women in film

Not Enough Women Behind Canadian TV Cameras

wivreportgraphs

Graphs from the WIV report on women in Canadian TV

by Jarrah Hodge

The shows we see on TV are created by a team of people. In terms of influence on a show’s finances and creative direction, the most important roles are usually directors, writers and cinematographers.

Unfortunately, a new report from the non-profit Women in View has found huge gaps in women’s representation in these key roles on Canadian TV shows. There is also a significant lack of representation of people of colour and First Nations people behind the camera. That means that even when the stories we see are about women or people of colour, chances are they were written, filmed and directed by white men (see a telling picture here). Women in media industries tend to work disproportionately in what the report calls “taking care” roles (line producers, production managers, etc.) or stereotypically feminine jobs like hair and makeup.

“I would like to believe that talent and hard work will pay off in terms of opportunities for people to earn a living in this industry; yet, it is well known that the screenwriting profession poorly reflects the diversity of society and is much more hospitable to white middle-aged males than to women, racialized minorities and seniors,” said Ryerson professor Dr. Charles Davis. “Despite the emphasis of Canadian cultural policy on the development and telling of screen stories that reflect all Canadians, the directing, cinematography and screenwriting occupations in this country are dominated by middle-aged white men.”

Some key stats coming out of the report:

  • Of the 272 episodes these 21 series represent, 84 per cent of directors were men, 16 per cent were women.
  • 11 of the 21 series did not employ a single woman director on any of their episodes.
  • No series employed a woman cinematographer.
  • No racialized minority women were employed as directors in any of the 21 series.
  • 36 per cent of the screenwriters were women; 64 per cent were men.
  • 13 of the 21 series employed no racialized minorities or First Nations writers or directors of either sex.

 

Putting together this research, WIV studied the 21 Canadian live action TV series with the highest levels of investment (between $1M and $9.1M per series) from the Canada Media Fund in their 2010-2011 year. Some of the shows they looked at were Being Erica, The Borgias, Call Me Fitz, Heartland, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Murdoch Mysteries, Republic of Doyle and Rookie Blue.

These gaps show that women, First Nations people and people of colour are missing out on significant economic opportunities. Just under $100 million went into the series studied in the WIV report, and the Canadian media industry on the whole contributed $5.49 billion to our GDP in 2011. Read more

Posted on June 8, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism, Pop Culture Leave a comment

My Boobs and I are Outraged

oscarby Jessica Critcher

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go a whole day without feeling angry about misogyny. That day is not today.

Of all the ridiculous things said at the Oscars, I find myself most upset at Seth MacFarlane’s “Boobs” song. It’s like a splinter in my heel: it hurts and I can’t stop picking at it. The fact that I’ve already been told, in the nicest way possible, to calm down about it ties the whole thing up in a nice, sexist bow.

Where do I even start?

MacFarlane sang about having seen several actresses’ breasts in films. That was the entire joke: “We saw your boobs. In that movie that we saw, we saw your boobs.” He then lists specific films in which actresses, most of them present, appeared topless, except for Jennifer Lawrence, of whom he says, “We haven’t seen Jennifer Lawrence’s boobs at all.”

Apparently those are the only two relevant categories for women at the academy awards: those whose breasts we have seen and enjoyed and those whose breasts we haven’t. Maybe that has something to do with why only one woman has ever won Best Director.

The cheeky, adolescent, boys-will-be-boys tone of the song is played off as if it’s supposed to be a compliment. Angelina Jolie’s breasts, MacFarlane says, “made us feel excited and alive.” But whether it’s a famous man with a microphone on television or a stranger yelling at us from a street corner, women are constantly reminded that our bodies are public property – not our own, but belonging to and existing for men.

Even grammatically, the phrase “We saw your boobs” is problematic. It makes viewers the subject of the sentence and ignores the fact that these women have any sort of agency, phrasing it instead as if viewers were peeping without these women’s consent.

But exposing one’s breasts on film isn’t unequivocally good, either. The double standard would never allow that. It is apparently possible to do this in too many films, as he reminded Kate Winslet, listing off several films in which she appears topless, adding “and whatever you’re shooting right now.”

There was also a cheap dig at Scarlett Johansson, saying we saw her boobs not on the big screen, but on our mobile phones. I couldn’t help but make the connection to women being blackmailed with naked photos on the internet, or the recent trend of revenge porn. He has seen their breasts, he can see them anytime he wants, and he doesn’t let us forget.

Another disturbing thing about this song is that the films listed are serious dramas for which many of the actresses were critically praised. Several of the breasts MacFarlane delights in having seen were exposed in the context of rape or assault in the films. Boys Don’t Cry in particular is about a trans man who is beaten, raped and murdered. I fail to find anything hilarious about that, whether or not we saw Hilary Swank topless.
Read more

Posted on February 26, 2013 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Pop Culture 8 Comments

VIFF: Virgin Tales

Virgin Tales Posterby Jarrah Hodge

On Thursday night I hit up Swiss director Miriam von Arx’s new documentary Virgin Tales at the Vancouver International Film Festival. Virgin Tales is an observational documentary that follows the Colorado Springs Evangelical Christian Wilson family. The Wilsons founded father-daughter “Purity Balls” at which daughters vow to their fathers to remain pure and chaste until marriage. According to the film’s website:

In the United States around 5,000 of these Purity Balls are held in Colorado and 47 other states. And Europeans are increasingly succumbing to the fervour. People from 17 countries, including Great Britain, France, Finland and Germany, have approached the Wilsons’ to organize such events in their countries.

For two years von Arx and her small crew of women filmmakers spent time with patriarch Randy and Lisa Wilson and their seven children, following them day-to-day through two purity balls, holidays, coming-of-age ceremonies for one son and daughter, and some of Randy Wilson’s work as National Field Director of Church Ministries for the Family Research Council. She spends most of the time with third daughter Jordyn, the oldest non-married sister at age 20. Von Arx situates the family in a broader social context, including the rise of the Tea Party movement, and argues that the purity ball trend is part of a “second sexual revolution: chastity”.

Read more

Posted on October 7, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Feminism, Pop Culture 1 Comment

VIFF: The Invisible War and The World Before Her

by Jarrah Hodge

So it’s Vancouver International Film Festival time, and I had the chance to check out two great documentaries yesterday, along with Q&As with both directors.

The first movie I saw was Kirby Dick’s documentary The Invisible War, which Jessica Critcher covered for this blog in July. In case you missed that post, The Invisible War is a heart and gut-wrenching look at the rape of service members in the US Military – the problem of the attacks themselves as well as the problems survivors face with reporting and obtaining justice. The main thing that struck me was the incredible courage of these women (and one very brave man) to come forward and share their traumatic experiences, often after having been shut down repeatedly by commanding officers, the VA, and military leadership. It made me really angry to see how people who were victimized were re-victimized through such things as having medical benefits denied, being charged with adultery (this happened to two single women in the movie who were raped by married men), being discharged while the attackers remained at their posts, and just generally not having their reports taken seriously.

The Q&A with Kirby Dick helped shed light on what the filmmakers had been hoping for in terms of policy changes. When asked about the potential for civilian oversight of these cases, he said, “That would probably never happen in the United States,” due to the power of the military. When the movie was made, decisions to act on reports were almost always made by the direct commander, who was often a friend of the rapist or the rapist themselves. Dick was happy Defence Secretary Leon Panetta had moved quickly after the movie was released to push the decision to act up the chain of command to higher authorities, but said what they were aiming for was ideally to get the decision to prosecute moved outside of the chain of command.

He also argued that making real changes in the military would benefit society, citing the success of the military’s programs to fight racism in the service around the time of the Vietnam War, which at one point led to lower levels of measured racism in the forces compared to society at large. He noted that if good values are taught to new recruits, most of whom are young and aggressive, then those values are passed on to wider society upon discharge.

“They could be taught values around respecting women, respecting others,” Dick argued, saying this would be an opportunity for a stronger military and society. Read more

Posted on September 30, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Can-Con, Pop Culture Leave a comment

Five Strong Female Lead Characters

Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone

Author bio:Zack Mandell is a movie enthusiast and owner of www.movieroomreviews.com and writer of movie reviews. He writes extensively about the movie industry for sites such as Gossip Center, Yahoo, NowPublic, and Helium.

Serious cinephiles talk about it all the time: Roles for women in cinema are limited. It’s just a fact. The pre-teen/teenage boy demographic Hollywood studios have been going out of their way to entice ever increasingly over the past decade or two simply is not interested in strong, well-rounded female characters. The only thing teenage boys care about being well-rounded in regards to the female characters is the derriere. Despite this unfortunate Hollywood trend, there are exceptions to the rule. Rebellious independent filmmakers the world over are transcending the chauvinistic Hollywood worldview in efforts to present cinemagoers with feminine perspectives. Some of these filmmakers have even managed to slither their way into the Hollywood club and exposed to mainstream audiences to these stories as well. While female actors have historically been given the disadvantage in the film industry (especially when they reach the age of 40), some of these actors have embodied characters that have left an indelible impression on the cinematic landscape for ages to come.

Jennifer Lawrence, star of the recently released blockbuster “The Hunger Games,” can attest to this, but not just necessarily because of this film. In 2010, she starred in “Winter’s Bone” and received an Oscar nomination for portraying Ree, a teenage girl in the poverty stricken Ozarks who needs to locate her meth dealing father before she and the rest of her family gets evicted. The film, directed by Debra Granik, explores the bonds of siblinghood and the resiliency of a young girl going to extraordinary and unreasonable lengths to preserve her family’s well-being. Read more

Posted on July 4, 2012 by jarrahpenguin in Feminism, Pop Culture 1 Comment