The casting couch is a

euphemism A euphemism ( ) is when an expression that could offend or imply something unpleasant is replaced with one that is agreeable or inoffensive. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the u ...

for the practice of soliciting sexual favors from a job applicant in exchange for

employment Employment is a relationship between two party (law), parties Regulation, regulating the provision of paid Labour (human activity), labour services. Usually based on a employment contract, contract, one party, the employer, which might be a cor ...

in the

entertainment industry Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and Interest (emotion), interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but it is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have deve ...

, primarily

acting Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode. Acting involves a broad range of sk ...

roles. The practice is illegal in the United States. Predominantly male

casting director In the performing arts industry such as theatre, film, or television, casting, or a casting call, is a pre-production process for selecting a certain type of actor, dancer, singer, or extra to land the role of a character in a script, screenp ...

s and film producers use the casting couch to extract sex from aspiring actors in

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...

Bollywood Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, is primarily produced in Mumbai. The popular term Bollywood is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (former name of Mumbai) and "Cinema of the United States, Hollywood". The in ...

, Broadway, and other segments of the industry. The term ''casting couch'' originally referred to physical

couch A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, chesterfield, or davenport, is a cushioned piece of furniture that can seat multiple people. It is commonly found in the form of a bench with upholstered armrests and is often fitted with springs a ...

es in the

casting Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or ...

office, but is now a

metonym Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something associated with that thing or concept. For example, the word "wikt:suit, suit" may refer to a person from groups commonly wearing business attire, such ...

for the phenomenon as a whole. Depictions of casting couch sexual encounters have also become a genre of

pornography Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is Sexual suggestiveness, sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolv ...

Legality

The casting couch is illegal under

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and especially Californian law. In the United States, the majority of

lawsuits A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. T ...

related to the practice are

settled A settler or a colonist is a person who establishes or joins a permanent presence that is separate to existing communities. The entity that a settler establishes is a settlement. A settler is called a pioneer if they are among the first settli ...

, resulting in a lack of

case law Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is a law that is based on precedents, that is the judicial decisions from previous cases, rather than law based on constitutions, statutes, or regulations. Case law uses the detailed facts of ...

Etymology

In ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 185 ...

'', linguist

Ben Zimmer Benjamin Zimmer (born 1971) is an American linguist, lexicographer, and language commentator. He is a contributing editor for ''The Atlantic''. He was formerly a language columnist for ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''The Boston Globe'', and ''The ...

described the casting couch as "a

for the skewed sexual politics of

show business Show business, sometimes shortened to show biz or showbiz (since 1945), is a vernacular term for all aspects of the entertainment industry.''Oxford English Dictionary'' 2nd Ed. (1989) From the business side (including managers, agents, produce ...

", which has been normalized into a

cliché A cliché ( or ; ) is a saying, idea, or element of an artistic work that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning, novelty, or literal and figurative language, figurative or artistic power, even to the point of now being b ...

due to the prevalence of sexually aggressive men with positions of authority in Hollywood cinema and

Broadway theatre Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, American and British English spelling differences), many of the List of ...

Economics

According to economists Thomas Borcherding and Darren Filson, the high

risk In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environ ...

and returns in Hollywood cinema encourage the casting couch phenomenon. The possibility of high returns incentivizes unestablished actors to accept minimal

wage A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work (human activity), work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include wiktionary:compensatory, compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailin ...

s in exchange for roles. With the exception of a few extremely talented actors, producers are unable to evaluate the

aptitude An aptitude is a component of a competence to do a certain kind of work at a certain level. Outstanding aptitude can be considered "talent", or "skill". Aptitude is inborn potential to perform certain kinds of activities, whether physical or ...

of the vast majority of qualified actors due to

uncertainty Uncertainty or incertitude refers to situations involving imperfect or unknown information. It applies to predictions of future events, to physical measurements that are already made, or to the unknown, and is particularly relevant for decision ...

. As a result, some actors give sexual favors to producers to obtain a perceived advantage in the

; the casting couch functions as a counterpayment that effectively reduces their wages. This creates a

conflict of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple wikt:interest#Noun, interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates t ...

in which corrupt producers substitute aptitude (an unquantifiable variable) with sexual activity in their decision-making. Actors who submit to the casting couch are not guaranteed roles, as there is an abundance of actors who participate in the practice. An actor's decision of whether to provide sex is comparable to the

prisoner's dilemma The prisoner's dilemma is a game theory thought experiment involving two rational agents, each of whom can either cooperate for mutual benefit or betray their partner ("defect") for individual gain. The dilemma arises from the fact that while def ...

, and results in a

tragedy of the commons The tragedy of the commons is the concept that, if many people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource, such as a pasture, they will tend to overuse it and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised vo ...

in which sex is needed to obtain film roles from producers who demand it, but fails to provide an advantage relative to other actors who offer sexual favors. The practice is illegal in the United States and likely involves some degree of

sexual exploitation Sexual slavery and sexual exploitation is an attachment of any ownership rights, right over one or more people with the intent of Coercion, coercing or otherwise forcing them to engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activities. This includ ...

sexual harassment Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim. It can involve offensive sexist or sexual behavior, verbal or physical actions, up to bribery, coercion, and assault. Harassment may be explicit or implicit, wit ...

. Actors who do not participate in the casting couch are subject to

externalities In economics, an externality is an indirect cost (external cost) or indirect benefit (external benefit) to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party's (or parties') activity. Externalities can be considered as unpriced ...

, including reduced

employability Employability refers to the attributes of a person that make that person able to gain and maintain employment. Overview Employability is related to work and the ability to be employed, such as: *The ability to gain initial employment; hence the ...

. Borcherding and Filson argue that the casting couch became less prominent after the Hollywood studio system, which enforced long-term

employment contract An employment contract or contract of employment is a kind of contract used in labour law to attribute rights and responsibilities between parties to a bargain. The contract is between an "employee" and an "employer". It has arisen out of the old m ...

s for actors, was eliminated on

antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...

grounds in ''

United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. ''United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.'', 334 U.S. 131 (1948) (also known as the Hollywood Antitrust Case of 1948, the Paramount Case, or the Paramount Decision), was a landmark United States Supreme Court antitrust case that decided the f ...

'' (1948). Long-term contracts gave producers stronger

bargaining power Bargaining power is the relative ability of parties in a negotiation (such as bargaining, contract writing, or making an agreement) to exert influence over each other in order to achieve favourable terms in an agreement. This power is derived f ...

, which was used by corrupt producers to extract sex from actors more effectively.

Pornography

''The Casting Couch'' ( 1924), a classic title in the stag film genre, was an early depiction of the casting couch as a

pornographic Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolved from cave paintings ...

trope that later became mundane as it grew in popularity. In the sixteen-minute film, a

tells a young actress to wear a swimsuit during an

audition An audition is a sample performance by an actor, singer, musician, dancer or other performer. It typically involves the performer displaying their talent through a previously memorized and rehearsed solo piece or by performing a work or piece gi ...

, spies on her in a

voyeuristic Voyeurism is the Sexual attraction, sexual interest in or Human sexual activity, practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, Human sexual activity, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature. ...

manner while she undresses in a different room, and enters the room to solicit sex from her. The actress initially rebuffs his advances with disgust, but returns to the director after taking advice from a book titled ''How to Become a Movie Star''. She performs

fellatio Fellatio (also known as fellation, and in slang as blowjob, BJ, giving head, or sucking off) is an oral sex act consisting of the stimulation of a human penis, penis by using the mouth. Oral stimulation of the scrotum may also be termed ''fellat ...

and vaginal intercourse in exchange for a role in his film; the latter takes place on a couch. ''The Casting Couch'' concludes with an

intertitle In films and videos, an intertitle, also known as a title card, is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (hence, ''inter-'') the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred ...

that states, "the only way to become a

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

is to get under a good director and work your way up". Zimmer credited the film with popularizing the term ''casting couch''. The trend of casting couch scenarios used on pornography websites began with Backroom Casting Couch in 2007. The website GirlsDoPorn, which operated between 2009 and 2020, was described as a casting couch site. The depicted women were manipulated, coerced, lied to, given marijuana or other drugs or physically forced to have sex, according to the accounts of victims and material from a lawsuit against the company. Six people involved in the website were charged with

sex trafficking Sex trafficking is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Perpetrators of the crime are called sex traffickers or pimps—people who manipulate victims to engage in various forms of commercial sex with paying customers. Se ...

by force, fraud and coercion in November 2019.

References

External links