White Male Bias – Nope Nope Nope.

Arb,

I’m going to try and walk a delicate line between two points of view here.

For one, while I get and agree with the point being made, I think it’s a cheap, weak, and ineffective way to try and make it. Show the buying statistics and “speaking roles” of Harlequin romance novels, for instance, and that’s an unfair bias towards women, an attempt to make the world “more female than it is”? How about this is simply how the chips fall after the male and female market both take their vote on movies, just as it does when they take their vote on books?

For the most part, businesses only make products that people will buy, or they go out of business. If movies that are successful tend to have more male speaking roles, the “smart money” going forward will be on a male lead. If you want to blame the male half of the market for that go ahead, but it’s just as much the female half who could be a) not scoring these movies at all in the focus groups/test-screenings, and b) voting with their dollars and refusing to go to these movies when they’re released. If either or both of those things happened we’d be seeing different movies out there, but we don’t because most women are simply OK with, and don’t take offense to, movies that have male leads.

And do you think a white, male studio executive cares if 90% of their buying public are female or male? No. They care only to know exactly who their market is, and what that market will buy. If there’s an untapped market of female speaking role leads that would give the mainstream market a run for its money, with enough evidence they’d go there but there simply isn’t enough to make that a viable play.

Therefore, I’d dismiss the graphic and the whole “white male bias” thing outright in the way it is presented.

Here’s the thing, though – to me there’s a better argument to be made that lies underneath the surface of what you’ve presented here.

Now to the other side. I don’t necessarily care that women are grossly underrepresented on screen any more that I’d care if men were. I care as to why, and rather than simply taking a statistic and trying to insinuate and infer bias based upon a back-end result, why not try and do so from the front end as far as what goes into making a movie?

I submit an article by the UK’s Independent – “Hollywood silences leading ladies as speaking roles for women slump”. Instead of stopping at the statistics of male & female speaking roles and saying “See! Skewed in men’s favor! Must be bias!” they go much further and I think, present a much stronger argument along with a more anger-worthy issue.

“Despite the success of female-driven films such as Bridesmaids, Twilight and The Hunger Games, the representation of women on screen in the most successful films at the box office has slumped.

The women that do appear are most likely to be teenagers who are portrayed in a sexualised manner, the study by the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism claimed. When they do get screen time, 31.6 per cent of women were depicted wearing sexually revealing clothing in 2012, the highest percentage over the five years.”(emphasis mine).

“Hollywood executives remain obsessed with feeding the perceived tastes of young male cinemagoers, the researchers found.”

As a business guy and marketing guy, I don’t buy the line “perceived tastes”. Big companies do a TON of research on their market and nothing in this regard is taken on a whim, so to me, here is the real problem: Young males are (still) being groomed by their parents and our culture to view women in an overly-sexualized way. If we want to start with a bias in movie-making, we should start there.

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Hi Bodycrimes,

“it’s too easy to say that Hollywood is simply making what sells, particularly when their own sales show that when they make movies that are female-skewed, they get tremendous box office receipts.”
I don’t disagree. However, one must also consider that while a few (for example) ginger-haired lead character movies may be successful in a year, does that mean 100 movies with the same type of leading character would be? Does that mean that there’s a bias against the other 97 that could have been made that year? Easy to infer anything we want to there.

The important question is, “Are there leads trying to be in movies but are being discriminated against/prevented from doing so?”

That’s why I like the news article I provided, rather than just the chart (with respect to Arb) – starts to drill down more into what may be driving the statistics. It’s also why I like capitalism – quite frequently you’ll have a risk-taker or innovtion turn stereotypes generalizations, norms, and status quo’s on their head. :)

“But their own biases stopped them seeing what was right in front of their eyes. They literally couldn’t see it.”
Right – so couldn’t one say the other way that the class was actually biased towards women, in spite of the teacher’s perception? What if the teachers said 70/30 towards women instead? Would the men be able to cry bias?

“People see what they want to see and research uncovers results according to what questions are asked and what assumptions are made.”
Yes, which is why sometimes we need to a) call out the perceptions vs. the data as your science class example shows, and b) go a little deeper to examine the “why” behind apparent or suspected desired outcomes.

I hope I’m reading your comments correctly – thanks for the dialogue. :)

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Hey Arb,

Looks like the issue hit Drudge:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/the-bigger-the-film-the-fewer-the-women-nominations-for-this-years-oscars-will-prove-hollywoods-sexism-9053697.html

Regarding your reply above:
“Are Harlequin romance novels considered the pulse of the cultural mainstream? Are they vetted by focus groups consisting of men and women with hopes of them becoming profitable mainstream cultural icons? They are not. Comparing hollywood movies to Harlequin novels is not a good comparison for your purposes because of the differences of intent and scale.”
I disagree. For one, you assume intent just as I do where sexism is concerned, but neither you or I are movie execs or happen to know any so we’re guessing as far as their intents in that regard are concerned.

For another, since when is the literature of a period not an indication of its culture? Different media, perhaps, but from a market standpoint, that “intent” is still the same – not one of social engineering, bur rather a work of fiction distributed with the intent of making sales and profit. You seem to be trying to make the case that protection of the patriarchy is 100% behind the numbers you post in your chart regarding movies. I’d say it’s more like 5% or 10%. I’d agree that perhaps supply isn’t there to where it should be (of female leads, female speaking roles, etc.) but I’d argue as well that neither is the demand. I’d argue that women choose these movies equally as men do.

Plus, where does it automatically say that 100% of women want to see a movie just because it has a female lead, or female writer? It seems based on the numbers that most women are ultimately comfortable with the ratio that currently exists.

“…almost always ends with a defence of the status-quo because the normative way of doing this *is* profitable. It is how the system perpetuates itself.” Yes, until someone enters with a game-changer and disrupts the system, which happens in every capitalism-based industry, including film. If there’s something preventing that from happening in film, I’d be the first to say it needs to be addressed just as the article I’ve posted here talks about how female directors who leave to have kids seem to be stigmatized. I’d also be the first to applaud the entry that does disrupt this norm.

You seem to make the case that this “conspiracy” is on the magnitude of 10 on the richter scale, I’d say more like .1 but m defense isn’t of the male decision-making. I know there are sexist elements and I think it’s horrible that Katheryn Bigelow, for instance, gets a “Wow! Look, a woman did it!” from the industry for producing an Oscar-worthy film (only to get shunned, mind you, for Zero Dark Thirty). But why the “Wow!”? I think there, we fully agree. My defense, however, in this case is of the market, which I believe is being far more fair to the wishes of the public than you’re insinuating and I would even go as far as to say not being sexist at all in terms of its motivations in buying.

To make my point: Take the stats from your chart above, and then tell me what the ratio between male and female movie-goers happens to be. 80% male? 70% male? No. According to the MPAA in both the US and Canada, it was 50/50, as in the same and 100% equal. That was in 2011, the last year they have stats available, and 2010 was apparently the same as well.

Sources:
MPAA U.S./Canada Theatrical Market Statistics, Attendance Demographics for 2011, March 2012

http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/who_goes_to_the_movies_moviegoers_stats_from_2010

So, as the statistics would indicate, women are NOT under-represented in terms of the buying public and in fact have just as much ability to influence which movies make it and which ones don’t as men do in spite of any biases that may exist on the supply end. Turns out the movies they just happen to like more were the ones with male leads and male-speaking roles in them, 80% or more of the time.

“The issue being addressed is that women are chronically underepresented in hollywood films”
From the issue of representation, your claim is debunked on the basis that women buy 50% of the movie tickets and are free to do so. The numbers you show are just as much a representation of their choice as that of males, and they have happened to prefer movies in the ratios your charts happen to show. Unless you can show that these female buyers were coerced or the 50%/50% stat being fabricated, I believe your insinuation as to the extend of male bias actually influencing movies falls from 100% to what, maybe 5%? 10%?

Now from the perspective of sexism in the industry, clearly it still exists and clearly it is still a problem as the articles show, but perhaps to nowhere near the degree that you believe or want to believe it exists? There’s nothing I’ve seen that shows that a) opportunity is being stifled to the point that 50% of movies can’t be by women, and there’s nothing you’ve shown that would indicate that even if the industry itself was 50% men and 50% women across the board in terms of writers and directors, that the female split in buying public wouldn’t STILL choose male-dominated movies to a degree of 70% or higher.

The sexism and discrimination is wrong but perhaps sometimes “a cigar is just a cigar”.

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“If no, then truly the movie industry must be completely opaque and unfathomable and as your comment suggests; mere shlubs like you and me have no business opining on their dark motivations.”
Haha! You’re not talking motivations, Arb, you’re talking absolute control which is different. We as business owners don’t actually dictate and control demand. It’d be nice, but that degree of influence only exists in fantasyland.

And what is this degree of influence you’re suggesting here, again? 1%? 10%? 100%? You don’t seem to want to pick a number – why?

“It is therefore unpossible that patriarchal norms have ever effected trade and commerce ever and how dare I even suggest that they, like every other facet of society ,are organized around a patriarchal set of norms and behaviours.”
Arb, how many times does it need to be said? I’ve stated over and over that I agree there’s influence. The question I keep raising (and that you keep dodging) is, to what degree – at least, to what degree in your opinion? You seem to think it’s 1000%, and I, based on the fact that women are making up an equal portion of the market here, believe that the degree of influence is far, far less. If you’re going to dodge putting up any sort of math or numbers as to what you even think this degree of influence is, then what you’re saying is conjecture at best, total exaggerated victimhood at worst.

“How is it fair that the majority of films are about dudes?”
It’s fair because 50% of moviegoers were male and 50% were female, and this is apparently what they wanted. No one had a gun to any of their heads forcing them to watch one kind of movie over another, or even to go to a movie at all for that matter, so their vote could have just as easily gone the other way.

“How is it fair that women, in the majority of films are there to be not characters, but objects of desire?”
Two totally separate arguments, even if they’re related, that you insist for the sake of your victim narrative to shove together into one. One’s about demand, the other about supply. I’ve already made my comments about that and agree with you regarding supply – the subject of how women are portrayed is something I agree is wrong and the Independent’s apparently picking up the cause as well. What we’re talking about there, however, the actual objectification of women, was nowhere to be found in the charts you presented and yet you seemed to offer them as being all-inclusive.

“How is this portrayal of man/subject, woman/object in any way fair?”
Who’s saying it’s fair? I certainly didn’t and even still, you seem to be over-generalizing about movies citing sequels rather than movies like War Horse, The Help, The Debt, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, etc.. There’s great movies that aren’t what you seem to try and make every movie out to be. Besides, life is never going to be fair because nature isn’t fair. Men will always be objects to certain kinds of women, women will always be objects to certain kinds of men. And the overuse and highly subjective use of the word “fair” is why people have so many problems that they do. That, however, is another discussion. :)

“Being endorsed by the market is not a signifier of inherent equality or justice.”
Equality, yes, when there’s equal choice in purchasing power, and in this case, there is. If 50% of the market are women and they’re choosing male-led movies out of their own free will, there’s equality there. Men and women each chose (freely) the movies they want to watch.

Justice, however? That to me has to do with how they’re portrayed in the movie and what they walk away from that movie believing, but that still doesn’t mean men somehow forced them to watch a certain kind of movie. Again, two different things.

“More to the point, if the market has found a profitable groove – oh and its a deep one – why would it change?
We all cling to past efforts that have worked, but at the same time we all change over time. Demographics change, tastes change, technology changes and that is going to skew things before you even get a chance to get into social commentary. Take movie technology for instance – do you think 3D and CGI is going to inspire a remake of “Little Women”, or “Transformers”? Easily the latter where the technology can be showcased. It gets showcased, and voila – movie audiences start getting younger just as the stats are showing. Still a big difference, however, between influencing and predicting a market vs. dictating or controlling it, and herein lies the second point – in ANY market there is always an opportunity for a disruptor, even with the big studios. Look at what the Blair Witch Project did in terms of marketing, or its successor, Paranormal Activity. They challenged the status quo of almost all the studio norms. Look at what Bigelow and Chastain did with Zero Dark Thirty.

“You’re gonna say innovation and change rule the market – my standard reply – bullshite”
No, I wouldn’t say that which shows once again that you don’t seem to understand either my viewpoint or the business world – that there’s only one shade of either to you. Even your sentence is contradictory within itself – you’re confusing “market” with status quo, and saying innovation and change “rule” a market isn’t correct. A single innovation or change (not the process) doesn’t “rule” the market until it has enough subscribers to actually become the status quo. There have been tons of examples of movies that have been successful in spite of the big studios. I mentioned two in the last paragraph. The big studios will take innovation on in terms of technology, but not so much in terms of market – I’d agree. Their budgets are too big and they have to churn out too many products to take that kind of risk on all of them and I agree with you with the whole “reboot” thing being proof (although look at the Oscars – great and well-deserving movies there). Read the next paragraph, however.

“hollywood is a monopoly. Hollywood is run by a standard hierarchical business type organization; the corportist ethic quashes innovation and stands as near impenetrable barrier against not only women”
Two comments on this:
One, this is where you should be applauding capitalism. Look what happens: actors thought that this monopoly and big-budget thing was shitty so they created a million film festivals to help out the smaller players precisely to break up that monopoly you speak of. Now look at all the films coming out of them being successful hits, and what happened next? The big studios started to create offshoots like Searchlight” to handle documentaries and smaller-budget, “higher risk” films, just as they have. Same happens now with startups of all kinds. No government “intervention”, no forced-choice naziism, simply a case where the market is working. Maybe not fast enough for peoples’ liking, but the power for it to go faster lies more with the market than it does the studios for the exact reasons you’ve said.

Two – actually, a question: in an era where anyone can completely avoid the big film studios for virtually every aspect of film-making – including marketing and distribution after-the-fact, why hasn’t the feminist market shot any of these writers, actors, or directors immediately to the top that they want to help? If a bunch of teens can do it around a college kids’ horror film, surely femnists can do it with a more intelligent and socially-relevant storyline?

“How does that even work? Women are underepresented in film, in all media actually. The number of women versus the number of men in leading roles in not even close to being equal. Nothing in your dubunking addresses this fact. Who goes to see the films isn’t part of the equation.”
Haha – it’s not “part of the equation” to you because it doesn’t fit your black and white “total and endless victimhood” narrative. “Like, not at all.” ;)

It’s simple – women are choosing male-led movies, and it works because it’s entirely possible that most women don’t or wouldn’t care to see the movies you seem to want made. They may not care whether the lead is a man or a woman (or care as much), and moreso, they may actually prefer a male lead – something which you can’t seem to consider even though the numbers point in that direction. Why is it so hard to fathom?

And nothing you say has explained those 50/50 numbers, except the insunation that some big ACME brain machine somewhere has dialed into a bunch of female autonomatron idiots and has forced them to go to one particular movie over another, which is ridiculous. If women are under-represented in film it may simply be because women don’t care so much to see females, or themselves, as leads in movies. Maybe us men are so narcissistic and fantasy-driven that we need to see the fantasy image of “ourselves” up on screen whereas women don’t need that for themselves to the same degree? I don’t know the full psychology of it, but I find the 50/50 thing to be telling even if it is surprising.

“If the production of movies were less biased, the graphs would be more similar.”
A conclusion based upon what, exactly? It looks like you’re just hoping, not even guessing when you make that statement because the numbers don’t seem to back that up. Correlation does not equal causation, right? The case you were trying to make is that the dominant white males were making movies that appeal primarily to dominant white males with the goal of making money #1, and suppressing women #2. In that case, one would expect a high percentage of the auidence to be white males but that’s been proven untrue. Furthermore, even less white men went to the movies in 2012 relative to their representation of the population (according to the MPAA), showing that not only do female movie goers care less about the speaking or leading role issue than you do, non-whites seem to think it not as big of a deal, either, as their ticket-buying went up relative to white mens’. Maybe most just care whether it was a great “feel good” movie or not without picking it to pieces intelletually from within a social framework? Or is it that us white males turned on the big ACME brain machine once again and now forced more non-white males and females to go see our white male movies? Haha! ;)

“I’m arguing that the normative values of society are responsible for what we see in the graphs, it would seem that you’re saying that this isn’t the case because the market…justifies the current distribution and therefore makes it right.”
That’s not completely what you were saying. You were saying that overbearing white men are responsible for what we see in the graphs, and that they were the ones doing the skewing of both the final product and outcome as part of their grand social design. Women were hardly at all part of that equation as you saw it (as not being part of “those in control”) and that was your complaint. Or did I misinterpret?

Turns out that women are part of that equation and ones with much more control than is being insinuated. For me, I’m saying the market (not the Great White Conspiracy) is what is driving the majority of the distribution of that 70/30 or whatever and that the choice of male leads/male speaking roles is more/less equally made by women as well as men. (I was surprised by that 50/50 number, by the way – I thought it would be more skewed to men). What I’m not saying, and haven’t said, however, is that it makes it “right”. The stats on how women are portrayed in movies bothers me and I said that from the very beginning, that it’s not right at all.

“magically free of the norms of society,”
Here you’re lumping two things in together again to fit your narrative. Yes, I’m saying that the women who go to these movies are for the most part immune to the big ACME brain machine that male studio execs hide in the basement of Wayne Manor along with the cold fusion machine. I’m saying they can very freely and easily choose for themselves what movie they want to see, and they do.

What they walk away from after seeing many of those movies, however, that this is how women are supposed to dress/act/be, that’s a whole other animal and a different ACME brain machine that needs to addressed.

“Because there are no systemic barriers to female entry in the film industry, absolutely none at all. Just like in the STEM fields, it is equal treatment and opportunity all the way to the top.”
Again (and again and again) – where have I said that there AREN’T barriers? You insinuate that the amount of male-speaking roles and white representation in movies is purely supply-driven. You weren’t even talking barriers, either – you were talking control, insinuating that white males are the only ones perpetuating that control. Turns out, it’s not so now you’re twisting and seeming to try and suggest that well, 50% of women go to these male-driven movies because that’s all that’s there for them to see. Assuming they agree with you, wouldn’t go unless forced, and don’t actually like the movies they go see? I think you’re reaching.

That’s on shaky ground, so then it shifts to you saying that I’m either stating or believing that there aren’t any barriers at all – something I never said, and now you’re trying to drag other subjects besides film into the argument. It appears like you’re trying to avoid saying what I think you’re thinking, which is that the 50% female representation of the market that go for these male-led movies are stupid and brainwashed women. Could be wrong, but your avoidance of trying to explain the 50/50 ratio leans in that direction. How do you explain it?

Regardless, I’ll bring up the question again if it wasn’t answered before:

In an era where anyone can completely avoid the big film studios for virtually every aspect of film-making – including marketing and distribution after-the-fact, why hasn’t the feminist market shot any of these writers, actors, or directors immediately to the top that they want to help? If a bunch of teens can do it around a cheap horror film, surely femnists can do it with a more intelligent, and socially-relevant storyline with a wider-reaching appeal?

Internet startups no longer have to go through VC’s to get funded. Inventors no longer have to go to lawyers or manufacturers, and musicians no longer have to go to the big labels – assuming all have a viable product which the market can now weigh in on before the big players do. Now filmmakers don’t have to go to the big studios, either, so why aren’t we seeing more female offerings this way?

“I hope we see the day when you can prove me wrong and there is a more equal distribution of women and men in film and media we can compare it against the current situation.”
Me too, Arb, and I don’t mean about the “prove you wrong” part. I mean in terms of the fact that I don’t care what gender writes, directs, or speaks in a movie so long as it’s a great movie. I’m also a capitalist and therefore I believe greatly in competition – more than that I’m a big champion of monopoly-busting and disrupting so I applaud ANY move that does so rightfully. I’d be happy to see more of the great female works like the ones that have already broken new ground.

We may disagree on what “equal” is (to me, opportunity, to you, quota?) but underlying that I think we’re in 100% agreement – that “more” great female films are needed along with a disruption of the status quo.

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