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The Curious Case of the Missing Women in Film Criticism

January 19, 2016 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Jeanne Phan for Variety

Jeanne Phan for Variety

Film criticism’s demise has been eulogized by endless film festival panelists — mostly male, mostly white. Yet, that waning power still goes largely unshared with women (and people of color).

“Film criticism is in the exact same position as latenight talkshow hosts,” says B. Ruby Rich, UC Santa Cruz professor of film and digital media. “The hiring of Stephanie Zacharek at Time is positive. Manohla Dargis reviews for the New York Times and Ann Hornaday is at the Washington Post. And, yet, female critics who barely got a toe-hold anyway are often the last hired, first fired.”

And there has been a decided brain drain among the few, the strong that once had industry stature. Where have the heavyweight professional critics Janet Maslin, Carrie Rickey, Caryn James, Leah Rozen, Eleanor Ringel, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Susan Wloszczyna, Claudia Puig, Christy Lemire, Lisa Kennedy and Katherine Monk gone, once they took the buyout or got shifted from their perch? Most are still writing, but their perspectives are harder to find as they navigate the passage into the digital seas and, in many cases, the loss of salary and benefits.

Martha Lauzen, executive director, Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, has been tracking the profession for years. “Because men make up the vast majority of critics — 78% of the top critics appearing on the Rotten Tomatoes website in spring 2013 were male — films with male directors and/or writers receive greater exposure from critics,” she says.

Melissa Silverstein, founder, website Women and Hollywood, says, “We need women and people of color’s opinions on movies on all topics. However, it is vitally important that we have more women’s voices reviewing and commenting on women’s stories and on women directors because women have a different perspective than men. Not better, not worse, just different. We have our own lens in how we see the world and that makes our perspective vital.”

“Women have a different perspective
than men. Not better, not worse, just different. We have our own lens in how we see the world and that makes our perspective vital.” Melissa Silverstein

Director Karyn Kusama, (“Girlfight”) says, “To me it’s the question of female directors, writers, cinematographers, designers, editors, actors and critics. If you have substantially fewer of them in the world, then we’re missing a crucial human perspective, and the world suffers for it.”

Another problem is ingrained bias, conscious or not.

Clem Bastow, culture writer at Guardian Australia, says, “The critical response to ‘The Intern’ was fascinating. There’s a subset of male critics that clearly see Nancy Meyers as code for chick flick and react with according bile. What’s very interesting, though, is that I think female critics, working in an industry that is coded as very male, if not macho, often feel the need to go hard on certain films for women, presumably because they worry that they’ll be dismissed, critically speaking, if they praise a film like ‘The Intern,’ as though they’re only reviewing it favorably because they’re women.”

Rickey, long-time Philadelphia Inquirer critic currently at truthdig.com, says, “The lion’s share of the daily and weekly reviewers is male. Are they sexist? I think not. But are they more enthusiastic about female characters seen from a male perspective, i.e. Todd Haynes’ ‘Carol?’ Possibly.”

According to the Gender at the Movies study of top critics on Rotten Tomatoes, men account for 91% of those writing for movie/entertainment magazines and websites such as Entertainment Weekly; 90% of those writing for trade publications and websites; 80% of critics writing for general interest magazines and sites such as Time and Salon; 72% of those writing for newspaper sites; and 70% of critics writing for radio outlets and sites such as NPR.

There is no evidence that gender equity is improving within the profession. According to Lauzen, “In 2013, 78% of the top critics on Rotten Tomatoes were male and 22% were female. I repeated the study at the beginning of 2015 and the numbers were the same.”

Despite the increased awareness, a reversal of the trend is not imminent.

“Unless they get the system of shaming to work against studios, agents, distributors and critics I don’t believe there will be any solution from enhanced information,” Rich says.

“Until somebody is willing to bankroll a lot of women directors, until someone is willing to payroll a critic, change will not happen,” Lauzen says.

So what keeps the industry from calling out critics on their white male majority?

“People who live in glass houses have to be very careful about casting stones,” Lauzen says. “Every corner of the film industry lacks diversity, from the executive suites, to the behind-the-scenes creative community, to those working on screen. The seamlessness of this largely closed system is astounding.”

[This article first appeared in Variety]

 

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: B Ruby Rich, Carrie Rickey, Clem Bastow, film criticism, gender equality, Hollywood boycott, Karyn Kusama, Martha Lauzen, Melissa Silverstein, SDSU, the Guardian, The Intern, Variety

How Debra Winger Ducks Stardom in Provincetown

June 22, 2014 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Debra Winger

Debra Winger


Debra Winger has trouble playing herself in the role of star. She tries. She tries to tell the truth but the impression I got as she sat on the stage yesterday afternoon at Town Hall in Provincetown beside B. Ruby Rich is that for her the truth is like an Impressionist painting — chips of color that change qualities in different lights.

Winger, on stage, is trying not quite desperately to be real, to please the festival audience that sees her as icon (“Urban Cowboy,” “An Officer and a Gentleman,” “Terms of Endearment”) and diva. Where has she been lately — for her the question is almost irrelevant. She’s been inside her skin, raising three boys, married to Arliss Howard (also in attendance wearing a peculiar kelly green bandana pirate-style on his bald head).

Overlaying the Provincetown Film Festival event — a career achievement award that the actress makes a point of saying is not a lifetime achievement award, she’s still a work in progress — is the question are there roles for women (implied of a certain age)? Winger jokes, rephrasing the question: “are there roles for women with rolls?”

Is it something in the air, as two major movies coming down the pike, Julianne Moore as a neurotic Hollywood diva in David Cronenberg’s “Maps to the Stars” and Juliette Binoche in Olivier Assayas’ “Clouds of Sils Maria,” both Cannes hits. It’s enough to make one ask: where is the “All About Eve” remake?

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV Tagged With: B Ruby Rich, Debra Winger, Provincetown Film Festival

Making Lists Gives me ‘Vertigo’

October 11, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

This is the first in a series of original posts that combine memoir and movies, but land strongly on the personal essay end of the spectrum. These intimate, highly subjective pieces will appear under the heading “Ten Movies That Shook My World.” Or Should it be 8 1/2?

Making Lists Gives me Vertigo

Making Lists Gives me Vertigo


Vertigo was probably the last straw, a straw I would have set alight like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, a movie that means so much more to me, and that I’ve watched more than any other. When Sight & Sound’s “Top Fifty Greatest Films of All Time” – a Barnum & Bailey title if ever there was one — came out with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo on top like an intellectual cherry it included one solitary movie directed by a woman: Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman: 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.

Mel Brooks could have captured my spit take on camera. That would have been an overreaction shot because I’ve almost (almost) become accustomed to a world where movie list-making is a sport like fantasy baseball. Nearly all these superlative lists reflect a bias toward men, and men trying to impress other men with their taste and intelligence.

Even if we began our fifty-finest list with Hitchcock, who I adore, I would have opted for my favorite, North By Northwest, or Rear Window. Or even Psycho, which viewers tend to remember for the Bates Motel shower scene and the sexually aberrant reveal. I admire its matter-of-fact mature opening in a cheap downtown L.A. hotel room with the adulterous affair of Janet Leigh and John Gavin in the bland light of a midday lunch hour.

All of this is to say that, although I’ve been a film critic for twenty years, and drafted my share of top-ten lists, I’ve always thought it was a bit of a load – but a load that got attention. There is no objective top ten, or fifty, or one hundred films. From what country – what about all the films from Egypt or India or that brilliant censored film from Kazakhstan that never crossed its borders? And films from what decade? And, of course, my personal province: from which gender?

This continued irritant, reading the Top Fifty Greatest Films of All Time (what, no Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep?), or the year-end lists of my colleagues at “The New Yorker” or “New York Magazine,” launched my more intimate, subjective journey. Really, most of us write from this place, but the ability to know one’s own bias, and write from one’s heart, through the lens of a passion for, and knowledge of film, is the province of the great ones, like Andrew Sarris, or Molly Haskell, or B Ruby Rich or David Rooney or Stephen Holden. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Essay, Movies & TV Tagged With: Academy Awards, Andrew Sarris, Andy Samberg, B Ruby Rich, Braveheart, David Rooney, Hal Ashby, Harold & Maude, Harold and Maude, Insdependent Spirit Awards, Melissa Leo, Memoir, Molly Haskell, New York Film Critics Circle, Personal Essays, Racing Daylight, Sight & Sound, Stephen Holden, Ten Movies That Shook My World, The Wizard of Oz, top-ten list, Vertigo

Brainstorming Woodstock: What’s the State of Women’s Filmmaking

September 23, 2011 By Thelma 3 Comments

Ida Lupino,Women's Directors,Woodstock Film Festival

What would Ida do?

 

On Saturday, I’ll be moderating the annual Amazing Women in Film Panel. I’ll have the honor of having three female directors on deck – Debra Granik, Susan Seidelman and Nancy Savoca, as well as critic Lisa Rosman, philanthropist Meera Gandhi, and trailblazing activist Robin Bronk. Given that brain trust: what big questions about the state of women in cinema do you have?

Here are some questions raised by FB and industry friends:

B. Ruby Rich: Why is it still so bad?

Thelma:  I was going to try to start off diplomatically — what have the gains been, and why are we still falling short? In a summer where Bridesmaids and The Help bookended the mainstream box office, why were execs and crix (mostly male) so surprised…. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: B Ruby Rich, Debra Granik, Ida Lupino, Kim Voynar, Lisa Albright, Nancy Savoca, Susan Seidelman, Women Film Directors

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