Melissa Silverstein of Women And Hollywood recently wrote a piece for Women’s Media Center called Pondering the Chick Flick. It’s a great read that explores the history of the chick flick up to now, describes the frustrating dichotomy in which “chick flicks” often promote women filmmakers (yay!) while encouraging regressive sexist values (boo!), and suggests thinking beyond the labels.
One particular part of Melissa’s post struck a chord with me, and I want to expand on it just a bit:
Fast-forward to the late 70s and early 80s when feminism was saturating the cultural landscape of the country and, for a brief moment, also penetrating Hollywood as women moved into powerful positions behind the scenes. The films of that period show some of the strongest, most feminist women ever seen onscreen and displayed the depth and range of the rising female consciousness. These films—including Julia, Norma Rae, An Unmarried Woman, Silkwood, 9 to 5, My Brilliant Career, Yentl, Places in the Heart, Out of Africa, The Color Purple, Children of a Lesser God, Desert Hearts— relayed women’s stories as important and valid to the culture and often appealed to men as well. But just like the women’s film flamed out, by the late 1980s, feminist films began to disappear as the blockbuster mentality grew in combination with the “backlash” documented by Susan Faludi. Since that time women have slowly and steadily been losing clout onscreen in a disturbing way that belies their behind-the-scenes power positions.
We’ve discussed before on this site about how women are not slowly making progress in film and TV but are, in fact, merely recovering ground we lost in recent years. Melissa offers the “blockbuster mentality” and the “backlash” Susan Falludi wrote about as an explanation for why that’s happening. This is absolutely correct. As far as the backlash goes, you really need to read Susan Falludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women if you haven’t already. Falludi is one of those rare writers who can distill history into a simple chain of actions, consequences, reactions and more consequences, and in this book, she documents how a few powerful people deliberately attacked the gains made by women through the early 80s with a campaign of media spin, fear mongering, and outright lies. I’d love to try to sum up the book for you, but I can’t. It really has to be read.
The blockbuster mentality, however, is something I was thinking about just last week.The film industry used to be run by filmmakers who’d been promoted from within. At some point in the late 70s or early 80s, these folks started getting replaced en masse by people who had MBAs and business experience but no particular love for nor understanding of films. Film hadn’t been doing so well in terms of profiting (neither had anything else – look up the late 70s and early 80s sometime), and this was cited as a reason for change.
The people who came in quickly diagnosed the “problem” – those silly filmmakers wanted to make artsy-fartsy stuff the audience was too stupid to understand. Only MBAs really understood the audience and just how dull-witted a collection of Homer Simpsons it was. The MBAs immediately set about impressing themselves with their own fabulous reports and demographics and spreadsheets, and engaging in ferocious dick-measuring contests anytime two or more of them wound up in a room or on a conference call together. I can say that without fear of being sexist, because there was nary a woman in sight.
It was also around this time that the new breed of film executives allegedly “figured out” something no one has ever found a shred of evidence to back up: that the best audience is white teenage boys. Hey, go figure! Was it just a coincidence that as soon as film got taken over by a group containing more than its fair share of emotionally stunted man-boys who functioned at a pre-teen mentality, they suddenly discovered that movies really should only be made for teenage boys? Probably not. We humans are not as objective as we like to think. Spreadsheets and computers give us the delusion that we’re not steering the Ouija planchette when we put our hands on it, but the irony here is just delicious: early film executives guessed what the audience wanted, based on their own desires, because they loved movies just like the audience did. The MBAs thought they could totally take their own desires out of the equation and be perfectly objective, but in reality, they just projected themselves into the audience so hard that all the people who weren’t teenage boys stopped existing for them. At least the early filmmakers understood that women shopped with real money and stuff. It takes a very special kind of brain warp to lose sight of a fact like that while making six movies a year about women shopping.
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Regarding the misunderstanding of numbers:
Some years ago, after watching “Star Trek: Nemesis” on DVD (because it was out of theaters so soon), I asked Richard Arnold, who was a research consultant for star trek and has some contact with the people responsible, why they decided to get the director they had for that movie. Since, in my opinion, the directing was one of the main problems with the film. Somehow, I was bored during most of the film, and was just glad when it was over.
His answer was that it was planned as an action movie, and so they got a director for action movies, instead of someone who knew anything about Star Trek.
Then, he mentioned that the film made about 40% of its total income on opening weekend, and the weekend after was the opening of Return of the King, and that was probably the reason people didn’t watch the star trek film.
My opinion – note that I wasn’t involved in that fandom at that time, so I can’t be sure – is that many fans watched the movie when it came out, since it was a star Trek film, so it had high initial box office numbers, and afterwards they didn’t saw it a second time, and told other fans not to bother. talking with other fans afterwards, I haven’t yet found anyone who really liked that film.
Now, what I found fascinating is that although the producers – or at least Richard Arnold – knew that the film just didn’t have any character interaction, and people plain didn’t like it much, the low box office result wasn’t attributed to any of those flaws of the film although he clearly recognized them. No, the main problem according to him was the fact that a film as popular as Return of the King opened a week later, and people didn’t go to both movies so they decided on LOTR.
And also a problem: taking the box office results of the first weekend as an indicator for the overall quality of the film. The first weekend, people go to watch a film based on the general idea, prequels so they exist, or trailers. It completely leaves the people out who – like me – wait until someone else they trust has seen the film.
TurelieTelcontar(Quote) (Reply)
There’s also a big problem with the whole “blame the audiences for not demanding better product” thing – we simply *don’t* have the power to compel the makers to build better mousetraps, and DIY amateur mousetrap building will only go so far in a national/international distribution chain.
If the manufacturers – whether it’s makers of movies, or washing machines, or color scanners and printers, or books, or shoes, or portable hard drives, or cell phone networks, or blogging platforms – simply *refuse* to pay attention to what the customers are loudly demanding, the customer has limited ability, individually *or* in groups, to force them to change.
All the manufacturers have to do is sell *enough* product to stay in business, which is easy when there is little competition *or* all the competition stinks equally badly – and they may not *care* that their customer base is staying flat *or* shrinking, at least not enough to *do* anything about it, let alone to change. Plenty of them would rather go down with their sexist ship than admit that they have a problem – q.v. DC and Marvel, frex. Stop going to movies? Stop buying books?
Okay, but has the shrinking customer base – or the flight to alternatives – over the past 20 years done anything to make them reconsider?
No, like superstitious idiots everywhere and everywhen (“prayer isn’t curing my family/health problems, obviously the answer is MOAR PRAYERZ! And GALLONS of holy water for the DIY exorcisms! Not counseling or doctors!”or substitute Homeopathic Vegetable Extracts, depending on chosen superstition–) their answer is to *try harder* to *make* their beliefs come true – to spend *more* money pursuing the demographic that they believe is the One True Source of Prosperity.
“There’s no point in trying to win more female customers to restore our shrunken customer base because Girls Don’t™ go to movies/play video games/read comic books/read skiffy/do DIY projects/buy cars/buy computers LA LA LA WE CAN’T HEAR YOU SAYING THIS IS BECAUSE WE SPIT ON YOU IN OUR PRODUCTS AND PROMOTIONS–”
Substitute “customers” or “X demographic” (like “home users” or “Joe Smoe” or “grandparents”) for “women” and rinse, repeat to get the story of decades of wasted investment in product R&D and advertising in the computer and related technology industries for the past 20 years – the constant expressions of Utter Shock on the part of the big name manufacturers when someone finally made and distributed what customers had been begging for for years – Who Could Have Thought That Ordinary Citizens Would Have Wanted To Scan In Their Own Family Photos And Make Holiday Cards Out Of Them To Send To Their Relatives? Who Could Have Known That There Were So Many Hobbyists Out There Who Wanted To Record Their Own Music & Edit It But Couldn’t Afford A Studio? Who Could Have Realized That Lots Of People Would Like Custom Artwork Not Available In Catalogs, And Yes Indeed There Is An Amateur Market For Large-Format Color Printing And Ways To Move Large Image Files? Who Would Have Thought That So Many People Want To Watch Hi-Res Videos Of Funny Cats And Want More Bandwidth To Do It With–?
–Because, the unspoken corrolary of all this is, Because *I* Certainly Don’t, and *I* being the Center of the Universe am the Arbiter Of All Tastes And Desires!
Which is why there was such industry resistance to making, to pick a few instances, 1) relatively-inexpensive color scanners, 2) relatively-inexpensive color printers, 3) widely-available high-bandwidth connections, 4) affordable wide-format color scanners and printers or printing services, 5) rugged portable hard drives, 6) affordable photo editing software -all justified with the arguments that “Nobody wants them, therefore it isn’t worth our time to make them”, (sometimes with the explicit “and YOU’RE nobody” coda) and in every case once these things became available, the supply couldn’t keep up with the demand. Only in a very few cases, however, was an amateur product or products able to successfully take over the empty niches (photo-editing software) because R&D, and even moreso production/distribution, of these things is prohibitive.
And the big companies which did adapt, some of them fell behind because they ossified – Iomega was the first to realize that yes, there WAS a market for large file transfer systems for ordinary customers, made a bundle…and then started ignoring us when we tried to tell them that we did NOT need Yet Another Incompatible, MORE Expensive drive/cartridge unit.
There was a looooong, dry hole, though, before we got SD cards and thumb drives and cheap CD burners, and so we were stuck with Zip drives like it or not.
When all the shoes and boots in the all the shoestores are flimsy/high-heeled/fugly, or all the bras are underwire, there’s only so much you can do. Most of us aren’t cobblers and don’t have the time/money to become cobblers, not all of us own sewing machines or have the time to learn how to make our own clothes, and only some of us can go without bras and shoes…my personal boycotting of the lingerie industry for the past ten years hasn’t seemed to force them to return to making non-wiry, non-scratchy, front-closure undergarments! And while I do know some leatherworking, I don’t have the tools or the training to make boots from scratch…
So good luck “rewarding” the MBAs, DragonLady – the pros’ responses to threats of boycotts tends to be (often explicit!) “Neener neener neener, don’t let the door hit you, pthhpt–” Just look and see how well our attempts at “retraining” Joe Quesada et al have worked in comics fandom. They’d rather go down with their ship – sexist and otherwise – than admit that their chasing of the Lowest Common Denominators, with MOAR BOOBZ, more Shocking!Gore, more WANGST and more willful disregard for good plotting, good art, and good character development is losing them loyal readers right and left.
bellatrys(Quote) (Reply)
Another example with which I am all too familiar – landlords could do better if they were responsive to tenants’ complaints about things like broken heating systems, broken doors, plumbing problems, holes in the walls, etc, and thus not have a constant cycling-through of tenants and units standing empty for up to six months at a time and people actively warning future tenants against their properties.
But, while that would inarguably be better for their profits over all, that would them to a) invest some money in the short term, b) even more, admit that they were not little tin gods and all their customers a bunch of losing losers who deserved to be ignored and mocked…and anyway there are always more people who will need to rent space to live, so who cares how many leave and tell others how bad they are?
bellatrys(Quote) (Reply)
I never said the American Viewing Public got the party started. I said that it has the power to stop it.
There’s also a big problem with the whole “blame the audiences for not demanding better product” thing – we simply *don’t* have the power to compel the makers to build better mousetraps,
Actually, we do. They need the American Viewing Public’s money far more than we need their movies.
The problem now is that a very small portion of the public — the feminist-sympathizers and some conservative Christians — are unhappy. The rest of the public would have to be convinced as well. Boycotts only work if the lion’s share or all of the customers do it.
So good luck “rewarding” the MBAs, DragonLady – the pros’ responses to threats of boycotts tends to be (often explicit!) “Neener neener neener, don’t let the door hit you, pthhpt–” Just look and see how well our attempts at “retraining” Joe Quesada et al have worked in comics fandom.
Threatening boycotts and actually doing it are two very different things with very different responses. And again, the lion’s share or all of the current customers would have to do it. Right now, the MBAs know that the lion’s share will keep filling their pockets. The “no, no, bad dog” is not outweighing the “bone.”
Secondly, those MBAs are individuals. They are human beings with families and emotional baggage and limitations and flaws and virtues and above all the potential to be someone good. To write each and every one of them off an unfixably bad monster who would rather be fired by his financiers than for one moment make movies about strong women who are equals, without ever having met them, is horrific.
Everyone has the potential to be better than they are and the power to change. Training, like the civil rights movements’ bus boycott, taps that potential.
Thirdly, a black Democrat is sitting in the White House right now because he tapped into a demographic no one else wanted, organized it, and showed everyone that “populist sentiment” does have power and can change things if it wants to badly enough.
And fourthly, my landlady is lovely. She fixes everything within a week of being told she needs to, she stays out of her tenants’ way, and she actually puts deposits in a savings account instead of spending them like a Christmas bonus. Still, I have yet to have a neighbor last longer than six months and I’ve only had three neighbors who didn’t trash their places. Low-income housing attracts people who were never taught how to be good tenants by their parents.
DragonLady
DragonLadyK(Quote) (Reply)
Wait – did you live in the building I was assistant manager at?! LOL, this is exactly why I finally gave up the free rent and left. I am much happier spending half my monthly earnings on room and board.
That is all, except to say I am really enjoying this conversation, you all.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
I don’t think anyone here is saying that those people would go and ignore the boycott knowing what caused it. The problem would be getting them to understand the reason there would be a less people watching those movies.
The example I cited above, and I guess I wasn’t too clear on it, showed someone who was a Star Trek fan himself. He was involved with Star Trek, he knew the shows, he knew the movies. He admitted that the last movie had a big amount of flaws, and once even said that the director with the editing had practically cut the heart out of the film – all the character interaction. He did see all those problems with the film – and yet he attributed the fact that it got such poor audience results to the fact that a more interesting-looking film came out a week later. So, basically, if your dog just doesn’t understand that he gets punished for barking, but instead thinks it’s because he sits somewhere he’s not supposed to, or in the end just believes that there is no reason at all you punish him and you’re just mean, how can you train him?
TurelieTelcontar(Quote) (Reply)
(oh, sigh, Susan Faludi. I really should try reading Backlash, but I’m scared to know because when I attempted Terror Dreams the preponderence of “quotes” annoyed the “shit” out of me , especially becuase they came without “footnotes” or any other “attributing source .” It’s not that I think that she lies it’s just that it’s 1) distracting and 2) I WANT TO KNOW WHO SAID THAT!)
Dragonlady
“I’m saying that as long as the American viewing public ….are willing to watch crap even though they want not-crap, or if they enjoy crap, then any wake-up call efforts are doomed to failure.”
I have to agree with Jennifer here, I don’t think that’s anywhere near the main source of the problem. The issue is not that people will watch crap, The issue is that no one bothers to notice the people who AREN’T watching crap. And they do this beacuse (in the execs’ minds at least) crap is cheaper to make and less risky, so even when they do start to notice that I’ve been to the movie theatre maybe once in the last year or two, they will not suddenly start making not-crap, they will only become more adamant about making even cheaper and more predictable crap. It’s lazier and more self-centered thinking to assume that I don’t like movies than it is to realize that I don’t like their movies. And sexism makes this easy to do. That someone is always going to watch their movies is more of a product of movie’s place in our culture and having a very large population than anything else at this point.
“Ed Bernero’s “Criminal Minds” is full of vivid, realistic, powerful women both behind badges, as civillians, and as victims….CBS let Ed make his show his way, they haven’t cancelled it, and it’s sitting beautifully in the Neilsens making them beaucoup bucks.”
Yeah but, aside from the TV/movie-apples/oranges issue, it didn’t start that way.
I remember watching the pilot when it first aired. Cuz I had to see the show that Mandy left Dead Like Me for. Aside from working extra hard to make mgg not cute (why, why would you do that?!?!) the only “girl” was a newbie with all the newbie questions – Garcia and JJ being mostly absent and not anywhere near as cool as they are now. So, I thought it was utter crap and excessively annoying. I didn’t actually start watching the show until after the first season was nearly over. By which time mgg was allowed to be adorkable rather than just dorky and Garcia was complete awesome. I’m guessing, however, that if it had been presented to studio execs as the show it is now – the one that I love, it never would have been greenlighted.
This is part of why TV and movies are apples and oranges. Part of why TV is taking risks that movies won’t is because when Ed goes to the studios and tells them he’s going to do a ep like True Night or Masterpiece, Ed’s already spent a lot of their money working on that episiode. They can mess around with stuff and tell him that the unsub needs to die rather than escape, but it’s not as easy for them to say stuff like “you know, I really don’t think Wil Wheaton would be a good choice for Floyd.” It was a lot easier for them to say “um, less of the fat chick, more Mandy” back when they had yet to greenlight the show to begin with.
Not that I think they said that. Not because they wouldn’t have, but because I don’t think they had to. Because the other factor that comes into play here is self-censorship. Just look at the pathetic mess that Dollhouse is. Whedon may not be The One True Feminist. But he can make better shows than that. But the last one he tried got screwed over and canned. I’m sure he still fights with FOX, but he’s also changed the kind of stories he’s telling and it’s not hard to guess that it has something to do with wanting to stay on the air – and fight less with FOX execs. Ed otoh, currently has a solid show and the studio likes him at the moment. So he’s less likely to self-censor. Back when he was trying to get CM on the air, however…..
Well, you do know that Garcia was suppsed to be a fat, ethnic dude, yes? (And, I believe, slightly un pc) Thankfully, Ed and his team are not as narrowminded as some other TV creators. So when one of them suggested Kristen and encouraged her to audition, the rest were fine with that. Which is very cool. But still, it’s not like they set out to create a character like Garcia. They set out for something more like Dexter’s Masuka.
“To write each and every one of them off an unfixably bad monster who would rather be fired by his financiers than for one moment make movies about strong women who are equals, without ever having met them, is horrific.”
But that’s not what we are doing. What we are saying is that they are powerful, priveleged, white men living in a culture considers male and white as the default, and working among mostly other powerful, privileged, white men like themselves. This tends to create a very self-centered view of the world, even if one is not naturally all that self-centered.
And also that they are businessmen and not artists. The point not being that the two cannot mix, nor that they are cold-hearted, greedy men, but that, in a sense, they are laypersons trying to tell professionals how to do their work. This isn’t to say that their opinions are moot or crap or worthless – they are the ones doing the investing, after all – just that a group of investors greenlighting movies are often going to choose very different movies than a group of directors would choose to make if they didn’t have to look for investors. I don’t think either extreme is good for the movie industry – or even necessarily art. But while the latter is more likely to produce navel-gazing crap the former tends to churn out the kind of lowest denominator crap we are getting now.
One of the main reasons, after all, why CM rocks is because Ed has done this before. Both the law enforcement part and the show part. The people that greenlight movies don’t always have that same kind of experience. And a lot of the ones that do have experience – especially on both sides – are the ones that are responsible for a lot of the non-crap that we get.
Also, while I haven’t met any exces personally, Jennifer has met plenty of people in the industry, seeing as how she not only studied screenwriting, but did so at UCLA.
Also, while I haven’t met any exces personally, I know people who know people. I figure when I not only know stuff like what kind of porn Scorcese likes, but when I know it because I know the guy that organized it for him as his intern, then I can make some pretty good guesses as to why certain people do what they do. (The point, of course, not being the porn necessarily, but actually hearing first hand what kind of work student interns – and others – actually DO.) They are guesses yes, but they are hardly uninformed guesses.
And then there are the non-guesses. For example, I know why certain decisions were made at Disney (although mostly minor and relating to the parks) not because I’m clarivoyant, but because I know people that were high enough up to get the memos, sometimes even be involved in the decision that led to the writing of the memos. And by know, I don’t just mean have met a few times, I sometimes mean “I’ve known them since childhood and I know what kind of people they are.” The good and the bad.
Mickle(Quote) (Reply)
I never said the American Viewing Public got the party started. I said that it has the power to stop it.
But you said the MBAs weren’t “the problem”, which I took to mean the audience was the problem. Did you mean something else? (Because while the audience may be the solution – in fact, I agree that they’re a big part of the solution, even though I think you’re overestimating their power, or I wouldn’t bother with this website – I see no way that viewers contributed to some of the weird-ass ideas MBAs cooked up that had misogynistic effects, whether or not they had any such intent.)
And, what TurelieTelcontar said.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Yes, this:
But that’s not what we are doing. What we are saying is that they are powerful, priveleged, white men living in a culture considers male and white as the default, and working among mostly other powerful, privileged, white men like themselves. This tends to create a very self-centered view of the world, even if one is not naturally all that self-centered.
Exactly.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
“Thirdly, a black Democrat is sitting in the White House right now because he tapped into a demographic no one else wanted, organized it, and showed everyone that “populist sentiment” does have power and can change things if it wants to badly enough.”
And I have noted, with no little fascination, that it is a black man who is in the White House. And that it was a white woman he was running against in the primaries.
Not just because of the obvious, but because of a comment Scott Westerfeld made back at the beginning of the race about life imiating art. In one of his books (and in the post I can’t link to bc my work is blocking his blog) he calls it the “missing black woman formation.” Not so much bc black women are the only people missing from the formation, but because the absence of a black woman in particular highlights how much “white male” is still the default – even when we make sincere attempts at diversity. If it were not, more people would notice the black woman’s marked absence from the formation, and it’s repeated usage in art and advertising would strike us as false rather than proggressive.
Think about all the presidents you’ve seen portrayed in the movies. How many of them have been white men? Now (starting in the last few decades) how many have been black? A few yes? Now, how about hispanic? Asian? None, right? And the women are always white, yes? And, gee, look, we have our first president that isn’t white… and he kinds reminds one of the way Morgan Freeman always plays the president, yes?
And I have also noted that, as much as I adore it, CM still follows the same formation.
Interesting, yes?
Mickle(Quote) (Reply)
Several posters have hit upon the “of course everyone is like me” mentality that is a major contributing factor to the problems with Hollwyood’s product. My experience has been that this mentality is the cause of many more problems. There are any number of opinionated people firmly convinced that their opinions are the only conclusions that an intelligent, informed, and well-intentioned person could reach. Therefore anyone who disagrees with them must be stupid, ignorant, or evil (or some combination of those). (Any number of bloggers who write about any number of subjects come to mind.)
I’d best not respond to any of Bellatrys’ comments about the decision-makers at Marvel and DC, because their unthinking misogynistic idiocy deserves its own topic. It’s just as well that I can no longer afford to buy comics, because I wouldn’t be buying anything from Marvel until Quesada gets fired anyway, and nothing from DC that isn’t written by Gail Simone or Greg Rucka.
Patrick J McGraw(Quote) (Reply)
“It’s not a gender thing, it’s whichever name “sticks.” ^^”
Gideon
Hotchner
Morgan
Reid
J
areauGarcia
GreenawayPrentiss
Rossi
Jason
Aaron
Derek
Spencer
J
enniferPenelope
Elle
Emily
Dave/David
JJ is in between cuz, well, JJ.
What name they are called depends on the situation and who is doing the talking. Reid and Morgan never call Hotch “Aaron.” But Hotchner and Rossi call each other Aaron and Dave all the time. Both Rossi and Hotch are more likely to call Emily “Prentiss” than anyone else. I think Morgan called Elle “Greenaway” once – in the same episode she got shot in. (And I’m guessing that was just because one of the writers likes puns/rhymes.) And Morgan may not call Reid “Spencer” but he does call him “kid” and “pretty boy.”
It’s not so much a gender thing as it a a familiarity/status thing. The show itself has made a point of this on occasion:
“The only person in the world who calls me “Spence.”"
The cop in Chicago calling Morgan “Derek” all the time. And then his family doing the same (but without the nasty tone of voice).
“What’s to understand Erin?” quickly followed by “I’m sure your know Agent Rossi” says Strauss and then Rossi and Hotch are all “Dave!” “Aaron!”
Which makes it a gender thing – among other things.
(It’s also sort of a time thing – the shorter names tend to win. But, you know, the writers get to pick the names.)
Mickle(Quote) (Reply)
One other note:
The MBAs don’t work directly for the financiers. They work for the studios. They must secure funds from the studio and/or outside financiers to make movies. The financiers contribute funds when they believe a movie can profit. Where do they get their ideas of what can profit and what won’t? From the MBAs. And where do MBAs get the evidence to show that their ideas are accurate? From manipulating the data to support their views.
That is what Goldman’s point was all about. It’s not a direct line from the MBAs to the people who buy tickets at theaters, and that’s part of what both creates this disconnect and makes it challenging to get everybody on a new same page.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I’m not sure whether it’s even possible to get anywhere through boycotting, regardless of what the MBAs’ reaction will be – mostly because hitting them hard enough in the pockets to convince them that they needed to change would require coordinated self-control on a scale I’m not sure would even be possible. Even if I might be overly-cynical about humanity’s tendency towards complacency, there’s still the problem that a lot of the people who would need convincing would also be those who don’t care as much about what they’re watching to begin with.
Creating an organization to act as a new financier with a different set of values seems like it would be more effective. You might still need a couple million people to make it work, but it wouldn’t matter which couple million people they were (whereas boycotting a movie you wouldn’t watch anyway wouldn’t help much). As long as its bets pay off, it could be self-perpetuating, and it would be in a position to say that it’s making money because people want to see strong female characters. (It also might be in a good position to make money anyway, since there’d be so many people who’d consider it “theirs” and want to see/show others the result) I’d imagine it’d be very difficult to do, but probably less so than organizing massive boycotts.
Ikkin(Quote) (Reply)
Aye. Most of the successful boycotts in recent memory succeeded because they were bad PR, not because they managed to hurt a company’s finances. A good example is the boycott of Taco Bell over its fruit pickers: There’s no solid evidence that the boycott itself had a significant impact on the company’s bottom line, but it was embarrassing, and Yum worried that the negative publicity could eventually damage their position.
This is much harder with feminist issues, though, as the reactionaries and religious fundamentalists are very, very skilled at manipulating the national media. No matter how good their intentions, no matter how well-spoken their objections, no matter how photogenic their protesters, a feminist boycott of the latest lowbrow, misogynistic blockbuster will be portrayed as a bunch of shrill, vindictive dykes attempting to destroy the last vestiges of male independence and suffrage in American society.
(Yes, there are actually people who think like this. They see white males as persecuted, disenfranchised victims in modern society… which is another example of Faux News and other reactionary media outlets “controlling the narrative.”)
Pocket Nerd(Quote) (Reply)
Ha! You’re all wrong. Except bellatrys.
Well, not quite all, but I see things so differently than most of you (and my time is so limited) that I’ll just make a list.
1. The contrast is not between the MBAs and the creatives, it’s between the MBAs and the old studio heads.
2. One of the differences is that the MBAs are just like their brothers in the finance industry: they’re working for their own personal gain, not for the good of the stockholders or the company. And they’re not in it for the long term.
3. For an old studio head, 5 $20M movies would be just as good as one $100M movie — better, even, because of spreading the risk. For a modern-era MBA, the $100M blockbuster is better, because if it wins big he has more of a chance to make off with a huge chunk of change before the revolving door hits him in the ass. Even if it doesn’t win big, that huge single project makes many people at once beholden to him, and gives him more chances to cook the books in his favor.
4. Also, it makes his dick look bigger. Or whatever it’s called when men impress other men with their manhood.
5. When Reservoir Dogs was shown at Sundance, the women in the audience walked out because of the violence. Tarantino was glad, because that meant he was “edgy” and manly. This is what most of the creatives in H’wood want, and it’s why I think Jennifer is wrong about the problem lying at the MBA level.
6. I have long said that there’s an IQ-Depressing Field centered on Hollywood, and the effects are amplified by testosterone. I have no empirical evidence to refute this theory and much to support it.
7. The IDF may be due to the fact that almost everyone in H’wood spends much, much more time socializing (on the clock or off it) than doing anything involving thought. Dick-measuring appears to be the main social activity for men: when you spend most of your time comparing dicks, everything that contributes to perceived dick size becomes highly-motivating, and everything else (even money, even the audience, even movies themselves) shrivels into unimportance.
8. There’s a positive feedback cycle going on: fewer, more expensive movies -> more time to compare dicks -> collective IQ drops -> make even more expensive movies and fewer of them.
9. The only way out IMHO is to make cheaper movies.
Doctor Science(Quote) (Reply)
Doctor Science,
1 is exactly what I said.
2 doesn’t contradict anything I said.
3 is an interesting point.
4 is almost word for word what I said
5 not sure where you’re getting your knowledge of what “most of the creatives” want. Men in our culture are generally encouraged to be whatever is considered “manly” at the minute, but I actually encountered a higher percentage of male “creatives” who weren’t interested in that crap than I have found in most other collections of men. And I am confused by your disagreement with the problem lying at the MBA level, since your entire comment here talks about what MBAs are doing wrong.
6 I thought I implied clearly that it’s really the MBAs who are stupid, not the audience.
7 Uh, it’s a bit of a local joke that everyone in HW is a workaholic. No one socializes – they network. If you’re new in town and looking for pals, believe me you will notice the difference. If you can’t advance their career, they don’t have time to be your friend. Mutual back-scratching may seem like a silly business model, but it’s kept the good ol’ boy network in nice digs for a very long time.
8 Since movies got so expensive, they actually make a lot more than they did when they were cheaper…?
9 Again, interesting.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Well, here is somebody who has exchanged more than my share of expletives with that type of individual. LOL
In response to this article:
When I see websites like AmericanWomenSuck.com & MenAreBetterThanWomen.com, the MPA’s motives become all-too-clear; these are the people they are catering to, and fueling their hatred equals $$$.
I too am annoyed by the myth that men are the only ones who watch TV or go to the movies. A perfect example of this wrong-headed mentality is The WWE. I have been a pro-wrestling fan since I was a very young child, and I know of many other females who are, yet, the industry would have us believe that men are the primary viewing demographic! All they ever talk about is how popular the show is with “men aged 17-35″, but one look at the audience (or on any pro-wrestling oriented forum) suggests that a rather enormous amount of women enjoy watching this program.
So, why are they ignoring us? We buy the pay-per-views, DVDs, merchandise, etc, just as the men do. Is our money less valuable because we don’t have a penis? And, to be perfectly honest, I am of the belief that this type of show is more suitable for heterosexual women & gay men, rather than self-identified heterosexual men.
Soap opera style drama? Check.
Scantily clad beefcake? Check.
How any guy can dub himself as “straight” while watching this is beyond me. I was visiting a forum for gay men, not too long ago, and they basically expressed the same sentiments that I do. They also suggested that pro-wrestling is a “safe” way for men, who identify as straight, to secretly admire the bodies of other men, because it is under the umbrella of a “sport” (even though it is clearly not a legitimate sport).
OK, a little more back on topic, now. LOL
I think the MPA is trying to create their own little perfect world, and the movies they pump out are intended to brainwash society into fitting the mold. I disagree with DragonLady, in regard to how much power we have over this type of thing. For instance, the average woman is about 5 feet, 3 inches tall… yet, the fashion industry continues to bombard us with images of freakishly tall models, wearing clothes that would probably never look good on a petite woman. Short girls are the majority, but we are ignored, nonetheless. A lot of people talk about sizeism in the modeling industry, but they never talk about heightism. Hmmmm…..
Anyhow, my point is… supply does not always conform to demand. In certain cases, especially where women are concerned, demand is almost entirely ignored… and we are forced to accept the supply… or kindly f*ck off. That is the mainstream, misogynist mentality in a nutshell.
A Very Bad Girl(Quote) (Reply)
Not all women are put-off by violent films. I think Tarentino would have been greatly disappointed, had I been in the audience.
Btw.. one of my favorite movies is a French film by the name of Baise Moi. It makes most of Q’s stuff look like a Disney production. Also, I am an avid horror film fan.
A Very Bad Girl(Quote) (Reply)
5. When Reservoir Dogs was shown at Sundance, the women in the audience walked out because of the violence.
Additionally, I wonder about the truth/context of this. Did ALL the women run out, vomiting? Or did one woman leave because she got a cell phone call, and someone assumed it was the violence upsetting her delicate heart, and the story Telephoned into “the women left because of the violence.”
After all, studies with test groups have shown that when men and women (for example) talk exactly the same amount of time or participate exactly the same amount in a conversation, people quizzed afterward consistently believe the women talked longer or “dominated” the conversation. People have a tendency to blow everything we do that’s not in the kitchen way out of proportion, and also to interpret our actions according to their understanding of gender bioengineering.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Speaking of context I also kind of wonder about when people left, assuming that anyone did. I’ve sat through more hours of violent film and television than I’m entirely comfortable with now that I think about it, and I can only remember one time when I left the theater for a few minutes because of what was about to happen on screen — The Green Mile, when I realized what was going to happen during Del’s execution. I don’t need to watch someone suffer because someone else is going to grossly abuse his power because he’s a petty twisted man and there’s no threat of retaliation.
If I hadn’t already seen Tarantino’s other movies by the time I saw Reservoir Dogs and so known exactly what to expect I might well have turned that one off, but that would have little to do with how I react to violent material in general and everything to do with a specific situation that I’ve seen less homicidal versions of far too often in real life.
MaggieCat(Quote) (Reply)
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