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| Jerry and Dr. Whatley, post shtickle of fluoride. |
“I wanted to talk to you about Dr. Whatley. I have a suspicion that he’s converted to Judaism just for the jokes.”
“And this offends you as a Jewish person?”
“No, it offends me as a comedian.”
Jerry Seinfeld was clearly onto
something when he denounced the insidious Dr. Whatley to a priest in a
confessional, pointing out that the crime of lazy comedy to a comedian can
actually be greater than yet another boring attempt at cotton-gloved
antisemitism. And like the best morsels
of comedy, Jerry stumbled onto a truth that can be easily brought into a
variety of other fields, particularly in an age of rapidly shifting social
norms of gender and race. Sure, a
Hollywood system that routinely cuts out huge portions of salary for female
stars is an obvious stain on the entire moviemaking process, but it’s the other
offense that deserves a little attention as well. After all, it shouldn’t just offend those who
support women’s rights; it should actually offend anyone who likes movies at
all, right down to the dummkopfs who coat their rooms in marketing posters from
the Fast and the Furious franchise. Though
the surface issue is that obviously women should get paid the same for the same
types of roles, the subtext is that movies end up being lazy and limited when
you blatantly tilt the point of view to the masculine. And I know, wanting to have a more
diversified set of stories makes me a traitor to penis-wielders everywhere, but
who cares. In any case, we’re not going
to run out of on-screen masculinity anytime soon no matter what, particularly
with Hollywood summers still resembling a trip deep into Sylvester Stallone's subconscious. Ultimately, clinging to an
old formula, even a lucrative one, has already set in motion a talent drain
that makes working for television increasingly more attractive than working in
cinema. As television dramatically
increases its production values in the post-network era, its biggest advantage
remains the much wider pallet that television producers get to use. While HBO, Showtime, Netflix, AMC and even Amazon
have been attracting filmmakers and actors with a series of complex stories placing women and minorities in the forefront, apparently it remains Pleasantville
in Hollywood.
Of course, the conversation takes
center stage with the final chapter of The
Hunger Games hitting theaters this weekend, as the release comes on the
heels of star Jennifer Lawrence recently being the bearer bad of news about
actresses’ salaries. What her reluctant admission
points out is that it isn’t just a matter of converting a few leftover misogynists
from the Hollywood golden age. Here we
have an entire industry struggling to figure out how to market movies with
women in the lead, or to even allow a full range of female characters to fill
in the enormous budgets that assault moviegoers at all points of the year. Even the heroine in smash hit Jurassic World seemed to fall right out
of 1970s, with Bryce Dallas Howard’s character playing lip service to Princess
Leia with a bit of gun play, but mainly playing the silly idiot badly in need of a rescue. On the other side we have Katniss Everdeen,
Jennifer Lawrence’s mostly stoic hero who oozes confidence and intelligence
long before you get to any whiff of Hollywoodized sensuality.
After breaking out with her Oscar-nominated role in Winter’s Bone, it was pretty clear that Lawrence wasn’t meant for
playing the dumbfounded starlet running through the jungle in high heels
getting chased by dinosaurs (sorry Bryce Dallas Howard, it’s not really your
fault). Instead, in The Hunger Games she plays an extension of her persona from indie Winter’s Bone – a born survivalist not
awestruck by the male-dominated world around her. Not only did Lions Gate find a
female-centered action franchise but they even figured out how to turn it into
a crossover hit with male audiences, which definitely did not happen with Twilight. Though Hollywood may insist that audiences
want to keep the rigid formula intact, the success of The Hunger Games (and Lawrence in general) suggests that there
really is a large audience ready to see a new range of characters and heroes – even if (gasp) they're women.
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| This epic 1986 masterpiece may have a lower IMDB rating than Howard the Duck, but it's also been inspiring marketing campaigns for generations. |
But as movies mainly recycle the
same roles for actresses, TV has shown a much stronger commitment to finding
new female characters to explore. Shows
like Homeland, Orange is the New Black, Game
of Thrones, House of Cards and Fargo all feature strong and complex
female characters who (mostly) combat the typical gender assumptions. Rising star Maisie Williams earned her fame
in Game of Thrones for playing one of
the toughest roles imaginable for a child actress, then when she took a look at
Hollywood she was bludgeoned with scripts caked in cheesy eroticism. It was such a problem that she has even
called on other women to refuse “hot girlfriend roles” after those types of
roles started showing up at her door about the second she turned 18. Though HBO looked at the prodigious Williams’
talent and saw a sparky and brazen young actress, apparently many in feature films saw her as yet another popular face to parade through a gauntlet of cliché
rom-coms, eventually getting to the PG-13 version of softcore porn. You know, the old school way. The same also goes for black actors and
filmmakers as well, as television is already years ahead of where Hollywood is
on this front. One of HBO’s other cult
hits, The Wire, had more complex
black characters than Hollywood produces in a decade – and it’s not close. It even seems that video games are headed
that direction before cinema. Don’t
believe me? The trailer for the new Tomb Raider game has as much character-building as the entire Angelina Jolie movie
series.
Move away from mainstream cinema
and you’ll see the problem even clearer, as films deemed more serious often
have even less female input. Ask just
about anyone to name three female directors and their brains would likely tie
into knots long before they ever even got to Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola or
Jane Campion. Even though anyone with
half a semester in film school can tell you that it’s a director’s medium first
and foremost, female directors are more of an endangered species than black
rhinos. And fellas, it’s not because
women haven’t figured out how to work a camera.
It’s because Hollywood by and large would rather throw $100 million at
Roland Emmerich so he can pretend to blow up half of Chicago than give a new
wave of talented female filmmakers a chance to change-up the formula.
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Tilda Swinton actually learned to speak Italian with a Russian accent for a movie (I Am Love) and is one of the most talented actresses of her generation. American audiences know her as the woman who may or may not be Miranda's body double in Sex and the City. |
With TV – and apparently even video
games – committing to a much more diversified spectrum of characters and
filmmaking viewpoints, Hollywood sits in a pivotal period in which it has much
to prove, particularly with streaming becoming the norm and the big screen
experience becoming marginalized. Though
movies have gone more and more outlandish to regain the importance of going to
the theater, the biggest problem might actually be the rise of other mediums that are more suited than Hollywood to step out of the cave man era. While improving wages of actresses is a
decent starting point, it’s as good of a time as any to reexamine a system completely
run by superheroes, car-chase-obsessed franchises and widespread terror of placing
women at the center of moviemaking. But
with a little help from Lawrence and The
Hunger Games, studios could actually realize that Katniss doesn’t have to
be a fluke, that there can be a loftier goal than lazily tickling the fantasies of
teenage boys still hungover from puberty.
Contrary to popular opinion, perhaps it is actually possible to improve
upon a system that has converted to Judaism strictly for the jokes.
