Last week, California Congressman Darrell Issa convened a hearing in DC. The topic: Should the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") require employers to pay for birth control? The panel: Five men representing various faith constituencies.
"The hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration's actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience," said an explanatory letter issued by Issa's staff, but most women were not persuaded. Photos of this all-male panel immediately went viral and triggered a national awakening.
One week later the media should be hyping the 84th annual Oscars, but the atmosphere is uncharacteristically restrained. Instead of movie-pundit predictions and breathless articles from the fashion police, the web is filled with statistics.
For the past ten years I've been counting too, but this year people are actually asking me why. Coincidence? I don't think so. Congress chooses five men -- and only men -- to help determine access to birth control? AMPAS chooses five men -- and only men -- to compete for the accolade "Best Director"? Suddenly people are asking themselves: Where are the women?
Cameras flash in DC, light illuminates the darkness, and it's not just those five Best Director nominees who find themselves caught in the glare. The names of thirteen nominees appear in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, but only one is a woman, and she's nominated for a film ("Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy") in which there are almost no female characters. The Best Original Screenplay category looks better (the nominees for "Bridesmaids" -- two names out of six candidates -- are female), but it doesn't take much digging to learn that many of the most infamous scenes in "Bridesmaids" were added by the (male) producer and the (male) director. So exactly who is being rewarded here?
And in the Best Picture category? Eight of the nine nominees for Best Picture tell their stories from all male points of view, with wives, mothers, daughters, girlfriends, and female colleagues all pushed to the edge of the drama. Only one of the Best Picture candidates, "The Help," has women in lead roles, and that film (although based on a book by a woman) was written and directed by a man.
But where are the women? Don't women hold up half the sky?
Of course they do! And when cameras snap the stars as they arrive on the Red Carpet tomorrow night, and when cameras pan the audience decorously applauding each new winner, lots of women will be there on our TV screens. Beautiful women in gorgeous gowns will adorn the arms of accomplished men, but they'll be seen and not heard -- like well-raised children in a proper Victorian family.
"Shouldn't the acting categories be collapsed already?" my male colleagues sometimes ask me. "Best Performance instead of Best Actor and Best Actress?" "Oh great," I reply. "Then there will be no women on stage at all!"
This isn't the time to drill down into the numbers, analyze them, and attempt a cure. Right now it's enough to simply acknowledge the current situation, and appreciate how unfair this all is in a world in which women do, indeed "hold up half the sky."
It's very hard to see what's not there. That's why radical Islamists force women to wear burqas. That's why Ultra-Orthodox Jews deface images of women on Jerusalem billboards. Since 9/11, complex female characters have virtually disappeared from multiplexes while Fundamentalist Christians have launched an all-out attack on reproductive rights that most Americans have taken for granted for decades. Coincidence? I don't think so.
Meanwhile, Oscar may look gold, but in fact he's really blue:
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© Jan Lisa Huttner (2/25/12) -- Special for Huffington Post Woman
Jan Lisa Huttner is a Chicago-based film critic and award-winning Feminist activist. She blogs at www.TheHotPinkPen.com, and her new book "Penny's Picks: 50 Movies by Women Filmmakers 2002-2011" is available from Amazon as a paperback and on Kindle.
But back to my initial point: there are not enough female directors working in Hollywood, or even outside Hollywood to begin with. Name a few good films this year that were directed by women, films likely to get buzz and attention. I bet you could count them with one hand, or two at most.
We do need more women interested in visual storytelling, more women knowledgeable about film, more women wanting to express themselves through this particular medium. There aren't nearly enough of them to convey the female experience and outlook on film in a significant way.
Is this a frustrating, culturally nihilistic situation? Yes, it is. Very much so. But to bemoan it is useless. Doing the work is what matters.
This from a female director.
She also writes: "Women everywhere have voices, vision's dreams; they have things they want to say, and we have to support women filmmakers so they will have more opportunities to make their films and get their voices heard. This isn't just an issue for Americans; this is an issue for women all around the world."
On the flip side, though, while female directors have a lot of potential for expression and in uncharted territories too, they are also in a situation of arrested development. Not only are there so few of them, but among those few, some conform to male-type of stories, style, viewpoints. They do not genuinely express themselves, but rather get into a preexisting mold, which has been created by male executives, male filmmakers and male audiences. They, then, have nothing more to offer or put on the table than any random male director.
So, the situation needs addressing on both ends- the audiences, but also the directors themselves. It takes a lot of courage, strength, endurance and self-confidence to be a filmmaker and express yourself in that way. Arrogance even. Like in many other professions, women sometimes fail to tap into those qualities, and while they are often more qualified and knowledgeable than their male counterparts, they stay behind, in the backseat, in the the shadow, behind a male colleague. This isn't specific to the film industry. It's a pattern with women overall.
There comes a point where political correctness is shown to be what it is....assinine.
You could make the same statement about black directors, which there are probably less of than female directors. Are we prejudice against black directors? Of course not, but there just aren't as many making films because Hollywood began as a male dominated industry. As time passes, the waters will be diluted a bit and we'll see some more diversity in the awards.
This year is a pretty big joke anyways, there aren't many good films even nominated. It's basically one of those years where if you're an old famous actor/actress you got nominated. The only truly great performance this year was Rooney Mara in the girl with the dragon tattoo and she'll most likely lose to Meryl Streep just because of seniority.
No actor male or female did a better job this year than Rooney Mara and there's no arguing that.
As a 60+ year old woman, I can hardly believe we're actually back to having conversations about whether or not BIRTH CONTROL should be made available! And what the hell ever happened to all the effort we made to have the media stop objectifying women?
You could never tell by the clothes that are marketed for young girls or the obsession with cosmetic surgery, that women ever burned their bras and refused to wear high heels and uncomfortable, objectifying clothing to receive male approval.
"Mad Men" isn't the only place where the dysfunctional early '60's are alive and well in 2012.
It appears, the audiences have spoken.
The constant references to the TOTALLY unrelated Issa hearings is an attempt to cover up a baseless sexist argument.
But if you don't understand the free market, I shall not attempt to explain it to you this morning.
If you were a woman you would understand how TOTALLY related the Issa hearings are to the oscars. Both the Issa panel and the academy are male enclaves that do or will deem what is relevant and important based on an almost exclusive male point of view and agenda. If you were a woman you would understand how problematic (and with regard to Issa- down right scary) that is. I'm sure most men would have a problem with a woman only panel that is predominately white determining what is important about men's health or an academy made up almost entirely of white women determining what was artistically and cinematically relevant.
What the Academy does is a bunch of masturbatory, corporate backpatting that mean's nothing to 99.9% of America.
Comparing the two, on any level, is a touch absurd. And vapid.
Also, movies are not male and female.
A man's favorite movie may well have been directed by a woman and a woman's favorite movie may have directed by a man.
Feminists, of course, see the world in terms of gender quotas.
So, because they assume that everyone thinks like them...that they will vote along racial and gender lines...(of course, using that logic...John McCain is president right now) so the only way to rectify the situation is to put more voters who they believe will ALSO vote along racial and gender lines.
That overwhelmingly male academy voted for Bigelow as best director years ago.
In fact....they were SO eager to give the award to a woman simply to quiet the critics (ahem) that they passed over the man who CHANGED cinema.
Cameron pioneered the techniques that form the basis of ALL 3-D movies going forward.
But, instead of giving it to the MAN who made one of the top 5 most important cinematic innovations of all time....they gave it to his ex-wife because it was "time for a woman to win."
Quotas won out over merit.
*Technically this movie might've been released in 2010, so not relevant to this year's Oscars, but I don't recall many people advocating it the way they have, say, Bridesmaids.
It's an adapted screenplay meaning adapted from another source; in the case of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," a novel. Were there many female characters in the source material? If not, then the addition of female characters to the film, unless they serve a purpose that directly contributes to the story, would do nothing other than offer up some gratuitous eye candy. I don't think "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is that kind of a film.
"Beautiful women in gorgeous gowns will adorn the arms of accomplished men, but they'll be seen and not heard -- like well-raised children in a proper Victorian family."
They are there as the spouse/partner/guest of the nominee. Unless they're nominated themselves why would they need to be heard? The event is not about them. But there is absolutely nothing stopping from making art of their own and being heard in their own right if they want to.
As for the books chosen to be made into movies being predominantly about men, there is clearly a gender preference here. Whether it is one we should accept or attempt to change is a matter for a longer discussion.
When Katheryn Bigelow won Best Director for The Hurt Locker, it wasn't because she was a woman, it was because she did a damn good job directing an award winning film.
Like the photography and architecture fields, film is perversely male dominated. When roughly half of all lawyers and doctors are women, why are so few of them chose to direct?