After MeToo, only mixed opportunities for women
LOS ANGELES — In the year after the downfall of Harvey Weinstein and the rise of MeToo awareness, women in Hollywood are still processing and evaluating what, if anything, has changed in their business — from the nature of scripts to an increase in basic opportunity.
Some say things have changed a lot, while others struggle to see any discernable difference that can be attributed to the cultural awakenings and discourse of the past year. In other words, if there are more female-directed and written projects or MeToo-adjacent story lines, it’s likely not because of MeToo, but a byproduct of other factors.
“I do think overall there’s been a change, but I don’t think a year is enough to see the real effect of this movement,” said Juliet Berman, head of development for Treehouse Pictures, which produced the Netflix romcom Set It Up.
It’s not hard to find films that seem to be speaking directly to the MeToo moment. This summer saw the all-female Oceans 8 do well at the box office. The indie Eighth Grade has a disquieting scene involving a 13-year-old girl and an older boy in a car. While both are fitting of the moment, both were also in the works before the New York Times wrote the first Weinstein piece in October last year.
Financiers have, generally, sought out more submissions of female-driven projects in recent years, not because of MeToo, but because it has been good business with the undeniable success of films such as Wonder Woman, which also came out months before Weinstein’s downfall. Hollywood goes where the money is.
Kristen Stewart has noticed a greater interest in more femalefocused stories in the past year, although she noted there is a certain amount of hypocrisy to it.
“I think that a lot of scripts that have probably existed for a long time are now being looked at again,” said Stewart, who is working on her feature directorial debut. “It’s something that I’m totally willing to take advantage of, but you have to be aware of it so you can make fun of it a little bit and then use it to your advantage.
“There are people now who, five years ago, would be like: ‘No, no, no,’ now being like: ‘Actually that’s a beautiful, fully empowered female story and I think you’d be great in it.’ Cool! Give me the money for it.”
Academic studies have for years highlighted just how underrepresented women are in film, both in front of and behind the camera, and a report from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative from July concluded that there has been no significant progress toward equality among the topgrossing films in a decade.
Those who work at the script level have not, in general, seen any significant changes, beyond male screenwriters writing more female characters.
But what might look like progress in an industry that still has a deplorable track record of representation also comes with a caveat — they might be female, but that doesn’t make them nuanced, or well-written.
“A lot of male writers are still very bad at figuring out motivations for their female characters,” said Kate Hagen, the director of community for the Blacklist, which surveys the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood. “We get a lot of male screenwriters who, if it’s an action script and a woman is on a quest for vengeance, they can’t think of anything that would motivate her beyond having a dead child or a dead husband or being raped.”
A survey Hagen conducted last year found that only 29 per cent of Blacklist scripts that featured female protagonists passed the Bechdel Test, a popular measuring stick that requires a film to have two named female characters talking to one another about something other than a man. The survey also found that men more than women depict sexual violence in their scripts.
While the nature of scripts may have more work to be done, some say that women are being considered for more directing jobs in recent months.
“I see directors’ lists for projects including more women,” said Susan Johnson, who directed To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. ”I don’t know that they’re being hired, but they’re certainly being considered more, which is a small baby step.” The type of material Johnson is being offered is still “very stereotypical, it’s rom-coms and comedies and so forth,” she said. It still baffles her that Ocean’s 8 was directed by a man.
Johnson and many others see greater strides being made in television, where not only are hiring practices favouring women and unrepresented groups, but many have even addressed MeToo in story lines, from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to Younger and The Bold Type.