9 years ago I returned to my college dorm after seeing Skyfall, and my roommate said to me, "Who do you think has more dead girlfriends, Sam Winchester or James Bond?" That sentence - and our ensuing futile attempts to Google the answer - kicked off the project that eventually evolved into this blog. Now that I've answered her original question, therefore, I'd like to reflect on what I've learned.
Over the past 9 years, I've heard many times that Hollywood is getting better, that female-centric shows and movies and franchises are getting more airtime than they once did. And that's at least partially true, so yes, good for us.
But the fact remains that there are far more films focusing on male characters than on female characters. In fact, Miriam Quick's analysis of award-winning films shows that the male-led winners outnumber the female-led by 9 to 1. Furthermore, there are still very popular, mainstream, successful films that have no female leads or, worse, no female roles, period. The Irishman (2019) is 3 and a half hours long and only lets a woman get 6 words in edgewise. Now, before the fans of Saving Private Ryan jump on me, let's note that sometimes the absence of women makes sense because of a film's setting. That said, let me ask you this: when's the last time you saw a movie that was all women and no men, and why was it literally titled The Women?
Be honest: how old were you when you noticed that some movies don't have women in them?
If your experience was anything like mine, you were in high school when someone specifically pointed it out to you, in the context of introducing you to the Bechdel test. Shortly thereafter, someone helpfully chimed in to point out that the Bechdel test is no decent way to measure a movie's quality, since after all, Lord of the Rings is pretty awesome, whereas Showgirls is fairly awful. Then that someone sat smugly back and considered the matter closed.
In my case, though, that smug someone caused the scales to fall from my eyes. "Why doesn't Lord of the Rings have women conversing in it? The whole extended trilogy is eleven and a half hours long! What, do women seriously have nothing to say to each other?" That moment is why I realized that I'd been conditioned, along with most of the world, not to expect women to speak, even in high-quality movies. In other words, male characters are the default, and women characters are a special exception. And we're not supposed to pay attention to that.
If you pay any attention at all to the man behind the curtain, you'll quickly realize that things aren't much better behind the scenes of the entertainment industry, either. Ms. Quick notes that "women hold fewer than one in five key crew roles," including writing positions - which might explain why we never see a movie without men in it. "Write what you know" becomes "write who you are" very, very easily. Unsurprisingly, the testosterone in the writers' rooms, editing suites, and directors' chairs spills over into things like who gets to vote on Academy Awards (68% men, 32% women), which movies get theatrical vs. streaming releases, which pilots get ordered to series, and - crucially - who gets hired to make these decisions. Across the media industry as a whole, studies have shown that even when entry-level positions have equal numbers of men and women, women get driven out of the industry much more often, which means only 36% of top-level positions get filled by women. All of this ensures, in turn, that men are overwhelmingly in control of the types of art we, the audience, get to see.
Let me stress that I'm not against men having control, on principle. But I am against letting men have 74-100% of the control, in a world that's 49% women. Life isn't fair, but it doesn't necessarily have to be unfair to that extent.
Recently my sister told me, "it's just not possible to consume most media with your feminist brain on." I can confirm. If you try, the people watching with you will tell you to stop yelping in horror because you're drowning out the show. And yet, I don't want to switch my feminist brain off permanently. I might need it for things, such as remembering why we vote. Nor do I want to stop consuming media, because I need that too. So where does that leave me as a viewer?
As my blog's FAQs proudly state, I've always approached this project as a fan, coming from a place of love for the franchises I investigate. Even after 9 years, I haven't fallen out of love completely. I recently made my first pandemic-era trip to a movie theater just to see No Time To Die. I wear my Captain Kirk T-shirt to scary doctors' appointments for inspiration. Joe Cartwright's quote about "When things seem hopeless, charge!" comes in handy in more situations than you might expect.
And yet, I find that I loved these stories a lot more in the early days of the DFGRR, when I was still doing this research to settle a simple bet. Nine years in, I find myself more and more annoyed by things like the overwhelmingly male-centric narrative focus in Supernatural, or the fact that James Bond follows a Girl Formula, or how we're up to the 10th Star Trek series and only our 2nd female lead...and they named her Michael, lest her femininity be too overwhelming for the men in the audience. (And never mind that women fans have been Trek's greatest champions since 1966.)
I roll my eyes a lot more than I once did, is what I'm saying.
This is your brain on feminism.
So here we are. Instead of shutting down the feminist brain or running out screaming into an entertainment-free night, I find myself wondering things like, why are we here? Why do we keep seeing popular franchises neglect, demonize, and kill off their women? How do screenwriters too lazy to add characterization to women keep getting work? Who died and made male-centric media king? Can we fix this?
If you want to explore those questions, please continue to read this blog as we enter...
I have an exciting lineup of questions to answer in Phase 2, including:
I'm also in the process of binge-watching several shows that may qualify for inclusion in the DFGRR, including MacGyver (1985-1992). As part of that effort, I recently gave an interview to the podcast Making Fun of MacGyver, which will be released on October 21, 2021. Please tune in for that, and keep watching this space for updates.
Until next time, keep questioning, and may our sexy lamps light the way to a better future.