DESPERATELY SEEKING BIRDWOMAN AND GIRLHOOD
This week’s Oscars exemplified the male domination of
Hollywood, an industry where actresses still get lower pay, less meaty roles
and fewer big-budget films than actors
By Anna MM Vetticad
“We’re more than
just our dresses. We are so happy to be here and talk about the work that we’ve
done. It’s hard being a woman in Hollywood, or any industry.” The words came
from Oscar 2015’s Best Actress nominee Reese Witherspoon on the red carpet
earlier this week as she elaborated on the #askhermore campaign in conversation
with a television reporter.
#Askhermore is an
online hashtag movement initiated by the US-based non-profit organisation, The
Representation Project, which calls out journalists for persistently asking
women on red carpets only — or at least primarily — about their gowns, while
quizzing the men almost entirely about their work. The demand: ask her more.
Accepting her Best
Supporting Actress Award later that evening, Patricia Arquette received a
rousing response when she raised another point of inequality. “To every woman
who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought
for everybody else’s equal rights, it’s our time to have wage equality once and
for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” she said,
as front-row occupants Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez roared their approval.
For Indian viewers,
it was important to witness Streep’s reaction. Drawing-room conversations among
film buffs across this country about male-dominated Indian film industries
inevitably include comments such as, “Look at the kind of roles Hollywood is
still offering Meryl Streep.” In reality, this legendary actress has often spoken
about gender discrimination in Hollywood. As for the substantial, well-written
roles she steps into year after year, one Streep doth not a feminist summer
make.
Look no further
than this year’s Oscar nominations for proof of how meaty roles and big-budget
mainstream films are usually reserved for men in Hollywood. Of the eight Best
Picture nominees, seven were male-led stories with women in supporting roles,
some significant, some not even that: American
Sniper, Birdman, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The
Imitation Game, Selma and Whiplash.
Substance attracts
awards juries. And so, four of the eight nominated films yielded Best Actor
nominations for their heroes. The eighth film was The Theory of Everything, the story of internationally renowned physicist
Stephen Hawking’s relationship with his first wife Jane Wilde. Not
surprisingly, this high-profile film with its male and female leads standing
shoulder to shoulder, got acting nominations for both its hero and heroine.
This is not a new
development at the Oscars or other Hollywood awards. The reasons for these
trends are twofold. First, the world’s most widely viewed film industry prefers
to tell the stories of men or tell universal stories from a male perspective.
Second, producers prefer to invest in male-led films.
The myth that
women-centric big-budget action, sci-fi or other mass entertainers do not make
big money like films in the same genres helmed by male characters has been
repeatedly busted over the years. The Angelina Jolie-starrers Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Salt (2010) both earned more than double
their mega budgets. Quentin Tarantino’s Kill
Bill Volumes 1 and 2 starring Uma Thurman collected almost six times their
combined budget worldwide. In a vastly different genre, The Devil Wears Prada (2006) with Streep raked in $326 million
across the globe, which was almost 10 times its budget. (Figures courtesy boxofficemojo.com)
It is not the
contention of this column that the male-centric stories being told by Hollywood
are not worthy of being told. The point is that across genres, the stories of
women too deserve to be told and have the potential to earn equivalent sums as
often as male-focused films do, if Hollywood were to tell such stories
consistently over a period of time, market these films as heavily and build up
female stars in commercial entertainers in the same way it builds up its male
stars.
Sometimes, stories
with promise are staring us in the face. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Best
Picture Oscar winner this year is the captivating account of a fading movie
star who once played the superhero Birdman with great success on screen. Would
it have been less enthralling if it had been about a former Birdwoman? Is not
the biography of Alan Turing’s colleague in The
Imitation Game — the genius cryptographer Joan Clarke — a film begging to
be made?
Richard Linklater’s
Oscar-nominated Boyhood is the
coming-of-age tale of a little boy from a troubled family, shot over a period
of 12 years with the same cast. Interesting though he is, the child at its
centre is often overshadowed in the first half of the film by his more dynamic
sister Samantha played by the young acting dynamite Lorelei Linklater (the
director’s daughter). As the film progresses though, Samantha is relegated to
the background by the script.
It is a wonder —
and yet it is not — that it did not occur to the wonderfully inventive
Linklater Senior to make a companion film to Boyhood. I am not pointing fingers at him here. It is but natural
for people to tell stories that they relate to the most. This then is what
happens when more men are making films than women, and more men are getting
money to make the films they instinctively want to make. I don’t know about
you, but I am dying to see a Girlhood
revolving around Samantha over those 12 years with the same cast. Wish
Linklater had been keen on it too.
(Anna MM
Vetticad is the author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. Twitter: @annavetticad)
(This column
by Anna MM Vetticad was first published in The Hindu Businessline newspaper on
February 28, 2015)
Note: This photograph was not published in The Hindu Businessline
Related link: Anna MM Vetticad’s Oscar forecast published in Daily O (February 21, 2015): http://www.dailyo.in/arts/and-the-oscar-2015-goes-to-either-a-boy-or-a-birdman-boyhood-linklater-inarritu-still-alice-jullianne-moore-american-sniper/story/1/2179.html
