Watched the whole of the Baftas last night. I find awards ceremonies more mesmerising than I should. I love playing Fug or Fab with the dresses, being surprised by which of the award presenters were terrified (Matthew McFadyen) and unsurprised by which were drunk / stoned / insane (Sharon Stone), I love guessing who will win (it was obvious Slumdog Millionaire would go home with everything) and getting irate when the deserving are robbed (Kristin Scott Thomas! Kristin Scott Thomas!) and there is always an excellent speech or two (Mickey Rourke). This year's bonus ball was a sprightly Mick Jagger presenting best film and making a very witty speech beforehand too.Here's my gripe though (there had to be one): where were the women? I mean, it was a slightly less all-white affair this year, thanks to the Indian crew of Slumdog Millionaire, plus Noel Clarke and Steve McQueen picking up gongs, but aside from the actress categories, the only female winners were Jean Black and Colleen Callaghan for make-up and hair on Benjamin Button, plus one female producer (Esther May Campbell) on the two-person team who won the award for best short film. This means they were almost outnumbered by the two studios who won an award. Surely inanimate objects should not be competing for prize numbers with female humans? And checking the list of nominees there were very few women there either.
Now I know it's boring to be feminist feminist bang on drum, and we supposedly live in a post-feminist era where all opportunities are equal etc etc, but don't tell me that this is because women are not interested in film-making. (I'm assuming nobody here will go down the women are not good enough route.) I will accept a tiny nod towards film-making involving anti-social hours that are hard if you have young kids. Though they seem to get actresses enough. Not to mention hair and make-up. (Maybe that's the real question here: why don't more men go into hair and make-up? Oh, my mistake, almost all the other nominees for that category were men as well.) It's incredibly depressing that almost ten years into the 21st century film is still a man's game, and largely a white man's game at that.
I may mention all this a few years hence when I'm picking up my Best Screenplay Bafta for mumble mumble haven't started it yet. Watch out male-dominated film world! Here I come! Also, I am shit at hair and make-up.
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7 comments:
Perhaps we should be grateful they don't open leading/supporting actress roles to drag queens???
I agree with you it is depressing. OTOH was very excited two years ago watching the BAFTAs and seeing someone I was at school with nominated for two production awards - she won for the Queen.
I think the reason that women tend not to get to the top though is probably similar to what happens in publishing. To keep going at the level required, to find the time to juggle family and work commitments in an industry that is so draining and intense requires such energy and determination, that the majority just say wtf and leave. Well, that's my theory anyway. I don't think it will ever change until men share that burden equally. And in my experience, though most of the dads I know are very committed etc etc, when it comes to work, their work always comes first above the woman's/family committments. Change that and then we might see a different world. Actresses are ok cos they can afford to pay round the clock nannies, and probably can afford breaks in between filming.
I would echo your call, purely on the grounds that if it's a choice between
a) watching a bunch of blokes on tele
b) watching a bunch of women on tele
I generally prefer option b.
As for lack of female directors, generally you have to be batshit crazy insane to want to be a director and having two X chromosomes seems to counter a large amount of broken Y chromosome bat shit craziness.
I'm in a sophisticated mood, today, aren't I?
Last year, CBC carried the Baftas, but not this year. (A woman wrote into the Yahoo! question web site to ask about a Canadian broadcast for the Baftas and some supercilious idiot told her to check the time difference and find an accessible station. Clearly some people will use any excuse to write some unhelpful and redundant response online. Why are you all looking at me like that?)
Anyway, I was forced to watch the Grammies instead. I was very pleased to see a female lead guitar revving up Carrie Underwood's performance, something that would have been a novelty not so long ago. It's great to know that as long as a woman is talented (and wildly good-looking), she can play alongside the boys.... Post-feminist? Really?
Agreed. Totally.
You may be right but for the argument to completely stack up we need to check the gender split across the nominees. I have just glanced through and there are a lot more women that I thought there would be. Perhaps this year the male nominees were better? It could happen.
I accept that the industry is male dominated and I don't think this is right but, given that, there seems to be a pretty good gender spread within the nominees as a whole.
Obviously the acting categories need to be ignored. I would also argue that some of the other categories, by their very nature, will have a gender bias. Visual effects tends to have more geeky blokes, costume design more women - not all the time but often enough.
Even putting those aside there seems to be quite a lot of women nominated, they just didn't win this year.
I just counted and amongst the nominees, allowing for a bit of confusion about asexual names, there are 26 female nominees and 153 male nominees, excluding the acting categories. I don't call that "a pretty good gender spread".
I knew I could get you to count them all!!
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