Notes on Watching Women
Some observations c. 2017 - 2024
For the past seven years, I’ve been on a kind of media diet to force myself to watch more movies made by women. I made a rule: half of everything I watched had to be written or directed by women.
You may think you understand sexism in the film industry. You may know that the percentage of female directors remains low and that women are much less likely to have leading roles or even speaking parts. But I didn’t really feel the weight of the sexism until I forced myself to adopt an egalitarian model of watching. The effect was cumulative. At first, I experienced movies made by women as a novelty. But as I watched more and more films that included a variety of female characters, the contrast between movies made by women and mainstream films became more pronounced. By the end of the first year, I felt I would never look at mainstream movies in the same way.
I started this diet in late 2017, because I was furious when the Harvey Weinstein allegations came to light. That was a wakeup call for me to think more deeply about the sexism of the film industry. I’ve been a devoted moviegoer since high school; until I had kids, I went out to the movies at least once a week—and even after kids, my husband and I would take turns going to matinees on weekends. And yet until the Weinstein allegations, I didn’t give much thought to the fact that women weren’t directing or writing most of the movies I watched. It’s strange because as a reader and writer, I was very aware of the sexism of the literary canon. I guess I just didn’t want to think too hard about how movies were made. They were my escape.
In 2018, I started a blog, Thelma & Alice, to document and review the movies I watched. The name Thelma & Alice is a nod to the feminist classic, Thelma & Louise. Thelma refers to Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese’s legendary and indispensable film editor; Alice refers to Alice Guy-Blaché, a pioneering director who made some of the first narrative films. (You can watch one a snippet of one of her earliest efforts, filmed in 1900, “The Cabbage Fairy” on Youtube. It’s about a minute long and it’s delightful.)
I thought I would write my blog for a year as a kind of experiment, but I fell into a community of female reviewers and decided to keep doing it for another year, and then another. In 2021, I moved my blog to Substack. Every year I think I need to write an essay about what it’s been like to watch so many more movies made by women. But the essay never came together, mainly because I’ve been working on my own writing. Also, I’ve been raising two little kids. And then there was this time in 2020 and 2021 where my children stopped going to school and daycare on a regular basis . . .
Long story short, it’s been seven years of watching women. What follows are some notes on what I’ve observed and learned over the years. These are the notes of a novelist and occasional film critic, not a scholar or journalist. There are occasional links to sources and data points, but for the most part these are subjective observations, sketches, stray thoughts, and queries. When I started writing, I thought they would take up one, maybe two posts. Instead, they stretched to 10,000 words. Even after editing and pruning, these notes are still rangy and unruly, so I have imposed order on them and made them more readable (I hope) by organizing them by topic. I will be posting every few days for the next two weeks according to the following schedule:
Part One: First Impressions
Part Two: The Stories Women [are allowed to] Tell
Part Three: The Burden of Feminism
Part Four: Obstacles
Part Five: Conclusions
A Note on My Criteria
I did not limit myself to movies directed by women. My rule was that the films had to have a female screenwriter or a female director. Co-screenwriting or co-directing credits counted, but if the sole female writing credit was attributed to the source material, it wasn’t enough. (For example, Martin Scorsese’s Age of Innocence based on Edith Wharton’s novel but adapted to screen by Scorsese and Jay Cocks would not count, but Scorsese’s Kundun, whose screenplay was penned by Melissa Mathison, would.)
On Female Producers
When I started this project, I thought I would include films made by female producers—partly as a rebuke to Weinstein. But ultimately it was easier to focus on directing and writing, because I could see the handiwork of a director and writer more easily. So, my apologies to female producers for drawing this rather arbitrary line. I know you are doing a lot behind the scenes to change the landscape of film and television.
On Finding Female Filmmakers
I think this is changing for the better, but when I started this project, I had to work to find movies with female directors. There were some female directors I knew and whose work I followed—Nicole Holofcener, Sofia Coppola, Kelly Reichardt—but in general I had to check new releases one by one to see if a woman had directed them. Finding movies written by women was even harder. The role of the screenwriter is already somewhat obscured, but there are so few female screenwriters that it was challenging to find movies with a female writer. From browsing IMDB, I’ve noticed that women are rarely hired to write “big” scripts, e.g. action movies, historical dramas, biopics, superhero movies, psychological thrillers, etc. Instead, you see female screenwriting credits on movies that are about women, or else you see women directing their own screenplays or screenplays by other women. It’s unusual to see a man directing a screenplay by a woman and vice versa, though I’ve found that this is often a winning combination. (More on that later.)
The Power of the Skew
If you choose a movie at random, it’s much, much more likely to be written or directed by a man. I don’t think this is true of music or books or even TV in quite the same way, especially in contemporary culture. But with film, the skew is so far off that you’re far less likely to chance upon a movie directed by a woman than a novel with a female author.
A Tip of the Hat to the Bechdel Test
I admire the Bechdel Test and still find it useful tool to evaluate gender equity in film. It’s such a low bar, yet the majority of movies can’t clear it. Nor can you assume that a film made by a woman will pass the test.
On the Prevalence of White Female Filmmakers
Hollywood is a tough business for women. It is a nearly impossible business for women of color. Most films that I screened were made by white women. I tried to seek out films made by women of color, but there was no way I could find enough titles to even approach parity. Some of this has to do with my own blind spots and lack of awareness, but as I began to follow the film careers of women of color, it became clear that it is simply a lot harder for a woman of color to get funding for her film, and therefore, fewer of her films get made. When her films do come out, there is less marketing and when awards season arrives, her films are often overlooked because they are not regarded as mainstream. It then becomes difficult to fund her next film, and to build a body of work over time. I will write more about these obstacles later, but I wanted to flag this issue at the outset.
Quick Note about TV
Although I do sometimes write about TV shows with female showrunners, in general, I focused on movies. There are a few stray thoughts about TV but these notes will focus mostly on film. (TV is generally more equitable than film, with more female directors and writers.)
Brief Note to the Trolls, Real and Imagined
Truly, these are notes. They are not prescriptive. I am not suggesting that men should stop making movies, or make fewer movies, or that they should censor themselves or their fantasies. I am not suggesting that we should have X-number of female filmmakers or that there should be X-percent of female characters per film. I get that show business is tough for everyone. I understand that money is involved. That Hollywood is in an existential crisis. Etc. I am not proposing a solution to those problems. These notes are experiential, a report on what it feels like to watch a lot of stories created by women in an art form that is dominated by men.
Why Notes, Why Now?
Well, I think notes are easy to read. Everyone’s attention is frazzled and many of us are anxious about the upcoming election. I am highly aware that I am publishing this as America once again tries to elect its first female president. As with Hillary Clinton, Vice President Harris’s biggest obstacle to getting elected is that she is a woman. Sometimes I think these seven years of watching women have been my way of coping with the open and often strategic misogyny of the Trump campaign and presidency. Watching movies made by women was often a balm, and it also provided a useful contrast to mainstream filmmaking. I understand better how the American imagination has been diminished by Hollywood’s view of women as helpmates and side characters, making it difficult for Americans to conceive of women as leaders. I worry that Kamala Harris, the only patriotic and morally serious candidate, will lose because of widely held and barely conscious belief that women should not be allowed to ascend to certain positions of power. I suppose I want to publish these notes now, before the election, because I’m not at all sure how I will feel afterwards. This time period, from the fall of 2017 to the fall of 2024, mark an era in my life, and these notes are a record of that time.