Quick, name a few recent popular movies where the two top-billed stars are female.
Here’s a miscellaneous survey I just did, tallied by gender of top billed/second billed star:
| M/M | M/F | F/M | F/F | |
| 20 biggest movies of 2007 | 10 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| 20 biggest movies of 2006 | 11 | 7 | 0 | 2 |
| 20 biggest movies of 2005 | 11 | 7 | 2 | 0 |
| 20 biggest movies of 2004 | 10 | 9 | 1 | 0 |
| 20 biggest movies since 1977 | 15 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| IMDb Top 20 of All Time | 15 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
There were about 110 movies with a male lead and 5 with a female lead. Of the second-billed females, nearly all are written as love interests of the first-billed man. There were over sixty movies in the sample with two male stars top-billed. The only movies with two top-billed female roles, on the other hand, were The Devil Wears Prada and Scary Movie 4.
My cousin has been working on tallying (by hand!) all movies with two top-billed female stars. She reports that there are staggeringly few of them, and the roles fall mainly in two genres: mother-daughter bonding movies and horror films. Hollywood is not creating female heroes.
Suppose we had a generic Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer movie with some evil organization (say, a shadow government headed by Dick Cheney or whatever) bent on destroying something (say, the internet). Who would you rather see battling their way through the system to stop them — another basic Bruce Willis/Denzel Washington/Vin Diesel character? Or River Tam, Sarah Connor, Lola from Run Lola Run, or Beatrix Kiddo? Not only could the film industry suck less in the examples it sets, we could have some awesome movies.
Notes: If anyone wants to expand my list into a more comprehensive and authoritative survey, I’d love to see the results. I did my tally by hand, using The Numbers for the basic lists and stars, plus IMDb and Wikipedia to get a consensus on billing order.
I just want a movie where the leads are Zoe from Serenity and…..
The fact that I’m having trouble coming up with a second one disturbs me. (I don’t like River, because she’s crazy. There, I said it.)
How about I’ll settle for Zoe and Ripley. That sounds good.
Hi,
as pafnucy allready said, most Almodovar-Movies have intresting female leads (like All about my Mother or Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). There ARE a few good movies with women that means it is POSSIBLE to make them.
But these are good movies, rather independent than blockbusters. Interested viewers watch them. Like most of the documentaries: the people who watch them are usually interested and open before they watch them and not the problem. Movies for the masses would have the possibility to actualy change role models. Female heroines that are admired not only because of their looks, thats what we need.
thanks xkcd,
Huma
To the ladies and gentlemen who are disappointed by the showing of geekdom’s misogyny in these comments:
Have you ever been to an engineering school and met engineers? I don’t mean MIT. Instead, I mean state schools filled with the ordinary, run of the mill engineering students in programs that have cursory liberal arts requirements at best.
These dudes hate women! They see women as “the other” because they never actually meet any. There were none in their classes or clubs. They hate any talk about privilege and difference in experience because they actually believe that they didn’t benefit from any of it. They’re the “nice guys” who blame their failures in relationships on women being so stupid that “they only date assholes.” They are usually objectivists. (What does that say about Ayn Rand?)
I’m just shocked that you’re surprised by these comments from engineers, is all.
>If more female screenwriters will fix this, then I have to ask why it hasn’t happened already. This isn’t the sixties anymore, surely some brightfaced executive would have said by now “Hey, let’s hire a woman and see what happens.”
Yeah, like with Wonder Woman. “Here, this woman is a popular female author. Let’s get her to write the screenplay for a film about a strong female superhero! That way, the feminists will be happy, and maybe we’ll get some name draw!” Except, you know, superhero-comics fangirls are not necessarily chicklit readers, and chicklit writers are not necessarily good at writing superhero-comics adaptations….
>”The movies you mentioned are shining examples of the fact that this problem goes deep into Hollywood’s inability to WRITE a decent female character.”
>Why is writing a female character so much harder than writing a male character, then? If they’re the same difficulty, you’d think this issue would have been fixed long ago.
Well, but the perceived difficulty and the actual difficulty are not necessarily the same. Often people think that, since women are as a whole an entirely different species from men, it’s really really hard for a man to write a woman character. Also, women in movies have to be really really obviously women in order to actually be women–female’s the marked sex, male is default. A guy can just be a person; there’re a whole host of stereotypes going with the Everyman, but it’s possible to play with them and stretch it out to get the Jock, the Nerd, the Comic Relief and maybe even an actual fleshed-out unique individual. If you stray too far from makeup-heels-purse-crying-and-boyfriend, though, well, obviously you’re not portraying real women at all.
So the thinking, apparently by people who have never actually known very many women, goes. And so people who are neither overtly feminine nor overtly masculine–women who neither play football or wear makeup, for instance, who don’t know martial arts but would only wear a skirt and/or heels to something like a wedding–simply get left out entirely. Because there’s a larger range of “men” types that male writers feel comfortable with than the “women” range.
>The thing is that I really don’t believe women would go to see that film. It?s certainly a generalization but I don’t believe the *average* female viewer is interested in seeing 90 minutes of mindless action regardless of who the main character is.
>To sort of reinforce that point here is a story: I went with some friends to see a martial arts movie. Just 90 minutes of action, no plot to speak of, but no degrading female lead and very little blood. There was me, another guy and 2 girls. My friend and I loved it, the girls couldn’t get over the fact that there wasn’t a plot or characterization.
>And Hollywood knows all this. They know that in order to get back their investment they need to appeal to those who are actually going to watch the movie: guys.
Hey, here’s an idea for Hollywood: make a film that has both lots of action sequences, explosions, and general ass-kickery *and* a plot that makes sense, characters with motivations, fewer rape jokes, and strong, not-hypersexualized women characters. Not only will this appeal to both “I want explosions!” and “wait, that doesn’t make sense” types (or, hey, both motivations in the same person), but we’ll also end up with *better movies*. And isn’t that what we all want?
I fail to identify with female characters when they are highly unsympathetic ditzes, or non-character mcguffins. I prefer to identify with the most interesting people, period; just see yourself primarily as a person, with “human” and your gender much further down, and in that order. I suppose cultural identity, sexual orientation, and race are down there somewhere too, but I like to keep a good gap below “person”. It helps me to identify with people who aren’t just like me. Call it xenoempathy. I enjoy it, in life and in fiction. In real life, other people are the closest thing we have to sentient aliens.
There are differences between the sexes. There are some that are clearly biological, not cultural (though it’s often hard to tell). Of these, apart from differences in reproductive organs and sexual preferences, none are big enough to predict individuals with any certainty; think heavily overlapping bell curves (please post any counterexamples, with data distributions). This is why stereotypes are a Bad Thing. Ignoring these differences is indeed the right thing to do, on an individual level. People vary in social skills, mathematical ability, housekeeping ability, and uncountable other ways. It’s stupid to try and force all that variation into two narrow little distributions and label them “male” and “female” (or anything else). It pushes people to take pride in weaknesses and hide strengths. It’s a waste of resources. It reduces originality. It will also really tick people off.
So: BiRT that generalizations about any gender (race, political position, culture, country, sexual orientation, job, degree program, etc.) are CONSIDERED HARMFUL, especially when unsupported (p<0.05, unpaired Student’s t-test, n<size of group the audience is likely to think about when applying the generalization).
(@anyone who ever said “That’s gay” etc., including character in http://xkcd.com/83/)
Entropy to Rigid Roles! Pure descriptive categories for all, mix’n match your own persona.
Back to the subject: what xkcd has posted here is a sample of a statistical system, not an individual whose interests we are invited to guess. What the decisionmakers in Hollywood have is also a statistical sample. I think it’s unrepresentative of the views of the general population, but their sampling is probably less biassed than mine. They do do screen tests. I suspect that Hollywood knows statistically just how far every component of the population will enjoy doing xenoempathy, across each well-known difference, and optimise their movies to match.
Unfortunatly, what we have here is a positive feedback loop. Movies without standard roles don’t sell, so they don’t make them, so people get weirded out by the few that do get made, so they don’t sell. Stereotyped roles are self-reinforcing, because people are unimaginative and socially conformist (me included; I’m sure you can already guess what stereotypes I aspire to; see P.S.).
Solution? Cultural hetrogeneity. Go download Blender (http://www.blender.org/) and/or Synfig (www.synfig.org) and make your subculture some movies. Copyleft them. Give people a broader choice of stereotypes, as a certain webcomic is doing… (thanks!)
I’d believe a female character who acted exactly like male characters do (after all, people online often assume that female posters are male). Much less credible, in our culture, would be a male character acting just like the female characters do. It’s not really fair; women can pick roles from any gender they like and be praised for it. They can even crossdress without having people change their assumptions about their sexuality. I don’t see males having this freedom (guys?).
How about gender-bending male characters in movies? Just take a script and swap all the genders. Imagine doing that to a few old favourites. Nah, wouldn’t sell…
P.S.
I don’t really like violence in my entertainment. Ditto romance; it’s not as if any one Hollywood romance is distinct enough from any other to be interesting. Honestly, though, I could forgive a movie a lot for being witty and thought-provoking. Has anyone mentioned Tom Stoppard? [i]Arcadia[/i] would make great movie, and has plenty of strong female characters, though I’m not sure who the leads would be.
I do view kicking as indicative of a failure of mental resource, but then I’m on the small side. So I wouldn’t punch Julius, I’d argue with him. Politely. Much higher probability of success. Also legal, possible, ethical, and, I hope, less objectionable to him.
May I self-describe as “the type of person who doesn’t like to damage a forum debate”? Way more important than “female”. I’d also rather like “gentleman” (on strict philological grounds, veremen and women). I’m happy to pay half of the time/amount, or cook half the dinner, a fun communal activity with opportunities for flirtation. And I hold doors for people. And I don’t hit anyone. And I offer to help carry things. Is that the definition? Do I pass? It would accessorize so nicely with “scholar”…
XKCDB is down. I just checked it a little while ago on a whim, and it was working fine. Now, however, it’s unavailable. I was wondering if there was an estimated time that it would come back online.
It’s very curious that no one recognizes or at least identifies the misandry very prominently (and sometimes violently) being exhibited by some of the women posting here. Since when has it been misogynistic to identify and criticize misandry?
>>We’d like to think that these roles are entirely cultural, and yet I would say that facts like the percentage of women in leadership roles evidences otherwise.
>>Yes. Men DO make better leaders than women. It’s our nature.
Really, David O? I have an observation or two for you. I am an engineering student at USC, and female students are strongly outnumbered by male students in almost all the majors (except biomedical engineering, which I think is getting closer to a 50-50 split). But if you look at the executive boards of the student organizations, women are the majority. Team leads for competitions like aero design or concrete canoe? They’re split about evenly between males and females. And the student organization that has the largest membership and organizes the most events? The Society of Women Engineers.
So tell me, why are all these leadership positions full of women, when we’ve got all these men around who are _clearly_ more suited for them because it’s their nature? Sure, I’m only looking at a limited case here, and numbers do drop off as you start looking at the corporate world. The percentage of female CEOs certainly isn’t that high right now – but if what I’m seeing now is any indication, it’s only going to go up with time. And then you’ll need to search for different facts to back up your sweeping generalizations.
“It’s very curious that no one recognizes or at least identifies the misandry very prominently (and sometimes violently) being exhibited by some of the women posting here. Since when has it been misogynistic to identify and criticize misandry?”
It’s a common problem. The traditionally oppressed, when given a chance, oppress the oppressors. Not all of them, of course, but it’s considered more acceptable. It’s happened with racism and it happens with sexism.
This was mentioned once here with no real discussion afterwards.
The Other Boleyn Girl starred Natalie Portman and Scarlet Johannsen (sp?), two serious famous actresses in a serious movie.
I’m sure that you, as a white boy, really feel the heavy yoke of oppression, Cesium. Please, share your experiences. We can heal together!
Ya’ll men and Ya’ll women all suck. I also find it funny that since this post has existed the last 8 xkcd’s have all involved the female charecter.
Randall, you suck.
>> for all those of you suggesting “lesbian porn” as an answer to this problem? you’re part of the problem
>Lesbian porn does VERY well and is loved by the majority of men, as well as a significant group of women. How can so many people be wrong? Perhaps the stick up your ass is the problem? Ever think about that?
I’ve seen some lesbian porn, I know a few lesbians, and I really can’t picture the latter acting like the former.
…come to think of it, I really can’t picture anyone I know in the real world acting like the people in porn movies. Maybe I’m just not watching the better porns?
Okay a few points.
Top 20 of Imdb is notoriously a male driven clientele so it makes sense that their top 20 would be male centric. Star Wars, Godfather, Lord of The Rings, Goodfellas etc. = dudes voting.
Why only the top 20 movies? Doesn’t this imply that it isn’t necessarily Hollywood’s fault but a moviegoing audience who is choosing not to go see female driven films? Also just because a movie doesn’t make it into the top 20 grossing films of that year doesn’t mean its not culturally significant. [i.e. Clueless came out in 1995 grossing a very respectable 56 million landing at number 32 for the year yet its life on video and tv and influence on the larger culture at hand is far greater than its "numbers" suggest. Whereas say Scooby Doo landed at number 13 for the year of 2002 but no one remembers it. Austin Powers 1 and Little Women are also good examples of the lower grosses/higher influence phenom.
Often times female stars [Julia, Reese, Sandra] are placed front and center and not given a female OR male co star of equal billing.
I want to raise something here as many have brought up the buddy/buddy comedy as typical of a m/m billing. Is it considered more or less socially acceptable to mock a male or a female for their shortcomings?
The AOL commercial that ran a few years back, was “so easy, even dad can use it” not “so easy, even mom can use it.” Its a corrolary to what I call the Family Guy Phenomenon. Which episode got cancelled, the one that portrayed all Jews as good at math or the one that portrayed the Irish as ignortant wife-beating drunks?
Its acceptable to belittle the majority because you won’t be called sexist if you’re a man making fun of other men. Start mocking a girl for doing typically ‘girly’ things and someone might start taking feminist pot-shots at you. So a m/m buddy comedy certainly seems like a safer choice.
Additionally, action movies have typically appealed to the male demographic so its unsuprising they typically have male leads. I believe in a lot of feminism’s tenents, but I also believe that there are some things that just make men and women different and while many women certainly love watching stuff explode as much as I do, many of them just don’t. Blame testosterone if you want.
Romances, in a hetero-world, typically need a m/f set up, for obvious reasons, so that explains the lack of f/f there. Horror? Well, I’ll probably concede theres likely some sexism here with women being the victims because of ‘defenselessness’ and all that, but how much of that is actual modern-day sexism and how much is just hollywood sticking to the time-tested and successful theme of the frightened female?
Finally, I don’t believe that the lack of f/f leads is due to the sexism or prevalence of men in the movie-making industry, or the lack of women. I may concede its due to the momentum of a previously sexist system and previously sexist men in a previously sexist society, but we all seem to agree that we’d like to see more female leads and more female-asskickers and I don’t think our desire would completely elude an industry that spends billions on pandering to what we want to see. Nor do I think the equation that boobs = $$$ is forgotten either. And even if hollywood was sexist, theyd still want to make money, which should lead to female ass-kickers anyway if they are really so desired.
Also, in conclusion,
iratecat
“…come to think of it, I really can’t picture anyone I know in the real world acting like the people in porn movies. Maybe I’m just not watching the better porns?”
Either that, or you’re watching the wrong people.
“I’m sure that you, as a white boy, really feel the heavy yoke of oppression, Cesium. Please, share your experiences. We can heal together!”
I’m not white, BTW.
“Additionally, action movies have typically appealed to the male demographic so its unsuprising they typically have male leads.”
Are you sure you’re not confusing the effect for the cause, here? It’s just that that’s the sort of thing that’s said a lot by the bigwigs in the comics industry–”girls just don’t read comics, so we should be trying to appeal to the male demographic! More naked women and rape scenes, please!”–without actually stopping to think about whether they might be actively forcing women away.
Plus, like someone up above said, if there’s a straight man out there who likes to watch action movies with male leads who wouldn’t like even more to watch action movies with female leads (fight scenes, explosions, and hot women!), I question his sexuality.
“I believe in a lot of feminism’s tenents, but I also believe that there are some things that just make men and women different and while many women certainly love watching stuff explode as much as I do, many of them just don’t. Blame testosterone if you want.”
While many men certainly love watching action-packed alien-fighting science fiction as much as I do, many of them just don’t (and wouldn’t watch Doctor Who, Torchwood, &c. if you paid them). Blame estrogen if you want….
Or we could just concede that neither of us has a very good sample size to go with, and we’d have to do a lot more to figure out how all the different factors interact before going “it’s just the hormones!”. Frex, it’s easy to look at fangirlish squee over how *hawt* Simms!Master is, and say “I guess the chicks just watch it for the good-looking guys”, and never actually find out how much of the fanbase actually thinks, for instance, that Simms himself is hot; or how many of said squeeing fangirls say the exact same thing any time there’s a woman doing squee-worthy things like taking over the world or acting like a little kid because you’re so powerful you can get away with it; or even how many would quite watching if all the guys were average or bad-looking but the writing stayed the same.
“Romances, in a hetero-world, typically need a m/f set up, for obvious reasons, so that explains the lack of f/f there. Horror? Well, I’ll probably concede theres likely some sexism here with women being the victims because of ‘defenselessness’ and all that, but how much of that is actual modern-day sexism and how much is just hollywood sticking to the time-tested and successful theme of the frightened female?”
That’s much of what sexism is all about. Nobody thinks there’s a shifty evil cabal of men in powerful positions who get together in their He-Man Woman-Haters Clubhouse and discuss how to oppress women. Much of sexism is simply “sticking to the time-tested and successful” things of the past, like trying to appeal to a male consumer base at the expense of females, combined with attitudes like “men and women are just different, that’s just the way it is, it’ll never change”.
Well-meaning guys can be sexist, too. Heck, well-meaning feminist women can be sexist–it’s not by any means always a conscious impulse. Socialization and conformity have their costs.
“Finally, I don’t believe that the lack of f/f leads is due to the sexism or prevalence of men in the movie-making industry, or the lack of women. I may concede its due to the momentum of a previously sexist system and previously sexist men in a previously sexist society,”
That would mean it would be sexism. …Do you really think our society is entirely free from sexism, by the by?
“but we all seem to agree that we’d like to see more female leads and more female-asskickers and I don’t think our desire would completely elude an industry that spends billions on pandering to what we want to see.”
Ah ha! The capitalist fallacy! I knew we’d see it again on this thread. The Invisible Hand of the Market is guided by the Telepathic Advertising Mind, right? Except it’s not. Because of many different things–business decisions are made in isolation from society at large; making large changes is a very very risky thing in business, and people are naturally risk-averse; people are more likely to make little tiny changes, see if it works or doesn’t, and when they don’t (what? You mean Catwoman fans don’t like seeing her story bastardized, her superhero costume ripped to shreds, and her nemesis be the fashion industry? But they’re *women*! We tried to target them, we really did!), give up entirely–what the people at the top greenlight only sometimes bears any relation to what the majority of costumers actually want.
You’ve heard of advertising campaigns that completely fell flat on their faces, right? So it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to go from “sometimes they think we want things we don’t want” to “sometimes they don’t think we want things we do want”, and then inertia takes over. It worked last year, so it’ll work this year–and only when it gets to the point where they’re not still making money on the old formulas will they actually wake up and try some kind of drastic change.
“Nor do I think the equation that boobs = $$$ is forgotten either.”
You’d think that would *up* the f/f proportion, not lower it. Just as the equation “semi-naked (or naked!) good-looking guy = $$$” has propelled many dashing, debonair ladies’ men to the top of the credits.
“And even if hollywood was sexist, theyd still want to make money, which should lead to female ass-kickers anyway if they are really so desired.”
Another point: this formulation would lead one to believe that universities would never close their doors to tuition-paying women (think back in Elizabeth Blackwell’s time, not our own, obviously), that teachers would get more money, that public health care would be a reality, that the death penalty would be abolished, and a good portion of the money currently spent on the prison industry and weapons would instead be going to child care, international goodwill missions, education, and crime-prevention programs.
Except none of that’s really happening, is it? I guess public opinion and saving/earning more money aren’t really as important as you’d think.
>Julius Says:April 21st, 2008 at 12:32 pm
>> Julius, if you said some of the stuff you’ve said here to me in person, I would punch you in the face.
>If you laid a finger on me, I would break your fucking bones, you fucking crazy bitch. Then you would perhaps understand that brute force, or threat of brute force, does not prove the validity of any opinion. That, and you would be a paraplegic fucking crazy bitch.
Best then you keep your own crazy ass self safe in the anonymity of the internet. And she wasn’t trying to back up her opinions with brute force. She just wants to punch you in the face. Because you’re a jackass.
>Julius Says:April 21st, 2008 at 5:53 pm
>> for all those of you suggesting “lesbian porn” as an answer to this problem? you’re part of the problem
>Lesbian porn does VERY well and is loved by the majority of men, as well as a significant group of women. How can so many people be wrong? Perhaps the stick up your ass is the problem? Ever think about that?
Lesbian porn… Because that’s not reinforcing the opinion/perception that women have limited places in life. Not at all.
>Julius Says:April 23rd, 2008 at 4:42 am
>It’s very curious that no one recognizes or at least identifies the misandry very prominently (and sometimes violently) being exhibited by some of the women posting here. Since when has it been misogynistic to identify and criticize misandry?
We’re not misandrous. We just don’t like you. Good thing you /= men, or then we would be. Just because Cadence wants to punch you does not mean she wants to kill all men. She just wants to punch you. Most of the perceived misandry was hyperbolous and ironic. Or it was directed at specific people (see: yourself) or even ideas/other perceptions (see: women suck as leaders, women are bitches, women are universally different than men).
Also, I’d like to punch you in the face now (if I ever had the misfortune to meet you in the real world) because your more recent comments show you to be a complete, all-around, pretentious asshole, who is also a misogynist.
Oh, you’re not white, Mr. Cesium? Then you will never know the pain and oppression I feel every day in America as a white male who is also straight and basically normatively manly. EVERYONE IS AGAINST PEOPLE LIKE ME! When oh when will someone listen to me and my needs? Reverse discrimination destroyed my chances to succeed in life by being a basketball player or getting a $500 scholarship! My life, as a white male, is over, thanks to all of this reverse oppression. YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND.
I had to go back to 1998 for Practical Magic, whose top four stars (as listed on IMDB) were Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, Dianne West, and then some guy I’d never heard of.
Add me to the list of females who like movies where things blow up a lot, and who are turned off by the way these movies often portray women. And to the list of people who loathe OMG I R GIRLY!! action heroines – seriously, a character doesn’t have to fight in high heels, giggle a lot and cry at least once in order to be a plausible woman. Sometimes I think this is really a way to reassure the viewer that she may be able to kick ass, but don’t worry, she’s still a GIRL, teehee!
That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to like Sydney Bristow, and it’s another reason I love “Aliens”.
steve:
So why are you so angry about it? If you’re the norm, maybe there should be.
“Why is writing a female character so much harder than writing a male character, then? ”
It’s not. It’s just harder for *sexist writers* to do correctly. Another poster pinpointed this: the female characters are exagerratedly marked as “female”, because male is the “norm”, which screws up the writing quite badly. If you just wrote an ordinary plot, and then assigned genders to the roles at random, and did a small amount of tweaking, you’d get a pretty good result.
Something like “Alien”.
Anyone who remembers that *women are people* can write women almost as well as they can write men.
(In order to get the last few inches of characterization in science fiction or fantasy, you have to have a fairly subtle understanding of the actual, very minor, biological differences between life as a woman and life as a man — but it’s not really necessary for a good script. In order to get the last few *yards* of characterization in other genres, you have to have an understanding of the very unsubtle, but often invisible cultural differences in the way women and men are treated — in other words, you have to understand sexism.)
Incidentally, quite a lot of genuine sexist pigs did come out of the woodwork to comment here, didn’t they?
Are you including Cinema from outside America as there have been plenty of films that are f/f
Sedmirkrasky (Daisies) is a rather weird example.
Bravo Dauthi, bravo. Also – I’d love to watch you punch Julius in the face. In fact I’d pay to see a movie about it!
IMDb all-time USA box office top 20
mm 9
mf 11
fm 0
ff 0
Top 21-40:
mm 15
mf 5
fm 0
ff 0
Top 40:
mm 24
mf 16
fm 0
ff 0
IMDb all-time non-USA box office top 20
mm 14
mf 6
fm 0
ff 0
Non-USA top 21-40:
mm 11
mf 9
fm 0
ff 0
Non-USA top 21-40:
mm 25
mf 15
fm 0
ff 0
The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Matrix movies and The Lion King and Troy based on Wikipedia, not IMDb’s cast lists.
IMDb all-time worldwide box office, containing no English dialogue:
mm 0
mf 1 (#310 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)
fm 2 (#222 Spirited Away, #264 Howl’s Moving Castle)
ff 0
If someone wants to start a list with lots of non English dialogue we can start with:
mm 0
mf 2 (#81 Dances with Wolves, #272 Life Is Beautiful)
fm 0
ff 0
To find other posts with stats, search for the following:
“Among Oscar Best Pictures”
“womenandhollywood”
“Amelie is 9″
I’d rather watch River Tam punch Julius in the face. Or kick him in the face. Kicking’s good too.
Why stop at Julius?
Women are perfectly capable of doing what men do. Universities are chalk full of women who score extremely well in calculus, stats and other math courses. And many women ace high school math.
When surveyed, these intelligent hardworking women just weren’t that interested in engineering or computer programming. They went on to be successful doctors and layers.
Women are not bad at math, they are just not that interested in it. Were these women born destined to be less interested (although capable) in math or push away from math by society despite excelling at it?
Either way it follows that engineering and computer programming are male dominated. But it is a logical fallacy to say women are not good at math.
Women can do math (and related subjects) just as well as men, they simply choose to do other things. You can hand out scholarships and hype up females in engineering/computer science all you want. But at the end of the day, they will still be male dominated careers.
Doctors used to be 100% male (and extremely sexist), more and more females are gaining ground in disciplines like medicine. So why aren’t there more female pilots? air traffic controllers? engineers? computer programmers?
Women CAN DO these jobs, and many women are successful in these roles, but most women just would rather do something else. Men are not keeping you out of these jobs.
So true. It’s kind of interesting though I never exactly felt personally affronted by it until I started thinking about it. I generally identified with the male hero which was never a problem for me, but perhaps other people don’t feel that way. The only females I can think of off hand who were really awesome growing up are Scully from the X-Files, and the two females in Jurassic Park. The one’s a hacker and the other’s a paleobotanist…that’s pretty awesome. I tend to compare myself to my male peers more than my female peers, likely because my male peers tend to have more things going in their lives. In the realm of stand-up, when I imagined being one, the material I had in mind really only seemed to work if the delivery came from a male, but I’m getting over that.
Addendum – as a writer and wanna be film maker I find the lack of interesting female characters rather depressing. Then I find the same problem in my own writing. We see these various options for characters in the media we consume our whole lives, so when it comes to creating a 3 dimentional, interesting male, we have lots of inspiration. I’m not really certain what the cause is.
In reply to dan (‘s comment about women’s capabilities in engineering, math, physics etc.):
I don’t mean to dispute the fact that women are just as able at these subjects as men, but I think the reason as to why there are not more women interested in them is more complicated than their ‘just not being interested’. I think that society in general disapproves of women in these male-dominated professions. Not by word or action, at least not knowingly, deliberately, but by its entire existence. This may be (and probably is) currently changing, but only at an excruciatingly slow pace.
At least that’s how I see it.
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I was originally going to just mention DOA… On the other hand, never mind.
But when I started reading this blog started getting interesting.
Sexism. Such an emotional subject. There will ALWAYS be someone who will disagree, no matter how pure your intention is. I can say “live with it, its society’s indicator”, and get dragged down with countless rebuttals.
Dauthi at one point commented that accepting the inequality makes it that much harder to overcome it. Sometimes accepting it can be part of fixing the problem.
Example: my sister lectures in electronic engineering, at what’s considered Australia’s leading University in the field. That’s a male dominated field, which is very hard to disagree with. The fact she’s even IN the field, let alone at the forefront, makes it mentionable. It’s not the first time she’s done that. The other 20 males who do the same thing as her are effectively anonymous.
There’s that sexist perception society throws at us. She does the same as every person around her, yet simply being in such a male dominated field makes her a poster child of sorts.
Want to look at reasons things such as FF movies arent popular, blame the lowest common denominator. In so many aspects of our lives, IN GENERAL, people wont reinvent the wheel. They will take an existing product, and either straight out copy it, or make small incremental changes.
It’s exceptionally rare for someone to break the mold and risk being different. Do any of you really thing movies are any different? It’s about repetition of KNOWN concepts that work.
random guy:
You were talking about movies in that last paragraph, and you’re right, it’s hard to find an original movie plot, especially one involving female leads.
But then the difference with women in general is, when they achieve, they stand out, as you said. If anything, women are trying to be the same. Some are trying to be the same as they were traditionally, and some like your sister are trying to be the same as men. (Not in all aspects, obviously, but you get my point.) Is that because in a male-dominated society, there’s no other path to choose? Or is it because women are still having too much trouble getting recognition for doing what men do to go beyond that?
“Sometimes accepting it can be part of fixing the problem.”
Very true; I heartily agree. However, you have to move past acceptance to action in order to fix anything. And more commonly, people will stop at the acceptance, as acting takes much more investment.
I.e., “In so many aspects of our lives, IN GENERAL, people wont reinvent the wheel.”
As for women standing out, I think it’s mostly just new-ness. Hopefully it’ll wear off once seeing women in traditionally male-dominated careers is more commonplace. If it doesn’t, it’s just another form of condescension used to keep women on the outside of the group, and should be addressed as such. Standing out in your field is nice, as long as it’s not “Awww… doesn’t she just look so darn cute in her x/doing y!” (or “She’s doing an upstanding job!” with the implicit “For a woman.”).
My 2cents. (What’s that add up to now? $1.32?)
Dunno if its been mentioned (or if people are still really watching this thread), but the movie, “Baby Mama” that just came out has 2 female leads and I found the movie hysterical (and I’m a guy).
what about …. aeon flux?? that movie kicked ass.
@ Dauthi: I can see you understand where I’m coming from, which is something I like about most of this blog – most dont presume a disagreeing opinion is an attack, but see it as an alternative viewpoint.
Again to use my sister, she doesnt make an issue of it, nor do those around her. To them, its natural and normal, and she’s just part of the team.
To our benefit, she had a reasonable role in developing the basics of what we now see as VOIP communication, and to a lesser extent, ADSL2 tech. That’s the sort of level she researches at. Some colleagues around her just made another breakthrough that promises to make storage devices significantly faster. But I digress.
She didnt fight the system, she just went into it ignoring the assumptions. She changed the rules, just by playing by them. As I said, her Uni is a national leader, and attracts more and more females to the field each year, from around the world.
Right there is a way a single person can change the system. She didnt change the system, but changed how society viewed it. Passively at that. She doesnt even realise the impact she has. I should note she’s been doing this for 15 or so years now.
Danica Patrick made history a week or so ago, by doing something men have done every other race. Will the impact be the same next time she wins? Or the 5th time? Or 10th? She has passively changed the system. I dont think the comments have been condescending
With movies, there’s no reason the same cant happen. I expect it would take a long term collaboration, but it could be done. Let’s say Gina Torres did a whole bunch of movies with Scarlett Johanson for example, playing some sort of action/comedy duo. Do it with good scripts, and as a franchise it takes off, someone else would take note and copy it. No different to buddy movies by the way, starting off with Abbot & Costello (or earlier).
Then you start seeing more FF movies, and eventually some would HAVE to make the mark the original post was looking for. If it becomes one of the norms, then it wears off as you say.
It gets back to people not taking risks. They mimic success. 50 years ago, there was 1 type of hotdog. Now, there are 50. Simply because people are happy to copy the market, and hope for 1% of the market. But someone took that original risk and decided to mass sell hotdogs.
random guy:
But, your sister isn’t doing anything different. She’s just doing what males have been doing all along, which is something quite different from being the first hot dog manufacturer. If anything, she’s only different because she stands out as being a woman in her field, which is a sign things aren’t changing enough. Sure, she may be a trailblazer, and inspire young women to follow her path (which still isn’t doing anything new), and the people who work with her may not treat her differently, but even the fact that you brought her up as an example means that the system hasn’t really changed. I don’t think Danica Patrick has changed racing, either. She’s more of a curiosity or a novelty, like Dauthi said.
But it has to start that way. You can’t just walk into an establishment of any kind and be all “Okay, guys, things are *going* to change. And they’re going to change right now.” Although, think of the fun you could have with that. Social experimentation ftw.
By being the exception, you will effectively begin the process of change. And it’ll usually take a damn long time. But at least there’s a start.
When I was applying to colleges, I was looking at Smith and Holyoke a lot, despite the fact that they’re all-women’s colleges. One of the things that really surprised me was that one of their selling points was, at an all-women’s school, students (of the female variety) could talk and participate in class because they weren’t socially silenced by male students. Which makes me think a lot of the gender inequalities are still socially ingrained at young ages. I know I certainly never suffered from any such shyness speaking out in my classes, much to the teachers’ amusement/frustration, I’m sure.
Anyway, I have to start working before my supervisor comes by, so I’ll quickly sum up by saying: without examples/models to work off of or to prove that the system can be changed, change would come a lot slower, since we’d be relying on the people/women daring enough to challenge the status quo.
Also, who wants to let me in on which format the HTML tags are in? I don’t like experimenting in public any more after a few embarrassing square v. angle bracket faux pas.
They’re regular HTML: < and >.
The Twilight movie is coming out soon. Probably F/M, but still probably really good.
CAPTCHA: ex-Katharine. Oh noes! What happened to Katherine
Looks like the New York Times picked up your blog post!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/movies/moviesspecial/04dargi.html
You’re ahead of the curve here, Randall:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/movies/moviesspecial/04dargi.html
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When I was young I usually wanted to play boys characters, because the ones I knew from books or TV were cooler than the girls. Little girls are trained to feel so. The cool and worth-to-write-a-book-about people will allways be men.
Ha, I was just coming to post that NYT link. Too slow. One of my Captcha words is ‘newspapers’ Hmm.