Hollywood - A Man's World

Hollywood – A Man’s World

There was a news story circling the internet this week about the BBC’s new approach to having a diverse workforce, ‘one in six BBC stars must be gay, lesbian or disabled by 2020’, and there will also be an overhaul of the male dominated stations such as Radio 2. The story has led to a division, with some people saying that it’s a progressive movement forward and others saying that its political correctness gone mad (you know the type). The news, however you take it, shows that more mainstream entertainment services are attempting to become equal opportunities working environments, which then raises the question, how is the greatest entertainment service of the western world diversifying? Is Hollywood progressing? Or is it still a man’s world?

April 7^th 2016, still reeling after their $2billion box office smash The Force Awakens, Walt Disney Pictures release the first trailer for their new Gareth Edwards helmed Star Wars spin off film, Rogue One, due to be released at the end of 2016. In amongst Stormtroopers and AT-AT’s and Ben Mendelsohn in a fabulous white cloak, was the films lead, Felicity Jones’ Rebel fighter, Jyn Erso, for the second Star Wars film in a row the lead character was female. The response was on the whole fairly positive, but then the cracks began to show. “Another woman lead...Come on Star Wars, be original” complained one tweeter, “Ohhhh another white anorexic British girl leads a Star Wars picture. Exciting stuff” another sarcastically moans. This reaction was also present on the internet 5 months earlier.

Despite its record breaking success The Force Awakens still managed to provoke an angry response from some corners of the internet for featuring a female character as its lead. Screenwriter Max Landis, most likely fuelled by his 3 box office bombs that year, took to twitter in order to voice his anger, claiming that Rey (Daisy Ridley) was a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue is a fan fiction term used to describe an idealised female character, something Landis described as “the worst fucking Star Wars main character yet”. Alongside Landis were other fans claiming that the film was pushing a feminist agenda. The negative response leads to an alarming misunderstanding of feminism, in no way can it be termed as a feminist agenda to have a lead female character, The Force Awakens has 3 female characters, one is an existing franchise character, and another is only ever seen in full Stormtrooper body armour. From what’s been shown in the, albeit brief, Rogue One trailer is a similar number of leading female characters. Percentage wise, Star Wars is still an absolute sausage fest. In terms of Rey being a Mary Sue, her idealised perfection is no more prescient than Luke’s was in the original trilogy, so why is it only a problem when it’s a female character?

This sexist reaction isn’t something localised just to Star Wars. 2015 saw the release of George Miller’s blistering Mad Max Fury Road, despite its overwhelming outpouring of critical and audience love, once again it provoked a negative reaction from some corners of the internet. The complaint in particular was that the film had pushed its main character to the side in order to tell the story of a group of female characters, in particular Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa. Then there’s the recent vitriol that has confronted the 2016 remake of Ghostbusters.

God forbid that someone remakes an 80s film and actually tries to do something different, Paul Feig’s remake replaces the male comedians of the original with 4 female comedians. The 4 stars of this version are Melissa McCarthy, Kate Mckinnon, Leslie Jones and Kristen Wiig. Jones and Mckinnon are 2 of SNL’s strongest players, and McCarthy and Wiig are 2 of the biggest comedic actresses working today, particularly McCarthy whose previous work with Feig has been some of the funniest comedy in recent years. Unfortunately for Feig the original Ghostbusters success was apparently down to the fact that it was male comedians, that is, if you believe the fans. “Ghosts worst enemy, butch lesbians” wrote one person, “all female cast, PC gone mad” wrote another, “women need to stay in the kitchen and leave the ghostbusting to us” voiced one particular arsehole, “Oh dear, a feminist version of Ghostbusters has been made. I do hope some of the ghosts are transgender or disabled just to tick all the boxes”. You’ll never find a more wretched hive of villainy and scum than the Facebook comments section. The worse thing about this response is that it has the potential to scare production studios from making films of this ilk again, the initial reaction to the first Ghostbusters announcement faced such anger, that it seemed to send Columbia Pictures into a knee-jerk reaction to announce an all-male version only a week afterwards, smoothly done guys.

Major studios are producing anger and vitriol at their attempts at equal representation, but the fact of the matter is, they’re barely dipping their toes in the water. According to Doctor Martha Lauzen’s report on women in the film industry, only 30% of all speaking roles in 2014 were female, and even worse only 12% of identifiable protagonists were women. Lauzen’s report isn’t on cinema of 20 or 30 years ago, those statistics relate to films of only 2 years ago, what’s also evident in Lauzen’s report is how little these statistics change over time. There are only ever marginal changes of 2 or 3 percent, and not always an increase, over time periods of about 10 years. So not only are women not being represented fairly on screen, but there also seems to be little effort to change this.

It’s obvious that the industry will be able to provide the market with more female led mainstream projects if they allow women filmmakers to make more films. However women behind the character are treated just as bad, if not worse, than those in front of the camera. Lauzen’s report identified that in 2012 women made up only 18% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors on the top 250 highest grossing films. Comparing those statistics to those of 14 years earlier shows there has been no change, which means 14 years with zero progress.

At the 73^rd Academy Awards the nominees for best director were, Stephen Daldry, Ridley Scott, Ang Lee, Steven Soderbergh and Steven Soderbergh, needless to say that with his odds slightly higher Soderbergh took home the Oscar. That year director Mary Harron had done exceptional work with her adaptation of American Psycho, not only did the academy not nominate her, but they nominated the same male director twice in the same category. This is more less the most indicative example of how women just aren’t being given the same chances that men are. Just look at the rapid rises that male directors make in the industry. Take the careers of Gareth Edwards and Colin Trevorrow, both direct small independent sci-fi films (Monsters and Safety Not Guaranteed), on the back of those films both are then given big studio projects (Godzilla and Jurassic World), and on the back of them both are given a Star Wars film to direct (Rogue One and Episode IX). Why aren’t studios knocking on the doors of Ava DuVernay (Selma) and Marielle Heller (Diary of a teenage girl) to offer them big marquis releases? There have been steps in the right direction, Warner Bros Wonder Woman film will be helmed by female director Patty Jenkins, and Jenkins herself replaced fellow female director Michelle MacLaren on the project. Those events however have an undercurrent of sexism to them, the project being a female character the studio looks for a female filmmaker, and how many other studio projects can you name where a female director has replaced another female director? Similar to Marvel studios only hiring Ryan Coogler when they had a black characters story to tell, this feels like a studio saying, yes you can make films, but you’re a female so you can only make a female story, real progress would be if either of those women were offered a Batman or a Superman film.

So maybe the BBC’s dynamic approach to their recruitment process is actually the best way forward. Dr Lauzen’s detailed report has shown that little has changed when the studios are left to operate as they have been for decades before. Toes have been dipped in the water and anger has come in response, but the only way those negative fans are silenced is through persistence. There is every chance that Hollywood can be representative of not just men and women, but of all different sexualities and ethnicities. Hollywood has a lot of work to do but there’s enough talent there to create an equal opportunities workplace, who knows, we might one day see a blockbuster film led by a black, homosexual female, we’re a bit away from there yet.