Tara Lago, Period 6, 10/4/22

 Tara Lago, Period 6, 8/04/22, Modern Mythology 2023

Socio-Political Consciousness

Whenever someone asks me for film recommendations, I always suggest Whisper of the Heart, A Monster Calls, Me, Earl, and a Dying Girl, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Dead Poets Society. See a pattern? I’ll give a hint: men. Every single one of these films was directed by men. They each have at least one main male character. In fact, the few female leads in half of these movies only forward the plot as love interests. 

I ignored this blatant inequality because these movies were the quintessence of brilliance: witty, cinematic, moving. But in movies that I disliked, I was quick to scrutinize their unprogressive feminism. I complained loudly about the scenes where they failed the Bechdel Test or where the jokes were about objectifying women while ignoring the same problems in my beloved movies. 

I was, in short, an outstanding hypocrite. 

And I didn’t realize it until I watched This Changes Everything. Mind you, the documentary has its own set of flaws, like being directed by a man when it’s about the absence of women in the film industry (ironic, right?) Nonetheless, it enlightened me to the unequal representation of women behind the scenes and on the screen and the efforts to change that. In the late 1970s, a group of female directors—“The Original Six”—sued the big film studios of the time for workplace discrimination (Syme). By analyzing the amount of women who held directing positions over the past 30 years, they found that less than one percent of director jobs were assigned to women (Smukler, 262-271). 

They took this evidence to court and lost. 

In 2004, actor Geena Davis founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the first organization to research and advocate for gender equality and inclusion in family entertainment media. Despite years of thorough research and pressure placed on studios to do better, progress has been slow. In a study published in 2019, female characters in children’s films still make up only 32.8% of leads (Geena Davis Institute, 5-6). The percentages of leading characters for LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and people of color are even lower (Geena Davis Institute, 5-6). A study conducted by a separate institution found that in 2021-2022, women made up less than half of directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors, and cinematographers for indie domestic features and documentaries (Lauzen, 7). 

These statistics were a wake-up call. I finally understood why I never liked a film based on the characters alone and why I rarely related to the people featured on screen. None of the leads are Filipino-American girls. None of them are teens whose coming-of-age story is about the value of platonic love. None of them are about creative writers trying to navigate academia and medicine. 

None of them are me. 

And for a long time, I thought that was fine. I discovered and embraced my identity on my own, so I didn’t need representation in the media. I was internalizing the overly-emphasized “rugged individualism” trope and accepting the absence of representation as a badge of honor. In reality, it’s a mark of shame, shame toward the continuous gatekeeping of the film industry, shame that diverse creative voices are silenced before they have a chance to sing.

Now, I mourn the lost potential of female directors in the past and present. I mourn the quintessences of brilliance that could have been created by women if not for the ironhold men have had in the film industry. I mourn for the children and adults who never see themselves as lead characters in movies, who don’t realize that they are more than their stereotypes or their invisibility.

But because of this documentary, I am empowered. “The Original Six” and Geena Davis’s institute may have more losses than wins, but that hasn’t stopped them. And it won’t stop me. I will share the information I learned from this documentary with others. I will actively look and support movies directed, produced, written, and shot by women. I will use the consumer leverage I possess for good so that girls, similar and different from me, can all watch a movie and see a sliver of who they are or who they could become. 

Works Cited 

Dunbar, Denise. “This Changes Everything’ is an important yet flawed story of sexism in Hollywood.” Alexandria Times, Alexandria Times, 14, Nov. 2019, https://alextimes.com/2019/11/this-changes-everything-review/.

Giaccardi, Soraya, Heldman, Caroline, Rebecca Cooper, Nathan Cooper-Jones, Meredith Conroy, Patricia Esparza, Ian Breckenridge-Jackson, Linzi Juliano, Ninochka McTaggart, Hannah Phillips, and Rita Seabrook. “Jane 2019 Report.” The Geena Davis Institute for Gender in Media, 2019. 

Lauzen, Martha. M. “Indie Women: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women in U.S. Independent Film, 2021-22.” Indie Women Report, Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, 2022, https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/2021-22-Indie-Women-Report-1.pdf.

Smukler, Maya Montañez. "Chapter 4: Radicalizing the Directors Guild of America". Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Reform of 1970s. Rutgers U.P., New Brunswick, 2019, pp. 262–271.

Syme, Rachel. “Meet Hollywood's Original Six.” Pacific Standard, Pacific Standard, 26 Feb. 2016, https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-original-six-and-history-hollywood-sexism.

This Changes Everything. Directed by Town Donahue. Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, Artemis Rising Foundation, David Yurman and Lyft Entertainment, 2018. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/title/81110773.