1. Since the mapping from lines to gender goes through the actor/actress involved, it seems that "trouser roles" (particularly in animated features) may skew the statistics. I don't know if the effect is large enough to matter, though.
2. The analysis seems to be conducted on the basis of "lines" rather than "words". Does this skew the results? I wouldn't be surprised if predominantly-male "action" scenes had fewer words per line (or, put another way, more lines per word) than other scenes.
3. The analysis of actor/actress ages aggregates screenplays over all years of publication. This makes it impossible to distinguish between a bias towards young actresses and a bias towards actresses born after a particular date. This is a very important distinction in terms of policy response, since there is little gap between genders up to age 31: If the problem is "older actresses don't get many roles" then it needs a response, but if the problem was "actresses born before 1985 don't get many roles" then the problem will self-correct as the older generations are replaced by more egalitarian ones.
I don't think an analysis like this is very useful at all. What matters is that all demographics get to see the films they like. It doesn't hurt one demographic if another demographic has more films made for.
Take women's magazines for example - while I haven't counted, it seems there seem to be an awful lot of them. Would it hurt men if there were more women's magazines than men's magazines? I'd argue it wouldn't hurt men at all.
So if you can show that there is a significant population that doesn't get to see the movies they want, I think you could get a better response.
The main point is that it is not a problem if some product category caters primarily to a specific demographic. What would be an issue would be a significant part of the population being neglected. However, there is no reason why that shouldn't be fixable by the market alone.
I can think of several TV series that cater specifically to women, with lots of women talking.
How can we be sure that the 2000 movies the article talks about randomly selected movies, not movies cherry picked to show the desired result?
Even if we pick random scripts that are available online, there might be an inherent bias? For example, maybe older scripts (from the 50ies) are more likely to be online?
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/4e15fa/the_largest_...
Also, from that thread, someone posted that USC does an annual film gender study. The latest is here [pdf]:
http://annenberg.usc.edu/sitecore/shell/Applications/Content...
For the same reason I would expect to see a disproportionate amount of policemen, soldiers and criminals.
They should do that by genre. I would be surprised if comedies, romance, or drama would be much imbalanced.
We're aware of sampling error and the potential for cherry-picking, but also struggled to figure out what was a representative sample.
If you go by box office success it seems to me you already introduce the bias of consumer preferences, not choices of the movie industry. Wouldn't it be better to go by production costs (and marketing budget, if that is not included in production costs)? Although over time one would hope the industry choices would reflect consumer preferences.
Looking at their data, I took the "top 20" male and female movies and compared their world wide gross, male movies averaged 50% more than female.
The majority of the films in this list that have predominately female characters all fit into a specific mold of story telling with very little overlap with the types of movies that feature predominately male characters. I very much doubt that either group who consumes these types of movies is interested in the same sort of stories about the opposite sex. That of course is my opinion.
I dont see how any of that is misogynistic? That would be like saying teenage girls are misogynistic for favoring boy bands over girl bands.
Or maybe a minimum gross filter of 500K?
If they were to determine the length of each bar using amount of lines instead of percentage of lines, all that would be immediately clear is that females have less lines, a fact well established in the rest of the article, and the point would be lost.
The bar graphs might visually amplify the gap, but 1.1 million lines versus more than 5 million is a real gap, for example.
If anything, they gave us 2 different views on the data, and that double ;-) what we usually get.
If 20-30 year old women would write more great scripts the situation would be different.
I don't think that screenwriters owe us any social justice. All they need to do is to write the best story they can, and it's much easier to do if you can more easily relate to the main characters.
How do you know they don't?
Maybe women are discouraged from becoming writers at an earlier age, but the above sounds BS.
http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-film-schools-teach-screenwrit...
When I started taking film classes at UCLA, I was quickly informed I had what it took to go all the way in film. I was a damn good writer, but more importantly (yeah, you didn’t think good writing was a main prerequisite in this industry, did you?) I understood the process of rewriting to cope with budget (and other) limitations. I didn’t hesitate to rip out my most beloved scenes when necessary. I also did a lot of research and taught myself how to write well-paced action/adventure films that would be remarkably cheap to film – that was pure gold.
There was just one little problem.
I had to understand that the audience only wanted white, straight, male leads. I was assured that as long as I made the white, straight men in my scripts prominent, I could still offer groundbreaking characters of other descriptions (fascinating, significant women, men of color, etc.) – as long as they didn’t distract the audience from the white men they really paid their money to see.
I was stunned. I’d just moved from a state that still held Ku Klux Klan rallies only to find an even more insidious form of bigotry in California – running an industry that shaped our entire culture. But they kept telling me lots of filmmakers wanted to see the same changes I did, and if I did what it took to get into the industry and accrue some power, then I could start pushing the envelope and maybe, just maybe, change would finally happen. So I gave their advice a shot.
Only to learn there was still something wrong with my writing, something unanticipated by my professors. My scripts had multiple women with names. Talking to each other. About something other than men. That, they explained nervously, was not okay. I asked why. Well, it would be more accurate to say I politely demanded a thorough, logical explanation that made sense for a change (I’d found the “audience won’t watch women!” argument pretty questionable, with its ever-shifting reasons and parameters)
At first I got several tentative murmurings about how it distracted from the flow or point of the story. I went through this with more than one professor, more than one industry professional. Finally, I got one blessedly telling explanation from an industry pro: “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about.”
---
George R.R. Martin on writing women:
George Stroumboulopoulos: There's one thing that's interesting about your books. I noticed that you write women really well and really different.... Where does that come from?
George R.R. Martin: You know, I've always considered women to be people.
You seem to be immediately dismissing this analysis as not useful, while only providing anecdotal evidence and questions. Do you feel like your points are more/less useful than the quantified analysis in the article?
I think an analysis like that can be amusing. I am not convinced that it is useful, as I explained in my previous comments.
As for doing the research myself, I may, but it is expensive. I don't have a gender studies grant or anything to pay for it.
Angelina Jolie has made several action movies where she gets banged up quite a bit. (Salt was originally designed for Tom Cruise; Jolie was a big improvement.) So has Scarlett Johansson (who, as Black Widow, ought to have an origin movie but isn't getting one.) Sigourney Weaver also had some tough times in her action movies. All of those were successful films.
No one said they do not exist.
Salt is rated PG-13 Aliens while rated R is 37 years old.
I dont understand the point you are trying to make?
How many movies have you seen, where men beat up women? How many movie shave you seen, where women beat up men?
As long as society has asymmetric views on gender you will never have equality of roles in movies.
Spoilers: yes, movies which star male actors (fitting this criteria) earn significantly more than female leads on average, and it is statistically significant.
Additionally, there is no difference (practical and statistical) between RT/Metacritic scores of movies with male leads/female leads.
http://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MPAA-Theatric...
I have provided an explanation of why I don't consider it very useful. From the article itself you can gather that there are many movies with more female than male lines. Therefore I question that women are disadvantaged by the available movie offerings.
So what exactly are you talking about? What, in your view, is the usefulness of the article?
For instance, you’ve just now made the claim that there are “many” movies with more female than male lines. The article clearly states that in their analysis, they found that 1505 films had 60% or more male lines, while only 173 had 60% or more female lines. That’s a ratio of nearly 10:1. Where are you getting your figures from?
Additionally my initial criticism of you was that you seemed happy to trust your intuition about magazines without any quantifiable evidence. I implied that perhaps without this article, you’d be making a similar claim about the prevalence of movies with women as the predominant speakers in them. This analysis is useful because it can be used to demonstrate that there truly is evidence of a gap between the amount of talking time men and women get in movies.
Perhaps you should examine your behaviour and ask yourself if you’re truly free from bias, when instead of quantifying your objections to a quantified claim, you’ve implied that somehow this is the work of biased academics.
I never made a claim about the authors funding. I also didn't claim that they are biased (although I find it curious that they only use 2000 of the 8000 scripts they found). I DO think they have an agenda, but I wasn't talking about that in this comment thread yet. Nor did I claim that their numbers are wrong.
So if it is important to you that a film you watch has more female than male lines, you have more than 150 to choose from. If you are generous and include movies with an even number of male and female lines, you are up to 490 movies (out of the 2000 they analyzed), or roughly 25% of all movies. Maybe that is plenty enough?
I never doubted their result that there is a "gap" between talking time, averaged across all movies (or at least the movies they looked at). However, why should you care about talking times of movies you don't watch? What matters is the movies you watch. That is all I am saying.
Personally I also think it is stupid to judge a movie by that criterion (likewise for the Bechdel Test), but if it is important to you, why not. But unless you run out of films to watch, there isn't really a problem.
Could you let me know how this doesn’t read as implying the author has bias? Am I perhaps misreading this?
> I don't have a gender studies grant or anything to pay for it.
Am I perhaps misreading that you think research like this is funded by gender studies grants?
Also I’d consider “having an agenda” to be a subset of “being biased”. Perhaps you could state what you see the differences as, and perhaps the evidence you have that suggests the author had an agenda before embarking on this analysis?
From the article as a counterpoint to your claim of an agenda:
“Lately, Hollywood has been taking so much shit for rampant sexism and racism. The prevailing theme: white men dominate movie roles. But it’s all rhetoric and no data, which gets us nowhere in terms of having an informed discussion.”
And here’s a screenshot from the reddit discussion: http://imgur.com/XvaZbFy
You also have provided no quantifiable evidence that there is a bias in favour of women in any area of media, let alone in an area as broad as “movies”. Do you have such evidence?
Also at what point did anyone mention they were afraid of running out of movies to watch?
That was a question I posed, not a claim. They mention they only used 2000 of the 8000 movies and never explain why. And yes, I don't necessarily trust those authors (the way you seem to do), because they have an agenda. Doesn't mean I believe they are lying, but it must be allowed to poke at the article with a stick.
"Am I perhaps misreading that you think research like this is funded by gender studies grants?"
I have no doubt that studies like this is sometimes funded by gender studies grants. I didn't make that claim about the article here. Still, somebody needs to pay for it. So you can not just dismiss anybody else's response with "why don't you do your own study".
"perhaps the evidence you have that suggests the author had an agenda before embarking on this analysis?"
They say so themselves in their article, right at the top. They set out to demonstrate that white men dominate movie roles.
"You also have provided no quantifiable evidence that there is a bias in favour of women in any area of media, let alone in an area as broad as “movies”. Do you have such evidence?"
I never made a claim of bias in media, just that there is plenty of stuff for women to consume (not saying there isn't bias, just that I didn't talk about it). A quick Google search or visit to your nearest news agent could confirm that for you, I don't think I should have to invest time to provide you with a dossier for that.
"Also at what point did anyone mention they were afraid of running out of movies to watch?"
Well what are the authors afraid of? They say "white men dominate movie roles" and assume that is self-evidently a problem. Well, it is not, so I tried to guess why it could be a problem. The only time I would consider it a problem would be if it would lead to some demographic (say, women) running out of movies to watch. However, if there was so much unfulfilled desire, it would be a market opportunity and I can't see why the industry wouldn't react. In fact, if feminists are so convinced that many, many women are longing for different movies, they should raise money to make those movies. (Anita Sarkeezian already raised amore than a million $ for some lousy YouTube videos, so it certainly isn't impossible to raise money for feminist movies).
Let's take another occupation, modeling - it seems as if women dominate the modeling industry. Is that a problem? Do we need a campaign for more male models, and higher pay of male models? I personally don't care, because I am not interested in seeing more male models. If a lot of people were interested, the industry would most likely react.
In the same way, if a lot of people want to see movies with male actors (say they are into war movies, or action flicks), why would it have to be considered a problem?
They don't write this in the article so why do you say this?
> In fact, if feminists are so convinced that many, many women are longing for different movies, they should raise money to make those movies. (Anita Sarkeezian already raised amore than a million $ for some lousy YouTube videos, so it certainly isn't impossible to raise money for feminist movies).
You're ranting about something not related to the article, again.
> it seems as if women dominate the modeling industry.
Another claim with no evidence. Another perfect demonstration of why the quantification in the article is useful.
They write it literally in the first paragraph: "white men dominate movie roles... But it’s all rhetoric and no data...To begin answering these questions"
"You're ranting about something not related to the article, again."
You don't seem to understand or not want to understand the point I am trying to make. Nor have you ever answered my question what, in your opinion, is the actual problem the article uncovers?
"Another claim with no evidence. Another perfect demonstration of why the quantification in the article is useful."
That is just ridiculous. First, just because you throw some numbers or data around, you don't have evidence. In this case, you have data about lines in movies, but not about customer demand for movies of various properties (for example). Second, it is still possible to have a conversation without an Excel sheet in the background. You also don't seem to be interested enough in my argument to do your own research.
I actually did google a bit on the model thing, but the first hits were about male models earning less than female models. Finding actual numbers of employed models and the exposure they get would have taken longer. It simply didn't seem worth it for an example, given that I am not campaigning for model rights or anything.
Maybe I would have even made that effort, but the model, as well as the women's magazines, are actually just an example. I clearly stated that. They are meant as a thought experiment. Unless you are convinced that there is no industry on earth dominated by women (are you?), it doesn't matter if in one particular example the numbers add up, because by magic of armchair thinking, you could just pick another example to clarify the concept. Or let's assume no industry on earth is dominated by women. You could STILL make a thought experiment and think of some theoretical industry where women dominate, to try to understand the point. If you have at least a shred of imagination, that is.
I am not going to repeat the point I was trying to make, as you seem to be not interested in understanding it (not even accepting it, just understanding it).
Should my estimate of your motivation be wrong, ask away and I'll try to clarify. Otherwise, why not end the discussion here.
"The prevailing theme: white men dominate movie roles."
That is not equivalent to "White men dominate movie roles." The prevailing theme of the shit Hollywood is getting is that white men dominate movie roles. How can you look at yourself as a reliable source when you need to chop up quotes so needlessly?
Interestingly, even given your massacring of quotes, you seem totally willing to conduct thought experiments, and use the results (lol) of your thought experiments to accuse articles of being useless. Without quantification, in the words of the article "it’s all rhetoric and no data, which gets us nowhere in terms of having an informed discussion."
Unfortunately, you seem absolutely convinced that the burden lies on me to provide proof, that meets your standards, for claims you make from thought experiments, that aren't addressed or even mentioned in the article.
As I said very early on, I encourage you to do some quantifiable analysis.
I don't understand your comment on my quotes of the article. They clearly set out to show in what ways white men dominate movie roles. My quote didn't distort that statement at all - I only chopped it up to make the quote shorter.
You still haven't answered what you consider to be the use of the article? What are we even talking about?
What data ("quantifiable analysis") do you want me to provide? I don't understand you.
Thought experiments aren't useless, and data isn't automatically useful. You seem to be blinded by the presentation of the article (has charts and data, seems legit). It's like trusting a person because they dress like a physician - understandable human flaw, but misguided.
Interestingly, after the phrase you quoted out of context, they don't mention race again. Also they clearly aimed to discuss the claims made against Hollywood in a quantified manner. You are clearly just assuming that they had an agenda.
Could you provide any quantifiable analysis for your claim: "What matters is that all demographics get to see the films they like. It doesn't hurt one demographic if another demographic has more films made for."
Unfortunately you seem blinded by a high opinion of your own opinions. I trust the article more than I trust your armchair assumptions.
Let's take data from the article. Does it hurt you that the movie "3 women" exists, which according to the article has over 90% female lines? (I assume you are male)
Does it hurt you that the movie "Agnes of God" exists, which according to the article has over 90% female lines?
And so on - you never said what your problem is...
Does it hurt you that there exists aisles and aisles of nail polish for women in most drug stores, and only few nail polish aisles for men? Do you need me to quantify that? What would be the benefit of demanding an equal number of nail polish aisles for men and women?
And if you say "you trust the article", what exactly do you mean? I don't dispute their numbers (which doesn't necessarily mean I believe them, but as a working assumption, let's assume their analysis is correct). I dispute that they have uncovered a relevant problem. How would you quantify relevance here? What makes the paper relevant to you? What consequences should be drawn (if it is relevant, it means there should be a reaction to it)?
As for agendas, believe whatever you want.
My position has always been that you've assumed this article is useless without providing any evidence. I trust the article's claims more than your armchair pontification about whether it is useful or not. I have very little doubt that you'll continue to believe that magazine ratios are in favor of women without any evidence, with or without a quantified study on the subject. If that study came out in favor of men's magazines, it sounds like you'd accuse the authors of an agenda, as well.
Fortunately, more logical people have probably read this useful article and realized their assumptions about the representation of women in film were flawed.
And your quote about the number of logical people reading the article comes across as really silly, after you have asked for evidence so many times. Have you quantified the number of "logical people" who found it useful vs the number of "logical people" who found it useless? Do you have evidence that the people you consider logical and who found the article useful are really logical?
You going on about the magazines just proves that you don't understand my point. I think it is enough now - you could just reread my previous comments if you are still interested...
