't even know who designed it, on sale.
06:37This is the last item of clothing that I will buy.
06:40So much of our identity, especially in this country, is about shopping, buying things.
06:46See, I grew up, I was born in 1937, and for the first decades of my life, we weren't so
06:52focused on shopping.
06:55Consumerism wasn't a big thing.
06:57Plastics didn't exist, nor did television, by the way.
07:02And I'm grateful that I lived at a time when we did just fine, thank you, without television,
07:07without consumerism, and without plastic.
07:10Trying to minimize consumerism, I have to walk the talk.
07:16It's not easy.
07:17I had to do an interview in the upstairs floor of Saks the other day, and as I'm walking
07:22through Saks, you know, I'm going, oh, look at the, oh, no, I can't.
07:26You know, oh, what, no, well, no, I can't.
07:28It's hard.
07:29So I can't shop anymore, but that's okay, because I have other things to do.