Women in Hollywood Tagged Articles at Cinematical

There was a time, I know I was there, when men were men, women were women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been won. Everything has turned into its opposite, so that what was once flirting and smoking is now sexual harassment and criminal. And everyone is more lonely and miserable as a result. --Dirk Benedict

To some, there is no villain more evil, more destructive, and more unwanted than the female race. We're a scourge that needs to be stopped, having mutilated the business industry and now ravaging the hallowed halls of media. Yes, this is a criminally outdated mindset, but nevertheless, the idea thrives for many groups as Hollywood and television diversify the ranks. In essence, adding more women to the mix has evoked a territorial "Give me my man-tainment!" outcry -- just one step away from a "Girls have cooties!" defense.

I bring this up for two reasons. First, as I stated last week, we've got villains on the brain this month at Cinematical. Two, a little surfing over at io9 brought up this: "Is Science Fiction Feminized Or Is It Sexist? Both." That led to reading the original rant that inspired the post, and then something I can't believe I missed: Dirk Benedict -- the man who played the original Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica and Faceman in The A-Team -- ranting about the castration of manly entertainment.

Naturally, reading all that made me want to jump into the topic here and add my own .02.

While skimming my feeds, I came across a post at THR about a Stanley Kramer celebration called "Films That Changed the World." It immediately got me thinking of world-changing cinema, and how much a film can impact us. But try as I might, I couldn't come up with films that changed my world, and instead, kept going back to the story. See, this new series is celebrating the films connected with the iconic filmmaker that were socially conscious. First up: Yentl.

It wasn't so much the film that kept grabbing me, but a quote by Kramer's daughter, Kat: "The history-making film, the first major studio production ever produced, directed and co-written by its female star, shattered Hollywood's glass ceiling like no other film ever did." I wish I could say that it shattered that glass ceiling. If it did, we wouldn't have such abysmal percentages of women in the industry -- both in it and writing about it. Last year, 25 years after Yentl, women didn't even hit 20% of all directors, producers, writers, and the rest of the big behind-the-scenes roles in the industry. We couldn't even hit 10% of all directors. Not even a quarter. Not even a tenth.

That's not a shattering of the glass ceiling, it's a crack in the glass that few women survive when they try to pull themselves through. It's monumental when a woman directs a big, supernatural romance (Twilight), and sadly not surprising when she's then pulled from it. More specifically, it was monumental for a woman to helm it from the pens of other women, even though the film is geared towards the girls itching for a little dark, vampiric action. Women directing for girls? Shocking!

The only way to stretch that crack, and just possibly create that shattered ceiling Kat Kramer was talking about is to do it again. And again. And again. Sadly, it can't just be with solid, noteworthy work. For every wonderful Protagonist, there needs to be a ceiling shake by Amy Heckerling, or a solid kick by Kathryn Bigelow, or Mary Harron -- blockbusters, hits, action, and horror that prove we're not all clumsy romance fiends and fashion victims. It's a fact that seems to be forgotten much too often.