The need for precedent in film

The film industry is a notoriously male-dominated industry, particularly above-the-line jobs (writers, directors, producers, directors of photography, etc.) Case in point: The organization Women in Film (WIF) reported that during the '09-'10 primetime TV season, "women only comprised 27 percent of individuals working as creators, directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and directors of photography on broadcast television programs." The sad part? That's a recent historical high.

The numbers for the film industry are even more grim: WIF reported that in 2009, "women comprised 16 percent of all directors, executive producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films." For those of you who aren't aware, 2009 also happens to be the only year a female won the Oscar for Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker); only three other women have ever been nominated. (On an equally grim note, only one non-Caucasian has ever one a Best Director Academy Award, but that's a slightly different issue.)

Why so few women in film? Back at the beginning of the awards season in 2009 (so prior to Bigelow's win), there was an article published in The Guardian about this very topic. Here's few interesting excerpts:

Once, the dearth of women directors could be traced to the small numbers entering film school. These days, that's not the case. Lauzen says women are now well represented in US film schools, while Neil Peplow, of the UK training organisation Skillset, says women make up around 34% of directing ­students in Britain. That translates into a large number of female ­graduates making short films, but few moving on to features.

Over the years, this failure to progress has often been blamed on a chauvinist culture; and certainly, talking to ­established directors, it's easy to ­uncover tales of overt sexism – from the mildly disconcerting to the downright illegal. The British film director Antonia Bird (Priest, Mad Love) says dryly that on her first directing job, "I was the only woman there, and all the guys just ­assumed I was the producer's PA. That was good." Director Beeban Kidron (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason) once sacked a male assistant director who called her "the little lady". At the extreme end, US film director Penelope Spheeris, who made the $100m-grossing Wayne's World, remembers meeting an executive at the Beverly Hills Hotel when she was at the start of her career. "And the guy was pretty drunk, and he ripped some of my clothes trying to take them off me, and when I got up and started screaming he said, 'Did you want to make this music video or not?'" She pauses. "You say sexist, I say felony."

When it comes to sexism, Martha Coolidge – director of Rambling Rose and Real Genius, as well as the first woman president of the Directors Guild of America – has heard it all. There was the story of the female president of a major studio who said "no woman over 40 could possibly have the stamina to ­direct a ­feature film. I've heard ­people say that the kind of films they want to make are too big, too tough for a female director. The worst was when my agent sent another woman director in for an interview, and afterwards the guy called up and said, 'Never send anyone again who I wouldn't want to fuck.'"...

But Coolidge insists that the film industry – and Hollywood specifically – remains a minefield, because "there is such a ­sexual component for the men who go into it. If all they wanted to do is to make money, they could just go to Wall Street. If you're a male executive, a producer – and I'm not talking about everybody, but the vast majority – you're there partly because you're ­surrounded by gorgeous girls. And that means that the older a woman is, the less they want them around. A woman would disrupt the flow of their lives." Coolidge and others point out that this is as true for black, working-class, and gay film-makers – in fact, ­anyone outside a small ­circle of privilege.

This is a perfect example of what we've been talking about for the last few days. Gilbert and Gubar argued that "Western literary history is overwhelmingly male--or, more accurately, patriarchal--and Bloom analyzes and explains this fact, while other theorists have ignored it, precisely, one supposes, because they assumed literature had to be male" (1928). Replace "literature" with "film" and you have a summary of the film industry as it stands today. It is an inherently male-driven culture; women are often expected to take advantage of their sexuality to work their way to the top (but only the top of the female side of film, not the entire film industry). My internship supervisor last fall told me she had several opportunities she missed out on because she wasn't willing to sacrifice her dignity (or her 9-year relationship with her boyfriend) to sleep with someone higher on the food chain than her. It's a very prevalent, very demeaning reality.

A good chunk of the problem lies in the lack of precedent. Cixous says, "[Woman] must write herself, because this is the invention of a new insurgent writing which, when the moment of her liberation has come, will allow her to carry out the indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history" (1946). The author of The Guardian article concurs: "There is also the simple fact that the fewer women there are at the top, the fewer role models and mentors there are...A lack of female film-makers also seems to have made it difficult for studios to imagine women in charge."

Clearly there's a need for change. There are more and more women trying to work their way up to the top spots. Last semester at LAFSC, two of the four main student projects were directed by women, and both of them have aspirations to become mainstream directors. More and more women are enrolling in film programs. Perhaps within the next few decades, we will see a rise in women holding top positions (and hopefully other minorities, as well).

And if that happens, maybe studios like Disney will finally start shaping up and present female characters that are both entertaining and realistic, and not as mindless puppets or evil stepmothers/sisters.