Gender representation in movies is unbalanced, writes Soraya Chemaly, and it’s sending the wrong message.
According to the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism study released today, a survey of the top 100 grossing movies of 2009 reveals that 67.8% of all speaking characters (in excess of 5000) were male. In addition, female characters, usually isolated by virtue of there just being one speaking role, were consistently depicted in sexualized ways. Twenty-three percent of women versus 7.4% of men appeared in revealing clothes or partial nudity. The fact that only 3.6% of the directors and 13.5% of the writers of these films are women is particularly telling when you consider that the ratios are substantively different depending on the gender of the story teller: in movies directed by women, 47% of characters are female versus 32%. These ratios are the same as there were in, get ready, 1946.
We have essentially made no progress in terms of our representations of gender in storytelling in the past 65 years. Really?? Really???? Damn. That’s depressing.
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In the upcoming round of seventeen “Must See” Holiday Movies for families recommended by Common Sense Media only one has a female lead character—Breaking Dawn. The other sixteen feature boys or men in lead roles. A large portion of the sixteen adhere to the Smurfette Principle, first described by Katha Pollitt in The New York Times in 1991, namely that there is one female character in an otherwise all male ensemble cast. According to The Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, the ratio of boys to girls becomes more extreme as they age. In the Institute’s study of the 50 top grossing family movies, females were 32.4% of speaking roles for G rated movies. That number declined to 27.7% for PG-13 movies. Boys outnumber girls in movies three to one. In addition, as in adult movies, girl characters are consistently presented with less clothes and hyper-gendered physical characteristics, like tiny waists. Almost every movie on the list for this holiday season is told from a male perspective and reviews of these movies do nothing to systematically address the messages sent by their collective presentation.
And, given trends in the entertainment industry, this is not likely to change unless it actually gets worse. According to the Motion Picture Association, in 2009, women were responsible for more than 50% of US movie ticket sales. You might think that this would elicit some interest in the minds of the men who make movies (and yes, they are still primarily men as evidenced by the stats above.) But, the fact is, Americans, especially American women, are not the target buyer for American made movies.
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American media corporations make at least half of their profits from the global distribution of their entertainment products. And what the rest of the world apparently wants is testosterone heavy action films. It’s why G and PG rated movies, increasingly popular in the US, have been outstripped by R rated movies, which are often loud, violent, fight-filled extravaganzas that don’t require complex characters or plots and can translate across multiple cultures. Cross-cultural entertainment product development, in order to work and be profitable, seeks the lowest common denominator—which it seems is male aggression, violence, and power.
It’s much tricker, not to mention subversive, to present complex characterizations of men and women that include non-traditional representations of women who are sexually liberated and empowered. Entertainers don’t want to rock the cultural boat, they just want to sell more movie tickets. So, basically, whereas a few members of international audiences might care about the travails of a small-town girl dealing with an unwanted teen pregnancy, all members of international audiences can appreciate being swept away in an asteroid-created tsunami from hell, which is why a movie like 2012 made $166 million at the US box office, but made $604 million overseas.
As a result, the US movie market gets its seasonal barrage of hyper-masculine, violent super-hero and action-hero films that do much to perpetuate out-dated, harmful hyper-gendered stereotypes of both men and women. This sexist, dumbing down of content has real ramifications in our culture as we try to develop a more balanced and genuinely equitable society.
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Children are smart. They are sponges built to absorb culture. The “must see” movies that we all pay for are a major cultural force that send kids exactly the wrong message about how to be in the world. They don’t even have to sense or intuit the gender imbalances constructed in movies and games. They’re obvious. Females are isolated, peripheral, sexual and, vulnerable. Males are central, often hyper-violent and powerful. We will continue to get what we pay for and apparently will continue to get what the rest of the world will pay for. The “is” is not the same as the “aught.”
Is there not one powerful guy in Hollywood who is old enough and rich enough to do the right thing and send a different message to boys and girls? We’re smart people in a smart country. What the hell is wrong with all of us?
—Photo rick/Flickr
About Soraya Chemaly
Interesting observation about the influence of the foreign market. If anything, this should make us more concerned about the message we send as a matter of national pride, but clearly this isn’t happening.
“Is there not one powerful guy in Hollywood who is old enough and rich enough to do the right thing and send a different message to boys and girls?”
I’m terribly afraid that there isn’t. Powerful old rich guys in Hollywood are rarely rich enough, and got themselves there by being mainstream bigots in the first place. We need to boycott Hollywood films which we know send the wrong message. Support subversive/feminist/queer/anything else films, and encourage others to do the same. It’s the only way they’ll ever listen.
Large movie productions are huge investments with uncertain payback, making it a high-risk business. To lower risk, studios like to do what has worked before. Hence, most large productions are formulaic. Unfortunately, the formula seems to extend to staffing, casting, etc., so there’s few attempt to even soften the standard gender roles within the scope of the formula. I wonder if it’s even thought about?
“I wonder if it’s even thought about?”
Oh yes – and the money won out!
As all to often happens – sorry – Invariably happens , it’s the Gross Domestic Product that is used to measure success, not the Gross Domestic Good, or Even the Gross Domestic Welfare.
Measures have been set – they are the ones that get used.
In the same way in the silent movie era Physical Comedy won out over Dialogue. You don’t need to be able to read to laugh at a prat fall! It’s why so much comedy in the USA is physical, whilst in other English speaking countries it’s more language based. From the outset US movies have dealt with cultural diversity and language due to immigration.
These companies cater to an audience.
You’re not going to find a company that doesn’t want to make money.
In 1996, the fabulous children’s movie “Matilda” came out, based on the book by Roald Dahl. My daughter was 5, and we went straight out to see it. I was THRILLED that there was a movie with a female protagonist who was not a Disney princess.
The movie bombed at the box office because boys would not go see it. Only half the possible children who could have seen it saw it. Tri-Star Pictures publicly vowed they would never make a kids’ movie starring a girl again, because it was a guaranteed money-loser. After all, girls will go to movies about boys, but boys will not go to movies about girls. (And BTW, ditto books!!!!)
Fast forward to adulthood. SAME STORY. SAME FINANCIAL EQUATION. SAME SEXISM.
Soraya, thank you for this article. I get so angry about this issue.
Go Geena Davis. May your hard work one day pay off. And women: Stop voting with your dollars. Stop supporting Hollywood when they do this to girls and women. I am a VERY choosy movie consumer.
Same what?
Aliens, Tomb Raider, Sucker Punch, Long Kiss Goodnight (A GREAT Geena Davis Movie), Kill Bill.
I watched The Help, pretty much all female leads and thought it was a great movie.
I’d love to see more female leads, but I’d also like to see more females in the roles of bad guys too. Males have the leads but are also the cannon fodder, most likely to die/shot/violent deaths, arrested, the good comes with the bad. Do women want to see women on screen who are raping men, beating up men, torturing men (and women too), women to be violently torn apart, kicked in the crotch and laughed at.
One genre that needs a shakeup is romance movies, I swear most romance movies I’ve seen recently went like this. Woman is about to get married, she meets some mysterious guy, she CHEATS on fiance, falls in love and dumps fiance, she and new fella live happily ever after. Is this meant to show that many women aren’t happy in relationships and get married, in unfulfilled relationships? How about some decent male romance movies, believe it or not many men do have a sweet side and the endless sexual conquest movies men are subjected to get a little old. Male romance movie seems to be comedies, or hero roles.
Then we get the romance movies Idea of sex as aggressive as hell where I’m wondering if it’s a rapescene or if the actors just became rare earth magnets??
http://www.mutantreviewers.com/rromancecliches.html – Very funny look at romance, I’m sure there are plenty for action movies (zomg big hulky man saves the day) etc around too.
Bring on the female hero roles and male romance, male vulnerability (Aliens Resurrection was awesome for Ripley being so kickass n calm whilst the men were scared). Bring on the physically strong female, smaller but agile male (like how Jet Li was portrayed in The Expendables), Angelina Jolie’s initial role in Wanted and also her role in SALT, the movie HANNA, Ripley in Aliens, X-Men (storm is one of the most powerful, and the most powerful is Phoenix/Jean Grey), River in Firefly, Sarah Connor (when she’s protecting John she’s kickass), Buffy, AVATAR, G I Jane, etc. Japanese anime seem to have quite a few strong female roles too, Ghost in the Shell, Bubblegum Crisis, Gunsmith Cats, Neon Genesis Evangelion.
I agree with all of this! I especially agree with more female villains! More specifically, more female villains who do not fit the tired old stereotypes of femme fatale/controlling mother figure/asexual evil hag. I want a female equivalent of Hannibal Lecter!
I agree with you, however I also think that a lot of the female villains out there are essentially men with boobs. You have listed some of my all time favorite movies and pointed out a giant issue with the movie machine that is Hollywood. Namely, we need to be able to have fully dimensional representations of women doing the full range of things that real women do. Instead, what we have are a ton of romantic comedies and the good (and occasionally hilariously bad – remember Barb Wire!) violent woman with a mission movie. It’s really hard to sell a script for about women in Hollywood that doesn’t involve romance or marriage. I wrote a script several years ago that started off as a pretty raunchy female ensemble comedy and after two years of “development hell” designed to make it marketable ended up as….a romantic comedy because that’s what Hollywood would buy. The Bridesmaid Effect might be good, but I am not sure that it will get us away from the wedding-focused scenarios. Women should be bad gals, good gals, scuzzy gals, loud gals, gay gals, scary gals. etc. Also, very interesting piece in the NYT this weekend about how our crazy people are, with a few noted exceptions….always women. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
If the female characters star in movies boys and men like then they will watch them (just look over previous posts to see titles that have powerful female characters and are popular with men/boys). No, men and boys (as a generalisation) will only pay to see a Rom-Com if their girlfriend twists their arm; it just doesn’t do it for us.
It may be even more unbalanced than the article suggests. You could hardly call the lead female character in _Breaking Dawn_ a major leading role for women to emulate. She spends a lot of the story sitting around and gestating….
Great point. This movie sends terrible messages to girls in multiple ways.
Thank you! I wrote an entire two pages on the dismal model that Bella Swann provides and then got so irritated that I was mumbling imprecations and obscenities as I typed. Saved as draft!
Simple solution: women should boycott male-centric movie studios until there are more female roles on screen. Take your money elsewhere. No excuses, power of the almighty dollar working for you and all that, take the matter into your own hands, agency, girl power, all that stuff. Go. Make it happen.
Couldn’t this potentially have the opposite effect? “Women don’t make up much of audience numbers, ergo, women don’t like movies, ergo, no point making movies with female audiences in mind?”
You know, I agree on the sales issue. The problem is that the movies are good and they are entertaining and there are simply not very many options. I’ve tried this route for years. I like these movies and would love to see them even more if there was even the slightest balance overall. I say let’s have a NATIONAL DAY OF BOYCOTT!
Firstly, it is hilarious(ly terrifying) that the only must-see holiday movie with a female lead is Breaking Dawn – starring a wet blanket of a teenage girl who passively lets men fight over her, has absolutely zero agency and doesn’t mind that her honeymoon night with her husband left her covered with bruises because she knows it’s just that he can’t contain his passion because he loves her so much. It scares the hell out of me that Bella Swan is one of the most prominent fictional female characters of the past few years and so many teenage girls see her as a role model to be emulated.
Also, really interesting article at overthinking.com about the trope of the “Strong Female Character” and how Hollywood has ultimately appropriated as just another female cardboard cut-out type –> http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/08/18/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women/
Also, I don’t necessarily agree that violent action movies are the problem. Kill Bill is super -violent, but also feature an incredible female lead as the Bride. She’s smart, she’s deadly, she’s ruthless, she’s flawed, and she’s not overly sexualised. Both movies were financially successful and critically acclaimed. It can work. I love super-violent action movies, and I don’t really see how it would be a financially dangerous move to make some more starring women.
I find the disparity particularly obvious when it comes to superhero movie franchises. Whenever I see discussions about the potential for a Wonder Woman movie, people shout it down. Popular points include; she’s a ridiculous character, she’s cheesy, her costume is ridiculous, she’s boring and hard to relate too and a movie would be financial suicide. Then I think about Thor, one of the biggest grossing movies of the summer, based on… a Norse god from the mythical world of Asgard who wears a hat with little wings on the side. If they managed to edge him out, I’m sure they can manage Wonder Woman.
People often cite trainwrecks like Catwoman as the reason female superhero movies are not are smart investment for studies. For me, the problem with that movie wasn’t that it had a female lead, it was that it was an objectively TERRIBLE movie (she has to save the world from a COSMETICS COMPANY for crying out loud) and only loosely based on the iconic character. It also baffles me when people use the financially viable argument when I see that a male superhero, The Hulk, has had two major movies in the last ten years and has twice-proven itself to be a financially unstable franchise, yet there is still talk of a 2012 sequel? And yet the attitude seems to be “well, it’s an iconic character with an established fan-based, so let’s just keep rebooting until it makes money!” On the other hand, Wonder Woman, an equally iconic character, gets a woeful pilot for a TV series where she’s a sassy CEO by day and a crime-fighter by night.
Anyway, that’s my two cents! Great article! More complex portrayals of women, please!
Standing up and clapping!
Sorry Marianne it not that simple.
The most well know Wonder Woman of this generation’s animated series is an aloof feminist and sometimes misandriest ball buster. She would have to be sold as a dominatrix just to get men in the theater.
Wonder Woman’s shaky history with men is so convoluted that there is a ground swell of readers who support the idea of her “coming out of the closet” already.
Here’s her history in a nutshel-l http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/2628-All-The-World-Is-Waiting
Hercules made her Hate Men, Adolph Hitler made her a crusader and Steve Trevor turned her into an inept submissive little school girl with a crush.
Every time She gets rebooted in the comics the writers have to eliminate one or all of these male figures from her origin.
The only thing Thor had to accomplish was to sell a story of a Kick Ass Space Viking to children and Classic Heroic Masculinity to adults. Needless to say they did a great job.
I would much rather see a full length big budget ” Zena the Worrier Princess” story.
I’m aware of Wonder Woman’s problematic (weird, fetishized, fragmented) history, but I didn’t start getting into comics until the early 2000s, so it doesn’t impact me on that much and certainly isn’t my main point of reference for the character. I think the point still stands that she’s an iconic figure (probably the single most iconic female superhero) and a thoughtful reboot would go along to solidify her as a character. Her reboot in The New 52 has been enjoyable so far, as was her appearance in Justice League #3. I think she has more appeal for both men and women than either a dominatrix or a feminist.
I’ve watched all of the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited animated series (I assume this is what you’re referring to when you say this generation’s animated series) and I don’t really see how she is misandrist – I mean, she did leave her island home full of women in order to live in, protect and understand the world of men more fully. She is aloof, but no more so than J’onn J’onzz, it seemed to me symptomatic of being from a different world and still be being somewhat baffled by our culture. Yeah, she is a bit of a ball-buster, but not nearly so much as Hawkgirl and in both cases, it seems to be because the DCAU is largely populated by men. If you are a kickass female superhero and the majority of villains and threats you come up against are male, and the majority of your team who you sometimes argue with also happen to be male, then yeah, you’re going to come across like a ball-buster.
There were some sporadic moments where she snapped abruptly at humans objectifying her, but her direct to DVD movie had most of the gender subtext that the animated series avoided.
In regards to the main point of this article..
(and as much as it pains me to say this) but
Hollywood is structured to cater almost exclusively to the reptilian parts of a consumers brains one gut reaction after the another.
For Example -
Men are Protectors
Man + Power = Hero
Woman are sexy
Sexy Woman are the rewards of Manly Men
Woman + Power = B*tch
Female sexuality should be feared and so on.
Men pay a premium to have classic masculinity depicted on film, video games and such. In essence, Hollywood is making a fortune selling our male insecurities back to us. This business model is as reprehensible as it is profitable.
I just have to laugh at your first sentence! Isn’t that the truth? It’s like people who are tied up in their knickers trying to figure out if Tattooed Barbie is BAD FOR GIRLS!!!!!
I’m wondering how this continuted (since 1946) silencing and oversexualizing of young women, along with the overt focus on power-seeking males as gender role models translates into the modern-day workplace? According to the author of the following article, women will garner success simply through force of personality (or good looks), while men as risk-takers will actualy, you know accomplish things: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-new-macho/comment-page-2/#comment-71109
A totally different way to look at it:
When women go to the movies, they see a wide selection of men on screen. When men go to the movies, they have a smaller selection of women to look at. I’m not convinced this is completely bad for women and good for men. If we even out the percentages, then there will be fewer men for women to see on-screen.
Some part of this phenomenon is that many women enjoy seeing sexy men on screen as much as men enjoy seeing sexy women on screen. Women are generally not dragged by men to watch movies starring Brad Pitt or George Clooney. They don’t necessarily need to see those actors scantily clad or in overtly sexual scenarios (they wouldn’t mind seeing these men like that, of course….).
In short, women often go to movies for reasons other than a search for female role models or to explore their experiences as women.
Now for the half-sarcasm:
Theoretically, this existing imbalance could just show that women are superior to men in some ways. Women are capable of spending two hours seeing things from men’s point of view, but men are not capable of spending two hours from a woman’s point of view. As we see elsewhere on GMP, females are more capable of sitting still for long periods of time, whereas males desperately need specific things to hold their attention or else they just can’t sit still.
I agree with you in the cross-gender empathy deficit for boys and men. Women and girls are given the freedom to explore and empathize with men and masculinity and the opposite is not true. It starts when kids are very young and goes on infinitely unless challenged.
I disagree, if women are “superior” to men in that regard then why are they seeing movies that project Male agency in such high numbers. My guess is that on subconscious level, women believe that the strength of a country is in direct proportion to the strength of its men.
Conversely, neither sex seem too egger to support a movie where the Male Protagonist is wallowing in a state of learned helplessness.
Did anyone else read the study’s methodology?
Personally, I find it difficult to accept the findings on how sexualization of female characters because the findings were based on “sexy outfits” such as swimwear, whether or not they “exposed skin,” and whether or not another character described them as “attractive.”
This completely misses how sexuality works in our culture. When a character is comprised of an attractive mail actor put into a tailored suit and then described as “powerful” or “wealthy,” there is no question in my mind that the character is being sexualized.
The most blatant example is probably the James Bond franchise. It is completely improbable that the spy would be wearing expensive perfectly-tailored tuxedos as often as he does, especially when the shooting starts.
Yet there was no consideration in this study of what it means for men in our culture to be sexualized. They applied the wrong standard and then got the results they were looking for.
Please note, the number of rolls is still a problem, I take no issue with that finding and I hope it will be improved in that future.
wow, my spelling and grammar are terrible when I write quickly.
Mail = Male, and the word “how” should be missing from the second line.
That’s interesting, but I wonder if what you are talking about isn’t so much how men are sexualized so much as stereotyped as powerful, etc. Women’s power is largely understood as a function of their sexuality, men’s of their resources – the effects of these representations are not the same on how we interpret gender roles in the wider world. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the movie Miss Representation if you have seen it.
IMO, Game of Thrones (the TV series– and it IS film quality!) has GREAT women characters! I think the TV series develops them better than Martin in the books.
Although some people complain about the sex and nudity –although the same people seem to have NO problem with the graphic blood-and-guts (LITERALLY guts), women and girls make up a huge part of the cast and are, for the most part, really pro-active and well-developed. Cersei Lannister is an evil bitch, but she is multi-dimensional and although her actions are never forgivable, they ARE understandable.
And Arya and Catelyn Stark are awesome role models.
I remember seeing two movie reviewers years ago talk about how all the great writers have gone to TV –West Wing, Law and Order, The Wire; and more recently True Blood and Game of Thrones. And most of the highly acclaimed TV series have great women characters.
Maybe cinema is on its way out. Which would be a shame– but if they won’t change, then they SHOULD die.