52 Movies In
Sep. 1st, 2018 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhen I made my New Year’s Resolution to watch a film by a women director every month, I briefly considered doing a 52 movie challenge instead: committing to watching a film by a woman director every week, for 52 movies total over the year.
“No,” I thought. “Fifty-two movies is a lot of movies. I might not make it.”
You may have guessed where this is going. After watching Cleo from 5 to 7 this afternoon (review still forthcoming), I hit fifty-two movies for the year so far.
In the grand scheme of things, fifty-two is not a lot of movies, but it’s enough to get good and mad about the piss-poor job Hollywood does representing women both in front of and behind the camera. The estimates I’ve seen vary (largely because the numbers vary year by year), but less than 10% of directors in Hollywood are female. Less than 10%! When we’re half the population!
And actually this is misleading: men direct an even higher percentage of high-budget blockbuster must-sees, while women (when they get to direct at all) are shunted into smaller niche films that don’t have nearly as much impact on the cultural conversation as, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where women exist only as secondary characters and are apt to drop out of the story without warning, and yet we’re like, well, hey, isn’t it great that Jane’s a scientist! In that one movie. Then she forgets about it because she’s moping about Thor, and then she sort of disappears, but hey, it was great while it lasted!
Hollywood throws us crumbs and they’ve been doing it for so damn long that we’re grateful when they throw us a slightly larger crumb than normal rather than infuriated that we’re getting fucking crumbs.
This is not to say that every film directed by a woman is a shimmering feminist masterpiece, but generally speaking female directors remember that women are people with human emotions who do things for comprehensible if sometimes horrible reasons, a low bar which many male directors fail to meet.
I have a theory about why girls tend to read more than boys. It’s because boys can turn on the TV or pop in a movie or a video game and see themselves reflected in all directions, and books are the only place where girls have even half as much chance to do the same thing.
“No,” I thought. “Fifty-two movies is a lot of movies. I might not make it.”
You may have guessed where this is going. After watching Cleo from 5 to 7 this afternoon (review still forthcoming), I hit fifty-two movies for the year so far.
In the grand scheme of things, fifty-two is not a lot of movies, but it’s enough to get good and mad about the piss-poor job Hollywood does representing women both in front of and behind the camera. The estimates I’ve seen vary (largely because the numbers vary year by year), but less than 10% of directors in Hollywood are female. Less than 10%! When we’re half the population!
And actually this is misleading: men direct an even higher percentage of high-budget blockbuster must-sees, while women (when they get to direct at all) are shunted into smaller niche films that don’t have nearly as much impact on the cultural conversation as, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where women exist only as secondary characters and are apt to drop out of the story without warning, and yet we’re like, well, hey, isn’t it great that Jane’s a scientist! In that one movie. Then she forgets about it because she’s moping about Thor, and then she sort of disappears, but hey, it was great while it lasted!
Hollywood throws us crumbs and they’ve been doing it for so damn long that we’re grateful when they throw us a slightly larger crumb than normal rather than infuriated that we’re getting fucking crumbs.
This is not to say that every film directed by a woman is a shimmering feminist masterpiece, but generally speaking female directors remember that women are people with human emotions who do things for comprehensible if sometimes horrible reasons, a low bar which many male directors fail to meet.
I have a theory about why girls tend to read more than boys. It’s because boys can turn on the TV or pop in a movie or a video game and see themselves reflected in all directions, and books are the only place where girls have even half as much chance to do the same thing.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-02 11:30 am (UTC)Because, as you said, Hollywood throws us crumbs.
I haven't seen the third Thor film yet because I'm grumpy that Jane isn't in it.
I have a theory about why girls tend to read more than boys. It’s because boys can turn on the TV or pop in a movie or a video game and see themselves reflected in all directions, and books are the only place where girls have even half as much chance to do the same thing.
That's a really interesting suggestion! Reading arguably takes more effort than watching something (unless someone is reading to you, and even then you still have to imagine it for yourself), and so people are presumably going to be less motivated to make that effort if they're satisfied by other types of stories. I wonder how early boys realise this and how make affect it has on boys learning to read.
My brother once said that he liked computer games because they allowed him to make choices and be in control, and I argued that I'd rather make up the story myself or else read someone else's (hopefully) interesting and narratively-cohesive choices. But what appealed less to me about those games was that they often didn't allow me to make the choices I wanted.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-02 09:04 pm (UTC)I suspect that my theory is an oversimplification - there have to be a lot of factors affecting why girls tend to read more than boys - but I do think that's one factor, and one that's often overlooked, often while people complain that there's nothing for boys to read. This isn't true at all - there's plenty for boys to read - It only seems like boys are being shorted because books are not as overwhelming boy-centered as every other kind of media.