Girls (not) on film
Deborah Cowan
WVoN co-editor
Earlier this week ‘Women in Film’ presented their annual Crystal + Lucy Awards at a star studded ceremony in Los Angeles.
Female figures from across the industry gathered to pay tribute to this year’s outstanding women achievers. That is, if you can find them.
According to figures recently published by the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, women held just 18 percent of key jobs on the top 250 money spinning movies of 2011.
The study, ‘Celluloid Ceiling’ looked at the (paltry) number of women working in the areas of directors, producers, executive producers, writers, editors and cinematographers.
The breakdown makes for depressing reading…
In 2011, only five percent of directors involved with the top 250 movies were women. That’s pretty bad. Worse still, it was actually a decrease of two percent from the previous year.
Also in 2011, women accounted for a tiny 14 percent of writers and a practically microscopic four percent of cinematographers.
Translated into more general terms, a woman is 15 percent more likely to serve as a member of the clergy or hold a seat on a Fortune 500 company board, and 10 percent more likely to work as an aerospace engineer than she is to direct a Hollywood movie.
And as far as Oscars go….. Kathryn Bigelow remains the only woman to have taken the coveted title of Best Director for her film about Iraq, ‘The Hurt Locker’. And that was a mere two years ago.
It’s a grey and disheartening celluloid landscape.
So let’s click our heels and return to the far more colourful Women in Film Awards. There was glamour, there was laughter, there were tears…….
And there was Meryl Streep.
Although her role for the evening was predominantly to present actress Viola Davis with the Excellence in Film award, Ms Streep also had more than a few choice words to say about the movie industry’s celluloid ceiling:
‘In this room, we are very familiar with these dreadful statistics that detail the shocking under-representation of women in our business,’ she said.
‘Seven to ten percent of directors, producers, writers, and cinematographers [are women] in any given year. This in spite of the fact that in the last five years, five little movies aimed at women have earned over $1.6 billion: The Help, The Iron Lady believe it or not, Bridesmaids, Mamma Mia!, and The Devil Wears Prada.
‘As you can see, their problems were significant because they cost a fraction of what the big tent-pole failures cost. . . . Let’s talk about The Iron Lady. It cost $14 million to make it and brought in $114 million. Pure profit! So why? Why? Don’t they want the money?’
Quoting poet and Pulitzer Prize novelist Alice Walker, who said ‘the most common way people give up their power is by thinking that they don’t have any’, she added: ‘That’s like [hearing] that women don’t get raises because they don’t ask for them. It’s incredible.’
It’s not just the scarcity of intelligent roles that are written for women (predominantly by men) or how much women get paid (which is less than men) that are causes for concern.
It’s also the fact that it is generally men who decide what movies get made in the first place, so women are often coming late to the table. And they’re getting younger and younger.
Davis raised the issue of ageism in the industry: ‘People always say, whatever happened to so-and-so, and the next response is always, oh, she’s over 40′, that’s what happened to her.
‘At the age of 46, I’m very proud to be Viola Davis. The higher purpose in my life is not just to do the song and dance, but it’s also to rise up and to pull up (others), and to leave the world and the industry a little bit better.’
The last word has to go to 15-year-old Chloë Grace Moretz, who was presented with the 2012 Face of the Future Award.
‘I love how Women in Films’ mission is mentoring young women. One generation helping another, joining forces to build a better future. . . .
‘I’m finishing up ninth grade, and in high school we have a name for the group that has assembled here. In high school, we call you all the ‘smart girls.’ And I want to be a smart girl.’
Methinks she already is.
Meryl Streep – fantastic! Good piece Deborah.