4B — Thursday, November 17, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

SHONDA RHIMES

Check out this blazer I just got at the Givenchy sample sale.

Last 
week, 
a 
relentless 

paranoia consumed my life as 
I prepared to direct a live talk 
show in my media production 
class. 
For 
exactly 
three 

minutes, I would take my turn 
in the director’s chair, giving 
commands 
while 
juggling 

three cameras, audio, graphics 
and cues to the talent. I was to 
follow a semi-scripted outline 
and make decisions on the fly, 
while my professor silently 
jotted down notes behind me. 
It was all very stressful and 
very much outside my comfort 
zone, because, for the neurotic 
planner that I am, “live” is a 
four letter word.

I’m sure all nine students 

in my production class were 
nervous for their directing 
rotation. I was. I watched 
as each individual’s nerves 
surfaced in their own ways; 
fingers twisted in hair, bitten 
nails, cracking knuckles. There 
was another tell, one that 
exactly half the class employed: 
the disclaimer. Sorry if this 
sucks. I’m totally gonna mess 
up. I apologize in advance.

The 
students 
who 
used 

disclaimers, I noticed, were 
exclusively women.

I recognize that my sample 

size is small, but even so, I find 
it extremely unlikely that this 
was an isolated coincidence. 
The fact is, all four women in my 
class preemptively disqualified 
their abilities as directors in 
some capacity, while the four 
men did not.

Disclaimers act as a sort of 

defense mechanism, a way to 
show self-awareness in your 
uncertainties and ensure that 
you don’t appear overconfident 
or pompous. They are used to 
acknowledge that you’re not 
blind to your imperfections or 
insusceptible to mistakes. But 
a thought prefaced with,“This 
may be a bad idea, but…” is not 
nearly as convincing as the 
same one without.

So why is there a gender 

disparity in confidence? Maybe, 
perhaps even subconsciously, 
the women in my film and 
television 
classes 
are 
less 

confident 
in 
their 
abilities 

simply because they haven’t 
seen many women take on 
high-powered 
positions 
in 

the industry. It’s no secret 
that Hollywood is an old boys 
club; any list of the industry’s 
“greats” will be overcrowded 
with old, white men. In the 
timeline of film and television, 
relatively few women have 
risen to great acclaim in the 
stereotypically male dominated 
roles of directors, producers, 
screenwriters and the like.

History has not cultivated 

many 
female 
role 
models, 

but there has been enormous 
progress. Throughout the past 

decade, incredible women have 
been able to break through 
Hollywood’s 
glass 
ceiling, 

successfully 
writing 
scripts, 

directing shows and running 
studios. And the women that 
are 
breaking 
through 
the 

boundaries are confident in 
their abilities and stand by 
their ideas. No disclaimers.

It’s infinitely easier to go 

along with the status quo. 
When 
predominantly 
men 

raised their hands in my Art 
of Film class last semester, 
I noticed the trend, but did 
nothing. I, like many, didn’t 
want to say something wrong 
or divisive, was not willing 
to run the risk of looking 
bad. I only got up the courage 
to speak one time in that 
lecture: ironically, when the 
class was having a passionate 
debate about producer, author 
and 
showrunner 
Shonda 

Rhimes. I talked about her 
dedication to blind casting, 
her movement to normalize 
minorities 
through 
her 

storylines and her persistence 
to 
grow 
opportunities 
for 

women within the industry. 
Her 
success, 
dazzling 
and 

inspiring, gave me confidence 
to overcome the perceptions of 
my own shortcomings.

The only way that progress 

can 
continue 
is 
if 
young 

women 
take 
initiative. 
It 

starts in the classroom, in our 
student organizations, in our 
internships. It’s time we take 
on projects that may be outside 
our comfort zones and have the 
confidence that somehow, we’ll 
figure it out. It’s time to stop 
saying we can’t before we even 
try.

DANIELLE YACOBSON

Daily Arts Writer

In 2016, young female filmmakers 
shouldn’t need to give disclaimers

Instead of apologizing, women going into film should feel empowered

Last week, 
a relentless 
paranoia 

consumed my life.

MGM

Check out my gloves, I just got them at the ACNE sample sale.

Action movies are more than 

just car chases. In the debris of 
every explosion, we find answers 
to questions that form the crux of 
human society: Who is the enemy? 
Why do we fight them? What 
distinguishes them from us?

Historically, 
action 
movie 

tropes have evolved alongside 
American foreign policy and 
global trade relations. We once had 
the Godfather and bands of Italian 
mobsters. Then came Russian 
gangsters and spies. Now we’re 
boarding private jets to coolly 
futuristic 
Asian 
metropolises, 

shooting at each other from the 
glittering towers of Shanghai, 
Tokyo, Hong Kong or Macau and 
sipping a cocktail in the hotel bar 
afterward.

We see this in “Fast and Furious: 

Tokyo 
Drift,” 
“Pacific 
Rim,” 

“Transformers: Age of Extinction” 
and more. Even less action-based 
thrillers jumpstart their plotlines 
with an injection of foreign travel, 
like “Contagion,” which began in a 
Hong Kong casino. “Skyfall,” one 
of the highest grossing films in 
the past few years, continues the 
James Bond legacy in a Shanghai 
skyscraper 
and 
the 
fictional 

Golden Dragon Casino in Macau.

For 
“Skyfall,” 
screenwriter 

John 
Logan 
explained 
that 

production deliberately sought out 
locations that were “in opposition” 
to London with an exotic quality 
that made them “places for Bond 
to be uncomfortable.”

But it’s not just Bond that’s 

uncomfortable. So is the audience, 
a presumed monolithic body of 
English-speaking, 
non-ethnic 

Westerners. It is this discomfort — 
this newness, foreignness — that 
creates the movie’s thrill. These 

cities are meant to be unfamiliar, 
harkening back to our most primal 
instinct to fear the unknown.

The dynamic is not limited 

to Asian cities alone. Action 
movie franchises take viewers 
all over the world, from Latin 
America to the Middle East, 
precisely 
because 
foreignness 

is inherently suspenseful. For 
Western audiences — particularly 
American ones — Asia has the 
stereotype of being perpetually 
foreign, taking the feeling of thrill 
even further.

Moreover, 
because 
the 

audience 
generally 
does 
not 

have 
first-person 
experience 

visiting 
international 
cities, 

screenwriters have the freedom 
of imagining whatever they want 
to fill that blank space. Asian 
cities, specifically, are tied to 
the image of high-tech futurism 
and consumerism, making them 
places where slick new gadgets, sly 
transactions, anything the mind 
can conjure up, flourish.

The setting is also about money, 

and characterizing protagonists 
along certain class lines. Notably, 
Bond 
doesn’t 
dally 
in 
the 

agricultural fields of Southeast 
Asia — those are reserved for 
stories of ancient treasures or 
war-related espionage. Instead, 
he only visits Asia’s economic 
powerhouses, and of those, only 
the cities that have the strongest 
trade relations with the US and 
the UK.

Here, his enemies are wealthy 

Asian businessmen or Western 
expats. His choice of associates — 
even in the villains he fights — is 
just one physical marker of Bond’s 
status as a sleek, cosmopolitan 
protagonist. He has his Armani 
suit, his Rolex and, now, the 
international network connecting 
him to pockets of power across the 
globe. He has both the financial 

means and the elite connections 
to jetset between London and 
New York, and now Shanghai 
and Macau. The plot is no longer 
just domestic. The more foreign 
backdrops the movie has, the 
grander the scale of the action, 
creating ever-higher stakes to 
indulge in.

There also is a real-world 

political and financial element in 
the trend of setting blockbuster 
action movies in Asia. Lately, 
Chinese investors have funneled 
a lot of money into Hollywood 
media 
companies, 
and 
Asia 

is a growing market for these 
action 
movies. 
The 
latest 

“Transformers” 
movie 
was 

heavily promoted in China and 
became the country’s highest 
grossing film at the time of 
release.

Some production companies 

respond to this new audience by 
creating special export versions 
of the film with after-edits 
making 
the 
storylines 
more 

relatable to Chinese viewers. It 
could be that now, writers are 
moving the entire stories to Asia 
— an artistic decision fueled by 
the global economic market.

But 
in 
practice, 
these 

international locations are used as 
nothing more than backdrops for 
(usually) American protagonists 
to play in. Instead of using the 
setting to shape the plot, it seems 
that it’s simply thrown in as 
an afterthought to add extra 
stimulation for audiences and 
production companies alike.

Since movies are a mirror 

reflection of society, it means we 
as viewers have an underlying 
mindset that enables this type 
of cinematic ethnocentrism. We 
should question why that mindset 
is so common and ask ourselves: 
are we making backdrops of 
foreign places in our own lives?

Considering the action 
movie as a mirror for life

VANESSA WONG

Daily Arts Writer

How the East and West are involved in action-packed films

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Just a shot of vodka! Hehehe!

Don’t have your own Jeffrey? 
Store bought is fine.

Flavortown. You can check out 
anytime you like, but you can 
never leave

‘Good Eats’ was indeed Good, but 
he’s trended downwards since 
then.

Former Daily Arts Writer devotes 
his days to sub-par chocolate 
mousse. 

OR

