> Hey, Hollywood: What's Wrong With This Picture?
> Run Date: 09/18/00
>
> By Jeannine Yeomans
> WEnews correspondent
>
> In the roles they play, the shows
> and movies they direct and edit and the jobs they fill, women are both
> misrepresented and underrepresented. The numbers of key jobs and
> positive characterizations are falling. Stay turned for a November
> girl-cott.
>
> HOLLYWOOD--The real story for women in Hollywood is more
> gloomy than glamorous. New research reveals that men still dominate all
> movie and TV jobs in vast numbers compared with women. In fact, the
> numbers of women in some key Hollywood jobs have decreased in recent
> years.
>
> "It's as if the women's movement never happened in Hollywood," says Emmy
> winner Jan Wahl, who reviews movies for the NBC-TV affiliate in San
> Francisco. "It's a tragedy for all women."
>
> New research by Martha Lauzen, Ph.D., a professor at San Diego State
> University, reveals that among the 207 top grossing films last year,
> women constituted only 17 percent of all creators behind the scenes,
> including producers, directors, writers, and editors.
>
> Only 4 percent of directors were women, a drop from 8 percent the
> previous year. There were other significant declines in the numbers of
> executive producers from 21 percent to 15 percent, and female editors
> from 13 percent to 8 percent. The picture for television is similarly
> bleak.
>
> "People think we're doing better than we are," says Robin Swicord, a
> respected film screenwriter whose credits include, "Little Women." She
> laments that women in Hollywood "have worked so hard and tried to get
> more jobs for other women, but it's discouraging that we have so far to
> go."
>
> Stay tuned for a nationwide girl-cott against TV, movies
>
> In November, Chicago-based Merge Magazine and the Media and Women
> Project are calling for a second annual "Girl-cott of the Movies," a
> nationwide protest against Hollywood and movies that unfairly represent
> and employ women.
>
> "We hope to get thousands of people involved in staying away from
> bad-for-women movies," says Tamara Sobel, founder of the Media and Women
> Project. "We have to start speaking up with a single voice," Lauzen
> agrees. "If we don't, no one will."
>
> And it's not just an issue of jobs in an industry that rakes in over $22
> billion a year.
>
> When the numbers of women working on a movie or TV show decline, females
> are more likely to be portrayed unrealistically on screen as what Lauzen
> calls "adorable dopes." They are powerless, indecisive and childlike,
> with men at the center of their universe and a need to be rescued.
>
> "These are the Ally McBeals and the Dharmas, just one step up from the
> classic bimbo," Lauzen says. "When women have more powerful roles in the
> making of a movie or TV show, we know that we also get more powerful
> female characters onscreen, women who are more real and more
> multi-dimensional."
>
> Blood and sex sell big overseas--the biggest-grossing market
>
> "Hollywood is only interested in what guys want, like old geezer movies
> and slob sex comedies where all girls are bimbos," says Wahl, a member
> of the Directors Guild who has reviewed movies for 20 years. "I've never
> seen our culture in such bad shape."
>
> Wahl and other Hollywood observers blame the bottom line: money. They
> say a hit movie can take in most of its gross--as much as 80
> percent--overseas.
>
> "Overseas audiences still want sex and violence. That's what sells
> outside the U.S.," says Wahl. "The whole world may have to change before
> the picture for women in Hollywood gets brighter."
>
> "It is very hard to get movies made that are genuinely feminist, or even
> portray women in a fair way," Swicord says. "I genuinely believe there
> is a big domestic audience for this kind of movie, but if there is only
> a domestic audience, it won't get made."
>
> Quality and realism improve with more women on the sets
>
> Swicord and Lauzen agree that it's not a male conspiracy and it doesn't
> help to label men in Hollywood as sexists. Lauzen's research also shows
> that women who have jobs behind the scenes in Hollywood try to help
> their sisters.
>
> "When women have power roles behind the screen, we get more women on the
> crew and we get a different kind of portrayal on screen, which is a more
> powerful female character," she says.
>
> But women working for their side are up against a conspiracy of the
> money-hungry, whose job is to pull in the big bucks--and often the
> grosser the movie, the bigger the gross.
>
> The TV picture appears to be just as dim.
>
> Research released by Lauzen last week shows that in the latest primetime
> TV season, 1999-2000, women accounted for only 40 percent of all
> characters, and overall they were portrayed as being younger and less
> powerful than men. Male characters were identified more by their
> occupation, while women were identified more by their marital status.
>
> "Veronica's Closet" is a good example of a bad show, Lauzen says.
>
> At first blush actress Kirstie Alley seemed to be a great character. She
> was over 40, not stick-thin and she was CEO of a multi-national company.
> "But then the show's creators 'youth-enized' her by making her very
> childlike and indecisive," Lauzen says. She cites one episode when she
> said she couldn't leave her husband even though he cheated on her dozens
> of times.
>
> "That was supposed to be a source of humor," Lauzen says.
>
> Revealing bias that had been suspected but never proven until now,
> Lauzen's newest study also shows that the scheduling practices of the
> major TV networks systematically favor shows where men dominate over
> women both on camera and off.
>
> "When the networks dole out time slots, they are doling out the fate of
> a show," Lauzen says. "So the networks can be doling out a death
> sentence or guaranteeing that a show will be a hit depending on its time
> slot."
>
> On the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox), as the percentage of
> females increased both onscreen and as creators of a show, the more that
> show "got moved around and surrounded by programs not getting high
> ratings or shares," Lauzen reports.
>
> "In other words, the female shows got a much tougher batting order," she
> says.
>
> Best shows for and about women get shabby time slots
>
> The picture was just the opposite--brighter--for women in the scheduling
> practices of the smaller networks studied, UPN and WB, where more
> favorable time slots were given to shows with higher percentages of
> women characters and creative talent behind them.
>
> Overall in primetime TV, women constituted only 18 percent of the
> creative talent, including executive producers, writers, and editors.
> Only 7 percent of all directors were women.
>
> The cause of these low numbers, Lauzen believes, is the power of the
> status quo. "People like to work with other people who are like them, so
> men tend to hire men, women tend to hire women, and so forth."
>
> Lauzen began researching the state of female employment in movies and TV
> because she kept hearing that women were making progress in Hollywood,
> "while the numbers didn't seem to jibe with what I was seeing on film
> and on the air."
>
> She admits changing Hollywood "is going to be like turning around a
> battleship. It will take time, but awareness is the first step."
>
> Jeannine Yeomans is a former television correspondent and creative
> consultant based in San Francisco.
>
> For more information about the "Girl-cott of the Movies," visit:
> http://www.merge.simplenet.com/