IMPress Polly
11-24-2013, 11:05 AM
As with the arts generally, the world of Hollywood film-making too is very sexist. This article in The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/swedish-cinemas-bechdel-test-films-gender-bias) bears out as much in a number of statistics:
Of the top 100 US films in 2011, women accounted for 33% of all characters and only 11% of the protagonists, according to a study by the San Diego-based Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film.
Another study, by the Annenberg Public Policy Centre at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that the ratio of male to female characters in movies has remained at about two to one for at least six decades. That study, which examined 855 top box-office films from 1950-2006, showed female characters were twice as likely to be seen in explicit sexual scenes as males, while male characters were more likely to be seen as violent.
It's kind of like how Miley Cyrus is the top-selling female musician of the year, trailing 8 male artists. These things kinda tell you something about how much we as a society value women and what we value in women, doesn't it?
Anyway, the same linked article explains that, in order to address the issue of gender bias in films, the state-funded Swedish Film Institute has recently decided to endorse the application of a gender rating for all films, in much the same vein that film advisory boards currently apply ratings systems to forewarn audiences about the presence of other potentially offensive content like graphic violence, nudity, swearing, and so forth. The gender discrimination rating is already being applied by a growing number of Swedish cinemas. The application thereof is quite simple: in order to pass the gender bias test, the film must feature at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. Sounds like an easy test to pass, right? Well most Hollywood productions fail it, including, among the multitude of others, as one cinema director pointed has pointed out, "the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, all Star Wars movies, The Social Network, Pulp Fiction and all but one of the Harry Potter movies". On the other side, the article highlights that...
Scandinavian cable TV channel Viasat Film says it will start using the ratings in its film reviews and has scheduled an A-rated "Super Sunday" on 17 November, when it will show only films that pass the test, such as The Hunger Games, The Iron Lady and Savages.
Some critics of the test (known as the Bechdel test) claim that the methodology of evaluation is too simplistic. Overly simple? Yes, obviously. But it certainly beats the absence of any kind of test at all, that's for sure. That's how I see it. Not that it will make a huge difference, if any, in terms of what people actually opt to watch, but it should nevertheless at least help to raise public awareness of what gender bias looks like on-screen, especially with initiatives like that of Viasat Film highlighted above (which, now in the past tense, went over well, incidentally). I'm all for it!
Of the top 100 US films in 2011, women accounted for 33% of all characters and only 11% of the protagonists, according to a study by the San Diego-based Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film.
Another study, by the Annenberg Public Policy Centre at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that the ratio of male to female characters in movies has remained at about two to one for at least six decades. That study, which examined 855 top box-office films from 1950-2006, showed female characters were twice as likely to be seen in explicit sexual scenes as males, while male characters were more likely to be seen as violent.
It's kind of like how Miley Cyrus is the top-selling female musician of the year, trailing 8 male artists. These things kinda tell you something about how much we as a society value women and what we value in women, doesn't it?
Anyway, the same linked article explains that, in order to address the issue of gender bias in films, the state-funded Swedish Film Institute has recently decided to endorse the application of a gender rating for all films, in much the same vein that film advisory boards currently apply ratings systems to forewarn audiences about the presence of other potentially offensive content like graphic violence, nudity, swearing, and so forth. The gender discrimination rating is already being applied by a growing number of Swedish cinemas. The application thereof is quite simple: in order to pass the gender bias test, the film must feature at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. Sounds like an easy test to pass, right? Well most Hollywood productions fail it, including, among the multitude of others, as one cinema director pointed has pointed out, "the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, all Star Wars movies, The Social Network, Pulp Fiction and all but one of the Harry Potter movies". On the other side, the article highlights that...
Scandinavian cable TV channel Viasat Film says it will start using the ratings in its film reviews and has scheduled an A-rated "Super Sunday" on 17 November, when it will show only films that pass the test, such as The Hunger Games, The Iron Lady and Savages.
Some critics of the test (known as the Bechdel test) claim that the methodology of evaluation is too simplistic. Overly simple? Yes, obviously. But it certainly beats the absence of any kind of test at all, that's for sure. That's how I see it. Not that it will make a huge difference, if any, in terms of what people actually opt to watch, but it should nevertheless at least help to raise public awareness of what gender bias looks like on-screen, especially with initiatives like that of Viasat Film highlighted above (which, now in the past tense, went over well, incidentally). I'm all for it!