Gender equality far off in movie business
Tina Fey earned a knockout with a recent appearance on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update Summer Edition, addressing the so-called “free speech rallies” planned after Charlottesville.
Fey delivered several quick blows as she ploughed her way through a slab cake, appealing to her fellow citizens to “treat these rallies . . . like the opening of a thoughtful movie with two female leads: Don’t show up.”
It takes brilliant satire to kill so many birds with one sharp tongue. The rant effectively dispatched the notion citizens can succumb to hopelessness in the fight against white nationalist zealotry. The next shot punctured the myth Americans can “take back” a country that was stolen in the first place. Then she put a cherry on top with a jab at the maledominated entertainment industry.
The importance of film in culture gets a boost this time of year, leading up to the Toronto International Film Festival. And with it, renewed handwringing over the marginalization of women.
Female actors make less money — a lot less — even when they bring more critical recognition. Forbes just named Mark Wahlberg this year’s highestpaid actor with $68 million. It’s more than double the income of top-earning actress Emma Stone, with $26 million and an Oscar.
The issue goes much deeper than money. Women still struggle for opportunities to direct, despite the critical and commercial success of films like Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow. And she makes action movies. Thoughtful dramas with female leads are notoriously difficult to green-light.
The phenomenon is so infuriating, it inspired cartoonist Alison Bechdel and Liz Wallace to conceive the oftcited Bechdel Test. To pass, a film must have at least two female characters — who talk to each other — about something, anything, other than a male. The list of failures is epic: Oscarwinning Moonlight, Avatar, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and even Toy Story.
Passing the test is no badge of feminism. The bar is set low, Fifty Shades Darker squeaked through. The most inane snippets of conversation qualify. Yet only half of last year’s 25 top-grossing movies met these criteria.
The Toronto Film Festival is attempting to flip the script on this narrative, with a five-year commitment to increase opportunities for women on both sides of the camera. The Share Her Journey campaign aims to raise $500,000 this year to support gender equality through projects such as residencies for emerging female artists and an accelerator program for women producers.
Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, who will debut her Tragically Hip documentary Long Time Running at this year’s festival, is a campaign ambassador. She argues lifting the diversity of voices will support the festival’s broader mandate — “transforming the way people see the world through film.”
Recently there has been reason to hope, with the commercial success of animated features such as Frozen, and the superhero universe bending a boxoffice knee to worship at the altar of Wonder Woman.
If the pendulum is slowly showing signs of changing direction on the silver screen, it’s in full swing on television, with an explosion of female-focused entertainment. Acclaimed shows such as Orange Is the New Black, Veep, Orphan Black, Insecure and Transparent give voice to diverse constituencies.
Meanwhile the TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale has captured the zeitgeist of a politically divided nation in the grip of zealotry.
Women’s stories, on film and television, help shape the way we see the world — as surely as women in government help shape policy. We need more of them. write.robin@baranyai.ca