It's been almost two months since the Oscars, and the memories of the awards are starting to fade from everyone's minds. Sure, people remember the best picture envelope mix-up (who could forget it?), but generally, it's all old news. Even I've moved on, though I was very excited for the Oscars this year. As a Cinema Arts Minor, I've gotten to know and appreciate so much more about films. I'd seen many of the best picture nominees, and I was very curious as to which would come out on top.
I was thrilled when Moonlight won. It was one of my favorites, and I thought the message was very important. Yet, I was disappointed that Hidden Figures, a film which I thought was also excellent and had an important message, didn't win any awards from its three nominations. The film, which centers around the stories of three female mathematicians, had great female representation when compared to the other nominees. When it did not win any awards, it inspired me to research the Academy Award Best Picture winners over the last ten years, and examine female involvement within those films.
The first step was to get all the movies: No Country For Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Locker, The King’s Speech, The Artist, Argo, 12 Years A Slave, Birdman, Spotlight, and Moonlight. Between discount bookstores, Netflix, and the library, I was able to acquire all the films (except Moonlight, which I'd already seen). I watched them all over the course of a view weeks, laptop handy for taking notes. First, I saw how many of the ten films passed the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test is used to determine how much representation women get in film. The test has many flaws, and has been criticized for them, but is one of the only ways to measure female representation in film. To pass, a film needs to only do three things: (1) have two named female characters, (2) have those two characters speak to one another, (3) have that conversation be about something other than a man. As it turned out, only two of the films definitively passed that test: No Country for Old Men and The King's Speech.
As I watched the films, I saw parallels emerge when it came to the female characters, even among the films that passed the Bechdel test. For example, many films had only one female character in a leading role in their film, while having many leading men. Also, many women were being represented as damsels in distress. I found the latter very shocking. With the success of such strong female films as The Hunger Games trilogy in recent years, I couldn't understand why so many films still insisted on showing women as needing the rescue of men. This was seen most prominently in Slumdog Millionaire but was also seen in No Country for Old Men and 12 Years a Slave.
I could tell that something was horribly wrong, so I went to do some research on what was going on behind the scenes of these films. At first, I figured the problem must lie with the directors. Research showed that out of all ten films, only one had a female director, Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. At first, I was excited. I was sure that there must be a correlation between the lack of female directors, and the lack of female representation. More investigation led me to discover that only six out of the eighty-two nominees over the last ten years had female directors. Of those six films, three had female-driven stories. However, this solution wasn't sitting right with me. The Hurt Locker had been by far the worst film when it came to female representation; only two very minor female characters spoke throughout the film.
One day, when out to dinner, I had a sudden insight. It wasn't the directors who were determining the amount of female representation, it was the screenwriters. I didn't eat a bite more of my dinner, instead, I pulled up IMDB to do more research. My mouth dropped open when I discovered that none, that's right none, of the ten winning films had female screenwriters. As it turned out, only seven of the eighty-two nominees had female screenwriters, while another seven were based on works written by women. More than half of these fourteen films had female-driven storylines. It also turned out that all three films directed by women and containing female-driven storylines had a woman involved in the writing process. I later discovered that female screenwriters make up around 25% of the screenwriters guild. I couldn't believe that they were so poorly under-represented among the Academy Awards.
It's so important to have women represented accurately in film. Things need to change, and it's going to be a long road to get there, but we can make a change. We need to support films with accurate female representation, films written by women, and films directed by women. If we do, then there will come a day when women's accomplishments in film are just as common as men's.
