History
Female directors are something that people have wanted to see more of in the last few years, from Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman), Ava DuVernay (Selma), Mary Harron (American Psycho) etc. But in 2018 a movement named Time’s Up was formed in the fallout from the controversy surrounding Harvey Weinstein and misconduct in the media industry.
It was a story that dominated headlines for many months and is still a major talking point and will be for many years.
Time’s Up has since evolved to include a peaceful fight against Hollywood for Gender Equality and Representation in the film industry. Many people in the media world have offered support to those that need it.
The reason for writing this report is to hopefully bring more awareness to the industry by saying that female directors deserve more recognition for their work. In my opinion, female directors are able to create films that people will positively talk about and are praised in terms of character development and emotion. But in 2018, with Hollywood being primarily one sided, woman pour all their hard work into their films, wanting to tell their inspiring stories and show off their variety of characters.
Women first started directing films way back in 1900s with silent films in 1911, a woman called Anna Hofman-Uddgren was considered the first woman to create a film: entitled Stockholmsfrestlser.
Fast forward 75 years where female director were being asked to helm family films such as Big (1988) starring Tom Hanks and directed by Penny Marshall. This was a record breaking film as Marshall was the first female director to have a film surpass $100 million dollars in the worldwide box office.
Golden Globes and Academy Awards
Directors who were female tend to pushed to smaller projects as Hollywood was and still is a male dominated industry with the audiences tending to see big budget blockbuster directed by the popular directors of our time with the likes of Steven Spielberg and James Cameron.
But in the 2000s and beyond, more and more female directors are being given the time in the spotlight when being nominated for an Academy Award but are having their moment ruined when a more popular film wins. For example, Lost in Translation’s director Sofia Coppalo lost the award to Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings.
Only 5 women have had the honor of being nominated of the award but only 1 has had the statuette placed in their hands, Kathryn Bigelow in 2010 for The Hurt Locker. And over the years, the lack of female directors has been in the center of controversy over the years, with joint focus on the lack of black actors and actresses as well as women in male dominated categories. (See Appendix 1)
Many actresses including Bryce Dallas Howard and Angelina Jolie have considered this career path. As well as their acting talent, they have shown their skills behind the camera creating films such as Unbroken and Soulmates.
Modernism and Post-Modernism
In recent years, modernism and post-modernism has been a talking point for how stories are being told. By definition it is something challenges a convention within society. In 2013’s Frozen (directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck), it challenges the typical structure of past Disney princess stories to show a fresh twist. Hans is not the person that Anna thought he was and leaves her to turn to ice. Anna stops the fight but ends up turning into an ice statue. But the twist is that Elsa is the one to undo everything and in turn saves Anna. She challenges the set structure of past Disney movies where the prince saves the princess. (See Appendix 2)
Superheroes
Comic Book movies are known to be male dominated with heroes like Iron Man, Captain America and Thor with the character Black Widow getting relegated to a supporting character and objectified to the male gaze.
But with the success of Wonder Woman, Marvel have tried to make Black Widow a more impactful character. And with Brie Larson making her MCU debut as Captain Marvel in 2019, this will be turning point for more female heroes to be introduced in solo films.
The project was announced in 2014 during a press conference where Marvel announced solo films for characters such as Doctor Strange and Black Panther. In the past, comic book heroines have always been sexualized to suit a certain audience. But due to the change of opinions, the character designs have been altered in a way to make the whole audience happy. The critical praise of Black Panther mainly focused on the all-black cast as well as the representation of women within the film. Current MCU movies are striving to include more female heroes.
After the success of 2017’s Wonder Woman by Patty Jenkins, many fans of comics consider Wonder Woman as the new face of the DC Extended Universe as the character’s popularity has grown over time.
The male gaze is often a controversial topic and is common in the industry, with films objectifying the female characters and presenting them in a way that is unfair. Franchises such as James Bond and Fast and Furious are guilty of this. And with female directorship, the likeliness of this happening will be smaller compared to female heroes under the directorship of Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon. With #TimesUp, they want to make representation of women fair in all aspects, in real life and onscreen.
Time’s Up
The Time’s Up movement has and will be a major talking point for many years as the fallout of Weinstein’s actions is not something that will go away quickly, as of 1st May 2018, actress Ashley Judd is suing Weinstein for “damaging” her career. And reports state that “if the lawsuit is successful, the actress has said she would donate any monetary damages to the Time’s Up legal defense fund” (BBC News, 2018) (See Appendix 4 for full article)
The movement has been in the news over the duration of the Award season from the Golden Globes and Academy Awards. The main aspect of the movement is to protest peacefully against harassment and assault. The movement has allowed many actresses to tell their stories, speaking out against him.
Emma Watson
Emma Watson is a well known feminist icon and a big supporter of the movement as in recent months she has donated £1,000,000 of her own money to the defense fund. Emma posts on Instagram inspirational photos and posts relating to the movement. Speaking to BuzzFeed in 2017 while promoting Beauty and the Beast, she was asked “What would you say is the biggest problem facing young women today?” to which she responded:
“We think we live in a post-feminist society, and we do not. So we are told that we don’t need feminism anymore, that we have the vote, that we are all good. And I think actually that’s incredibly disconcerting…” (Watson, 2017) (See Appendix 4 for full statement.)
On January 3rd, she posted a bunch of photos with #TimesUp: “We seek equal representation, opportunities, benefits and pay for all women workers, not to mention greater representation of colour, immigrant women and lesbian, bisexual and transgender women, whose experiences in the workforce are often significantly worse than their white cisgender, straight peers.” (#TimesUp, 2018) (See Appendix 5)
Following the success for the Disney film, Emma Watson was nominated for an MTV Film Award for her performance as Belle in the lead role. Watson won the award for Best Actor, the first award to include two genders in the same group. (See Appendix 6 for full speech)
(For additional information on Emma Watson’s career as an activist: see Appendix 7)
During the Golden Globes 2018, Oprah Winfrey, while accepting her Cecil B. de Mille award for contributions to entertainment, she used her time onstage, to deliver a motivational speech to all who were in the room and to the millions watching around the world. Quoting her speech “I want all the girls watching here now to know that a new day is on the horizon.” (Winfrey, 2018) (For full speech see appendix 8)
Whereas at the Oscars, Frances McDormand, who won Best Supporting Actress for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, invited all female nominations to stand up in the room to have visual proof of just little female nominations there are compared to the male nominations.
Analysis of Questionnaire Results
Q1 asked if they knew anything about the Time’s Up movement, results for this show that no one had knowledge of this movement, whatsoever, despite it being on the news constantly over the last few months.
Q2 asked for any personally influential actresses, a common name was former Disney star Zendaya “because she empowers young women to go for their dreams and is such a big role model representing young women in the industry.”
Q3 asked for any female directed films and none came to mind for the respondents.
Q4-6 regarded the history of the Oscars, a majority of people guessed correctly, but when asked how many have won, they all said 3 and 5. And that same amount said that actresses and actors should not be directors, for unknown reasons.
Q7 regarded Comic Book films, with a vast majority saying that female hero led films shouldn’t be helmed by female directors for unknown reasons.
Calling back to Q4, some people gave reasonable answers saying, women need a chance to show their skills and they want change to happen.
Q9 asked for opinions on the future of the Time’s Up movement, a majority said no. I think it is because it is the same group who said they didn’t know what the movement is.
I showed 30 minute segments from Wonder Woman and Selma to my classmates and then gathered their opinions through a selection of questions.
The people is this group were myself, Stella Higbee, Shannon Cook and Nathan Daeche-Green.
Reactions to “Wonder Woman”
When asked about Wonder Woman, the whole group that Diana herself was represented in fitting way. The meeting scene got their attention as they thought it showed her in a meaningful way. They saw her compassion for other people. Even though she has only been interacting with human life for a few hours, she had more concern for their lives. Whereas the military generals had their attention on wanting results rather than caring about the people they are sending to die.
Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) was portrayed as a good man, a solider wanting to end the suffering of people in the war and acted as guidance for Wonder Woman, teaching her about life at war and consequences that happen. They noted that without Steve Trevor’s influence, she wouldn’t understand the choices they have to make. Both characters are supportive of each other when in crisis.
They noted the message as “women can be heroes like men, and like men they can mess up but ultimately save the day.”
They all agreed that Wonder Woman was right not to be Oscar nominated as they felt the film was conforming to the typical superhero traits and wasn’t revolutionary in how it was directed.
In terms of how they would change it, the main point was a costume change. They felt that Diana’s main red, blue and gold outfit showed off her legs, hips and chest too much and that it demeans her character, whereas in previous scenes she is more reserved and dignified.
“Selma”
They saw that Selma was in many ways different to Wonder Woman, from the genre, style and time of which it is set. The same questions related to this film:
They saw Martin Luther King has an authority figure leading everyone in a march. They saw women that a shared role in this film as they worked together to protest civil rights. This is a film based on true events.
The main message for this film was highlighting issues like black equality and the civil rights movement.
In terms of Oscars, this film was nominated for Best Picture, but they couldn’t understand why Ava DuVernay wasn’t given a nomination for her work for directing.
On how to change the film, no points were made as they felt that the portrayal of everyone was fair and the performance given were impactful to them watching the film. MLK relies on the network of the civil rights movement and his own actions to help him but Diana doesn’t.
When asked about the future of female directors having recognition in the future, Nathan said: “Yes but as long as it is not filling a social quota and a director should be helming based on the amounts of work done in their career, whether they are female or not. As a group they agreed that representation is bringing a positive change to Hollywood and thanks to #TimesUp.
They believe that the added influence of the movement will “further push the industry to be more diverse.”
My personal views
As a student wishing to join the complex world of Film and Media in general, I feel that these topics are very important to discuss as diversity is a point that should be addressed. The female directors in the industry are very talented in how a film is captured on camera, how they develop their characters and how characters are portrayed.
A director (male or female) should be allowed to create films they want regardless of whether they get nominated for awards or not. But recognition for women in film is key no matter what genre of film they are making.
The fact that only 5 women out of the 90 years that the Academy Awards have run for is proof that this needs to be changed. The peaceful protests of Time’s Up is allowing the movement to be known and the influence from figures in the industry helps boost the campaign further. While researching the history of directors, a book series published in 2002 by Robert J Emery: The Directors Take 1-3 contained 46 interviews with different directors but only one female: Martha Coolidge.
Speeches from Oprah Winfrey, Frances McDormand, Lupita Nyong’o, Emma Watson and Ashley Judd all help the cause. As stated by my classmates, Time’s Up encourages people to overcome negativity and strive for a positive light for future generations of the industry.
Everybody should have a chance to express their ideas on the big screen, more women should get themselves in the spotlight.
The reason I chose to focus on Emma Watson is because I felt that the impact of her career and her achievements in the movement is very impactful, especially in the UK. I have noticed that within her films, the characters that she plays have elements of longing to be independent, they wish to prove that they can do things on their own without anyone holding them back.
Hermione in the Harry Potter franchise evolves over her time at Hogwarts, from a shy, geeky “know-it-all” to a young woman who also manages to save the heroes from perilous situations.
And Belle in Beauty and the Beast is very content with her life but she does want to explore the world and escape from time to time. When confronted by Gaston, she sees through his thuggish looks and repeatedly turns him away. She wants to be with someone that she has a connection with, rather than a man who is self-obsessed and doesn’t give up on her and needs to be with her.
Conclusion
The media industry is growing; people are making their voices heard. I believe that the Time’s Up movement can be pushed further with the right support and help from the people of the world. Greta Gerwig’s nomination at the 2018 Academy Awards, as stated before, is something that see change attitudes in Hollywood. Writing this report, I would love to see positive change in the media industry, allow people to have their say and speak out for what they protest for. Change won’t come overnight, the Time’s Up movement is happening everyday, people are striving to make change. But think of this: could we see more than one female director in that category in 2019?
The positivity surrounding Time’s Up is inspirational to many people, although the reason for the movement beginning was a stand against harassment, gender equality is just as important as anything else, allowing everyone to have the same opportunities for both men and women is what Time’s Up is making happen.
I feel that this essay has helped spread their message and the people need to help address any further issues in the industry.