Last week came the results of a disheartening new study about the lack of female film critics. Look at those numbers. It’s an interesting problem, and not news to anyone who is paying attention to what is going on. It’s no secret that the Boys Club is a real thing. On some level, it may be maintained deliberately (that Variety article mentions that horrible email sent by an editor forbidding a film critic to review any of those stupid “women’s movies”), on other levels (far more insidious) it is unconscious. But it exists. It exists in the literary world as well, and that has also gotten a lot of attention recently. Those who pooh-pooh that this is even a problem … well, let’s say I find their motives suspicious.
Two film sites just came out with lists of female film critics people should be reading, a gesture I very much appreciate, and not just because I’m on one of the lists. I have mixed feelings about being honored for my writing and my vagina. Like, can’t we leave my vagina out of it? But I’m not that much of an idealist. I understand how privilege works, and I understand that the situation as it stands is unfair. So to be included on such a list is flattering, and I am glad that this conversation is occurring. It needs to occur.
A great example of how the invisible privilege that makes people blind to diversity operates is in the recent AV Club list of the best films of the ’00s, and there wasn’t one female director represented. 50 films, not one female director. Shameful. Especially for that particular decade, when so many female directors kicked some serious ass. I don’t think they set out to exclude women, but it just happened that way, and not one person along the way thought to themselves, “Huh … what is wrong with this picture …” Hopefully, the AV Club (a great site) did some serious soul-searching in the wake of that list.
I do my thing, I have people who have been reading me for years, and I am grateful to the opportunities I have been given (or, to put it in a better way, opportunities I have earned). Having a diversity of voices is an important part of cultural conversation. Especially now, when misogyny and dismissive attitudes towards women’s points of view is almost endemic (and reflected in the last presidential campaign season. Sheesh, what a mess.)
A related thought: There have been studies done about reading habits of men and women. Women have no issue reading books by men. But men reading books by women is a much rarer phenomenon. There have been huge arguments that have reached the public eye occasionally over things like book design. Books designed solely for a female audience – with the typical chick-lit cover – are clearly good business if you look at it in a certain light but there have been authors who have balked at that ghettoization. And rightly so. I never would have read the amazing book Inglorious, by Joanna Kavenna, with the cover chosen for its American hardback edition, a typical chick-lit cover. It would have been a turnoff. I’m a woman, but I am not drawn to the “chick-lit genre”, as it is marketed to me. Not my thing. I like more serious weighty books. Inglorious isn’t “chick-lit” at all. It’s a harrowing description of a nervous breakdown, told over the course of 5 or 6 days in this one woman’s life, and it’s an incredible debut novel. It has nothing to do with adorable clumsy female heroines, and their romantic shenanigans, talking with friends at happy hour over Cosmopolitans. It is a brutal book about a woman losing it. It was completely mis-marketed to US audiences. The brou-haha Kavenna made about that cover was so intense that they actually changed it for the paperback edition, and good for her for making a stink. Here’s Kavenna:
“I begged them not to use that cover but they did, and the reviews in the US were slightly different because of it. One said, ‘This is the most boring chick-lit novel I’ve ever read.’ They may have felt it backfired, because they did a much more sober cover for the paperback.”
This is a conversation about perception. It’s an important conversation.
I’ve always had male readers. I think I have more male readers than female, although I’ve never tallied it up. I am thankful to everyone who shows up here and joins in the conversation.
I am grateful to both of the male writers at Film.com and Flavorwire who saw the results of that study and didn’t get defensive, didn’t just ignore it, didn’t dismiss it as a problem in the first place. They set out to highlight some women doing some good work out there, and that’s a good thing. I’m pleased to be included. It’s nice to see a couple of my friends on that list as well. I mean, I’ll keep writing regardless. I’ve been writing a long long time. But it is nice to be there, I won’t lie.
Here are the lists:
Film.com: 7 Female Film Critics You Should Be Reading.
Flavorwire.com: 15 Great Female Film Critics You Should Be Reading. (I am described as “scholarly (yet lively)”. Thank goodness for that “yet”. My dad would be proud.)
Sheila, for what it’s worth, this bias exists in math and science – and among both men and women. A math professor at the University of British Columbia whose blog I enjoy commented on a recent study in her field where “In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. …. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent.”
I liked that she took her fellow math professors to task with, “You’re a mathematician, right? What do you do when you see a difficult problem? Do you give up, collect your toys and go home? Or do you start chipping at it, looking for a crack that will take you part of the way? ”
Naming and shaming the jerks and gatekeepers isn’t going to get it all done. Getting decent folks to take note of their biases is probably the biggest win here in the US. I like to think of myself as a decent person, but I am certain I would not have checked to see if there were any women directors on the list of 50 best movies. I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Richard Feynman, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
If interested, here’s her full post.
http://ilaba.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/gender-bias-101-for-mathematicians/
Mutecypher – very interesting! There was a piece recently – can’t remember where – about gender bias in music, and how female violin players, drummers, trumpet players, whatever, were not represented in orchestras. It was still predominantly men. Not because they weren’t competent, but because … whatever, people just saw their gender, and were less likely to hire them. So orchestras started doing blind auditions – where they could not see the person auditioning. They stood behind a screen and played. And voila – the number of women players in orchestras skyrocketed. The ability needs to be the same – no doubt about it – otherwise, it’s just tokenism and you don’t do anyone any favors by hiring them BECAUSE they’re a woman if they’re not as good. But it was a very interesting example of how gender bias works – and I am sure those hiring only men aren’t fully conscious of how exclusive they are. Privilege like that can blind you and you don’t even know it (like the AV Club). Feynman’s quote is great!
I honestly didn’t want to carp about this since it’s great to be put on a list. I am not dissing the list. I am thrilled! And the response, so far, has been really awesome.
and again: I really think that this is about perception. It’s fascinating: a violin SOUNDS different if a woman plays it? Just as well as a man does? No – that can’t be true – it’s that the person judging them has a view of women and so can’t even PERCEIVE what is in front of them. It’s quite amazing. And in literature: If you did not know that Annie Proulx was a woman … how would one perceive her writing? Women writers get handed such a load of SHIT from the reviewers, the publishers, the editors – it’s outrageous. Not to mention from unadventurous male readers who think that a woman couldn’t tell them anything about the world. Or they’re not interested in female perspective.
But Annie Proulx (just to use her as an example – and I chose her specifically) doesn’t write stereotypically female-oriented books. She writes about ranchers and weirdos and loners and Wyoming. Of course The Shipping News was a huge success across gender lines – a major moment when men and women were both reading the same book BY A WOMAN. It often happens the other way around – men and women all reading the same book but it’s more often than not by a man. But it’s been proven that women are more adventurous versatile readers (perhaps because from the get-go we are expected to read books by men, throughout school, because there are flat out more male authors in the canont.) And I respect the canon. I don’t want to push Mark Twain off so some second-rate female writer can be included – that’s tokenism.
Men need to really look at where they might be “fooling themselves” in this arena. (Men who get defensive, I mean – men who dislike such conversations as this one – they need to really look at their reactions, and ask themselves some tough questions.) Women have done more soul-searching in this regard – it’s part of being lower on the totem pole status-wise.
// Getting decent folks to take note of their biases is probably the biggest win here in the US. //
Yup. That’s the only way real progress will be made. And it’ll be better for ALL of us when that happens.
Annie Proulx is a great example. I recall early on when Oprah (bear with me) had her book club (still going as I just checked) and there was the Jonathan Franzen controversy, I decided to use her selections to try out more fiction written by women. I thought the quality of writing by Barbara Kingsolver and Jacqueline Mitchard and Carol Shields and Jane Smiley (yeah, the last two were not Oprah selections) was as high as anyone else I was reading at the time – but I just didn’t feel hooked on their voices enough to read a second or third book of theirs (with the exception of Kingsolver, I’ve read 2 of hers). But Annie Proulx, I can just gobble down her stuff.
At the same time, I have given Don DiLlillo and Cormac McCarthy 2 or 3 tries each, even though I’m similarly impressed with the quality of their writing and uncompelled by the worlds and characters they want to tell me about. I do think I’ve given those two some additional tries because “everyone says they’re great.” Do I treat them more seriously because they’re guys? Does “everyone?”
My unequivocal conclusion is that any writer described as Faulkneresque is to be avoided.
I don’t know if it’s easier for women to be genre writers (we can skip a detailed discussion of what that means and possibly agree that it’s like pornography – you know it when you see it). I think of Anne Rice, JK Rowling, Ursula K. LeGuin, Lois Bujold McMasters, Anne McCaffrey – all with many books in my library. Anne R. could use an editor with a machete, but all of them can write some wonderful stuff.
In terms of reading and writing, it’s hard to grant that readers have preferences – and that at the appropriate level that allows for generalization, men and women have different preferences – while at the same time saying that men “ought” to read other things. I know you aren’t doing that. When it’s “just some blogger” writing a “best of” list, there’s an understanding (sometimes a condescension) that “it’s just a list of your preferences.”
But when it’s a bigger outfit (like AV Club) the “best of” lists are hoped to be somehow more objective. They ought to be.
I’d heard of the orchestra auditions before. Scientists are considering similar things with papers submitted for publication, essentially removing the names of authors so that papers can be judged on merit alone. This places a big burden upon judges and referees for publication. There are some concerns that papers which are more speculative and outside of the norm papers will be rejected – the thinking being that once you reach a certain stature in your field, you ought to be given some allowances for weirdness and speculation. It’s thought that the risk to one’s reputation is a sufficient constraint to the temptation to hubris.
That doesn’t seem to stop famous people from famously doing dumb stuff, so I’m not convinced it will stop scientists.
I guess I wish that men would question their “preferences” a little bit – and try to stretch. Why don’t men pick up books written by women? I wish they would ask themselves why. A blogger I read spent an entire year where he tried to rectify his own “preference” and read only books by women. I applaud people who do such things. He was like, “I don’t know what my problem is – I looked at the books I’ve read over the last 15 years – and there’s only a handful by women. Let me see what else is out there.”
And he was pleasantly surprised! He read a book by Elinor Lipman – one of my favorite authors – and her books definitely get labeled “chick lit”, and are given “chick lit covers” – but she is FABULOUS – a real social commentarist. And he loved the book he read.
So I do wish that people would examine what they call their preferences. Of course you can’t force someone to like something they don’t like – but I do think there’s a bit of blindness going on – and it seeps into the way books by women are reviewed. Male critics review books by men, women books by women, and the situation is institutionalized.
and I definitely have those authors I’ve tried to get into but just can’t. I find Don DeLillo very uneven – but when he’s good, he blows me away.
It’s so true about orchestras! Ever since the practice of blind auditions started, things have started to change–but it’s still an uphill battle, especially in certain European orchestras (the Vienna Phil only lifted its ban in 1997 after much protest and promoted one female harp player from sub to permanent.) As a young musician, I also heard about Abbie Conant–who became principal trombone in the Munich Philharmonic after several rounds of blind auditions (where “number 16” clearly stood out) and then, after playing excellently for over a year, was demoted to second trombone for no demonstrable reason apart from being a woman. She ended up suing, and there was all kinds of nonsense at the trial about how she couldn’t possibly play as loud as a man, etc., so she had machines brought in to measure the decibel levels. Sure enough, she could play just as loudly…
Also, my mom had a viola-playing friend in the 80s who kept trying out for the Chicago Philharmonic and made it to the final round multiple times, which was the only part that was NOT a blind audition, where she would be eliminated. After the third or fourth time this happened, the judges got the hint (or got embarassed?) and she finally entered the orchestra.
Incidentally, at many blind auditions there is carpeting or some other means of muffling the sound of high heels!
Lizzie – wow, so fascinating! It really shows how people do not want to give up a foothold to women – there is such resistance, it’s unbelievable.
Love the detail about the carpeting!!
I think I spy the old ever-moving goalposts trick!…You passed the blind test so it must be that you do not play LOUD enough. Next year (or next applicant) it will be something else, alas.
My own theory for at least part of this is that cultures developed by any sort of male intelligentsia are almost always envy-oriented shadow-acts of the jock or “locker-room” culture that defines so much of male development in school and from which most of the bookish types who become writers of any sort (let alone critics) are pretty much excluded….Those few who aren’t quickly learn to develop protective coloring and–just speaking from experience–it takes a while for it to wear off, even if you want it to. Which, of course, many do not.
And suffice it to say that the formative jock culture is about as friendly to women as you can imagine. Much the way cats are friendly to wounded mice. It’s a complicated dance that hardly plays out in merely obvious ways. Lots of “sensitive” males are prone to it and I frankly don’t know any grand design for fixing the problem except to keep writing about it and trying to pry open one mind at a time. (And keep making great art, of course. Or writing great criticism. Or whatever. The Shangri-Las and the Go-Gos did it for me. It can happen!)
I don’t really read much film criticism, but I know one of the tricks that rock critics use is mindless overpraise of the universally accepted genius. They pick some unassailable titan who happens to be black or female or gay or whatever. Then they make sure to write about them–and their art–as though they are slightly superior to a fundamentalist’s preacher’s version of Jesus. They also bristle at any suggestion that their preferred paragon is anything less than perfection! Then they repeatedly point to what they have written (or bristled at) to assure everyone that they don’t have a racist/sexist bone in their body! (Aretha Franklin is really handy for this purpose, though Janis Joplin will do in a pinch.) I’m not sure any female director, for instance, has reached that status, yet. But if one does you can bet she’ll become the same sort of touchstone….”I can’t possibly be misogynist. I have LOVED Kathryn Bigelow since ‘Point Break!’!” Trust me, assuming the larger culture in general retains any remote semblance of a common standard, some version of this is coming.)
Anyway, that’s my two cents from a male perspective! Maybe if we all keep beating our heads against the wall together, the cracks will begin to widen.
I think it goes way deeper than intelligentsia, although that is a part of how it manifests in modern culture.
The Latin root of the word “pudendum” is “shame”. This shit runs deep. It’s in the language.
I hear you, with rock music criticism – great point! So yes, they will be congratulated for not TOTALLY leaving women out! It’s interesting the sneers that certain performers receive because their audience is made up of young girls – Taylor Swift, for example. And of course, our main man, Elvis Presley! We have discussed this before! Women are just not seen as “serious”. Even though they are the most serious fans on the planet, in terms of loyalty, buying power, and passion.
It’s a disgusting situation and I try not to think about it too much. Many of the people who have given me a “leg up” in my own career have been men. But it’s amazing how strong the desire is to leave women out of the conversation.
And the liberal open-minded guys tend to be the worst offenders, in my experience.
Like I said, this shit runs deep.
HOWEVER. The whole point of this little rant was to say how happy I was to be included on that list – and I have certainly discovered a lot of new writers because of it. Not “women writers”. But writers, period.
Yeah it certainly goes way deeper than intelligentsia. But they’re the ones we might at least expect to try to be better! (And you’re so right about the “liberal” minded often being the worst, partly because they can’t really conceive of themselves as ever being less than fair-minded. I was going to make that point, but I felt myself beginning to rant so I thought I better just stick to the original point! lol)
Okay, I was kinda ranting anyway…but I at least wanted to avoid the DOUBLE RANT!
I was thrilled to see you on that list of film critics.
And if anyone wants to read about female filmmakers not named Bigelow, Ephron, or Coppola, they can visit my place from time to time.
I clicked the highlighted text in the third paragraph of this essay and it lead to an Indiewire blog entry that has a link to another web page where Carrie Rickey lists some viable female-directed movies that could have made The Onion’s list. I like that, because accusations of gender/race exclusion ring hollow without nominations of worthy alternatives. Despite their problems (simplistic, reductive, biased, etc.), I enjoy movie lists because they provoke thought/debate and send my mind wandering around the cinematic landscape, which is always fun. Looking over Carrie Rickey’s list, a question I’d never pondered occurred to me: “What is the best movie of all time, directed by a woman?” I know, I know, it’s a corny question, but I’m curious to know if “Sheila Variations” readers have their own answers. My choice might be Lina Wertmüller’s, “Pasqualino Settebellezze” (Seven Beauties).
It’s disheartening though because there are so OBVIOUSLY so MANY alternatives. It’s not like you have to even dig deep or think hard to find fascinating great interesting movies directed by women. It’s not a “niche” market. This is WILLFUL blindness. That’s what was so depressing about the AV Club’s list.
I think mine might be Dogfight, by Nancy Savoca – but there may be others – I will have to think on it. The Hitchhiker, by Ida Lupino is a terrific film.
Speaking of which – my piece on Bill Murray just went live. So I’d have to say Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation as well.
“Dogfight”. I Netflixed that about a year ago because of your frequent raves, and I think you and Matt Seitz did an online conversation about it at The House Next Door. I’ll be honest, I don’t like it as much as you, but hey, nobody’s perfect. :) That final scene, however, is… ASTONISHING. It is a mini masterpiece that poetically expresses what the Vietnam war did to this country’s psyche about as well as any entire movie made by people with last names like Coppola, Stone, or Kubrick. It belongs on the short list of great ‘final scenes’ along with “Casablanca”, “Beau Travail”, Satyajit Ray’s “Apur Sansar”, “City Lights”, “The Long Good Friday” and, and… hell that is a short list. Just thinking about the final scene of “Dogfight” gives me a feeling of frisson.