Women & Film & A**holes

So way back in October, the Washington Post published an article by Ann Hornaday, entitled Women & Film, which posed the following question:

With female characters, why does Hollywood fear that the stronger they are, the harder they fail?

I had been ruminating (read: seething) on this for a while now, and was already sufficiently annoyed by a lot of things in this article, when this happened… all in a row:

Needless to say… I have thoughts.

First of all, with respect to what I’m sure were the best of intentions, it must be said that even Hornaday’s take on the female dilemma in Hollywood is laughably simplistic and, at the risk of sounding harsh, incredibly shallow.  And that in itself is a very large contributor to the continued and systemic absence of quality female-driven narratives in mainstream Hollywood.

Case in point:

To earn her two Oscars, Hilary Swank went mano a mano with Clint Eastwood in a boxing ring and sucked face with Chloë Sevigny. But her toughest test yet might be this weekend, when box office numbers for “Amelia” come in. The historical drama, about the pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earheart, represents a major risk in Hollywood, where studio executives have been increasingly chary of making movies about strong women.

So… apparently, an underdog boxer and a courageous transgendered youth fail to qualify as strong female characters.  I might have less of a problem with that theorem if, say… they had appeared in a Michael Bay film.  But Million Dollar Baby and Boys Don’t Cry are both highly respectable achievements, boasting complex narratives and fully developed characters.  I don’t applaud these films simply for featuring women.  I do so because the women are presented as real people; people who feel the pain of compromise and the very human shame of circumstance, people who experience pivotal moments of self-loathing and extraordinary strength, people who would not so easily –at least not in the real world, as it is now– find themselves on an Earheart-type pedestal within modern society.  But it is because they are women, that they are summarily dismissed.  Women are rarely embraced without the sheen that results from a Hollywood focus group.  Men do not have that cross to bear.  Hannibal Lector, Rocky Balboa, Michael Corleone, Travis Bickle, Tyler Durden, Kyser Söze… etc.  None of these characters are model citizens.  Yet they are permitted to exist, uncensored, and are thus made thoroughly engaging.  But most importantly, male roles are never accompanied with the ‘strong’ qualifier.  They’re simply men.  Good or bad.  Now, I haven’t seen Swank’s latest, but judging from the trailer, I can pretty confidently guess that any box-office disappointment had absolutely zero to do with the fact that Amelia Earheart is a woman.  It’s the fact that it looks like a Hallmark presentation of  A Lifetime Original Movie, written by Nicholas Sparks (the trailer, I mean).

Which brings me to:

To cries of “I call sexism!” most insiders agree that it’s more complicated than that. “I don’t think it’s sexism,” says writer-director Rod Lurie, whose films “The Contender” and “Nothing but the Truth,” as well as the television series “Commander in Chief,” all featured strong female leads. “Because Hollywood will do whatever it takes to make money. They are not taking a principled stance against women. They just don’t see the audience as going there.

Hey.  Hollywood.   I know most of you are dudes with lush offices and giant egos.  But since I have a vagina and you don’t, how about you knock off the trying to tell me what a woman is.  I’ve really had enough. What is often lazily crafted as an homage to ‘strong female characters’ is, in fact, an utterly sanitized incarnation that does not (and frankly should not) exist in reality.  It’s an incredibly condescending attempt to resolve the Madonna-Whore dilemma, and a creation that is solely manufactured to feed the misguided –and still often gluttonous–  notions of female empowerment.

These are films made in the hopes of appealing to a select block of consumers, which is a reasonable business goal, and certainly not illegal in a free society.  But spare me the obligatory hemming and hawing ‘oh-it-IS-unfair-but-I-don’t-think-it’s-sexist’ song and dance.  No one has to be trying to be sexist to actually be sexist.  I like movies.  I’ll see a lot of things, if I can reasonably expect to be at least 70% pleased.  So you can play up the chicken-or-the-egg argument all you want, but for me, it’s irrelevant.  Modeling and perpetuating the cycle of shallow empowerment does not necessarily indicate malevolence.  But it is, above all else, cynically lucrative.  And the selection of profit over, and at the expense of social advancement is absolutely a principled stance.  Gordon Gekko doesn’t become any MORE greedy just by wearing an ‘I Hate Poor People’ sign on his back.  But he’s still a greedy motherf***er.  So shut up.  You’re playing the game.  I see that.  Just stop lying about it.  You’re like Jim Cramer going on The Daily Show, claiming maybe you could do a better job.  Maybe??  YOU ALL KNOW.

What women will go see, observers agree, are groups of women in comedies, a la “Sex and the City,” “Mamma Mia!” and “He’s Just Not That Into You.” (Each of them, it bears noting, was based on a popular TV show, musical and book.) “Women like going out in groups to watch women interacting in groups,” says Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com. “And they are very loyal. If they discover something they like, they tell their friends about it. Women were social networking way before Facebook.”  And what women like, at least for now, Dergarabedian says, are traditional narratives. “There’s no ‘Bourne Identity’ with a woman starring in it right now,” he says. “It’s almost as if in real life, women want to be empowered and in control, but on-screen they seem to like the old-fashioned damsel-in-distress, love-struck female.”

I never (ever… ever, ever) thought I would think this, let alone write this.  But Manohla Dargis is right.  Paul Dergarabedian, you are an asshole.  That’s the most bullshit thing I’ve ever read.  ‘Women like going out in groups to watch women interacting in groups’??? Here’s hoping I run into you in a dark alley someday.

The upshot, Obst says, is that “it’s easier for male executives to get jobs now, because they want to develop male-oriented material. Girls don’t grow up reading comic books or playing video games, or with Transformer or G.I. Joe toys. So the material they’re looking for isn’t necessarily as familiar to female executives who read books, which is becoming practically a liability. That’s a real problem. That’s how it becomes systemic.”

Becomes systemic?  Generations of women and men championing freedom of choice and self-determination and this is where we are?  ‘Men don’t read books.  Girls hate video games.’…?

I quit.  Not really.  But I’m feeling a wave of saltiness that, at the moment, knows no end.