Failure to launch
Did Thelma & Louise move the needle for female-led films?
NEW YORK — When Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon clasped hands, stepped on the gas and flew over the canyon ridge in that memorable ending to Thelma & Louise many in Hollywood believed they were launching more than that turquoise Thunderbird.
It was 1991, and the expectation — or at least the hope — was that they were also launching a new era for women in movies, an era in which it would be easier to get films made with meaty female lead roles, and in which female filmmakers would find it easier to get work. It didn’t happen, says Thelma herself. “It hasn’t changed at all,” says Davis, who has become an advocate for diversity in Hollywood, focusing especially on gender representation in media made for children. “We never seem to get any momentum going.” In fact, she says, things actually haven’t gotten better since the 1940s. “Our research shows the ratio of male to female characters in film has not changed since 1946,” Davis said, referring to studies by the non-profit research group she launched, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.
So what about Wonder Woman, the mega-hit that has shattered glass ceilings, turned Gal Gadot into a superstar and earned the top global haul for a live-action film directed by a woman? Davis remains skeptical.
“Look, there was Hunger Games, there was Frozen even Star War with a female lead ... and now Wonder Woman. You figure, ‘We’re done!”’ she says. “But we have to wait for the data. It’s been a quarter-century since Thelma & Louis and nothing’s changed. I know it will change, but to say this is the exact moment — well, you’ll have to prove it to me.”
Also in the skeptical camp: screenwriter Callie Khouri. Her tale of that fateful journey from Arkansas to the Grand Canyon by Thelma, a timid housewife with a chauvinist husband, and Louise, a hard-bitten waitress with a painful secret, was Khouri’s debut screenplay. And she won the Oscar — the first solo screenwriting Oscar awarded to a woman for an original work in 60 years. But a turning point for women? “Yeah, that didn’t happen,” says Khouri, with bitter humour. “I’m still waiting.” The rise of Wonder Woman, she says, feels like a “tiny little crack” in the ceiling.
But, she adds: “You know, it’s been a little daunting to see how slowly things actually do change. I can tell you that I, for one, am so sick of the conversation. Why haven’t things changed for women? I mean, don’t ask us!”
The uphill struggle for women in Hollywood — onscreen and behind the camera — has been the subject of numerous studies, including several in recent weeks.
Most research has been about films for adults, but Davis’ institute has always focused on content aimed at children. Lately, it has focused its research on family-oriented films.
In a yet-unreleased report, the institute analyzed, using technology developed in partnership with the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, the 50 top-grossing 2016 family films. It found that male characters outnumbered females by 2-1, and male characters had twice the screen time and speaking time.
“If you want to change the world, you can change it overnight in the mind of a child,” says Madeline Di Nonno, the institute’s CEO. “Geena pioneered this field of research because she was watching programming with her young daughter, and was concerned about what she saw.”
In another recent study, the Viterbi School’s SAIL Lab (Signal Analysis and Interpretation) analyzed language of 7,000 characters and 53,000 character interactions in 1,000 film scripts. It found that women had about 15,000 interactions, or “dialogues,” while men had over 37,000. Women portrayed just over 2,000 characters, while men portrayed almost 4,900.
Yet another study, from USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, found that behind the camera, women directors are still a rarity: In the top 100 films of 2016 there were only five female directors out of 120, including co-directors.
In a statistic that remains ever striking, only one woman has won the Oscar for directing in the awards’ 89-year history: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker.
Khouri’s experience is instructive. Her Oscar aside, “It still took 10 years before anybody would let me direct anything — I was trying, every day of that 10 years,” she says. She eventually directed Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood in 2002, then was frustrated to find herself typecast as a director of female-oriented films.
“I never really understood why I was only ever sent things about women bonding through their tears,” she says. “Nobody wants to be put in a box.”
“Besides,” Khouri adds, “I never thought of Thelm as a particularly soft movie.” (The film has a shooting death, attempted rape, armed robbery, and of course, suicide — though Khouri intended the ending as a metaphor.) She later turned to television, creating “Nashville.”
But despite her struggles to build on the momentum of Thelma & Louise, Khouri can point to a clear silver lining — well, besides that statuette on the mantel.
“Honestly, here we are, 26 years later, talking about this movie,” she says.