Women In The Movies: Where Are They?
Posted by Michelle Moquin on June 18th, 2013
Good morning!
At The Movies, The Women Are Gone
by Linda Holmes
NPR – June 14, 2013
I live in the D.C. metro area, which is a very good place to find films. If you don’t live in New York or Los Angeles, it’s about the best you can do. I’m within 10 miles of a multiplicity of multiplexes, not to mention four theaters I would consider “art house” theaters or at least mixes of wider-appeal fare and smaller stuff.
According to Fandango and some back-of-the-envelope math, excluding documentaries and animation, there are 617 movie showings today — that’s just today, Friday — within 10 miles of my house.
Of those 617 showings, 561 of them — 90 percent — are stories about men or groups of men, where women play supporting roles or fill out ensembles primarily focused on men. The movies making up those 561 showings: Man Of Steel (143), This Is The End (77), The Internship (52), The Purge (49), After Earth (29), Now You See Me (56), Fast & Furious 6 (44), The Hangover Part III (16), Star Trek Into Darkness (34), The Great Gatsby (16), Iron Man 3 (18), Mud (9), The Company You Keep (4), Kings Of Summer (9), and 42 (5).
Thirty-one are showings of movies about balanced pairings or ensembles of men and women: Before Midnight (26), Shadow Dancer (4), and Wish You Were Here (1).
Twenty-five are showings of movies about women or girls: The East (8), Fill The Void (4), Frances Ha (9), and What Maisie Knew (4).
Of the seven movies about women or balanced groups, only one — the Israeli film Fill The Void — is directed by a woman, Rama Burshtein. That’s also the only one that isn’t about a well-off white American. (Well, Celine in Before Midnight is well-off, white and French, but she’s been living in the U.S.)
There are nearly six times as many showings of Man Of Steel alone as there are of all the films about women put together.
If I were limited to multiplexes, as people are in many parts of the country, the numbers would be worse. In many places, the number would be zero. Frances Ha is by far the most widely available of the four women-centered movies, and it’s at 213 theaters this weekend in the entire country. The East is at 115. What Maisie Knew is at 51. Fill The Void looks like it’s in about 20 locations, judging by its site.
The Internship is at 3,399.*
[*Note: I originally had understood these to be screen counts; they're actually theater counts. Not a huge difference with non-blockbusters less likely to play on multiple screens at the same place, and if anything, makes the possible disparity with something like The Internship greater, but it's different nonetheless. This doesn't affect the numbers for my own local theaters, though — those are just individual showtimes counted by hand.]
I want to stress this again: In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take your daughter to one.
There are not any.
By far your best shot, numbers-wise, at finding one that’s at least even-handedly featuring a man and a woman is Before Midnight (at 891 theaters) so I hope you like it. Because it’s pretty much that or a solid, impenetrable wall of movies about dudes.
Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space, dudes drinking, dudes smoking, dudes doing magic tricks, dudes being funny, dudes being dramatic, dudes flying through the air, dudes blowing up, dudes getting killed, dudes saving and kissing women and children, and dudes glowering at each other.
Somebody asked me this morning what “the women” are going to do about this. I don’t know. I honestly am at the point where I have no idea what to do about it. Stop going to the movies? Boycott everything?
They put up Bridesmaids, we went. They put up Pitch Perfect, we went. They put up The Devil Wears Prada, which was in two-thousand-meryl-streeping-oh-six, and we went (and by “we,” I do not just mean women; I mean we, the humans), and all of it has led right here, right to this place. Right to the land of zippedy-doo-dah. You can apparently make an endless collection of high-priced action flops and everybody says “win some, lose some” and nobody decides that They Are Poison, but it feels like every “surprise success” about women is an anomaly and every failure is an abject lesson about how we really ought to just leave it all to The Rock.
Nobody remembers, it seems, how many people said Bridesmaids would fail. And it didn’t! But it didn’t matter.
My answer is that I have no idea what the women are going to do about it. It helps when critics, including men, care about the way women artists are treated and make it their problem to share, as Sam Adams did yesterday in a terrific piece about Sofia Coppola. It helps when people go out of their way to see any kind of film that’s about people other than themselves. It helps when we acknowledge that what we have right now is a Hollywood entertainment business that has pretty much entirely devoted itself to telling men’s stories — and to the degree that’s for business reasons, it’s because they’ve gotten the impression we’ve devoted ourselves to listening to men’s stories.
But for crying out loud, let’s at least notice. When it’s 90 percent here, it’s much worse elsewhere. [Copyright 2013 NPR]
********
Blog me.
Kim: I just realized which “Kim” you are! Thanks for commenting. I’m delighted to see you here. I HOPE you’ll check in again.
Jack: I’ve been super busy – will try and work on it. Some patience would be great.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
If you love my blog and my writes, please make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, please click the “Donate” button below. (Please only donations from those readers within the United States. – International readers please see my “Donate” page)
Or if you would like to send a check via snail mail, please make checks payable to “Michelle Moquin”, and send to:
Michelle Moquin PO Box 29235 San Francisco, Ca. 94129
Thank you for your loyal support!
All content on this site are property of Michelle Moquin © copyright 2008-2012
“Though she be but little, she be fierce.” – William Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream
" Politics, god, Life, News, Music, Family, Personal, Travel, Random, Photography, Religion, Aliens, Art, Entertainment, Food, Books, Thoughts, Media, Culture, Love, Sex, Poetry, Prose, Friends, Technology, Humor, Health, Writing, Events, Movies, Sports, Video, Christianity, Atheist, Blogging, History, Work, Education, Business, Fashion, Barack Obama, People, Internet, Relationships, Faith, Photos, Videos, Hillary Clinton, School, Reviews, God, TV, Philosophy, Fun, Science, Environment, Design, The Page, Rants, Pictures, Church, Blog, Nature, Marketing, Television, Democrats, Parenting, Miscellaneous, Current Events, Film, Spirituality, Obama, Musings, Home, Human Rights, Society, Comedy, Me, Random Thoughts, Research, Government, Election 2008, Baseball, Opinion, Recipes, Children, Iraq, Funny, Women, Economics, America, Misc, Commentary, John McCain, Reflections, All, Celebrities, Inspiration, Lifestyle, Theology, Linux, Kids, Games, World, India, Literature, China, Ramblings, Fitness, Money, Review, War, Articles, Economy, Journal, Quotes, NBA, Crime, Anime, Islam, 2008, Stories, Prayer, Diary, Jesus, Buddha, Muslim, Israel, Europe, Links, Marriage, Fiction, American Idol, Software, Leadership, Pop culture, Rants, Video Games, Republicans, Updates, Political, Football, Healing, Blogs, Shopping, USA, Class, Matrix, Course, Work, Web 2.0, My Life, Psychology, Gay, Happiness, Advertising, Field Hockey, Hip-hop, sex, fucking, ass, Soccer, sox"
June 18th, 2013 at 9:26 pm
I want to stress this again: In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take your daughter to one.
There are not any.
June 18th, 2013 at 9:33 pm
I work in the film industry. We need more women in the writer’s room. We need women’s perspectives. If we let men write all the stories, then women will be written as 2d characters who just support the male lead. It’s really pathetic.
I don’t even watch narrative films anymore because of this bullshit. How am I, as a viewer, supposed to connect to the female characters when they’re not nearly as fleshed out as all the men? Why must the woman always need to have a man to feel complete? Why is it nearly impossible to find an “imperfect” woman on screen? All the women look like perfect barbies, while the men can get away with physical flaws. UGH!
June 18th, 2013 at 9:34 pm
So this is why upon watching the previews before Gatsby, I felt no interest whatsoever. I don’t need another rehashing of Superman or The Hangover. If a movie does well, then they just do it to death.
The article should’ve mentioned “The Help”. That was a good, woman-centered movie, telling women’s stories. There’s also a fantastic show which unfortunately won’t return next year, “Bomb Girls”. It ran at the same hour as some other popular show and lost out on ratings, despite its brilliance.
I just hate seeing good shows cancelled, replaced by reruns of CSI. Fuck CSI.
June 18th, 2013 at 9:36 pm
bechdeltest.com curates movies that pass the Bechdel rule, in which (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man. A movie can clear this low bar without being about a woman or even having a major female character, yet only about half pass.
The test got it’s name from this strip by Alison Bechdel:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zizyphus/34585797/
June 18th, 2013 at 9:38 pm
in many parts of america, places where they don’t have Art House theatres, you cannot go to see a movie about a woman or women.
June 18th, 2013 at 10:18 pm
in many parts of america, places where they don’t have Art House theatres, you cannot go to see a movie about a woman or women.
June 18th, 2013 at 10:19 pm
“in many parts of america, places where they don’t have Art House theatres, you cannot go to see a movie about a woman or women.”
You don’t see that as a problem? Even if this weren’t the case next weekend, I would bet good money that the reverse issue will not happen anytime in the near future, nor has it ever been a problem in the past. There has never been a weekend since movies became prolific where consumers could not find a movie about dudes.
Dismissing the issue as only “temporary” completely misses the point of this article.