The number of female filmmakers working on Hollywood films was flat in 2024 despite buzzy releases like ‘The Substance’ and ‘Babygirl,’ study finds.
The number of female filmmakers working on Hollywood films was flat in 2024 despite buzzy releases like ‘The Substance’ and ‘Babygirl,’ study finds.
This has very little to do with my opinion of women’s agency and has more to do with my opinion on human agency in general. I have known many women in my stem field who are better than me at my job, and I know many that have faced discrimination/hostile work places.
I mention the Scully effect (see also the uhura effect) because as humans, we aren’t immune from propaganda, and when media companies accidentally or purposefully make a character that inspired people, it seems weird to not acknowledge it?
The number of big Hollywood directors is small, so general workplace trends might not be as noticable, but I still think that the typical director in media is depicted as male. I think that would have a noticable effect if you could find two populations who had experienced different depictions in media, and polled them about dream jobs.
Is there a particular narrative floating around “women can’t do movies”? In the present, I mean? There have been plenty of “women can’t be soldiers” narratives in Uhura’s time, also (in the US) “black women can if anything only be maids in movies”, of course that opens a door.
To me, “women can’t do movies” makes about as much sense as “women can’t write books”. Ask even a paleoconservative and I doubt either would make sense to them. There has to be a narrative that needs to be broken for a narrative-breaking role model to have an effect, especially as “you can do anything, girl” is also a narrative.
Also, rant: Why is it that female role models got a downgrade. I’m talking about the original Mulan “be smart about things and play to your strengths and you can achieve the barely imaginable” vs. remake Mulan “you have literal magic powers that’s why you’re better than everyone at everything” type of thing.
…just looked at who wrote/directed either and let me just say that according to this limited sample, it is infinitely better to have men write and direct inspirational movies for girls than let women do it. Just for the record I don’t doubt that women can make good movies, those just clearly can’t, and I hated the remake before I just looked up who made it.
What’s more important: That the movie inspires a billion young girls or that the behind the scenes inspires the 10k who bother to watch it?