Sunday Morning Political Slot : )

Good morning and welcome to the Sunday Morning Political Slot : )

Two issues on my mind today for the debut of this slot.

1. Hollywood Sexism?

One thing has really struck me since I started putting my lists together. The difficulty of remembering great female performances and the absences of some in some years. It really troubled me. Am I a sexist pig unable to recognise great female roles and the kind of person who (subconsciously) believes that making movies is a fundamentally "masculine" act. As a (very) committed egalitarian, this has troubled me quite a bit and it made me think very seriously about how I viewed films (making lists is very therapeutic, trust me!). I don't believe I'm sexist, seriously hope that I'm not, and would welcome any challenges on this level to help me out. So I thought I'd put some of my thoughts down. And blame Hollywood.
Is that an easy answer and a massive piece of hyperbole? Quite probably both, but I think there is more than a grain of truth to it. I'm not talking about the movie-making culture as such (casting, movie execs, the industry as a whole), I HEAR that a latent culture of overt sexism pervades, but I have absolutely no experience of the industry myself so I cannot possibly comment. I'm sure some academics and some film-industry researchers will have done some research on this and I'd be very interested to read it. I'm rather talking about the structure of film-making itself, about whether most of the best roles go to men and whether box-office, therefore, is geared around male performances.
I have serious reasons for thinking that the answer to this question is yes. It's a very male-dominated perspective. Two genres, in particular, that have defined (and, in a large way, continue to define, American move-making), the western and the action-film, are fundamentally male-dominated. Of course, there are exceptions but think of female action heroes compared to male ones (and, for that matter, how successful they have been at box-office). Horror films are interesting because they have tended (as Scream so delighted in emphasising) to be female-focused, though, within that, it's probably a 50-50 call as to whether the female characters (including the leads) are viewed as strong, powerful and independent (even Jamie Lee Curtis' Lawrie Strode needs Dr Loomis to finish off (or not) Michael Myers) or as pathetic, reasonless, idiots running around screaming. I, personally, tend to see it as the latter though more recent horror movies have tended to redress the balance slightly. Romantic comedies, on the other hand, are what I would refer to as 'Egalitarian', in other words, they can be told from the female (My Best Friend's Wedding etc.) or the male (Notting Hill etc.) perspective and offer similar roles equally to men and women. That said, I'd be interested to see whether people feel that the best roles within the genre have gone to men or women? I'm not sure I have a view on that, it not being my favorite genre of movie, but the one role that does jump out at me is Hugh Grant's Will Thacker in Notting Hill.
What I'm trying to get at (and I won't go on too much longer, promise) is that true, 'egalitarian', movies which offer great roles to men and women alike and have a shared, equal, perspective, are few and far between. The one stunning exception, is, of course, Jonathan Demme's The Silence of The Lambs and, naturally, there will be others (Traffic, Crash). Some, too, it must be said, offer the great roles solely to females (Notes on A Scandal from Adam's 2006 list, for example).
And, equally, it's far too easy to say that it's just Hollywood! Are Samurai movies, for example, any less male-dominated than Hollywood westerns? Although, I suspect the brilliant Yoji Yamada might have something to say about that... Having said that, European Cinema is better at offering a stronger female perspective (and stronger female roles) to women, the champion, of course, being Pedro Almodovar. And I think my lists reflect that point, though I regret that that makes it a subjective one. I'm very interested to see what people think about this.
I could go on, but I think I've gone on long enough for a post and so I leave it open to the floor. One final point and a bit of a quiz to finish off with. How many best-picture Oscar winning films have been directed by women since 1980? Answer? None. How many women have won the best director Oscar since 1980? Answer? None. Okay, how many women have ever won the best director Oscar? Answer? None. How many have been nominated during the whole 79 annual awards since its inception? Three. Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola and Lina Wurtmuller. Shocking.

2. IMDB Message Boards

I promise to keep this one short! Just been perusing IMDB for some thoughts and research and made the mistake of foraying into the message boards. Never have I experienced such anger and frustration at the denigration of people's tastes and opinions. It actually disgusts me. As much as I hope that people will eventually come and comment and debate on this site, I pray and pray that nothing like this ever occurs, especially as these people don't know each other. Everyone has the right to be heard openly and, for fuck's sake, this is how your opinions and knowledge (not just of films, but anything really) changes and grows and how new avenues open up to you. It really annoyed me to see film-lovers speaking to each other like that. To be avoided. I'm never going to post on there, that's for sure.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this and I eagerly await the coming flood of comments. I would have liked to have written more about the sexism issue but it was a long post as it was and (I HOPE!) more can come out and be discussed in comment!

That's all folks!