4B - Thursday, February 21, 2013
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
4B - Thursday, February 21,2013 the h-side The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom
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MARLENE LACASSE/Daily
Nicole Gellman and Yaqi Ge head a female-dominant creative team for 'Fender,'
Cinema's glass ceilig remains solid
Students prepare
to enter a male-
dominated industry
ByKAYLAUPADHYAYA
ManagingArts Editor
What's your favorite movie from
the past year?
When you talk about film and
television as much as I do, you
become accustomed to the ques-
tion. And choosing favorites isn't
something I like to do, so I usually
rattle off a list.
But I noticed something about
almost all of the movies I men-
tioned: They were directed by men.
As someone who invests a lot of
time in studying pop culture from a
feminist perspective, I knew there
were gender barriers in the film
industry. I knew why Kathryn Big-
elow and Nora Ephron matter. But
I'd never really looked at the num-
bers behind the story.
So, I pulled out my laptop to do
some investigating. With a list of
the top 250 grossing films of 2012
in hand I highlighted the ones
helmedby female filmmakers.
Only 9 percent of the 250 were
directed by women. In the top 100,
there were only three: "Brave,"
"Zero Dark Thirty" and "The Guilt
Trip."
If you can't think of the last
movie you saw that was made by
a woman, you're not alone. Even
most of the Screen Arts and Cul-
tures students I sat down with had
to take several seconds to think
about it, and some of them are
aspiring directors themselves.
Beforethementookover
Have you heard of Dorothy
Arzner?
Neither had Nicole Gellman.
Last semester, Gellman, an
LSA junior studying SAC and also
enrolled in the School of Music,
Theatre & Dance, was given a list of
famous directors and had to choose
one to write a research paper
about. She stumbled upon Arzner,
the only woman on the list. Even
though Gellman had never heard
of her, she soon discovered that
Arzner was critical to early cinema.
"She was an open - to her col-
leagues, not to the public - lesbian
lady," Gellman said. "And that was
unheard of at the time."
Though current trends suggest
that cinema has been an old boys'
club, the industry wasn't always so
male-dominated.
Professor Caryl Flinn teaches
film theory and music at the Uni-
versity, and she's particularly
drawn to media's mix with femi-
nist theory. Feminist film theory,
which emerged in the 1970s, has
helped unearth female pioneers
integral to film's roots.
"Because cinema was a rela-
tively fledgling business and indus-
try at that point, I think they were
more open to experimentation,"
Flinn said. "And I think when the
studios became bigbusiness, there
was a little less proclivity to invest
so heavily in female talent."
Flinn noted that while this does
partially explain why there aren't
as many women seen in cinema
today as there were in the past, it's
not the whole story.
A team of women many successful female editors.
Patrice Petro, vice provost for
When I asked Gellman whatcher international education at the Uni-
career plan is, she replied emphati- versity of Wisconsin, has written
cally, "I will be a director." several books on film theory and
She is currently taking the SAC history. SheofferedscholarB. Ruby
department's highest level produc- Rich's explanation for why we see
tion class. During the course, stu- more female editors than directors:
dents workon one oftwo films from "Editing is the great exception, as
beginning to end, and the finished closed work in dark rooms dedi-
products premiere at the Traverse cated to making the guy look good
City Film Festival in the summer. - that's a job for a woman."
Gellman is the Assistant Director "It's the perennial and persis-
for the project "Fender Bender," tent sexism that accounts for why
for which the creative team is com- women are not as represented in
posed mostly of women. Gellman the industry - certainly not as
works closely with the director, directors," Petro said.
LSA senior Yaqi Ge. With recent trends in gender
"I'm lucky to be working on barriers to filmmaking in mind, the
'Fender Bender' with Yaqi because, Sundance Institute commissioned
really, it's awoman team," Gellman an unprecedented study into the
said. status of female filmmakers in
When Ge was five, she watched the independent film industry.
"Toy Story" for the first time. Scholars from the University of
Immediately after, she turned to Southern California probed the
her mom and said that this is what issue, and while it focused on the
she wants to do; she wants to make independent world, the findings
animated movies. illuminate problems women face
Ge is used to working in male- throughout the film industry.
dominated settings. In addition to According to Sundance Film
her involvement in film, she is dou- Festival Senior Programmer Car-
ble-majoring in computer science, oline Libresco, "as there's more
another field with a disproportion- power on set, there's a decreasing
ately high number of men. number of women."
Working with so many women Emily Lyon, a senior dual-
on "Fender Bender" has created a enrolled in the School of Music,
noticeably different working atmo- Theatre & Dance and LSA,
sphere, Ge explained. explained that women in any kind
"You just feel more comfortable of leadership position have to
with other girls," she said. "You walk a fine line. She said women
think in the same way; it feels eas- are expected to be generous and
ier." inspiring and are not necessarily
LSA senior Christina Bender allowed to be commanding.
expressed a similar comfort in "Because they don't want to be
working with other women. called a bitch," she said.
Bender, who has been involved And when women aren't scru-
with University student-run film tinized, they're ignored.
studio Filmic Productions since Even Kathryn Bigelow, the only
its inception, took an interest in woman to ever win the Academy
film before coming to the Univer- Award for directing, was passed
sity. In high school, she attended a over when the nominations came
film camp at the Motion Pictures out this year. "Zero Dark Thirty"
Institute of Michigan. When she received five nominations, includ-
arrived, she was the only girl. ing Best Picture and Lead Actress,
Though her first experience but Bigelow wasn't recognized.
was shocking, Bender said she has The politically charged debate
become more accustomed to work- surrounding the film has over-
ing mostly with men. shadowed Bigelow's continued
Then, last year, she had the success as a filmmaker.
opportunity to work as a produc- Last year, the LA Times investi-
tion assistant for a female producer. gated the composition of the mys-
"It was so wonderful to have a terious Academy, which doesn't
woman as a mentor, and people publicly release a list of its voting
kept telling me how lucky I was," members. The report found that
Bender said. nearly 94 percent of Oscar voters
Bender explained that the rest are Caucasian and 77 percent are
of the crew was male-dominated male.
and that she still observed a subtle "I think sometimes they're still
sexism. a little gender blind in terms of
"I don't know if it's super sexist, who even gets nominated," Flinn
but just the way thatthey talk," she said. "I think that still there's a
said. "They call you 'sweetie' and lot of underrepresentation and
that kind of stuff. It wasn't any- underconsideration of female
thing like groping or anything, just talent, except for in the obvious
comments." Actress categories."
In addition to expanding access
Power dynamics behind the to directing, Katy Ralko, a Ph.D.
camera candidate in the SAC department,
said she thinks part of the prob-
Though a dominantly female lem is the lack of recognition for
creative team backs Gellman and women who are working in other
Ge, there aren't very many female creative positions.
students who come into the film "I think we live in a culture
course as determined to direct as where so much of that credit goes
Gellman is. to the director," Ralko said. "I
"I think there probably is a sub- think we have to challenge that
conscious level of'oh, that's a man's idea."
job,"' she said. According to Ralko, small
However, women do tend to fill industry changes such as includ-
other positions on creative teams. ing more names in the top credits
in particular, there have been or celebrating creative work more
visibly at events like the Academy
Awards can open up more space
for female recognition in film.
"For example, Martin Scorsese
is one of these pantheon directors,
and he's worked with the same
editor for almost all of his films,"
Ralko said.
She paused, trying to recall her
name. She reached over to her
computer for help. A quick Google
search pulled up the name Thelma
Schumacher.
"See?" she said. "Even though
I try to be so conscious of these
things, I remember Martin Scors-
ese's name and I forget his edi-
tor's name. That woman has had
her hand on every single frame of
every single movie that Scorsese
made. And I couldn't even remem-
ber her name."
The connection between
sexism onscreen and on set
Enforcing gender roles on set
goes hand-in-hand with enforc-
ing gender roles onscreen. The
Sundance report draws attention
not only to the increase in women
crews led by females, but also to
the fact that in top-grossing films
and Best Picture nominees, female
directors are more likely to put
girls and women in their films.
Lyon said she frequently thinks
about the way women are por-
trayed onscreen.
"Right now, film tells young
girls you can be a love interest
- you can be a love interest that
basically does some ass-kicking
first - but you're still a love
interest, like in 'The Matrix,' "
make gory action flicks.
Try looking up the most recent
romeom you saw. Chances are that
it was made by a man.
So, while women and men can
tell the same stories, the ways
in which they tell them differ.
While "Zero Dark Thirty" is a spy
thriller, it doesn't come with the
sexualization and reinforcements
of masculinity and femininity so
common to the genre.
Layne Simescu, an LSA junior,
agreed that the stories we see
onscreen are often dominated by
male points of view.
Just look at the slate of Best
Picture nominees this year. With
the exceptions of "Zero Dark
Thirty" and "Beasts of the South-
ern Wild," male characters con-
trol the narratives.
"Historically, movies have
always been made by males, so
we've always got that kind of
viewpoint," Simescusaid. "If more
females started making films, it
would turn the filmmaking indus-
try on its head."
"What we see projected
onscreen in the media is really
powerful in shaping the ideas
about ourselves and shaping the
world we live in," Libresco said
when asked about the importance
of increasing access to filmmak-
ing. "So, the stories we tell actu-
ally shape our experiences and
vice versa. If we don't have a full
range of voices reflected in what
we see on screen and in the media,
we don't have a full reflection of
human experience and therefore
don't have a fully equitable soci-
ety."
Lyon said. "There's a very lim- She referenced another USC
ited vocabulary of what women study that looked at the way jour-
are." nalists cover war. The study found
"I think what film really needs that female journalists wrote
to do for us gender-wise is give more humanistic stories and
us examples, open our imagi- focused more on the victims and
nation for who women can be people affected by the war. Male
and what their strengths could journalists wrote about the more
be outside of home and outside violent aspects of war.
of relationships," she continued. "They had a very different
"Because when you can expose vision of the world, and that vision
so many people to an idea, I think was projected back out to audiene-
that's one of the ones we can focus es," Libresco said. "We want the
on to really change this unfortu- full range of voices to create more
nately skewed sense of women." access to help tell those stories."
Lyon mentioned a screenwriter When she isn't consumed with
friend of hers in New York who her GSI duties, Ralko is her own
wrote a script for a film centered writer, director, producer, music
on a female superhero. A group of supervisor and editor on small-
producers thought it was great, film projects. It's impossible to
but said it would never fly without untangle her work from her iden-
the inclusion of a strong relation- tity as a woman and a feminist.
ship arc. In addition to her Sundance
According to Lyon, the unwill- position, Libresco produces and
ingness to try new types of char- writes. She, too, noted that her
acters and challenge stereotypes identity as a woman and feminist
of women onscreen is innately tied influences the way she sees the
up with the gender barrier behind world, and her work reflects that.
the scenes. "I've always had the instinct to
"If we started changing the sto- work on women's stories --towork
rylines for women, then I think with women artists and to support
women would have a lot more women directors as a producer,"
space to have their voices heard," she said. "It's a definite instinct for
Lyon said. "Right now, we're very me because I knew there weren't
much so telling men's stories." as many films from that point of
view out there for women."
Gendered gaze Gellman said she does believe
that female filmmakers shoot
So, do men make different mov- women differently than men do.
ies than women? "I think female directors shoot
Many of the students I talked women as more of a whole," she
to remarked that moviegoers said. "They seem like fuller char-
sometimes expect women to make acters; they're not just there to
more sensitive films and love sto- serve the men."
ries. Bigelow is the clear exception This difference in perspective
to the notion that women can't is known as the male gaze, a term
used in cinema to describe when
the camera puts the audience into
the perspective of a heterosexual
man. Think Megan Fox lifting the
hood of a car in "Transformers."
In a directors' roundtable at
the Sundance Film Festival in
January, five female filmmakers
with movies in this year's festi-
val discussed the different ways
in which they capture female
sexuality onscreen. Director Liz
Garcia talked about the sex in her
Sundance submission, "The Life-
guard."
"My film really deals with
explicit female sexuality," she said
during the roundtable. "I mean,
there's cunnilingus in the movie.
I think that tells you right there
that this is a woman making the
movie."
More cracks in the ceiling
So, according to Flinn, the
glass ceiling isn't even being *
approached.
And according to Petro, women
have actually lost ground. She
said there are ebbs and flows, but
women aren't on a truly forward
trajectory in film or beyond.
"I think, today, there's a back-
lash against feminism and a back-
lash to women's rights, and you
can see it at every level," Petro
said. "I think that a new gen-
eration has to be engaged to be
attentive to reproductive rights,
let alone to access and opportuni-
ties in various workplaces. I think
that there still is incredible insti-
tutionalized sexism that needs to
be addressed. And I think there's
been a kind of complacency that
these issues are no longer issues
when, in fact, they are. And they
need continual vigilance."
The issue of complacency is
drawn out in the Sundance study.
As part of the qualitative analysis,
the researchers interviewed both
males and females in the industry.
"When we did these in-depth
interviews, we understood one
of the major barriers to chang-
ing the data is that people don't
believe there is a problem,"
Libresco said. "Now we have
data. We have numbers. There's
no more refuting that there's a
problem. So, we can point to the
data to raise awareness."
While the Sundance U.S. nar-
rative film competition boasted
50 percent female directors this
year, the Annenberg researchers
say these results have to be seen
three years consecutively before
anyone can claim real change.
While not everyone is tuned
in, the students I spoke with are
acutely aware that they are enter-
ing an industry dominated by
men. They're "nervous"; they're
"scared"; they're "intimidated."
But they still maintain an incred-
ibly positive outlook, determined
to do what they love and share it
with others.
Throughout our conversations,
it was clearthatprogresswilltake
a long, long time and it requires
sweeping changes throughout
the industry - from the way films
are financed to who we recognize
at the Academy Awards.
- This article has been abridged
for print. For the full story, visit
michigandaily.com.
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