ON A MISSION
Geena Davis fights for diversity and inclusion
When Geena Davis isn’t acting, her side projects in the pursuit of diversity and inclusion keep the Oscar winner busy.
Through the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, the nonprofit research and advocacy group she formed in 2004, she brings stats about representation to studio boardrooms year after year. Complementing
that work is the Bentonville Film Festival, held annually in Bentonville, Arkansas, which she co-founded, and which has persevered to open its sixth iteration on Monday in a largely virtual edition due to the pandemic.
Luckily, Davis has always been an optimist. As the festival’s mission to foster inclusivity across media continues to expand, she’s hopeful that going online this year will bring new audiences in to see what they’ve been doing in Bentonville.
“We realized that this is an exciting opportunity to see how it will go over because now anybody in the world can watch these movies,” Davis said from her Southern California home.
Backed by founding sponsor Walmart, the festival launched in 2015 with a strong emphasis on female-directed films. Each year it has taken bigger steps to be more inclusive of underrepresented voices. This year’s feature lineup is directed by 65% BIPOC and 40% LGBTQIA+ identifying filmmakers, according to festival organizers.
“We’re learning and changing and growing, and now here we are with the most radically inclusive program that I’ve done over the last six years,” said Wendy Guerrero, president of programming.
Ahead of the festival, Davis discussed her work on-screen and through the festival, as well as her activism. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
While you’re the face of the Bentonville Film Festival, your advocacy work through the institute is largely not public-facing. What does that work look like?
It’s almost all not publicfacing, and it was designed that way from the beginning. When my daughter was a toddler, I realized it was such a problem with gender nonparity in what kids were seeing. It was so eye-opening! It made me really realize, “What are we doing?” We are all trying to address this problem of gender equality and yet from minute one we’re training kids that boys are more important than girls.
I became obsessed with that, and I couldn’t find anybody else in the industry who saw what I was seeing. I spent two years having the largest study ever done on gender depictions in movies and TV for kids, and the whole point was so I could go directly to the creators. I know everybody. I can go directly to them, and I have this research. So I called a studio once I had it and said, “Can I come share some data with you?”
What changes are you seeing?
Last fall we did a new study of children’s TV, and we found that for the first time ever, we have reached parity among lead characters, female and male. And earlier this year we discovered that in G, PG and PG-13 movies, we’ve reached parity in the lead characters also, male and female. We still have work to do with people of color, although it’s getting much closer — it’s like 32% and they’re 38% of the population — so it’s getting closer. But when you look at supporting characters, that’s still bad. And there’s a long way to go for LGBTQ, people with a disability, people of size. But it’s encouraging.
“Thelma & Louise” and “A League of Their Own” are influential films of yours whose female characters were empowered and, in turn, empowered generations of fans. What was the moment you realized your work could have this kind of impact?
It’s interesting. People liked “Beetlejuice” and “The Fly,” movies like that, so I got used to people recognizing me. After I made “Thelma & Louise,” all of a sudden, if people recognized me from that movie, it was completely different. They wanted to talk about it — “This is how many times I saw it!”
“This is how it impacted my life!” It made me realize how few opportunities we give women to come out of a movie feeling empowered and inspired. I (started) thinking about that with everything I’m going to do, or not: What are the women in the audience going to think about my character?
Not meaning that I want to play role models — I hate that term, anyway, because a lot of people say, “We want strong female characters,” and a lot of the time “strong female characters” are utterly boring. They have no personality but they’re “tough.” What we want is complex female characters. I was looking for characters that were in charge of their own fate. That’s what I realized about “Thelma & Louise” that was so meaningful to women. We retain our control of our destiny, to the bitter end.
One of the films in last year’s festival was a documentary you executive produced, “This Changes Everything,” about the systemic issues women in Hollywood face and have faced. Why was that an important project for you to make?
When “Thelma & Louise” came out so many people loved it, but there were also people who thought, “This is a horrible thing, because now women have guns they drive off cliffs, they shoot men, it’s terrible!” But they were unified in saying, “This is going to change everything. Now there’s going to be so many movies with women.” My very next movie was “A League of Their Own,” and the same thing — “Now there’s going to be so many female sports movies.” Five years later another movie starring women comes out and it’s, “Oh, this is going to change everything.” Fifteen years go by. Twenty years go by. And it’s still oneoffs, never any momentum. So that’s why we called the movie that. It’s like, what’s it going to take?
At one point the interesting work for many female performers in Hollywood seemed to move from movies to television. Do you feel like the interesting work has also, then, moved off-screen?
Oh, yes. So many actors in the industry have so many other passions they try to support.
But my true passion is acting. I just want to be in some great movies. And I want to be sure that people know that I’m not doing this exclusively now, because when I go and meet with the studios and talk about all this, I say, “Now it’s time for questions — although I have a question for you: When is my next Warner Bros. movie?” And they go, “Ha ha ha” and I’m like, “I’m serious. I didn’t retire, so think of me when you’re adding female parts like I’m here telling you to do.” (Laughs)