Hollywood and Porn: A Latent Connection

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.

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Frankly, I’m very stunned with those numbers that you shared.

I think it would be very beneficial for women to have more influence in the film industry. I can’t understand why this gender gap hasn’t been resolved.

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I think the lag has to do with the element of smoke and mirrors in the film world. There is so much that is misunderstood about where these stories come from, and who is really in the decision making seat.

I also think there’s a misunderstanding about how influential movies are. Even just in the background, they paint a social landscape that allows us to see situations we want to be in, dread being in, or have already been in: leaving us vindicated or humbled. These previews and fantasies we get to experience of “what life could be like” are not far off from the easily abusable elements of escapism that makes porn feel so adventurous, even educational to a teenage boy.

Scary stuff I think. The kind of stuff that really takes some considering and study to determine just how silently dangerous it may be.

Could it be there is not always an equality issue and perhaps there is simply an inherent difference in genders, leading to different ambitions and jobs.

I believe roughly 80% of teachers in the UK are female for example, but little outrage over this.

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When you rule out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

@Ark, I think you make a very valid point. Maybe women prefer to write books over making movies being that they appeal more to the emotions. Maybe for similar reasons, it might explain why the majority of women don’t prefer to be pornographers, video game designers, or car mechanics.

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A few days ago, I watched a romantic movie called Forever my Girl.

I’ve enjoyed romances later in life because it portrays a world outside of my own.

In a nutshell, the movie is about a gentleman who ditches his bride at the alter and doesn’t reappear for 8 years.

One of my favorite parts was when a colleague has a chat with the man. He says,

"There are better men than you. that’s true. But, she loves you. she’s not going love any of those other men. she’s only going to love you.

Fascinating…

My mother once told me during watching an old movie when a couple returned back to each other after years apart, “You can’t just turn off real love like a water faucet.”

I just laughed. Real love? For me, I can turn it off easy.

Fascinating…

Anyway, back to the movie above. I realised that it was produced and directed by a woman.

Didn’t take such note of it before. But I definitely will from now on.

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Hey @Ark, thanks for the input & perspective man!
It’s one of the trains of thought on the subject for sure, and personally, in my life, I’ve grown to know too many women who were told to their faces that they aren’t a good fit for a job they’re applying for for BS reasons to feel that there’s much validity in the naturally different ambitions train of thought as it applies specifically to film.

That said, thanks for sharing, it’s important to challenge beliefs often, and you’ve got me reassessing over here.

I guess it really comes back to what I said up in my original post on this thread: I’m just curious. What could be different? I’ve actually had a near equal split of male/female teachers over the course of my education, and it remained so in each school separately as well. I think there’s a lot to be said of cultural differences of expectations.

Someone did this test of assumptions with several young kids, I think it was kindergarten? They told the kid, draw an astronaut. He was a man. Draw a librarian: she was a woman. Draw a CEO: he was a man. Draw a dancer: she was a ballerina. It seems subtle, and it could be passed of as kids being kids, but it says a lot I think for how we start thinking of many jobs as gender specific when we first learn about them. Then we eventually unlearn this partially when we see a woman in space, and Todd who loves books, and she who led a company out of the dark, and he who moved with a grace and power seemingly unassignable to a gender: so incredibly feminine, yet so incredibly masculine.

There are so many statistical imbalances across the world’s workforce, and across the world’s hobbies, and I can’t help but be skeptical in the status quo’s implicit correctness. I can’t help but wonder who we may be treading on. Thanks again :+1:t2:

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Hey @KevinesKay, I’ll need to check it out. I think what’s really challenging in romance films, that is films whose genre is listed only as romance, struggle with retaining enough real-world plausibility of the relationships they depict to allow us to believe the events and characters we see, but still allows for the uplifting nature of a classic romance.
I forget if I ever mentioned this on here, but I made a rule for myself that I’d require myself to see a film I knew would be me uncomfortable, that would challenge me, specifically because I’d otherwise remain in my own personal comfort zone, and I wouldn’t grow nearly as fast as an artist. That said, I can’t watch something challenging on a tough day, that’s a bad move. The film I’m making now is about grounding melodrama in elevating simple human moments, not creating from thin air moments that are too pristine to be real. So I’ve got a bit of a bias here lol.
Have you seen Cafe Society? It’s a fun one to watch. Up there with the classic modern Steve Martin with Daryl Hannah: Roxanne.

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