The ACLU Wants the U.S. Government to Combat Sexism in Hollywood

[jimmy olsen]

Certainly a problem, but unless the ACLU has much more resources than I think, they would be better served hammering the government over police brutality, torture, extrajudicial killings of American citizen abroad, Ide's beloved survaliance state, etc.

http://time.com/3855507/aclu-hollywood-sexism-gender-bias/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true

The ACLU Wants the U.S. Government to Combat Sexism in Hollywood

Eliana Dockterman @edockterman
  2:26 PM ET
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The American Civil Liberties Union is targeting sexism in Hollywood, and it wants the government to step in and help.

Only 7% of the top 250 grossing films in 2014 were directed by women—two percentage points lower than in 1998, according to the annual Celluloid Ceiling report conducted by San Diego State University. The organization believes systematic gender bias is to blame.

"Many of these women directors have been told that they 'can't be trusted with money' by studio executives," says Ariela Migdal, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU. "This isn't just about stereotypes and implicit bias, it's about blatant discrimination. We heard over and over again from female directors that they've been told, 'This show is too hard for women' or 'You can't do this movie, it's action'—this to women who have directed plenty of action."
Gender bias in movie-making has reached a tipping point.

So on Tuesday, the ACLU sent letters to three federal organizations charged with ensuring equal employment opportunity. The letters included research and testimonies from 50 women directors, exemplifying bias and reporting sexist practices such as secret, studio-compiled "short lists" of potential directors who are almost exclusively male. These shortlists may explain why in television, for example, only 17% of directors were female last year.

The civil rights group hopes the messages will lead to a federal investigation and government intervention, which might include requiring short lists to be public and a database of women directors to be made available to producers who claim they "don't know any female filmmakers."

The request for federal action comes after a tension-filled Oscar season. Selma director Ava DuVernay was snubbed by the Academy, and many critics suggested bigotry against women or people of color might be at play — especially as only four female directors have ever been nominated for an Oscar. And Patricia Arquette used her speech after winning Best Actress to call for wage equality in the industry.

These ideas aren't new: Cate Blanchett lambasted "studio executives who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films with women at the center are a niche experience" at the Academy Awards last year. Even former Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal said in 2014 that the "whole system is geared for [female filmmakers] to fail."

But they have reached a tipping point. "There's been a building outrage, whether it's with Ava DuVernay or the pay gap that was revealed in those Sony leaks," says Migdal. "It's led women to say, 'This happened to me, and now I realize it's part of a bigger systemic pattern. That, I think, is why women are reaching out to us now."

The problem is not isolated to directors; behind the camera, only 17% of all directors, writers, producers, editors and cinematographers working on the top 250-grossing films are women. Women are also far less likely than men to graduate from critically-lauded independent features to bigger budget studio movies, according to a Sundance and Women in Film study that found that award-winning female directors rarely lead to the kind of studio opportunities a man would get. Women like Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty) and Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, The Bling Ring) are very much the exception to the rule.

"There's this idea that men can direct films about women, but women can't direct films about men," says Migdal. While Paul Feige can direct the women-centric hit Bridesmaids and Judd Apatow has directed the upcoming Amy Schumer film, Trainwreck, women aren't given the same opportunity for action films or male-driven dramas like The Imitation Game or American Sniper. "I think people thought when Kathryn Bigelow won her Oscar women would finally get that opportunity. But statistically speaking that hasn't happened."

And even female actors struggle for the same opportunities as their male counterparts. Leaked Sony emails revealed that stars like Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams were being paid less than their male counterparts in films, despite having equal or more screen time. The two problems are, of course, related: when fewer women write and direct films, movies are less likely to tell women's stories and consequently fewer robust female roles are available.

Even though 2013 research found that movies that passed the Bechdel Test—a simple analysis that measures whether two women speak to each other in the film about something other than a man—made more money at the box office, studio executives continue to assume that audiences don't want to see films made by and about women.

Hollywood insiders generally think of women's films as "niche," according to recent study from the University of Southern California's Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative. And that view persists despite the massive box office success of female-centric films like Frozen, Gravity and The Hunger Games, which are consistently considered flukes.

Legal action may now force studios to consider and hire female directors as a higher rate—but that doesn't necessarily mean they will be happy about it. "As a lawyer, I will take grudging hiring over non-hiring," says Migdal. "That's where change starts."

[Ed Anger]

Fuck her right in the pussy

[Eddie Teach]

Fuck her right in the pussy

[Admiral Yi]

I've always had a lot of respect for the ACLU.  Not happy to see them pushing for quotas for selected protected classes.

[Ideologue]

It's a genuine problem, and it's not beyond the ACLU's purview nor the Labor Department's.  I got challenged on this the other day by my girlfriend--as you know, I own about 400 films on blu-ray.  Number directed by women: zero.  (If we include DVD, it's one.  Namely, Wayne's World.)

At the same time, if we're talking about female directors, we do have to remember that we're talking about a rarefied profession.  Arguably there are bigger fish to fry in other industries, and causes that don't benefit women already in the 1%--but Hollywood's institutional sexism is extraordinarily patent as well as extremely high-profile by any industry's standard.  So, sure, go for it.

[Admiral Yi]

How many films were directed by blacks?  American Indians?  Laotians?  Paraplegics?

[Ideologue]

How many films were directed by blacks?  American Indians?  Laotians?  Paraplegics?

Black guys?  Two.  Inside Man and 12 Years a Slave.

Anyway, it's not my fault.  I own a lot of movies directed by Asians and a smattering directed by Hispanics.

[jimmy olsen]

How many films were directed by blacks?  American Indians?  Laotians?  Paraplegics?

Half of the population is female, an eigth black. I don't think it's asking too much that women directors break out of the single digits in percent of films directed.

[Admiral Yi]

Do you have reason to be believe that the underrepresentation of women is more severe than that of American Indians, Laotians, and paraplegics?

[Martinus]

Do you have reason to be believe that the underrepresentation of women is more severe than that of American Indians, Laotians, and paraplegics?

Not saying that I agree with ACLU on this, but this is one really poor line of reasoning.

[grumbler]

Do you have reason to be believe that the underrepresentation of women is more severe than that of American Indians, Laotians, and paraplegics?

Not saying that I agree with ACLU on this, but this is one really poor line of reasoning.

Not to say that i agree with Yi, but yours is a classic of argument by assertion.  You need to expand on an assertion to make it into an argument.

If you were noting that this is a classic Yicratic argument wherein Yi takes no position, but only asks questions to force the other side to defend theirs, that would be enough, and be a better argument.

[Martinus]

Well, the argument that we should not be addressing one problem because we are also not addressing all other unrelated problems is a classic fallacy.

[celedhring]

The Spanish media industry used to be very male-dominated just a mere 10 years ago or so; I would walk into a writers' room and there might be one woman in it at best. Nowadays, however, that has changed completely; it's not too rare to find myself in the minority in a team dominated by women, and we have plenty of powerful women in the industry. It also happened just naturally.

I think the issue here is that as an industry Hollywood is incredibly risk-adverse and very resistant to change. They will only hire a woman to write/direct a film aimed at women (or children, there's LOTS of women in children programming), and they don't make that many films aimed at women to begin with. The glass ceiling is slowly being chipped at, but it exists.

[Valmy]

Can female directors blind me with lens flares like J J Abrams or suck off the US Military like Michael Bay? Without the ACLU we might never know.

[Admiral Yi]

Well, the argument that we should not be addressing one problem because we are also not addressing all other unrelated problems is a classic fallacy.

"Addressing the problem" in this case consists of asking for a quota for women.  It takes exactly the same amount of energy, time and resources to ask for a quota for everyone.