Quick, name a few recent popular movies where the two top-billed stars are female.
Here’s a miscellaneous survey I just did, tallied by gender of top billed/second billed star:
| M/M | M/F | F/M | F/F | |
| 20 biggest movies of 2007 | 10 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| 20 biggest movies of 2006 | 11 | 7 | 0 | 2 |
| 20 biggest movies of 2005 | 11 | 7 | 2 | 0 |
| 20 biggest movies of 2004 | 10 | 9 | 1 | 0 |
| 20 biggest movies since 1977 | 15 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| IMDb Top 20 of All Time | 15 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
There were about 110 movies with a male lead and 5 with a female lead. Of the second-billed females, nearly all are written as love interests of the first-billed man. There were over sixty movies in the sample with two male stars top-billed. The only movies with two top-billed female roles, on the other hand, were The Devil Wears Prada and Scary Movie 4.
My cousin has been working on tallying (by hand!) all movies with two top-billed female stars. She reports that there are staggeringly few of them, and the roles fall mainly in two genres: mother-daughter bonding movies and horror films. Hollywood is not creating female heroes.
Suppose we had a generic Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer movie with some evil organization (say, a shadow government headed by Dick Cheney or whatever) bent on destroying something (say, the internet). Who would you rather see battling their way through the system to stop them — another basic Bruce Willis/Denzel Washington/Vin Diesel character? Or River Tam, Sarah Connor, Lola from Run Lola Run, or Beatrix Kiddo? Not only could the film industry suck less in the examples it sets, we could have some awesome movies.
Notes: If anyone wants to expand my list into a more comprehensive and authoritative survey, I’d love to see the results. I did my tally by hand, using The Numbers for the basic lists and stars, plus IMDb and Wikipedia to get a consensus on billing order.
Love Actually
Chocolat
Calendar Girls
Snow Cake
Shipping News
Randall works for me? Hey, where’s my cut?
I don’t anyone will read this but I still think I have something to contribute.
To people that say that it eats into profits to make movies geared toward women instead of men just because men spend more then they really are shooting themselves in the foot. An example is the Wii. It doesn’t focus on people that usually spend money on games but people that essentially never spent money on games. For an elaboration I think this TED talk is excellent to explain that concept.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/20
I personally happen to love a strong female character. I like good punk bands with female leads. My problem is that a lot of movies with female leads suck. It has nothing to do with the female lead and has almost everything to do with the story and writing. I really don’t think fight scenes with River Tam are all that great. I have seen several asian films with a solid story and kick ass female fight scenes. Which I find ironic in a sense because asian countries have a history of sexism. Then there’s the “you go girl” type movies which seem to do nothing but destroy men. That being said the male lead films that hollywood make are not all that great either. It’s best to distance yourself from the system and go the independent route.
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It’s funny to see a comment up there about how men are the ones who buy/consume the most movies and yet, if it wasn’t for me (a female) I don’t think my friends would bother to go to the movies anymore. I love going to the movies and go by myself quite a bit (my most recent trip was to see Doomsday, I’m not going to claim it was a ‘good’ movie but I thought it was awesome (though it pissed me off when it hit the Unfair Racial Cliche Alert button (http://www.feoamante.com/Movies/Racial/racial.html))).
And one little note about the Silent Hill movie. From what I heard, the original script didn’t have the bit with Sean Bean. The studio refused to greenlight it without any male characters so his bit was added in.
My guess is that The Descent (also all female cast) only managed to get made because it wasn’t made in Hollywood.
The Others was really good and I highly recommend it.
If anyone wants to know more statistics about women in the movies and television, check out the work of Martha Lauzen, my professor at San Diego State University.
She does counts of women on screen and behind the scenes of prime time TV and the top couple hundred grossing movies every other year, and also compares them to female behaviors on screen (for example, roles assigned to female characters – lead, off-lead, love interest; or their language behaviors like levels of politeness, starting and ending words, commands, etc.)
If you go into your university’s database of scholarly journals and search for her, you’ll find her work. You can also check her out on Google Scholar or just a regular Google search.
Here’s a Wikipedia entry on her stuff to get you started:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celluloid_ceiling
Wow, there is an AMAZING amount of sexism in this thread.
And you’re not the only one, Julius.
A lot of people seem to be forgetting the rules
2004-2007
Top 20 Films
TWO Female leads.
It’s simple! But everyone wants to shout out “Thelma & Louise” as if this is relevant. OH! HOorAY! You found ONE example!
That’s what we call an exception, folks!
Man. It’s hilarious to see people’s comfortable complacency that “other XKCD readers are my kind of people” torn to shreds by this thread. Mine included. To think that there are still geeks out there who still think that women are genetically programmed to iron shirts and smile when hubby comes home. Goddamn.
To comment on every post that I’d like to would take too long, so I’ll just make a few points from my incredibly manly perspective to muddy the waters further:
- Most women I know, including those in my family, hate most chick flicks, just like the majority of men. Why? Because the majority of chick flicks are stupid. The ones that they like, I can usually at least appreciate why, and often I enjoy them a lot (like Love Actually).
- Most men I know hate mindless action films. Why? Because they are stupid. I love them, but I’m weird and geeky.
- Good action films, good comedies, good dramas; most people I know like good films, it doesn’t matter whether they carry their ovaries on the outside or the inside.
- All you pompous male geeks who haven’t realised that your assumptions about gender are both overgeneralised and largely stereotypical, I say: wake up! Look at the evidence; don’t just defend your own biased opinion because it feels right!
- If I was given the choice of a high-flying CEO position or looking after the kids, I’d instantly pick both. Why is this not an option? You don’t have to be a stay-at-home parent to be a good parent. My mother raised me and my brother and sister single-handedly, while working about 50 hours a week as a civil servant (at the moment, she routinely administers about 3 million in funding); so far none of us have robbed even one convenience store to pay for our crack habit, so I think she did pretty well. I respect her and other parents like her much more than I respect people who think that you can’t do both.
- Feminazis (and I say that with affection, you men-hating, universally lesbian, workboot-wearing freaks); Don’t be too hard on the men here who are ignorant of the inequalities women still face. Everyone has their blind spots, and it’s usually not their fault. The overt bigots are either trolls or beyond help; ignore them. But the others only need to be educated; you can tell that they subconsciously realise this by the defensive attitude they have towards anyone suggesting that misogyny exists.
- The idea that heterosexual men cannot identify with female action leads is preposterous; I don’t know about the rest of you, but I always thought Ripley was awesome, and totally imagined myself in that powerlifter throwing the Alien Queen on her ass.
It frustrates me as well when overzealous editors label every strong female appearance in a movie as an example of “girl power.” What? This all but implies that male is default, and every female appearance must be explained.
Joss Whedon tries to avoid this trend, and it’s pretty clear that River Tam (and not Captain Mal or some other character) is the main character in Serenity, and, the way things worked out with Firefly, in that show as well (the Juban Early ending still gives me shivers).
Juno was compelling for its female presence. In the end it was mostly Ellen Page and Jennifer Garner.
And is nobody going to single out Lindsey Lohan’s singular performance as the star of “I Know Who Killed Me”?
Oh my…one post and so many comments with people wearing their privilige so clearly to display!
Cadence – come back! This comment thread needs you!
Thelma & Louise, Nine to Five.
I can’t think of anything else.
Some small parts of my faith in males on the internet have been restored through the last several comments.
And as to the gentlemanly concern about the date-situation, it’s not about being a gentleman. The objections were to the other caveats tied to the statement; such as, “women don’t go to movies by themselves,” “men are the biggest ticket buyers” (with no facts to back it), and “feminist women will bitch and scream about equality and still ‘let’ you pay everything for them…must be nice.”
I don’t mind being treated, and I guess it’s still the “norm” for the first date (?? -scratches head-), but I don’t *want* for any guy in my life to pay for me forever. I have my own money, I can buy my own stuff. Hell, I can buy *you* stuff, too. There’s a very, very fine line for guys between being polite and being condescending in this case.
Just like there’s apparently a line women have to worry about in the dating scene… “Letting him pay means you’re interested” and “Paying for yourself means ‘fuck off’.” Or at least this is what I was told by my (female and male) college friends. Had some nice awkward dinners/snacks/coffee/etc. when I had to choose between my deep-seated desire to pay my own way and to not come off as disinterested.
Holding doors is still okay, as long as you don’t get pissed when I occasionally hold the door for you. I have arms, too. =P
It’s ridiculous to think that this disproportionate statistic doesn’t have its roots in sexism. Even if its being carried out by capitalism, the only reason male leading roles have greater market penetration is *because* of sexism. Even if its because most screenplays are written by men, its most likely that sexism is in play when these screenplays are chosen (though I guess I really can’t back that up, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true).
Talking about stuff like “different, but equal” sounds a lot like “separate, but equal.” Beyond the biological tasks, a man can do anything a woman can do and vice versa. Hell, technology going the way its going, in the future, those biological tasks (birth, etc.) may not even be restricted to one gender.
Its true that a woman/man may be predisposed to be better at something, but that doesn’t mean that gender should “rule” that field.
To people who say, “name 2 woman inventors” and such, that doesn’t mean men are better than woman. It’s no secret that sexism was much more rampant in the past than it is today, even in the earlier part of the 20th century. I mean, women weren’t even allowed to vote at the beginning of the 20th century. Something still relatively recent (in historical perspective) will have an impact on today. People that were alive than had raised people who are in power today. Hell, some of them may have been alive themselves. Those beliefs will still be there.
We’re living in rapidly changing times. With the internet, ideas spread faster than they ever had before. The market is ripe for ‘gender-benders’ with a female lead in a position that was normally dominated by a male. While I think it may be more evident in the newer generations, men are more willing to see a woman taking charge as a turn-on, not a turn-off. Civilization has always been trumping instincts and the instinct that the male is the only one both willing and able to take care of the woman and the family.
Personally, I know I don’t want a girl who becomes completely dependent on me. I desperately want an equal or hell, I won’t lie, I wouldn’t mind even a literal ‘better half.’
The reason a lot of the heroine roles have been dominated by attractive leads is that leads in general (male & female) are dominated by attractive people, but also that a woman leader in itself is, like i said previously, becoming an attractive attribute.
Ok, my rant is over. Hopefully its relatively coherent and what not.
What, I’m only the second person here to have seen Bandidas? Sure, it wasn’t a fantastic movie (and it certainly wasn’t a “20 biggest”), but it came to mind immediately when I read this article.
I’m surprised that there aren’t a lot more people here who went “Hayek and Cruz? I must rent this!” It certainly seems to have been a common reaction with (me and) my friends.
Well, Atlas Shrugged is going to come out soon. It’s going to suck, I’m sure, but arguably Dagny is the lead role. I’m sure Hollywood will make Galt into the bigger role though.
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My dream for said awesome female actor for cutting off the antagonists balls: Ellen Page.
Not only did she allready do this literally in Hard Candy. But she has also got to be the most awesome new actor on the block since Portman in Leon. She only has to get past the phase of still being able to play 14 year olds.
Interestingly, Kill Bill vol 1 has F/F, but vol 2 has F/M (seeing as Lucy Liu isn’t in the second one).
I would like to see more F/F movies, particularly if one of the F’s is Summer Glau.
That’s seriously sick!!
>>Talking about stuff like “different, but equal” sounds a lot like “separate, but equal.”
Hallelujah, Paul.
People keep going on and on about profit
Well, the thing is this: film has been massively less profitable lately. The industry blames piracy, movie fans blame a decline in quality. It COULD be that there are now different forms of media (television, anime, webcomics) that appeal to a large set of consumers whose needs aren’t being met by film, so those people have just stopped spending money on seeing movies.
When I was in high school I used to have a running joke; when people asked me who my role models were, I’d say “Catwoman and Carmen Sandiego.” At the time those were the only women on saturday morning cartoons who weren’t boy-crazy or subservient to men, weren’t just a token female on an all-male team, and actually frequently succeeded in solo endeavors without the help of a man.
Then, in the mid 90s, anime stole me away from comics and american cartoons, due solely to Lina Inverse (Slayers) and Hikaru Shidou (Magic Knight Rayearth). In both cases this was a cartoon with a leading character who was a believable and nuanced female who was not obsessed with boys and actually wanted to have adventure for adventure’s sake and who wasn’t constantly being rescued.
Both Rayearth and Slayers made a lot of money, both in Japan and here, when they were imported. They’re both fairly popular with both genders. It was blatantly obvious that there was a market there with a lot of cash, just american writers of comics and cartoons were entirely unable to see it before Japan had stolen it away (note: I’m not implying that most anime is feminist or that Japan is some idealized land of sugar and fairies. I’m saying that they happened to, once or twice in the 90s, produce fairly awesome leading female characters).
Just because a capitalist entity is obsessed with making money doesn’t mean that things they neglect are UNPROFITABLE. Marvel and DC are all about making money… then why are Graphic novels often consigned to a single-shelf ghetto while manga takes up an entire wall? They convinced themselves that girls didn’t want to read comics and would never be a major market, so they largely didn’t bother writing for them or marketing to them. And now they’re playing catch-up.
Saying “blah and blah would be unprofitable. If that isn’t true, someone would have done it already” is exactly the mistake people made for years about girls and comics. In the 90s US publishers would occasionally try a half-hearted, poorly marketed campaign for a terrible girl-oriented comic and then say ‘haha, look, it failed, that means we’re right about girls and comics.’
I guess I’m saying that just because someone is obsessed with making money doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll actually be good at finding and appealing to new markets. The corp fatcats are notorious for overlooking new markets until its too late, and then scrambling to acquire the young, creative company that DID find them.
So true and so sad. My bf and I were re-watching Transformers for the 3rd time last night, and I noticed that there were tons of nerdy guys saving the day in that movie. Nerd boy images abound. There’s Sam, his nerdy friends, the government hacker nerds, etc… but the women in the film, no matter what specific role they fill (love interest, hacker, random person on the street) were “hot”. I’m not saying there aren’t hot women mechanics, hot hackers, and hot women… but in a world of nerdy dudes, ALL the women were frakking gorgeous. Not. Fair. Play.
It looks like quite a few people are nitpicking your methods or naming movies that disagree with your point. But for what it’s worth I think your dataset was very well chosen and your conclusions were valid. Of course someone else can always expand on your list, but you made a fabulous point.
i haven’t read the rest of this but my search function doesn’t find it mentioned so i’m going to do it now and then go back and read the rest of this long list of comments:
death proof.
i know it didn’t gross well and i’m not suggesting it disproves the OP’s theory at all, but it’s a recent movie with mostly female leads in which the female characters are interesting, (mostly) believable, and also badass. i suppose burt reynolds probably still gets top billing, but he also gets his teeth stomped into the highway by a bunch of ladies. if you want to talk body image questions, this film’s not particularly progressive, but i still like to see a bunch of chicks jumping burt reynolds.
it turns out i’m a dumbass and someone mentioned deathproof as one word, which it probably was in the original title. so, consider me having seconded this.
also, i read some of the comments for that blog post with the electric skateboarder / squirrel/dyson spherist sketches and the bitching and moaning people did about that because you didn’t explicitly indicate the genders of the participants? that was aggravating.
why do people always go on about “men have a hard time identifying with women” or similar arguments? as a gay man i have grown up every day of my life in the position of having to either identify with heterosexual narrators and protagonists or completely avoid popular culture, and guess what? i do just fine. a good movie, or book, or song, or tv show should ideally speak to universal themes in human experience, so why should men care any more about who is experiencing it with/toward whom than women do?
and why do you even *have* to identify with the main character? i can’t say i really *identify* with beatrix kiddo, but i *understand* her and *empathise* with her and that makes kill bill work for me.
also, if i wasn’t at work i would have lol’ed at the poster who claimed that gender disparity has vanished. possibly the increasing rate of academic failures in males in this country is a result of an increasingly poisonous cultural construction of the male gender role? god i could go on for hours but i’m at work and i need to go home so i’ll limit myself to one more idea:
someone said the way to get more female leads into action movies is to defeminize the characters. the example of aliens is certainly compelling anecdotal evidence of this point, but consider that traditionally, females in mainstream media have been hyperfeminized. they haven’t been real or balanced characters – like someone else said about the “female flaw”, the creation and shoehorning of gentler and kinder weaknesses into characters to make them test better in focus groups. sure, we could use to defeminize female roles, to the extent that they’re overfeminized. just like we could use to demasculinize male roles to the extent they’ve been hypermasculinized. enough with the gender caricatures already, culture. sheesh.
If anyone posts with another list of films which had female leads, can someone with a shotgun please revoke their breathing permit? Single examples are not the point (plural of anecdotes =/= data). The statistics may not be rigorous, but they certainly are significant. There clearly is a disparity in terms of roles, and obviously that is due to some form of sexism. What level this sexism is at (society, writers, studios) is debatable, and probably needs working on. Nobody has come up with anything resembling a solution, or even a suggested solution, or even a partial one. My personal (possibly optimistic) idea is that provided women continue to become more influential in roles they have historically not been able to gain influence in, the problem will gradually sort itself out.
Additionally, kityglitr, I wouldn’t dispute that there is some kind of discrimination here, but I would find it harder to agree that it is clear “against” whom the discrimination applies. Obviously you were being hyperbolic (or wrong) in stating all women (as geeks) are gorgeous, but I suspect that Hollywood is trying to make a positive effort to not have all geeks as white stick thin young men with glasses and serious social problems. Perhaps they’re simply trying to create role-models, empowering girls to venture into profession they were historically barred from. I’m not sure you thought quite as deeply as you could have about this. I would bear in mind throughout all of this that Hollywood is as a general rule, crap, and leans heavily on tired stereotypes. Looking to it for leadership on these kinds of issues is a tad optimistic, in my view.
(Also, for those people who think that the first date paying issue is clouded by convention. Surely you would not accept the reverse situation if it were the ‘done thing’? Using the arguments that “everybody does it” shows that you haven’t quite endorsed fully an agenda of equality. This is of course a minor, and very irrelevant issue.)
okay i lied. one more thing.
people have said, “the problem is the lack of female writers,” or “female roles,” or “female directors.” people have blamed the audience. so far no one i’ve read (sorry i didn’t get through the whole thread) has pointed out that all of these are simultaneously true – the problem is systemic and exists at every level.
i think the solution is not to improve the quality of mainstream media, but to phase it out of public life. i’m not sure how much of this is a product of my position vis a vis the internet, but i see media and culture becoming increasingly small-scale, distributed, and personal. people can shoot their own videos and put them on youtube. they can sell their own music on myspace, or publish their own books online. i could forsee a future in which this mysogynistic, homophobic, racist, hegemonic megaculture we’ve created dissolves into smaller-scale communities supported and driven by fans.
call me an optimist, but i’ve got my fingers crossed.
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Next time someone complains about people posting movies that actually have female leads, could someone else please shoot them?
Seriously, relax. The first line says “Quick, name a few recent popular movies where the two top-billed stars are female.”
SOME of us do just that. All those comments, including my own way up there, is hardly meant to be a proof that there doesn’t exist sexism, or a contribute to the debate in general. It is in all likelihood just people responding to this blog like any of Randall’s other blogs, not taking it TOO seriously, and simply responding to the blog itself.
Look at the starting posts. People pretty much all mentioned movies that had a female lead. It wasn’t until somebody decided that the issue of sexism in movies and in general should be discussed, that people started having a problem with movies being mentioned.
So please, take a chill pill. We are all allowed to post what we want about the subject at hand. Besides this is not the best place to discuss such a serious topic. So leave some room for all of us. Pretty please?
On another note, recaptcha: the Meadows
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Eh, people can’t identify with women. Even women can’t do it, or at least the ones with money to spend on movies can’t.
C’mon, dudes, admit it: we’re all looking for a woman who has a “man brain” anyway.
“Ooh, you’re into horror movies and rock’n'roll, instead of pressing wildflowers? You’re interesting. I want in your pants.”
as opposed to
“Ooh, you’re into pressing wildflowers? I want into your pants.” (Note lack of “you’re interesting.”)
Thanks Cadence and others for all your hard work in answering some of the stunning sexism in this thread. I’m disappointed too, in that I expected more from readers of xkcd.
For those posters who believe that female action heroes aren’t believable because “women just don’t kick ass in real life,” I want to ask you: When was the last time YOU “kicked ass” IRL? By that I mean, pulled off even some of the fights or stunts we see in the movies? Obviously, you must be able to because of your undying faith in only male action characters.
Most men I know haven’t been in a fistfight for YEARS, because a) they grew the fuck up, or b) like 99.9% of the population, haven’t been confronted with the fantastic premises that led to said ass kicking in the movies. Your average guy is just as incapable as your average woman in pulling off the exploits shown in films. Why are you demanding only women to have to be able to perform these stunts IRL before they can have a hero at the theater?
Let’s try the cultural comparison angle, rather than the feminist defence:
A few have mentioned The Matrix, and I thought this was a good example as a sort of microcosm of the situation here. Since the W Bros came out and said Ghost in the Shell heavily influenced their trilogy, it’s not a far stretch to imagine Trinity based on Major Kusanagi, but Neo ends up as the main protagonist in the Matrix. Perhaps they knew that they had to deal with Hollywood, so they took only as much as they could chew (Neo could have easily been a female character right? But that would have been too much to ask for).
Now it’s not really fair to compare how female characters are used in Japanese anime, since they’ve had the chance to become far more developed. The basic flow is (totally my opinion),
Japan is nuked twice,
leading to the development of modern manga as an entertainment with some disconnect from reality,
leading to anime,
leading to the development of kawaii culture as an additional disconnect from reality mixed with East/West culture swap of “sex sells”,
and the parallel development of hentai culture
And these opened the doors to exploring interesting female characters.
Anyways, avoiding the above paragraph, I think as Hollywood drys on ideas, more people like the W Bros will finally make interesting female characters, perhaps even more so with the continuation of aforementioned East/West culture swapping. It’s just going to take about 10 more years. I don’t see comedies like Azumanga Daioh really picking up here anytime soon, but we’re already seeing 1995-esque reverse gender roles characters in our sci-fi (Rei Ayanami and Asuka Langley Soryu as the templates from Neon Genesis Evangelion).
Also previously mentioned was the broad audience interest, which could explain why many leads are male. Men can relate, and women can either enjoy their pretty face or their inner conflict, etc. But for a lead female character, women can relate, but the most proven, profitable, and reliable way to catch a male audience is sexy fanservice. Even Japan agrees with the USA on this one. They are, after all, one of the most misogynistic societies.
And it will be like that for a while, at least until Hollywood decides to roll the dice on Serial Experiments Lain. So lets assume here that’s why all the female characters are inexplicably way hotter than their sci-fi geek counterparts.
So the trend will be the same, someone will create the perfect storm movie in Hollywood allowing for more risks in female characters, just as the Matrix did for cyberpunk, and LotR did for epic fantasy trilogies. It just hasn’t happened yet, which is what the XKCD table above shows. I’ll say it happens in 10 years, since we’ve already ported The Ring, and in 2009 we’ll have ported Akira.
So in conclusion, real feminists need to steal more stuff from Japan.
P.S. One person brought up NANA, and I actually watched this series and enjoyed it, even though it was created for the teenage female demographic (and I’m obviously part of the 18-30 male demographic). I watched it as a psychological thriller and a commentary on the current state of the pop music industry though, not as a shojo romance.
Just thought I’d point out that you still have women alive in America who remember a time when they couldn’t vote and you’re expecting sexism not to have any sort of affect on movie making/watching.
In New Zealand (where women won the vote in 1893 and we’ve had female prime ministers for the last 10 years) all of the recent kiwi made strongly grossing films that I can think of have had more than one strong female character ( with the possible exception of Eagle vs Shark which I haven’t seen) and 2 of them were directed by women (Niki Caro and Jane Campion).
Hot topic
Thought: Could the reason be that we can’t stand two strong women?
—————
Checking my DVD collection:
with F/F
- fried green tomatoes (F/F/F/F/F!) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101921/
- Vier Minuten http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461694/
both not very prominent indeed, more or less confirming the top post. The latter with two excellent and powerful female leads beyond any chick appeal
F/M I can fin a few more,
Luna papa
Frida
Bella Martha
Beyond Silence
Strong Female lead that should be credited first:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347048/
Now shhote me, Oce
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Both Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Apocalypse list women as the 2 top-billed leads. Well, technically RE2 as a woman and a girl, but still. RE3 gets honorary mention for first and third billed, and Golden Compass really should have been top 2 billed, except for some asinine reason they decided both Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig should be billed above Dakota Blue, who played Lyra, the main freakin’ character!
Another sci-fi movie: Alien 4, a.k.a. Alien Resurrection, with Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder.
XKCD I feel your pain…
Every post has been one of:
A) someone highlighting a crap movie as a point of rebuttal.
B) someone posting outright 1950 chauvinism (aside: most people who post this make a comment about women in the workforce. I have yet to meet someone who says this sort of thing and actually works in management, or holds a regular job at all in most cases)
C) someone missing the point that the sample was limited and the original article listed the wider study being conducted by your own cousin presented the same correlation.
D) generic college kid post by someone about hot lesbian action.
Please people get a clue, read the article, learn some grammar and then make an informed and insightful post.
For the record I too agree there are not enough Hollywood action flicks with women. Might I point out that France has produced some amazing movies with female lead heroines in the last ten years. I like a good action flick with a protagonist who you genuinely don’t want to fuck with, for example Summer Glau or Bruce Willis. The problem is not just the lack of female protagonists but the lack of believable female protagonists. Get into some French action movies.
Maybe one reason there are so few blockbusting movies starring females is that blockbusters work with primitive underlying fantasies and archetypes. Male heroes since the mythological period have been violent adventurers and conquerors – no problem, that’s what the movies give them. Female heroes (heroines, whatever) have been: chaste to the point of suicidal stubbornness e.g. any number of martyrs; or fiercely and sometimes vengefully protective of their family and its prerogatives. Unfortunately for female heroes, while our culture is happy to watch a frivolous entertainment involving the mass slaughter of terrorists, it seems on the one hand not to be much interested in chastity (although this may explain the F/F horror movies?) and on the other not to be very comfortable with bloody-minded devotion to one’s own family (although I think there are exceptions to this one).
I enjoy a female action hero as much as the next man, in small quantities, but it’s really a chimera, a grafting of the male heroic fantasy onto a female. I’m not at all sure I’ve got the female heroic fantasy right, but I do think it’s different from the male model and that for some reason modern Western culture is uncomfortable with it.
Of course, that’s no reason that perfectly good non-blockbuster movies couldn’t have F/F leads.
Thank you, Randall: I love this post. And this comment thread! Lots of good people here.
It seems like a lot of people are talking about what guys want to see in a movie. This usually includes plot, lots of action, hot women. I’ve also seen the assumption that because F/F or female-made movies won’t satisfy these desires, men won’t go see them. Just for the sake of a brief and incomplete example, let’s take “some dude”:
>>Eh, people can’t identify with women. Even women can’t do it, or at least the ones with money to spend on movies can’t. C’mon, dudes, admit it: we’re all looking for a woman who has a “man brain” anyway.
I’d just like to point out that not all men have the same set of expectations or desires in their movies and their lives. This is a central point of feminism, actually: All women are not the same. All men are not the same. When society (and therefore Hollywood) stereotypes women as, oh, nurturing/not!leaders/not!action heroes, it is also stereotyping men: they are not!nurturing/strong!leaders/action heroes. So where does this mindset leave the man who does not feel he has strong leadership skills, who doesn’t have any particular interest in blowing stuff up for the fun of it, who could happily spend most of his time caring for a house and kids? Nowhere, that’s where. He doesn’t exist.
In short: narrow definitions of “what men like” or “what women are good at” hurt women and men alike.
There’ve been numerous mentions of differences between men and women, difficulty of relating to characters of other genders- but people, isn’t it obvious that men and women are much more similar than different? If you look at a list of traits labeled as feminine or masculine, it’s easy to see that by those guidelines, we’re all androgynous to some degree. Things like “women are more emotional” and “men are more rational” aren’t rules so much as vague trends, socialized stereotypes so flimsy as to be useless when applied to actual individuals. At least, that’s been my experience.
(Also, if people have such trouble identifying with members of the other sex, why is heterosexuality so prevalent? Though I guess the divorce rate suggests it doesn’t work out terrifically for a lot of people…)
Personally, I find it easy to relate to some characters in books and movies and hard to relate to others because of their personalities. Fiction is like real life, that way. Gender just doesn’t matter that much to me, and I don’t see why it should. What’s the more meaningful connection between a theater-goer and a character: a common interest, or a common organ? Me, I tend to identify well with nerdy characters and characters with swords, whether or not those characters have penises, and I have trouble identifying with very gender-stereotyped characters of either gender, because I find them ridiculously unlike real people.
To jump off KitaC’s comment with another observation: the ways the systemic sexism of our society restrict both men and women is especially apparent when you consider how members of both genders are punished when they step too far out of their designated stereotype-boxes. Men who act too feminine are usually treated even worse than women who act too masculine. (Quick, name two popular movies in which men take on traditionally female roles without automatically becoming the butt of an emasculating joke!)
The explanation I’ve heard for this, that makes sense to me, is that because men are privileged in society (yes, men, you are), women who enter traditionally masculine roles are empowering themselves, while men who enter traditionally feminine roles are taking a step down on the power ladder. It makes sense for women to want to be like men- shouldn’t everyone?- but it’s ridiculous for men to want to be like women, so “feminine” men are stigmatized even more than “masculine” women, and men get horribly bound up in the stereotyped expectations of them.
What about the opposite? Do narrow definitions of “what women like” or “what men are good at” also hurt men and women alike? Funny, why does the tone change simply by moving the genders…
[quote]When society (and therefore Hollywood) stereotypes women as, oh, nurturing/not!leaders/not!action heroes, it is also stereotyping men: they are not!nurturing/strong!leaders/action heroes. [/quote]
Although your overall point was okay, this sentence is just awful. Assuming that men and women are stereotyped as exact opposites in all cases is nonsensical and is basic correlation/causation confusion. If women are stereotyped as short, does that also imply men are stereotyped as tall? Of course not, the two aren’t dependent, so why the hell would being nurturing/leadership/action heroes be tied down as opposites?
I enjoyed the New Zealand and France movie viewpoints, I think that furthers my opinion that Hollywood will start to adapt in the next 10 years with interesting female roles, especially given it’s recent history of running out of ideas and copying.
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Thank you so much for explaining why xkcd is so heteronormative and posting this chart. From the bottom of my feminist heart.
hmm. Interesting. Sue-Ellen Case, a prominent feminist theorist, argues that in theatre (and by proxy film) women are lumped into one of four types of characters. The Witch, The Bitch, The Virgin (or Goddess), and The Vamp. Which I think is a major component to why you find few films with two women in top billing. It is hard to combine any of these characters and make a compelling story.
The films I could think of off the top of my head were:
Boys Don’t Cry – Hillary Swank & Chloe Sevigny (this is an interesting case because Swank is playing Brandon Tina, a woman who identifies as a man, which is against the standard societal feminine character, however in a heteronormative perspective it is two women with top billing)
A League of Their Own – Gina Davis & Lori Petty (In this case a viewer would assume that Davis and Petty would have top billing in the movie, however Tom Hanks has top billing, thus removing it from the F/F column, also Madonna got higher billing than Petty)
Bend It Like Beckham – Keira Knightly & Parminder Nagra (A British movie, which is outside the American centric corporation of cinema, though two females with top billing.)
Chicago – Catherine Zeta-Jones & Renee Zellweger (Similar to A League of Their Own one would expect these two actresses to receive top billing on this movie-musical, however Richard Gere recieved second billing on this film, again dropping it from the F/F column. Though this movie is a good example of the F/F buddy movie that doesn’t end with them driving off a cliff)
Hocus Pocus – Sarah Jessica Parker, Bette Midler, & Kathy Najimy (A trio of powerhouse women got top billing for this children’s movie, in an ironic twist, all three are literal witches, placing them into marginalized characterization.)
I think the parameter of putting two women in top billing is interesting, because it shows how while there are movies out there that star two women but they don’t receive the top two spots on the marquis or on the poster. I wonder if this chart isn’t at least slightly skewed by the advertising for films with female leads.
Jordan – Actually if you look at the posters/DVD cover for Chicago, it says “Catherine Zeta Jones, Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere”, with Richard being the last listed. The imdb credits are listed in the order shown in the film, which is in order of appearance so that doesn’t help to determine who is 2nd.
My god I wish I had the time to read all of your comments, instead of having to go off and read my textbooks and do assignments and whatnot (though I’m sure I’ll be back later, when I have more procrastinating to do).. but just needed to add that I think it’s awesome that you’ve brought this up, and perhaps (if you can find this comment amongst the millions already posted) you could pass on your cousin’s findings to me? I do Cultural Anthropology (along with other stuff… including CompSci.. it’s a long story) at University, and would love to be able to pass something like this along to my lecturer – not just cause it gives me brownie points, but also cause I’d love to see something like this up in a lecture. Changing the world and all that.. baby steps to begin with, but I think we can do it.
Kudos for pointing this out. Keep up the good work
Blog on.