Two Female Leads
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.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:43 am
what about, charlies angles? or doesn’t that count because it is f/f/f?
April 10th, 2008 at 7:44 am
I wouldn’t mind seeing River Tam save the internet, and I would love to see Chaney get his but kicked by her. :)
Maybe you could write a full cartoon series with a female lead, you know break the mold and such.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Yay! Now we can end up with more movies like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sweetest_Thing ! O frabjous day!
April 10th, 2008 at 7:48 am
I think Charlie’s Angels doesn’t count as a good movie…
April 10th, 2008 at 7:51 am
> what about, charlies angles? or doesn’t that count because it is f/f/f?
That’s certainly a valid one — it’s not on my lists because it wasn’t in any of the sets I surveyed. It’s basically your standard bullet-time empty movie — Full Throttle was a high point for over-the-top action — but as far as gender goes, it’s far from ideal.
> Maybe you could write a full cartoon series with a female lead, you know break the mold and such.
The only time I’ve really found myself telling a story with a named set of characters, that’s what I did.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:52 am
It’s not out yet, and no clue if it’ll be any good or not, but the upcoming Sex and the City movie has four women listed before the first guy on the IMDB page.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Look at Silent hill the movie. Basically, the two heroes are female. The whole bit with Sean Bean seemed like they did his entire part as re-shoots after the movie was done and edited together for no major reason other than to include a male on the poster. (I know they actually added him as a late script rewrite, but the feel still carries through)
April 10th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Perhaps it might be more interesting if you considered the proportion of women in the top n billed stars.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:55 am
> I think Charlie’s Angels doesn’t count as a good movie…
that is true, but i wasn’t aware that “the devil wears prada” was a good one.
*long meaningful stare in xkcd’s direction*
April 10th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I still haven’t seen the Silent Hill movie yet, but it brings to mind the Resident Evil movies. I haven’t seen those, either, but the trailers had me intrigued and I actually plan to watch the first two sometime soon. I’ll give the Silent Hill one another look, although I heard bad things about it.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:57 am
>> I think Charlie’s Angels doesn’t count as a good movie…
> that is true, but i wasn’t aware that “the devil wears prada” was a good one.
> *long meaningful stare in xkcd’s direction*
Over 70% on Rotten Tomatoes. I’ve actually had some friends recommend it to me. My point wasn’t that they’re good movies, though — Scary Movie 4 only looks even vaguely good when set next to Epic Movie and Date Movie. My point is that these are the movies they’re producing with women in the lead roles. A movie about fashion and a horror movie.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Nim’s Island
The Holiday
Freaky Friday
Just off the top of my head. I dunno… seems there would be lots…
April 10th, 2008 at 8:04 am
What about world cinema?
I’m thinking back through the film’s I’ve watched over the last year: I don’t think I’ve seen any holywood ones, and there’s definitely /less/ bias, although I suspect it’s still there.
Possibly the bias might be less as the ‘action/thriller’ is definitely a Holywood staple. Films like Amelie, Ghosts, etc which are more subtle or informative may allow this bias to be avoided. Just an idea - needs testing!
April 10th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Have you heard of the Bechdel-Wallace test?
It requires that a movie:
1) Has two female characters
2) Who talk to each other
3) About something other than a man.
You’d be surprised how few movies fail this test.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Male Power! :) It’s about time men were ahead in something, without having blatently earned the right to be first. That said, I do believe on average male actors are more believable than their female counterparts.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:10 am
I had to think about it for a while, but I’m hard-pressed to think of any in the last 20 years except Thelma & Louise.
*scratches head*
April 10th, 2008 at 8:11 am
I meant, you’d be surprised how few movies pass this test. Or maybe I meant you’d be surprised how many movies fail this test.
I suck.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:14 am
i think you’re kidding yourself if you think this is an example of sexism - the studios just sell what gets bought, they’re just too greedy (and why shouldn’t they be) to shoot a movie that isn’t going to put bums in seats.
I think what you’ve uncovered is *gasp* that all mainstream blockbuster movies are basically the *same* *movie*.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:19 am
> i think you’re kidding yourself if you think this is an example of sexism - the studios just sell what gets bought, they’re just too greedy (and why shouldn’t they be) to shoot a movie that isn’t going to put bums in seats.
A survey of small and unsuccessful movies shows that nobody is trying to make these movies, so nobody knows what people would think of them. They just write these familiar roles, people get used to them, and nothing changes. And we continue to leave gender in culture as a huge mess.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:24 am
I am 100% behind anything with more River.
Especially if they manage to wangle a Serenity / Sarah Connor Chronicles crossover and have Summer Glau playing two parts.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:27 am
I find it interesting that you listed the male hero examples by actor and the female hero examples by character.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:31 am
I think the horror bias is in part because the final girl archetype works so well.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl )
Doesn’t really explain why there needs two female leads, but I don’t watch enough horror films to be able to guess who that other girl is.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:31 am
> I find it interesting that you listed the male hero examples by actor and the female hero examples by character.
There are so few female heroes of this sort that I can only mention individual characters, but with men it seems to be a broad group best characterized by actors who have played the roles a few times.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Looking through my movies, it’s clear that the proportion of movies which feature two female leads is directly linked to the rating that movie has, and is at the same time, inversely proportion to the number of non-lead characters in the movie.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Perhaps because we don’t want to watch a film with 1 minute of action and 89 minutes of two woman discussing their feelings about the action.
I very rarely see women portrayed as heroines. In the era of Katherine Hepburn and Bette Davies, women were cast in strong roles where they drove people to extremes.
In the era of post-feminism, women are seen primarily as victims of male aggression.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Ghost World. Maybe not a top grossing movie, but pretty good anyway. How about Pretty In Pink? Or Heathers?
April 10th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Why? Because the female leads have a better medium, TV, where they have enough time to actually develop the characters.
Think Buffy (yeah!) and the upcoming Dollhouse (Eliza Dushku) that Whedon is getting ready to shoot as we speak.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Counting all of the major successes and ignoring all of the bombs and minor hits gives the study a major bias. It may not be that hollywood doesn’t make them, it’s that people just don’t watch them, or the writing just happens to be subpar.
For example, UltraViolet had a woman as the lead, and a decent budget. I don’t think that sexism had anything to do with why that one bombed.
That said, I happened to like the first Resident Evil, and recommend it if you’re willing to suspend your higher thought process for an hour or two. Don’t bother with the second one, though.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:45 am
This isn’t exactly a popular movie, but The Hours was really good, and it had three female leads (Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep).
I’m also trying to think of this less than popular movie that ended up being a love story between two women. It’s set in London around a famous park there. I just can’t remember the title right now.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:49 am
> Counting all of the major successes and ignoring all of the bombs and minor hits gives the study a major bias. It may not be that hollywood doesn’t make them, it’s that people just don’t watch them, or the writing just happens to be subpar.
And doing a more complete survey, as my cousin was working on, shows that indeed Hollywood just isn’t making them.
But I’m specifically focusing on big-budget and heavily-advertised movies — the movies that create culture. Hollywood isn’t solely responsible for this, but it’s clear they have a big hand in it.
A tally by budget might be a good idea, and if we do that for the top twenty, we find one female/female movie — The Golden Compass, which indeed didn’t do very well in the US (although I blame the dense, straight-from-the-book story).
April 10th, 2008 at 8:53 am
JohnA: I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “post-feminism” (my only association with the term is the phrase “I’ll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy,”), but you seem to be assuming that a.) films starring women are all about feelings, never about action, and b.) nowadays(?) women are seen only as victims.
If I have understood you correctly, my rebuttals:
A.) Off the top of my head: Alien. Actually, Alien: Resurrection is the only one of that series that stars two leading women. Gosh, if only that film had spent some time on action…
B.) Sarah Connor would like a word with you. So would Lara Croft. I think they want to talk about their feelings…
April 10th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Well, I hope I’m wrong, but could it be that it’s the other way round: Movies with F/M or F/F aren’t in top 20, not because they are not made but because they don’t end up in top 20?
Let’s face it, we’re all critics, and can name some really good movies that aren’t the usual action-guy-beats-the-bad-guys, but we’re right there in the cinema when they show Mission Impossible a-billion-and-one…
For instance, why isn’t Kill Bill vol. 1 on the list? It’s an F/F action movie. Possibly 2003 was just too tough a year to compete in?
Oh, another reason: One trend in popular movies these days is refilming old movies, which generally had male leads, comics (same), old tv series (same) and old books (see above). I think that The Lord of the Rings would have been somewhat strange with a female lead…
April 10th, 2008 at 8:59 am
> Well, I hope I?m wrong, but could it be that it?s the other way round: Movies with F/M or F/F aren?t in top 20, not because they are not made but because they don?t end up in top 20?
I don’t think this is it — my impression is that a survey of smaller movies, like my cousin’s, doesn’t show a lot of female leads. But as I said in another comment, I?m specifically focusing on big-budget and heavily-advertised movies ? the movies that create culture. Hollywood isn?t solely responsible for what’s in this group, but it?s clear their decisions have a big hand in it. And I really think that if they pushed these female-centric intelligent action movies, people would go. With the bonus that it makes society better.
> For instance, why isn’t Kill Bill vol. 1 on the list? It’s an F/F action movie. Possibly 2003 was just too tough a year to compete in?
I didn’t do 2003. Kill Bill Vol. 1 would have been #40 that year. The pair actually didn’t do all that well at the box office (in part, of course, because of the rating — R movies almost never open at #1), though I think they’re doing well on DVD.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Big-budget movies, by definition, have to recoup their budgets. So they are compelled to appeal to the largest possible audience, having characters and involving plotlines that ticket-buying audiences identify with, or at least find engaging. Since men buy most of the movie tickets (either for themselves, or their dates, or their wives), the industry has to cater to the men, or at least to the relationship the men are investing in by buying the tickets. Action, thriller and sci-fi movies will make money by mainly catering to male audiences. Romantic (and to a lesser extent horror) movies tend to cater to couples, and again the man pays. However, all-girl movies (Ya-Ya Sisterhood, ugh) won’t make as much money, because women don’t want to go to the movies alone, and don’t want to pay for the tickets themselves if they can get a guy to pay instead.
Basically, it’s all about the money. Follow the money.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:13 am
There are plenty of great movies out there with lead female actresses. Movies with two high-billed actresses are rarer, sure. Perhaps that’s because the whole “buddy” genre is a male thing.
Since you’re judging by billing, not necessarily roles (see earlier comments about Silent Hill, which, by the way, is creepy, visually fascinating, and features a confusing plot and very little character development)–er. Long parenthetical. Let me try again.
Since you’re judging by billing, not necessarily roles, you should consider the possibility that when Hollywood targets a mixed-gender audience, they might want to draw both genders into the theater with different stars. Ie., the women go, “Yay, Tom Cruise!” and the men go, “Yay, Penelope Cruz!” and they both go see Vanilla Sky; whereas if the film is billed as “Starring Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz”, the women go “huh?” and the men go “ew, chick flick!”
It goes the other way more often (women go, “ew, guy movie” and guys go, “radical!”) because Hollywood’s been targeting teenage males ever since the 70s. Blame Spielberg and Lucas.
On the other hand, you have to remember that the film industry is incredibly unbalanced, gender-wise. Most filmmakers are male, which means they’re mostly writing directing stories they know–ie., stories about males. Most XKCDs are from a male perspective (a heteronormative one, at that), not necessarily because you set out to do so, but because that’s who you are.
Which is to say, it’s more a matter of the industry demographics (which indeed need to change) than it is any unnatural bias, whether deliberate or not.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:14 am
> Action, thriller and sci-fi movies will make money by mainly catering to male audiences. [all-girl movies] won’t make as much money, because women don’t want to go to the movies alone.
Quiz: what genre was the best-selling movie of all time?
My whole idea here is that maybe we males *would* go to watch a good, flashy movie with a properly ass-kicking, well-done female hero. Tomb Raider and Ultraviolet are halfhearted attempts that fail to have a good-enough hero. Hence my emphasis of River Tam, Lola, The Bride, etc. I would watch those movies, and I’m not the only one.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Um…Kill Bill had a female protagonist…a very STRONG female lead.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:23 am
The fact that horror movies are willing to give two actresses top billing is not especially heartening, since in most modern horror movies, the actresses are only there to be the object of torture.
As the father of two young girls, all I can say is thank you Miyazaki.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Three points:
Normally the formulation of the Bechdel-Wallace test is ‘two named female characters’; plenty of films have scenes where the lead woman has conversations with unnamed characters (mostly service personnel).
Often films people think of has having primarily strong female characters (eg Heathers) have a man as second lead.
Finally, the Devil Wears Prada was a really sharp film. Well-written and well-casted. With two female leads who were not primarily obsessed with men. The fact that people in your thread are writing it off without having seen it may go some way to answering the underlying question.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:25 am
> Quiz: what genre was the best-selling movie of all time?
It depends on how you define best-selling. Opening weekend ticket sales in the US? Entire run ticket sales in the US? Worldwide ticket sales, either opening weekend or entire run? VHS / DVD sales? Licensing to pay-per-view? Licensing to TV channels for rebroadcast rights? Merchandising income from licensed product? The answer would be different depending on consideration of each of those factors.
Ass-kicking female heroes cannot be done very well because they’re just not very realistic. You either have to camp it up all the way (Charlie’s Angels) or work a damsel-in-distress twist halfway into it (Matrix Reloaded) for it to have any resonance with audiences. Women just don’t kick ass in the real world, so portraying otherwise on-screen fails to engage audiences.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:26 am
> Most XKCDs are from a male perspective (a heteronormative one, at that), not necessarily because you set out to do so, but because that’s who you are.
I’m emphasizing the creation of characters here because when I start talking about gender, it hits too close to home and I have trouble being funny.
But a bigger problem is that xkcd is so minimal that everything I put in there has a point. Sometimes I cringe a little when I make a pair of characters male/female, but I can’t think of a way to do anything else without grabbing the reader’s attention away from the punchline and ruining the joke — and the joke is tantamount. There’s so little context in the strip that people make huge assumptions based on small cues, and I’ve never been able to find a way to introduce gayness as a background to the strip without making it a focus. And then I run into the problem that I largely have trouble making the jokes themselves about gay issues without getting preachy, or without worrying too much about what readers from different backgrounds will understand what I’m talking about. There’s a big overlap between a lot of areas of nerd culture, but the xkcd readership will be coming from wildly different areas when it comes to gender and sexuality. This makes it hard to transition over to talking about gay stuff, because I have to talk to so many different viewpoints that it’s hard to get the familiarity needed for a joke to work — hence, it ends up being ineffective and merely preachy. This has been one of my biggest frustrations with xkcd — that it has ended up as hetero-focused as it is.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:27 am
My first thought was, “Wait! What about all the lesbian movies?!?” (D.E.B.S, But I’m a Cheerleader, Better Than Chocolate, etc.) But then I looked them up on Rotten Tomatoes and they all tanked. D.E.B.S does have some fun ass-kicking, though…
April 10th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Just to toss out a FF action movie that didn’t suck:
“Resident Evil” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318627/)
It was actually surprisingly good, and may be the top of the “videogames turned into movies”. For the record, by the way, RE2: Apocalypse (urgh…) was also FF, although RE3: Extinction (double urgh…) was FM (with Oded Fehr getting second billing).
Also, just to toss a more recent one out there:
“Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” was really quite good.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:36 am
>It depends on how you define best-selling. Opening weekend ticket sales in the US? Entire run ticket sales in the US? Worldwide ticket sales, either opening weekend or entire run? VHS / DVD sales? Licensing to pay-per-view? Licensing to TV channels for rebroadcast rights? Merchandising income from licensed product? The answer would be different depending on consideration of each of those factors.
Ticket sales are fairly standard, and the reason I made the question as simple as I did was because you were talking about theaters and money, and there’s one movie that wins at box-office by a large margin in the US and a much larger one worldwide — Titanic (although I think Star Wars edges past it in the US if you adjust for inflation and count both releases).
April 10th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Yeah — But I’m a Cheerleader is so cute, but it’s definitely underground and kind of indie. It’s like Hedwig — a classic in its circles, but never actually getting wide theater audiences.
My recommendation for a more mainstream high-gloss lesbian movie would actually be Bound. If they’d made it after they made The Matrix, I bet it would’ve made the charts. But maybe it’s the sort of movie that you can’t do after you’ve done something like The Matrix :)
April 10th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Yes, I remember the mania back then, of girls dragging their boyfriends to see Titanic over and over. Still, men paid for the tickets. Follow the money.
In inflation-adjusted dollars, apparently Gone With the Wind wins out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_the_United_States_and_Canada#Highest-grossing_in_the_US_and_Canada.2C_adjusted_for_inflation
Romance sells. Hollywood already knows this.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Ok, I officially heart this blog now.
I haven’t done the math, but I have a hypothesis that the numbers would get progressively better for less heavy-budget but popular forms of expression - books, maybe? Plays? Musicals? TV programs? Is that because writers/playwrights are less sexist? More individual/self-driven rather than driven by focus groups? Smaller-budget therefore more open to risk-taking?
And of course, the same people who would never go to a movie with a single female lead, go on and buy (in large numbers) magazines with women covers. Apparently the ranking for magazine covers in terms of saleability is solo woman >> woman + man >> man only. And most TV advertisements have a female lead. I guess that’s not because these industries are less sexist, but because (a) women’s faces/bodies are the object of both heterosexual male and all female attention, (b) buying power and household purchase decisions are usually made by women.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:46 am
For a recent movie, how about The Other Boleyn Girl?
And as a P.S. (Since I don’t post very often) I love that my Captcha says “integral fighter”
April 10th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Thelma and Louise.
I’m just sayin’
April 10th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I think what we have here is a clear need for a Xena movie.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:51 am
How about Memoirs of a Geisha? Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh all had more screen time than Ken Watanabe, even if he is the biggest name.
Meryl Streep seems like to have a big share in F/F movies. The first movie that came to my mind was Death Becomes Her.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:55 am
The Devil Wears Prada was Wall Street redone with women. Fashion was the catalyst for the action, but not the subject of the movie. The same can be said about the stocks in Wall Street.
The Devil Wears Prada used the fashion industry because it is one in which nobody would question the premise of a controlling female executive — just as nobody would question the maleness of Gordon Gekko.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Oppression inherent in the system.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:02 am
one of my friends, after I had FW-ed this post to him, just said:
…
nope, probably the full dialog would show it better:
“…
Me (Good_Boy):
http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/04/10/two-female-leads/
A commenter linked to a fabulous concept ? the Bechdel-Wallace test. A movie passes the test if it has:
1) Has two female characters
2) Who talk to each other
3) About something other than a man.
Apparently, not many movies pass.
He (bad_boy):
ha-ha :) “Sex & the City” - passes!
Good_Boy: “Apparently, _not many_ movies pass.”
this is not a movie, but a tv series
morevor, shame to u - that I recalled this particualr title
one can assume that you r watching/watched it
bad_boy:
Actually, _not many_ of the girls are not dumb-pinky-veggies-caring-only-about-men-around-them
that’s why people do not make many films about them.
Good_boy:
actually, …
bad_boy:
However, for example, in the porn industry …
God_boy:
ha-ha :)))
bloody chauvinist
”
what about porn industry? :)
April 10th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I can think of quite a few movies that have females in the leading role. Some of them I haven’t seen though so I don’t know who would be considered to have the second leading role.
Tomb Raider and The Sweetest Thing were unfortunately already mentioned. And Leah’s post made me think of Bound, but then of course Randall had to go and mention it first. Freaky Friday and Sex and the City were some brilliant examples already mentioned though.
But some movies that haven’t been mentioned:
- Bring It On plus sequels (I assume, I only saw the first one)
- Wild Things (Can’t believe anyone hasn’t mentioned that movie)
>Quiz: what genre was the best-selling movie of all time?
>My whole idea here is that maybe we males *would* go to watch a good, flashy movie with a properly ass-kicking, well-done female hero. Tomb Raider and Ultraviolet are halfhearted attempts that fail to have a good-enough hero. Hence my emphasis of River Tam, Lola, The Bride, etc. I would watch those movies, and I?m not the only one.
Can’t say that I agree. To me Tomb Raider was a great movie with a great hero, and it sure ended up racking up some money. So yeah, I definitely think we males would go watch a movie with a female hero, I personally would. But I don’t really think there is a lack there of, there has been a boom in female heroes over the last few years. Maybe not with a female co-star, but they certainly do exist.
And maybe I’m stating the obvious, but the quiz answer is Romance. Titanic, of course. With Lord of the Rings next. Point taken.
(Recaptha, Pentagon Boston. Must’ve been quite a sight with all those moving trucks)
April 10th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek: Bandidas!
April 10th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Fucking Åmål AKA Show Me Love
http://imdb.com/title/tt0150662/
Not only does it have two female leads, but it’s also the best teenage lovestory movie ever. And, a slightly more subjective verdict, the best movie ever, period.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Girl, Interrupted. Wynona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. Some Oscar wins and nominations. Psychological drama, drugs and some cat fights!
April 10th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Fucking Åmål got Englishized? *shudders*
April 10th, 2008 at 10:31 am
+1 for Bound.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I also agree that there is a selection bias and maybe a cause/effect bias here. People like to see movies because they identify with the characters in the movies, and I think people have an easier time identifying with those of the same gender. Julius is right about following the money, and it is possible that men just like movies more than women do. At some point in the past I presume that males were the ones paying for movies, Hollywood noticed this, and movies started to have male leads with the goal of attracting male audiences. More men then go to see the movies, and more movies are made with male leads. So the top movies are about men because men go to see them, and an old socioeconomic condition that has dramatically decreased in prevalence is still having an affect on our culture.
(I do not want to sound sexist or create stereotypes, but it is also foolish to discard possible explanations for fear of being so.)
April 10th, 2008 at 10:41 am
“an old socioeconomic condition that has dramatically decreased in prevalence”
This is not very accurate. Men still pay for the tickets, and the dinner, and everything else. That is one of the miracles of feminism: Women see no problem holding onto the vestiges of patriarchy that benefit them. They only cry foul when, again, crying foul benefits them. Pretty nifty.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:41 am
So in reading all the comments I need to throw out a few additional titles that I enjoyed and did well monetarily with high percentage female casts or a visible heroine:
The Descent (all female creep fest)
Aeon Flux (ok not a great example, but was highly advertised and big budget)
Stardust
Elizabeth
Beetlejuice
Mary Poppins (and similar like Nanny McPhee)
Pan’s Laberynth
Mirrormask
Princess Diaries
Premonition (and other Sandra Bullock movies like Miss Congeniality)
However, I fully admit that a F/F or even F/F/F/F cast, including heroines is much more common in television vs. the ‘big screen.’
April 10th, 2008 at 10:42 am
the 80th academy awards ceremony on feb 24th also brought an incredibly depressing fact into focus: in 80 years of full length, feature films (not documentaries), not one felmale director was awarded an academy award. They are not always blockbusters, but the Oscars bring their nominees and especially winners, into the forefront of film culture, even for just a few weeks.
someone asked about a London film that ended in a romantic relationship between the two female leads: “Imagine Me & You” with Piper Perabo and Connor’s Lena Headey (2005). Never did anything in the box office, but is often spotted on HBO. (for those seeking female leads addressing some sexuality issues…take a look at the 61 film ” The Children’s Hour” with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine…its an interesting perspective on society then, now, etc).
Interested to see how the new surveys hold up. I’d love to see more kick ass females…cause its already depressing that the list of actual movies we could come up with is Prada, Sex and the City, and Charlie’s Angels…
I’d really REALLY rather see Summer Tam save the Internet
April 10th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Am I the only one who sees a problem with the fact that anything from Run Lola Run was listed as good?!?!?! I had to watch it in its original German in high school (this was not the problem, I like German, and it was subtitled, and German always came naturally to me anyway), but my entire class (including me) was just praying for all the characters to die and end the movie (and the pain). I’m pretty sure the collective belief was that the “best” part of the movie was that it taught the class all sorts of *wonderful* new vocabulary (it was German 2, so we were all 15/16 years old, knowing how to say f@%& you in German was funny)
***
To be honest, I don’t care who is in the movie, male or female, as long as it is good. But, the easiest way to reach everyone is to have action for the guys and romance for the gals, that’s just the way it is.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Well, we all know this is going to change with Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Scarlett Johansson + Penelope Cruz + Purported Lesbian Sex Scene = God Bless Woody Allen.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:58 am
If lesbians scenes are the hallmark of a good FF production, there’s tons of material already available, starring girls both younger and hotter than Johansson or Cruz. Personally, I prefer MFF scenes. To each his own I guess.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Random vote, even though it’s only F/M and not F/F, and only because I just watched it: Girlfight. Is a very good movie.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Bend it like Beckham has two female leads and is much more about family and culture than boys.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Don’t forget that epic The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Trying to remain objective about the topic, I think the consensus is that for a movie to be both Critically and Financially successful, there needs to be a balance of elements that appeals to both genders.
If you tally one metric you will find one class of movie; tally the other and you’ll find a different. Tally the two combined and weighted appropriately and you’ll very rarely find a movie that’s heavily weighted for one specific demographic.
That’s not even accounting the business decisions made to account for concessions to Hollywood egos, contractual obligations or marketing decisions (who to put on posters, who gets their name on the marquis, etc)
April 10th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Some other not mentioned yet, off the top of my head: Bound, First Wives Club, Amelie (female lead), 9 to 5, Death Becomes Her, The Banger Sisters, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Beaches, Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias, Fried Green Tomatoes, How to Make an American Quilt, Boys on the Side, and a bunch of other tear-jerkers.
I wonder, though, if it’d be possible to dig out these stats using the IMDB database by looking at the first two credited actors for every major film of the last 20 years. IMDB seems to know whether people are male or female, since they list an “Actor” or “Actress” keyword appropriately. I don’t know if that information is in any of the data dumps, or if the cast order’s preserved in the dump. I suspect you’d have to crawl IMDB to get it.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:48 am
I’d like to see more action movies where a female lead is neither crazy nor a cyborg, alien, or robot. More Ellen Ripley, less Sil. Yay for Firefly, but River Tam was annoying as heck.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I recommend more Summer Glau (River) and Gina Torres (Zoe). Hell I recommend more of anyone from Firefly/Serenity. Anyone seen “Death at a Funeral?” Alan Tudyk(Wash) was freakin amazing.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:52 am
quoting Julius: “Ass-kicking female heroes cannot be done very well because they’re just not very realistic. You either have to camp it up all the way (Charlie’s Angels) or work a damsel-in-distress twist halfway into it (Matrix Reloaded) for it to have any resonance with audiences. Women just don’t kick ass in the real world, so portraying otherwise on-screen fails to engage audiences.”
Oh, rubbish. I’ll bring up my hero again as a counterexample: Ellen Ripley. Tigress protecting her cubs is a totally believable ass-kicking female gender role.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I wonder what would happen if you did the same study on porn movies
April 10th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
“Notes on a Scandal” is a recent one.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
@ThemePark: of course Fucking Åmål got Englishized: one word of the original title is unprintable, and the other word is unprintable.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
monster (2003) starring charlize theron and christina ricci
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340855/
April 10th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
the problem are the lack of female screen writers telling female stories. and i do not only mean stories featuring strong female characters but also flawed or weak female characters or female characters in central historic settings. the lack of female participation in historic contexts is another reason for the lack of films with multiple female leading roles.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Kind of surprised no one mentioned Volver.
“Ass-kicking female heroes cannot be done very well because they’re just not very realistic. You either have to camp it up all the way (Charlie’s Angels) or work a damsel-in-distress twist halfway into it (Matrix Reloaded) for it to have any resonance with audiences. Women just don’t kick ass in the real world, so portraying otherwise on-screen fails to engage audiences.”
When are ass-kicking heroes ever accurate? Alien and Aliens were pretty realistic in the sense you could really see that character kicking that much ass, which is why Sigournery Weaver was up for an Oscar for Aliens. Both of those movies also had the benefit of good scripts. Almost all of the movies that have been mentioned and not done well (outside of niche gold like “But I’m a Cheerleader!”) have had bad scripts, bad production values and bad acting, especially Ultraviolet. If the lead in Ultraviolet had been Daniel Craig or Chow Yun-Fat or whatever, it would have still sucked.
“Frank Says:
April 10th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Trying to remain objective about the topic, I think the consensus is that for a movie to be both Critically and Financially successful, there needs to be a balance of elements that appeals to both genders.”
Very true. I consider myself a male feminist (of the third and fourth wave variety), yet I would rather stab myself in the eyes with chopsticks than have to sit through another crappy sisterhood movie (especially crap like the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) that my ex used to put on whenever they were on HBO. For whatever reason, the women in these types of movies all seem to be the type of perpetual victims and alcoholics (and often hicks) straight out of a Lifetime television movie. Compare these characters with strong women in your own life. Actual strong women would be embarrassed to be associated with the morons who fill many of these types of movies.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
If it helps, my ScriptFrenzy screenplay that I’m writing this month has two female leads who kick ass. And they definitely pass the Bechdel-Wallace test.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Clearly, audiences simply are not demanding female lead roles. The market is simply meeting demand.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
As a classical example, Snow White. Starring voice artists Adriana Caselotti and Lucille La Verne. But then I suppose we’re back to horror stories.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
There’s always Rebecca Drysdale, Time Traveling Lesbian.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I see it more as a reflection of the societal sexism that exists. Rather than blame Hollywood for this, I think the answer is to write more scripts featuring two female leads. And make it realistic, non-supernatural, ass kicking women. The more awesome scripts written, it seems like the odds are in favor of them being filmed.
Then again, we’re always going to have crazies telling us our strong female leads are, in fact, just as victimized as every other women and that nothing will ever change unless we kill all the men.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Mad Money had Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes as bank robbers.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
You’re forgetting another key element - how many of those movies were directed by a woman?
The answer? Two - Vicky Jensen was one of 3 co-directors on Shark Tale, and Judy Morris was one of 3 co-directors of Happy Feet. It seems that’s as close as women are allowed to get to directing a big movie: if it’s an animation rather than a live action film, and only then if they have two men to help balance things .out.
A lack of women directing in Hollywood can be blamed on a number of things, some of them with some sort of merit (”a stronger ability to multitask makes women better producers than directors, whereas men’s ability to focus in on one thing make them better directors”), and some of them with none (”there aren’t any good female directors out there”).
Have you seen any sort of blockbuster, ever, that was directed by a woman? Can you even name more than two or three female directors?
Of the top 100 movies last year, only 3 were directed or partially directed by women, the highest ranking of which was #83 - “August Rush,” directed by Kristen Sheridan. How is anyone supposed to believe that no woman was capable of directing ANY of the top 80 movies this year? There’s no women out there capable of directing a big movie?
April 10th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Masculinity is more credible and suitable in roles where herosim is required. When directors try to marry feminitity with heroism, the results are always either underwhealming or plain ridiculous (’Buffy’ from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charlie’s Angels from ‘Charlie’s Angels’).
The most successful female heroes (and male heroes for that matter) have always been those who don’t show overtly feminine traits, display masculine traits, or a balanced mixture of the two (Ripley from ‘Aliens’, Kara ‘Starbuck’ Thrace/Kendra Shaw from the re-imagined ‘Battlestar Galactica’).
Bottom line, if you want to see more female heroes, stop making them feminine. Simple as.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
One of the previous posters said that buddy movies were a male genre.
When I tried to think of an example, the first thing to come to mind was “Dumb and Dumber”.
I would definitely like to see more female leads, especially of the ass-kicking variety. But in some cases the gender of the leads isn’t trivially flipped. I can’t see Dumb and Dumber working with women.
April 10th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
There really aren’t many actresses that can be called upon to do the action hero deal. There’s Milla Jovovich, Summer Glau, a few Asian action stars, and then what? Honestly, would you buy Uma Thurman as an action star in any non-Tarantino movie? If I say name 10 female action stars you would watch in any action movie, it’d be hard to come up with that list. Name 10 male action stars, and it’s no problem.
Like others have said, TV does the Female hero lead better. Heroes. Buffy. La Femme Nikita. Xena. Firefly. Sarah Connor Chronicles. Women as action heroes just do better with a plot surrounding them. The action in Buffy was stupid, but everything else about that show was great. If Kill Bill was a TV show, or even a mini-series, it probably would’ve been 10-times more successful than it was. I’m not saying better, but I’m saying more successful.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
> Bottom line, if you want to see more female heroes, stop making them feminine. Simple as.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say not feminine at all, but I definitely think that femininity (that’s a word, right?) should not be the central aspect of the role - i.e., a woman can be a heroine without jumping up and down shouting “look at me, I’m the star AND I’m a woman! let’s make absurd quips about broken nails and makeup while I fight!”
April 10th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Augh! This post made me really happy, but some of these comments are so frustrating. Let’s pick a few points that have come up a few times:
1) “But-but this/these movies totally had two female leads! Your point is invalid!”
Like the Bechdel-Wallace test, the fact that there are exceptions does not invalidate the point. The point it that you have to think about it, and pick your movies carefully, where if you wanted the opposite you could just pick pretty much any movie at random. (If things were split evenly, 25% of moves would be two female leads. Do you guys think you’re listing 25% of all movies here? No? Then the point still stands.)
2) “The movies exist, they’re just not popular!”
I’m really not sure what point this is supposed to make. Even assuming the balance of all movies ever made is exactly right (unlikely), and it’s just that the M/M or het leads rise to the top, what does that prove? By me, either (or probably both):
a) The public as a whole dismisses f/f lead movies out of hand, and won’t pay for them. Newsflash: “But guys just don’t want to see movies which two chicks in them!” is not a rebuttal. That’s just as sexist.
b) The movies with f/f leads are objectively worse in quality overall. (I can’t argue this isn’t true - but when 95% of the movie industry is male and a substantial portion of them seem a problem writing believable female characters that they don’t see the need to correct, what do you expect?) Again, “but movies with two chicks just suck!” is not a rebuttal. There’s clearly still a problem.
And I have to say, I am SO angry at some of the comments I’m seeing here? Women just want to sit around and talk about feelings? Men pay for all the movie tickets? You guys do realize there are female xkcd fans that read this, too, right?
Julius, if you said some of the stuff you’ve said here to me in person, I would punch you in the face.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
I don’t see why some of you have said they need more ass-kicking non-supernatural and realistic women. i have no problem with my ass-kicking women being supernatural and/or unrealistic. I also don’t mind the realistic kind either (well… at least the character itself, like with sarah connor). Milla Jovovich is popular amongst ass-kicking (usually of the supernatural or genetically engineered variety) women. I’m guessing if you keep the women good looking, you’ll have no lack of a male audience wanting to go see it. Tomb Raider is a sample of this. The movie itself is run of the mill, but seeing Lara Croft in the flesh (figuratively speaking) was the main selling point of that movie.
I’m all for River Tam kicking everybody’s ass
April 10th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I’ll take Sarah Connor (’Terminator’) and Ellen Ripley (’Alien’) as my heroes. Either one of them could mop the floor with John McClane.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Apologies for the typos.
Also, I have to say, I missed Julius@9:25:
Y’wanna come over here and say that?
April 10th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Actually, as a high school teacher I wish we had more male role models. I have news for you; sexual inequality has long since vanished. In just one decade we have completely reversed academic achievement between the sexes. Girls are beating boys badly academically. We are losing boys and losing them fast. Divorce and a culture that treats fatherhood as somehow less important than motherhood is going to wreck havoc on this country in a very short time.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Julius Says:
>>“an old socioeconomic condition that has dramatically decreased in prevalence”
“This is not very accurate. Men still pay for the tickets, and the dinner, and everything else. That is one of the miracles of feminism: Women see no problem holding onto the vestiges of patriarchy that benefit them. They only cry foul when, again, crying foul benefits them. Pretty nifty.”
I am sorry you see the world this way. Things are changing and this has decreased in prevalence. Take the blinders off and look around.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Cadence Says:
“Also, I have to say, I missed Julius@9:25:
>>Women just don’t kick ass in the real world, so portraying otherwise on-screen fails to engage audiences.
Y’wanna come over here and say that?”
I think he just has no grasp of what reality offers. You go girl!
April 10th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
didn’t read all the comments, but what about the movie “loving annabelle” - two female leads, a drama and no mother-daughter bonding, and in my opinion a very good movie too (and no, i’m no lesbian, and i still think this movie is a masterpiece)
April 10th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I’m just impressed by the mention of Franka Potente, albeit not by name. (Run Lola Run)
I remember hearing ‘even cowgirls get the blues’ as being a very popular movie (i found it apalling, which was disappointing - what could be more promising than a movie about a hitchhiker with giant thumbs getting it down in a cowgirl camp?), headlined by Uma Thurman and Lorraine Brakko.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
There may be another factor hidden in there, though: “20 biggest movies…” Many movies with female leads (even action ones, such as Elektra and CatWoman) simply don’t do well in the box office. So it may not be so much that they’re not getting made; it may be more that they just don’t make much money, so fewer get made.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
>>”sexual inequality has long since vanished”
If you’re going to make such a bold statement, one would think you’d at least have the courage to address the evidence in this very comment thread that overwhelmingly points to the opposite conclusion.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I take into question your methodology. As a statistics student and a scientist, I would like to know parameters, assumptions, and hypotheses.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
The site you used (the-numbers.com) only counts money they made in the calendar year. This favors summer movies over movies that come out in December.
Juno and Enchanted (F/M movies) get hurt for 2007/08. I was also going to raise a stink about Dreamgirls getting hurt by this until I realized that Jamie Foxx got top billing (oops).
April 10th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
what about just 1 female as the lead? G.I Jane, Tomb Raider, etc…
April 10th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
To say this data implies Hollywood is not creating female heroes seems kinda fallacious. You yourself mentioned 4 other movies that don’t get included in your results that none-the-less have strong, female heroes. I can go on to think of more.
There are also economic considerations. How did you choose your sample? It sounds like you may have a bias toward high grossing films. If that’s the case, isn’t it more correct to say that Hollywood isn’t creating F/F movies so much as there isn’t any money in them?
I’d like to see more statistical rigor performed before any hasty conclusions are drawn. The thing is, XKCD is a pretty popular blog, and now, regardless of if “Hollywood is not creating female heroes” is statistically accurate or not, it’s quite likely to become a meme. Not saying that to be snotty. I’m just a little surprised.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I find the cause and effect element here interesting that ‘Thought’ brought up;
> So it may not be so much that they?re not getting made; it may be more that they just don?t make much money, so fewer get made.
Whilst i think that that argument can be applied in some cases- for example I think that as a culture, male comedians are far more succssful because they are genuinely funnier than women comedians in general (that ‘in general’ part is very imporant, it should be said), but in as broad a genre as ‘film’ and ‘acting’ i think its unfair to say that men are better therefore they are more popular. xkcd’s research clearly shows theres a male bias within the industry here, and M/M films make more money because they are all we get, therefore are all we are used to, therefore more money is spent on them, particularly marketing, therefore we think we want to se them, so we do. and it is very sad.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
also name 5 famous female directors.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Okay, after a few hours to wake up I think I can be a little more coherent. (Although since about 10 more examples of my points one and two have come in since, I might be speaking into a void.)
Yes, there are more movies with female heroes than Randall specifically listed. Amazing! Shocking! I’m sure everyone could come up with several examples! Good job! But, you guys, that fact that’s it’s even plausible to start listing them should be a big red flag that there’s an issue here.
Yes, perhaps you could argue that the top 20 “biggest” movies is not the best measurement. But really, can anyone think of any way of doing this where the numbers would come out anywhere near even? If you can, I would be very interested to see it.
Yes, movies with female heroes haven’t made as much money, so there’s less incentive to make them. That’s not a way to write off the issue, it’s just one facet of the problem here.
Sexism is systematic. It’s not like the problem is big Hollywood movie execs going “hahaha, stupid women, I shall not make any movies with female heroes just because I’m a horrible sexist!” That’s not how it works. If it was, it would be a lot easier to fight.
The point is that if you just look at the balance of movies there are, you cannot possibly say there’s not some societal issues here. And considering the number of people willing to say “sexism is not a problem anymore”, that’s an important point to make.
And part of the problem is the sort of stuff people are saying in this comment thread: “Men can only identify with male leads!” “Women just want stupid chick flick movies!” “A woman kicking ass is just totally implausible!”
Women have to identify with male leads all the time. Get over yourself. Women are people too, not some mysterious “other”. There’s no reason that almost all of the movies made require a dick between the main character’s legs except for institutionalized sexism and anxious masculinity.
I’d kinda hoped xkcd readers would be more clever than this.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
If Dick Chaney is going to destroy the internet, I think the person best equipped to foil him is Elaine Roberts, not River Tam. I suppose she could still be played by Summer Glau. In fact, this would be essential to the movie’s success.
She would have to dye her hair though…
April 10th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Cadence: I don’t think including more movies would make the results even, not by a lot shot. But it might give a better indication if the trend is changing over time. It would be interesting to know if the problem is getting better or worse.
It also seems a bit weird to single out movies, especially action movies. It’s not like we’re drowning in a sea of F/F books, TV shows, comics, etc. Even The Sarah Connor Chronicles gives second billing to Thomas Dekker (making it F/M) and not Summer Glau.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Dear Randall, I think I love you.
Ahem.
Anyway, what several people have said about male interest winning out when a man and woman decide on a movie to say is, sadly, correct. Men want to see movies featuring men, whereas women will watch movies featuring either.
This extends into many, many arenas. Men want to read books with male heroes; women will read books with protagonists of either gender. Men want to listen to music performed by men; women will listen to singers of either gender. Even — get this — toy commercials fall into this trap. Toys that have girls on the box or in the TV spot sell poorly to boys. Toys that feature only boys in their advertising do fine with both boys and girls. It’s all about which gender role is the “better” one, and how we as women are encouraged to adulate or emulate men, but men are punished for feeling that way about women.
It straight-up sucks, and I think Hollywood could help to remedy it, and yet look at those numbers . . . .
/women’s studies lens
April 10th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Gary, *nod*. It would be interesting to see if things are getting better or worse. My instinct is that it’s been pretty bad over the past few years, but that’s not data.
And yeah. Movies are just a particularly mainstream and egregious example of a widespread problem, of course. But the fact that people will not even acknowledge this one obvious thing is frustrating.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Way back up this thread, somebody made the assertion that typical male actors are more believable than typical female actors. I would assert that typical male _roles_ are more believable than typical female _roles_.
Seems like every woman in a movie, no matter how ostensibly strong or powerful the character, has to be written with some kind of “feminine weakness” or “womanly flaw” that softens them up. I would guess Hollywood executives demand this in the name of credibility, but I believe it’s exactly what makes these characters _less_ credible.
For decades now, I have gone to absurd lengths to see images of empowered women. From the 1985 C-grade film “Barbarian Queen” to the turn-of-the-milennium made-for-SciFi-channel show “Cleopatra 2525″, I have enthusiastically subjected myself to some utter schlock to witness truly empowered women on screen.
Here and there you do get some credible counterexamples. Despite being male, I do love a good “chick film”, which puts Thelma & Louise near the top of the list. Despite my acute Tarantinophobia, Kill Bill also scratched the itch — now _there_ are some powerful women.
It doesn’t always have to do with top billing, either: The new Battlestar Galactica series has also got some truly ass-kicking women. And it took me a long time to realize that Galactica is the first place I’ve seen female officers consistently addressed as “sir” by their male subordinates without any sense of irony or snarkiness by the males. This simple fact has become my favorite thing (among many) about the show.
There’s my $0.04 worth, anyway.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
So, while I am not a movie-savvy person (Lack of time + Lack of deep interest + Lack of money make a powerful combination for that), that is trully and interesting point. However, two things must be said:
1-) How about woman in deep supportive roles, or M-F or F-M movies that break the whole “Guy meet Girl and falls in love”? Movies where you have a woman that can relation up with another man without falling in love or already being in love? I guess that the lack of females interacting with males without thinking about sex is far worse than a lack of F-F pairings.
2-) And what about small independent media, such as independent web stories or movies where you get Female directors or F/F as main protagonists? Does the trend keeps the same? If yes, then maybe it ain’t really a Hollywood things as much as a overall society reaction to Females at movies…
April 10th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Good Job!
Gets me thinking.
Intresting that the M/F is so big compared to the F/*.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Portal!
Not a movie, but awesome, and just about all the characters are female. Even the turrets. Not sure about WCC.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Among Oscar Best Pictures, broken down by decade:
MM MF FM FF
27-39 2 6 5 0
40-49 3 6 1 0
50-59 5 2 2 1
60-69 4 3 3 0
70-79 6 4 0 0
80-89 4 4 1 1
90-99 2 6 2 0
00-07 4 2 1 1
So, it looks to me as if, roughly, the trend is getting a bit worse.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
What about Underworld, parts 1, 2, and 3. Great movies, awesome female lead! Not f/f, but at the very least f or f/m, and don’t appear to be in the table above.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I find it highly ironic that, hand-in-hand with arguing that there’s no sexism in this, people are then turning around to make blanket statements about women, such as how we don’t go to movies on our own, only watch “chick flicks,” need to talk about our feelings all the time, and aren’t very tough. Clearly then I must be male.
Very glad you brought this up, Randall. It’s always a good thing to get people talking about this kind of thing.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I’m not sure why this hasn’t come up yet, but has anyone thought of the movie “Deathproof”? I’m not sure what the general consensus on the movie is, but the entire story involves a group of ladies outwitting and outdriving an arrogant, cocky male. It essentially oozes with feminine power of various forms without going *too* over the top. I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed it.
Not only that, but the movie would be tallied as having a M/F lead, since for some reason they gave Kurt Russel top billing. I realize that this movie is an exception rather than the norm, but just because a male has the lead doesn’t mean the movie doesn’t hinge on the women.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
i don’t know if anyone’s mentioned it, but in the past few years, the popular movies have definitely been favoring the whole buddy-buddy comedies that made Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn(and others) famous. (E.g. wedding crashers, superbad). I figure if scary movie 4 is one of the “top twenty” than these probably factor in popularity at least as much as how good the movie is. Therefore, something like this would definitely skew the numbers.
Now imagine one of these comedies, except with two women. Not sure it would work, but I’m no movie genius
April 10th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
as an add on, a buddy-buddy comedy with 2 women would definitely be outside the female stereotype, which we’ve established hollywood doesn’t like to do. So, not that I’m sexist, but i can’t see something like that being made
April 10th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
One of the big problems about creating male heroes or female heroines is that no matter what, they will still be falling into some gender trap. The solution, to me, is not: “Hey, let’s increase the number of female heroines, because right now things are out of balance.” Taking away the statistical skew does nothing to change the rigid gender roles that our (mainstream) society has defined.
Instead of asking why men get paid more than women, or why women didn’t get to vote in Switzerland until 1971, or why there were always more men in my physics classes than women, I simply ask, “why does gender matter at all?” For me, asking that question lets me see people as people, and not as men or women… that’s how I go about things, at least.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Thanks for bringing this up Randall. It really is quite an amazing problem when you think of it.
I must confess that I did scream obscenities at the screen a few times with some of the comments that were made.
“But FF movies just suck”
“But guys pay for the movies so movies should be made for guys”
It just seems that you can never underestimate how systemic and ingrained sexism is.
I think that we need to challenge the dominant gender assumptions. Scriptwriters need to be more aware of this sort of thing.
As a male Creative Writing and Film student, thanks Randall, I’m going to keep this in mind when I sit down to write.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
>>”There may be another factor hidden in there, though: “20 biggest movies…” Many movies with female leads (even action ones, such as Elektra and CatWoman) simply don’t do well in the box office. So it may not be so much that they’re not getting made; it may be more that they just don’t make much money, so fewer get made.”
Alright, I’m going to start with your specific examples and then move on to the larger logical fallacy.
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. First, Elektra is a spin-off (male or female, spin-offs are notorious for being terrible) of an overwhelmingly poorly reviewed (albeit higher grossing) movie. Second, Catwoman (there were so many problems. Where to start?) automatically alienated its fan base by taking a hugely famous and beloved character (one of the oldest, strong ass-kicking female characters in American pop culture) and stripping it of every recognizable trait besides the name and a shredded version of a costume. On top of that, the Catwoman of that atrocity fought, not against the mafia, Batman, or a supervillain (as the Catwoman of comic book and previous-movie fame has done), but against make-up. Evil make-up. That isn’t a testament to the inability of female characters to find success at the box office. It’s a testament to just how little Hollywood thinks of women.
Additionally, both of the movies you mentioned are adaptations of a medium that, while awesome, has serious gender issues to begin with.
But on to the larger issue. When you’re dealing with such a small sample size, individual failures or successes seem to have greater significance in relation to the entire genre. When “The Hulk” failed spectacularly, no one extrapolated that male centered comic book movies “just don’t work.” The movie was judged on its individual merit, not as a bellwether of the entire genre. The problem with women-centric cinema is that failure is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hollywood doesn’t value it, significantly less time and effort is spent producing a quality product, and when the product sucks, that becomes “justification” for the status quo.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
How recent are we talking? I know people that think of ‘90 as recent. Give me a time frame and what counts as ‘popular’ and ‘hit’, are we only talking #1s or is it just top tens?
April 10th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Aside from an overall displeasure with Julius rampant sexism there have been some somewhat interesting points brought up.
I think that stating “There isn’t money to be made with ____” simply because a lack of significant prior data is silly. Internet Search would not have made any money because it hadn’t before it did. We are simply studying a data set and noticing a trend of a lack of effort. Looking at a subset of an industry that is primarily comprised of large budget movies produced by almost exclusively male directors, with primarily male script writing, and without having actually dug up the numbers personally I suspect probably primarily male financial backing it isn’t entirely shocking that there is an lack of representation of significant female roles.
I completely disagree that it’s not possible to write movies with strong f/f billing or strong female heroes. We have examples of just such movies exist. Complaints about them being good or not or marketable are silly. Movies, at least in this subset, are disctinctly targeted pieces of art. Failing to properly invest in a writer that can adequately write characters in a female voice or from a female point of view and then having the reaction that the characters are unbelievable doesn’t mean the characters can’t be done right, it just means they aren’t being done right currently.
Nor do I buy for a second that women are not a viable market to sell the product too. Novels, plays, tv, radio, and pretty much every other storytelling medium has proven the interest of the demographic in a narrative product. Not offering a product that appeals to a person does not mean that person is not interested in purchasing a product. Especially considering the QUANTITY of female consumers as a market and the staggering monetary force wielded by female consumers.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
>>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.
I don’t see what the problem is here. If female-oriented movies are generally just as male ones, then it’s only a matter of time before the gender inequality evens out.
But I think if it was that simple, it would have happened already. Hollywood doesn’t care about sexism or anything else but money.
If moviegoers prefer male movies, so what? The box office is the only metric of quality that Hollywood uses. Superior pay for superior work. To call it sexism is to presuppose that a.)there exists some kind of absolute rubric for movies and b.) this rubric is 100% gender blind.
It would be nice if half of all movies were Star Wars, and the other half were Amelie. But they aren’t.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
edit:
If female-oriented movies are just as *profitable* as male ones, then it’s only a matter of time before the gender distribution evens out.
Also, I should like to see a solution proposed instead of just complaints. I think some variant of affirmative action would only result in more movies like The Invasion.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:41 am
I would love to look at these sort of numbers for Japanese movies. If you think gender equality is a problem here, Japan would make your hair curl, and yet they seem to have just as many or more or more F/F movies that do well as America does. You still don’t see female action stars, but outside of strict romances, you see plenty of chick buddy movies (Nana, Shimotsuma Monogatari, Tokyo Friends) and even a few f/m buddy movies (Honey & Clover) - something that would never happen in America.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:48 am
The most obvious solution is going to be female investors, directors, and scriptwriters working together and with male counterparts to demonstrate the untapped market share available and bring about new pieces of art that capitalize on the prior negligence.
Writing female characters believably isn’t hard. It’s different. It seems pretty cliched advice that it’s easiest to create based on what you know. Male authors will create female characters only as they understand them, which will never be from a point of BEING a living breathing female for their entire life. For the same reason female authors have an innate hurdle to crafting believable male characters.
I agree that it is only a matter of time before the issue of inequality evens out, and that any kind of affirmative action is not the appropriate or even desired solution. As well, that no amount of whining on the Internet is going to bring about these changes. But having conversations like this DOES effect things, already in this comment thread one developing film maker has reconsidered the manner in which they consider characterization and storytelling. Nor do I believe that Hollywood is intentionally limiting their earning potential as a result of a desire to preserve an outmoded gender inequality. I think it is far more likely to do with fiscally conservative rich men having stumbled upon a relatively stable formula to multiplying the money they have. They have proceeded to milk ever bit of monetary potential from that formula that they can and nothing is going to change that status quo without the formula breaking first or a better formula being found by someone else. Taking a risk on a different formula isn’t really an exciting prospect for the people in the prior situation as we’ve seen by their prior actions. But there are more people with access to more money that will eventually use that money to try different things, in this situation, different things will be different combos of female creators and characters. It may never dwarf the earning potential of what is there now, it may not even be truly equal in terms of earning power vs the current paradigm. But it will eventually happen, and we don’t have a way of stating concretely yet the potential earning power it has. It has after all, not been done well yet.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:06 am
What about Chicago? The movie, not the city. And don’t tell me it doesn’t count because it’s a musical - it did win Best Picture, after all. *AND* it was just awesome in general, even if you don’t like musicals.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:24 am
> I’ve never been able to find a way to introduce gayness as a background to the strip without making it a focus.
Woo, tangent, but: if a good chance ever does come up to have queer characters as the focus of a strip, maybe give at least one of them some distinguishing characteristic, like the hat? So then they can show up later to provide background queerness without it being a big deal, because it’s established that the person with the thing isn’t straight. Just like it’s not weird how the guy with the hat is an asshole.
Actually, you could take this one step further and steal a distinguishing trait from a queer character in another webcomic. Except the only ones that immediately come to my mind are from Shortpacked!, which maybe isn’t the best source of inspiration in this case.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:50 am
I think this is more complicated and interesting (and still problematic) than simply more sexism = fewer and lamer rolls for women.
Why do I think this? Noir and Westerns.
Turn on a days worth of TCM and you’ll see more sarcastic, wiley, and even quasi-independent women than you will in a years worth of current movies.
Now obviously (I would think at least) we’re less sexist than we were in the 50s. Plus Hollywood has far more female investors and studio execs. So why are the women in today’s movies so frequently personality-less eye candy whose entire existence is defined by their relationship to the male character?
I have my guesses, but I can’t back them up, so I just throw it out there.
Oh but cynically: In general the great women’s rolls of stage and screen have been a bit more personality based than the great men’s rolls. Modern movies are very rarely much of character studies. And those are usually pretentious and boring.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:50 am
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.”
And I haven’t seen much evidence that the writer’s gender affects their ability to write characters. Nora Ephron creates believable male characters, and that guy who wrote the Silence of the Lambs created a believable female character. No gender barrier there.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:53 am
The problem might be aggravated by history. There are obvious reasons why there aren’t many WWII themed movies featuring female leads. Through the majority of history women have played a domestic role.
Just a thought.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:26 am
I assume the hookup graph has symmetry in the sense of an improper rotation?
April 11th, 2008 at 2:31 am
There is a ton of study into the concept of male/female voice etc. And one example each hardly refutes the possibility of it’s existence. Otherwise how would say, all the female characters in the third Xmen movie not constitute an irrevocable argument against your point? It’s not magic, going out on a whim once and finding a female scriptwriter and saying “here’s money, make it good!” doesn’t automatically fix the situation. I’m only trying to suggest that there are issues that are clearly brought up by the current situation in which more of the same is obviously not changing. Looking at the statistics of where the huge quantities of the money being funneled through this market are going through a significantly male dominated figure. That does not mean that females aren’t investing in the process, or that there are no female scriptwriters, or directors. There are, and clearly they can produce artistically and commercially viable products (such as Juno) where a well written and believable female lead written by a woman spearheads an amazing movie.
I also 100% agree that being of a specific gender does not automatically make you automatically able to successfully characterize them. Male heroic characters are generally pretty unrealistic as well in lots of these films even when written by male scriptwriters. We’re looking at an intensely competitive marketplace where literally every edge possible would be needed. A male scriptwriter can write a good female character and many many times this has happened and vice versa. But there are tons of examples of professionals in this field doing a terrible job at this same task as well. The different genders have demonstrated throughout history that they express ideas in different manners and styles of narrative and characterization. Both manners are valid and will produce different results. We keep telling a series of virtually interchangeable stories that are fairly simple, there are huge points of view that are financially being ignored that are in all likelihood full of interesting stories that are capable of being huge draws.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:35 am
I’m still not seeing any evidence that more female screenwriters will result in more good female oriented movies. Examples show it’s possible for a member of either gender to succeed or fail at writing the opposite gender, but you’re right in that they don’t prove anything when it comes to generalizations.
And if women are better at writing female characters, this won’t necessarily change whether or not their movies succeed as well as the male ones do. If there is a greater demand for male-oriented movies, then the successful female writers will be the ones who are best at cross-gender writing. And if cross gender writing is more difficult than same-gender writing, then the male writers will have an intrinsic advantage when it comes to satisfying the demand.
I think demand is the cause, not the industry because demand tends to get satisfied fairly quickly, but it changes very slowly. If people want films about women, it’s only a matter of time before Hollywood starts making such films. But if people prefer male movies, then it’ll be a long time yet before they prefer something else.
I remember reading somewhere that the average starting commission of a female porn star is like double or triple that of a male’s.
Also, Campbell’s monomyth focuses on a male hero.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:45 am
I’ve heard the lead “Quick, name two female…” a couple times in recent months. I find it humorous how surprised we are when we realize that, after half a century of women’s liberation, there are still differences between men and women! A couple more examples of this include:
“Quick! Name two women comedians.”
“Quick! Name two women inventors.”
Now we announce that women aren’t just as involved in a particular discipline as men like this should shock us, and yet historically, men and women have always fallen into very specific roles. Men have been the protector and provider, while women are nurturing and supportive. 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.
I think we’ve been fooling ourselves into believing that men and women are “the same” for far too long. Our world seems to be convinced that men and women are sexless, save for the physiological distinctions. We love aggressive women. We want more women in every top role possible, whether it be business, government, or film, so we can confirm our beliefs that there is no difference between the sexes. And yet, sexuality is a glorious distinction.
Yes. Men DO make better leaders than women. It’s our nature. This doesn’t make women any less valuable or special or important. It just means that we are different.
Perhaps, rather than using this information to bolster the theory that men are holding women back, we might recognize that this tells us something about the ontological nature of men and women. Maybe the fact that men and women aren’t “the same” after half a century of “women’s liberation” indicates that there are differences in the purposes and positions that men and women are most suited for, that cannot be eliminated, hidden, or wished away. Once America wakes up and realizes this, I think that she’ll finally start to return to some of her former glory.
I would write more, but I must study for a Micro exam.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Heavenly Creatures (1994) by Peter Jackson is another example. Not really a Hollywood movie, but it does have Kate Winslett in it.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:05 am
I couldn’t care less who saves the internet from the evil organization (is that M$?) beacuse I’m done with watching blockbusters. I don’t mind that industry being monopolized by male actors. And since they use the same story all the time, it’s no wonder that all their stars are the same gender.
On the other hand, truly interesting stories require diverse casts. I’d imagine that the really good and interesting movies have about 50/50 male and female stars. But because good movies are themselves a minority, it makes female stars a minority.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:16 am
BTW, having more female stars isn’t a goal of its own (unless you’re a guy and are talking about seeing more of the heroine’s attractive body as she fights for the good cause). Saying that there is a gender imbalance among movie stars that should somehow be fixed is like accusing a composer of using white piano keys more than the black ones and demanding that something is done to counterbalance it (compose more in minor pentatonic scale?). The root of this analogy is that using male or female characters, just like using white or black piano keys, should be entirely determined by what the author’s idea requires. If an original story requires ten male and no female actors, or vice versa, that’s just fine.
April 11th, 2008 at 6:53 am
what about “the queen”?
April 11th, 2008 at 8:01 am
I’ve heard a rumour that Ripley was originally written as a man, and then Weaver was cast against gender. If that is true, it would explain the good writing. I think some writers struggle to write some genders. I think it is plausible that Hollywood writers tend to write “men as heroes, women as love interests” better than some other patterns. If so, it would set up a self-perpetuating system where men as heroes and women as love interests make more money, so writers who are good at that are the ones writing the movies. What’s to be done about it? Keep buying the good stuff when you find it, and (if you’re creative) keep trying to write what you’d want to see (even though our culture hasn’t provided us with a particularly rich set of examples, so it’ll be a harder than writing what has gone before).
I really hate the “men and woman are different” whining. It seems to me to be based on a desire to see each gender as a singular thing. I can tell you, I’m female, and the vast bulk of female culture is of no interest or relevance to me. I also constantly find myself on the wrong side of the “women are better at ____” statements (no, I can’t multi-task). I’m quite happy to live in a world where men and women generally whatever, but I’m frustrated at living in a world where people make a fuss of people who buck the trends. The trick isn’t to force anyone to do or be anything, it is simply to let people alone to get on with living their lives to the full. That includes having a range of teaching methods in schools - but for any child who needs them, not in gender-segregated classes.
Meanwhile, to add to the List of FF Movies I Loved; Leaving Normal. It’s a sort of road movie, friendship chick flick, art movie, whatsit.
P.S Mrs Roberts is my hero.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:11 am
How about Mulholland Dr. from David Lynch? It had two female leads and so on …
April 11th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Interesting observation… I think I may have an explaination though:
Most females (at least the ones I know) are less interested in action/adventure movies (like James Bond, or Star Wars, for example) and more interested in “emotional” movies (like “When Harry Met Sally” or “Spanglish”).
This means the the people watching the movies with “heroes” are mostly male. I think, from being a 007 fan myself, that males like seeing male leads because it lets them more easily fantasize that they are the lead (James Bond, John McClane, Maverick, etc.).
The few females who are interested in action movies (again, this is only from personal observation) don’t seem to mind watching an impossibly-well-defined leading man lose his shirt a few times, while they still have a few female heroes to look up to (”Jinx” in the Bond series, for instance), even if there aren’t often 2 or more in a film.
Just a theory… I’d be interested in your response.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:35 am
It doesn’t exactly count as popular, but I want to put in a plug for Manny and Lo, starring a probably 10 year old Scarlett Johansen. Two sisters living homeless on their own dealing with the older sister’s pregnancy. They end up kidnapping a nurse. I haven’t seen it in a long time, but I remember it being quite good, and wondering why actually *good* F/F movies never do well, while crap-fests like Thelma and Louise get all kinds of accolades just for being F/F movies.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Actually, I am reminded of something I did recently as a study of the general decline of movies - I looked at the IMDB top and bottom 100, and categorized them by year. Unsurprisingly, most of the bottom 100 were in the last ten years.
In fact, here’s the graphs, redone quickly:
http://pastebin.com/f2982c49c
April 11th, 2008 at 9:21 am
A movie doesn’t need to be F/F to produce a female “hero.” Case in point: Silence of the Lambs (F/M), Fargo (F/M), Norma Rae (F/M), etc. I just wanted to note this.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I propose a film where the two main characters are lesbians!
April 11th, 2008 at 9:33 am
I had a discussion about this with a female friend last week. Men get so many leading roles in good movies because that is what gets the most market penetration. Women will turn out to see a good looking man in a blockbuster action movie. Men going to see a female action hero… not so much… because most of the female actors that would be put in those roles are little more than eye candy (with a few exceptions, like G.I Jane).
There was a guy on NPR who spouted off about the lack of female heroes in American films having a negative influence on his daughters (after seeing Horton Hears a Who, of all things), but his flaw was that he claims to be a true capitalist. I’m all for empowering women and whatnot, but you can’t be a capitalist and then tell an industry to change their product to be less profitable.
If Hollywood wants men to accept women in leading roles, they have to stop 1)casting on looks alone (i.e. Jessica Alba) and 2)putting them in such shitty movies.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:35 am
The numbers make you sit up and go “wow”, although it’d be nice to be able to see the details behind them.
However I’m not sure how much they support your thesis that Hollywood isn’t creating Heroines. Going by the billing on the back of the box Serenity would be classed as M/M in your list, yet… River Tam.
Linda Hamilton gets second billing on Terminator 2 so likewise that’d be M/F and yet…
Plus there’s the obvious point that the first two slots on the bill don’t need to be female for the film to have a strong female lead. Just taking flims I’ve seen this year, does the fact that second billing on Juno and A Mighty Heart goes to a man really undermine the leads in those two films?
April 11th, 2008 at 9:57 am
I’d prefer Vin Diesel ;-)
April 11th, 2008 at 10:26 am
We need to get Ragnor Tørnquist in holywood. :D (Longest Journey, Dreamfall)
April 11th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone who is not hyper-defensive against suggestions that sexism might be the cause of anything in the world that there are vastly more male action heroes than female ones, and extremely few movies with two top-billed women, especially considered in proportion to all the other movies in existence.
Is the suggestion that it would be nice to have movies with female heroes and more than just one of them so disturbing to the internet in general that it requires he-man macho nerds to quibble with statistics to prove that there’s no possible way that hollywood is sexist at all, grunt scratch sniff?
Also, no one went to see Ultraviolet because it was an extremely poorly written movie. I don’t think is demanding more badly written/incomprehensibly weird but glossy looking action movies starring women (although I did actually like Aeon Flux the movie…). But is it too much to dream of a girl Indiana Jones?
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