Hey y’all, I’m a film student and a filmmaker. For those of y’all I haven’t met on here, I’m a recovering porn/masturbation addict, who discovered he lost touch with others and decided to treat it like it was: addiction.
I’m also a very passionate film-lover, and I’ve spent a lot of time over the past four years thinking about movies, how much I want to make them, and what I want to do differently than established “grand old Hollywood”.
In this post I want to share a section of research and my thoughts on the social dangers of film with you. The references to data come from the USC Annenberg Report on Inequality in 1,200 Popular Films, a running report since 2007 that examines who’s making the movies we all watch, love, and hate.
For many people, especially women and minorities in the US, the big budget stories that Hollywood creates do not reflect the reality of their experience living their lives. The statistics behind the demographic makeup of the Hollywood movie machine are staggering to say the least. As someone who’s been studying how movies are made: who makes the calls, creatively or logistically, I can say it’s troubling at the least, and I personally see a dangerous linkage between the white-male-dominated storytelling we all accept as “big budget movies”, and the attitude many men have toward women developed from the consumption of a painfully under scrutinized drug: porn.
It’s incredible to think that in the decade following 2007, only 7.3% of the women we saw speaking on screen were directed by women. Only 10.1% of the lines spoken by women were written by women. And the score, the music, often described as the emotional soul of the film, the audience’s presence in the film, the ear to the heart of the characters we see: only 1. 1 female composer.
Many people have lots of different opinions about what these statistics really say. What does it matter if a female character was written by a man? What does it matter if only men are writing the music we deem an emotional guide to how to understand where a character’s at at a certain part of the film?
It matters when 89.9% of the words scripted for a woman to speak, 89.9% of the female characters were imagined by a man. We may see women on screen, speaking 33% of the time someone talks, but their words come from the mind of a man.
Thank G-d for actresses who turn down diminishing roles, and who might change a line here or there to adjust the “male-gaze” written into the film.
There is a line that moves a bit production to production, actor to actress, director to writer, that delineates between the written character, and the performed/viewed character that reaches the audience.
I just want to see and hear more characters whose words weren’t dreamed up by a man, whose action and character development comes from an implicitly more distant perspective: the perspective of the witness and the judge.
It’s an old writing addage that many screenwriters, authors, and storytellers say: “Write what you know.” which is really tricky.
They don’t say “write what you imagine you know.” As a man, I know only how I imagine a women would respond/react differently from myself. I simply don’t know what I can’t know. Therefore, the writing is truthful only so much as I am truthful to my imagination. It is not truthful to the reality of the experience of someone other than me.
I think I’m just curious. What would be different? What could be different in ways I straight up can’t imagine? I want to find out, and I hope I get to be a part of the industry I love so much, at a time of change, when filmmakers become more aware of the responsibility they have to the audience of the world.
I’ve been fighting my addiction to porn for 174 sober days, and I have no plan of stopping. It’s really gotten me thinking about the female characters I’ve seen in film, and how, to a far less obvious extent than in porn, men control the narrative, whether we’re aware of it or not. Sometimes the control is passive, a result of the perceived status quo not being challenged.
I’ve learned to hate what porn did to my mind and my ability to connect with women authentically. As a part of my coming to terms with myself and the industry I’m gearing up to join in the coming months, I wanted to pass along this USC report on diversity in film.
Hopefully you can take from the report a reminder of the dangerous implicit truth hidden behind the drama of movies: the bits that feel more true-to-life, the humor and the sadness, maybe the smiles and the love, and to think that about 9 out of 10 times, it was thought up by a dude. Damn.
I’d love to hear y’alls thoughts on this. Let me know what you think!
Thanks for tuning into this episode of a man ranting about men in movies. On to the next day with y’all. Thanks as always for a fantastic community, and thanks for the 174 days.
