So What Do These Oscars Mean For Women In Hollywood?

Posted on Thursday March 11, 2010, 16:42 by Helen O'Hara in Empire States

It's been a few days now since the 2010 Academy Awards finally saw a woman (only the fourth nominated) take home the Best Director and Best Picture prizes. Speech of the night, by pretty much anyone's reckoning, also went to a woman - Best Actress winner Sandra Bullock. A few cautiously laudatory articles about women in Hollywood have followed - here and here for example - but they all feel a little forced.

Here's the thing: Kathryn Bigelow's win is a great thing for her, a well-deserved acknowledgment of a brilliantly made film that never got its due. And Sandra Bullock's the most likeable actress in Hollywood, a star whose classiness during awards season (even turning up to collect her Razzie) just confirms the impression that she's a lovely person - and she's a very good actress, whether in dramatic turns in the likes of Crash and, yes, The Blind Side or in comedies like Miss Congeniality (where she is really rather good; give it a chance). But nothing at this year's awards has made me think that the position of women in Hollywood is changing.

After all, Bigelow doesn't particularly make films about women, making it spectacularly easy to dismiss her as an anomaly or the exception that 'proves' the rule that women can't direct action. Salon.com recently unfairly described her as a male director "in drag" for not making films about women - although frankly it's her business what films she makes, and no one's giving Garry Marshall grief for not making more films that are just about men*, or James Cameron grief for creating strong female roles. Far more offensive are the internet comments suggesting that Bigelow can only direct action / direct visually because of Cameron's influence and 'training'. Way to dismiss an Oscar winner, assholes.

But the fact remains that few female directors have had the opportunities Bigelow's had to make action movies, and fewer still (cough cough Karyn Kusama) have managed to make successful mainstream hits. Their records probably aren't much worse than comparable men who started in indie movies and shifted to big popcorn fare, but every failure reconfirms the belief and makes it that much harder for the next one. Even Bigelow took years to get another gig after the failure of K-19, far longer than a male director of a comparable flop. What she does next - and how long it takes her to find something - will be instructive in showing if any progress at all has been made.

 As for Bullock and the Best Actress category - and emphasising again that I really like her and don't begrudge her the prize - it's recently felt to me like there's a worrying trend in Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress over the last few years to give the prize to the biggest star not already to have won an Oscar (or Hilary Swank). Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Halle Berry, Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, Rachel Weisz, Catherine Zeta-Jones: all these are names that sell tabloids as well as films. The Best Actress categories have become an award crowning the ability of a female star to open a film, payable as soon as she turns in a good performance in a more muted (preferably indie) role. The male acting categories have often felt fit to bursting over the past few years; in the female categories, there's sometimes a sense of straining to fill up space because the roles just aren't there. (And no, trolls, you can't make a case that women just aren't as good at acting**).  It was suggested recently on Jezebel that the Oscars should no longer divide their acting categories by gender, which I agree should one day be an aim, but the net result of that, here and now, would be fewer female nominees and fewer female winners.

But it's also a question of demographics. Seriously: compare the Best Actress and Best Actor winners of the last ten years. There are more than twice as many female winners under 40 as male winners; seven times as many male winners over 50. Women are only getting decent roles until they turn 50 (and of the winning roles, 15 were under 40; only 4 between 40-50). They're getting roles at their career peak, and that ends quite suddenly, usually, in their late 30s. Men get meaty, Oscar-attracting parts for a good 20 or 30 years after that. Men are allowed to age onscreen; women, not so much.

Sure, there may be elements of vanity for some actresses who don't want to play old, but performances like Mirren's in The Queen, Julie Christie's in Away From Her and the utterly un-vain Mo'Nique in Precious tend to suggest that female stars will abandon vanity if the role is good enough (I'm counting eight of the 20 winners from the past ten years who significantly uglied-up for the role). It's just that, with less than 30 percent of all roles in Hollywood going to women, the opportunities for female leads aren't really coming up except in brainless rom-coms and as the straight woman / lust object in comedies. And still, every time a Blind Side or a Mamma Mia! or a Devil Wears Prada opens, the analysts stand round amazed (again) that people will go see films with female leads and without a dash-for-love to the airport at the end.

 So are these Oscars a giant leap for womankind? I don't think so, even though the sight of Bigelow with two fists full of statuette is a step in the right direction. Women haven't come any closer to equality in Hollywood, and while we can hope that Bigelow's win proves a small step on the road to changing people's attitudes and encourages the odd executive to give a female director a chance, there's a long road ahead. 

*Well, they might; they see him as lightweight, but you try thinking of an A-list equivalent male director who mostly makes films about women.

**Especially since you misogynist trolls are usually the same people who claim that women are manipulative.