Look, we get why female characters are underrepresented in Hollywood: It's not like movies with women as protagonists make huge amounts of money, or win lots of awards, or both.
Warner Bros., Lionsgate Films, Universal Studios, Summit Entertainment, Walt Disney, Columbia Pictures
And it's not like women buy more movie tickets than men.
Oh. But wait, how can we say that Hollywood is still all about dicks if all those hit movies shown above are fairly recent? Surely things are looking up now that it's been proven that women can write, produce, direct, and star in big blockbusters, right? Nope. In fact, they're only getting worse, because ...
As a nation, we love boobs. That's totally fine, but unless the character is a tri-bosomed mutant prostitute on Mars, boobs aren't always necessary to things like the plot and character development. For example, we're pretty sure that 30 percent of all female characters in 2012 weren't temptresses, despite that being the percentage of women in 2012 appearing on film in revealing clothing -- the highest it had been in five years. We're guessing 2013 didn't do much better, considering it was the year when the latest Star Trek and Die Hard sequels looked like this:
Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox
Women did get a peek at Jonah Hill's fake dong in Wolf of Wall Street.
But it gets worse. We not only love boobs, but love underage boobs at that. How much do we love underage boobs, you ask, a little too excitedly? Fifty-six fucking percent much -- as in 56 is the percentage of teen girls in movies that were costumed in the provocative category. That's up 20 percent from 2009.
It's almost as if costume departments are made up entirely of creepy uncles.
We're actually seeing more of each woman on the screen (as in her boobs) while seeing fewer women overall. Only 15 percent of all protagonists in the top grossing films of last year were women, which could just be a bad year for ladies ... if that number wasn't actually one point lower than in 2002. In other words, the year of Austin Powers in Goldmember was slightly better for women in film than the year of Gravity.
New Line Cinemas
The fact that Beyonce's career survived Goldmember is evidence of a satanic pact if ever there was one.
As for speaking roles in general, only 30 percent of characters who get to say something in movies were women. That number has stayed pretty much the same since before we were invading Iraq. But are these meager parts at least interesting? You already know the answer: To cherry this "fuck you" sundae, of all those roles, ladies were roughly five times less likely to get any type of authoritative character, which might be explained by the fact that they're also generally much younger.
Hmm, it's almost as if these movies are getting cast by dudes who only see women as decoration.
If you're an actor trying to make it in Hollywood and you happen to be female, what could you do to further decrease your chances of making it big? Try being black, too. To be exact, only 14 percent of characters in films are African-American women, and while that sounds dismal, it's actually up from 8 percent in 2011 ... but down from 15 percent in 2012.
Lionsgate Films, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures
And if you're more than a size 2, expect to compete with men in fat suits.
But look on the bright side, black actresses: At least you're not playing an Asian character, because that demographic went down from 5 percent in 2011 to 3 percent in 2013. That is, you're just as likely to see an alien woman in a movie as you are to see an Asian one. After all, if a lady isn't staff fighting or operating a giant robot, then why would she possibly be of Asian heritage?
It's almost as if ... well, you get the idea.
One would imagine that the more bloated a budget gets, the more likely there would be a wide variety of demographics behind the camera. More people involved means more of a chance for women to get in, right? No, it's just the opposite: As the Producers Guild of America has recently discovered, only a measly 4.4 percent of directors of the top 100 films of each year from the last decade were women, due to the fact that women are way less likely to be put in charge of a film with a higher budget. Because, you know, what if Channing Tatum winks at the camera and the director faints? We can't have that.
And the same goes for any job where you get to yell at people -- only 16 percent of all high-up production jobs in 2012 were held by ladies, which is actually less than in the freaking '90s. But look on the bright side: It's not like Hollywood is going to start buying screenplays from chicks, so you best just start writing books.
theguardian.com
"Why not? Name one successful book adaptation franchise that came from a woman writer. One. We're waiting ..."
Ah fuck. Never mind.
Always on the go but can't get enough of Cracked? We have an Android app and iOS reader for you to pick from so you never miss another article.
David Christopher Bell
1260 Comments