I hate to burst the happy Oscar nomination bubble, but things are pretty shitty for women in film right now.
Yes, Rooney Mara may have kicked ass in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Meryl Streep made an utterly convincing Iron Lady. But what about the women behind the cameras?
A glance at the Best Director nominations makes the problem oh-so-obvious. Kathryn Bigelow made history in 2009 when she picked up the Academy Award for Best Director and not another woman has been nominated since. Directing is a big boys' club, research by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film has the statistics to prove it.
The report The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 250 Films of 2011 has shown that just 5% of 2011’s highest grossing films were directed by women.
That’s right, five paltry percent. That’s not to take away from the achievement of that 5%, but what the hell is going on here?
The shocking and unpalatable fact of the matter is that women directors are still a novelty. Every time a director who happens to have breasts has a mainstream success, there is a wild flurry of patronising media guff about her bravery. Outside of film studies workshops, no one ever discusses the impact of Martin Scorsese’s gender upon his work. For women directors, their gender defines their work; whether they like it or not.
It’s not just in the director’s chair where women are noticeable by their absence. The report shows that women make up 4% of cinematographers, 8% of executive producers, 14% of writers, 20% of editors and 25% of producers.
These statistics highlight the importance of not marginalizing “women’s film”. Women’s ideas and stories are too valuable to be a fringe niche interest – the demand for Diablo Cody’s frank and funny screenplays being a case in point. Films directed by women don’t have to be sensitive, emotional, beautiful or poetic. They can have explosions! They can have car chases and super powers and even some smutty knob gags!
Here’s to the day when the phrase “female director” is replaced simply with “director”.
Image via Marcel Oosterwijk's Flickr