“The world is round people!”
―Cate Blanchett
People are saying 2013 is the year of women in the box office. As recent as 2008, major studio head were still making ridiculous statements about never funding another film with a female protagonist. (Click here for a great article from 2008 about this, courtesy of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at SDSU, who by the way, puts out the Celluloid Ceiling Report every year.) But after Bridesmaids grossed $170 million and everyone picked their jaws up off the floor, perhaps a few people actually paid attention to the fact that the film starred an ensemble of women and yet both men and women bought tickets to see it.
You see, the idea before was that men and women would both see films with male protagonists, but only women would go to the theater for a female protagonist. Also, it was common knowledge that if women were on screen talking, men would just tune out. This was the justification when it was pointed out again and again that though women make up over 50% of the box office, they make up less than 30% of SPEAKING characters. WTF.
Enter Frozen and Catching Fire.
In December 2013, Catching Fire had beat out Man of Steel as the third highest grossing film of the year. Gravity beat out both World War Z and Star Trek Into Darkness. Frozen is the 5th highest grossing film OF ALL TIME at $1.2 billion worldwide. If anyone knows the power of Frozen, it’s the mother of a four-year-old girl. Everything in our house is Elsa.
And then came the “Yeah, but…”s
“Catching Fire was already a major bestseller with a multi-million fan base…”
“The Heat stared Melissa McCarthy and Sandy Bullock. They’re both very hot right now…”
“Frozen is Disney at it’s best…”
Anything to downplay the important fact that all of these films were amazing vehicles for complex female protagonists. And they made money. Lots and lots of money. It’s time for the “yeah, buts” to end. It’s time to start spending more money on women, both on screen and behind it. It’s time to stop pretending that this discrimination is for profit. The world is round people.
Every women in Hollywood and probably the publishing world has encountered some form of misogyny, whether purposeful or not. In my own experience, I applied to a well known film school in LA for my MFA. They asked me to pick a secondary field besides Screenwriting and I choose Cinematography, because that is what interests me. When I was accepted I was surprised to find that my secondary field had been changed to… Production Design. Now, I don’t mean to demean production design, because in reality it is a fascinating, difficult and highly creative field, but at the time it felt like they were shunting me away from the camera towards more “feminine” pursuits. I was and still am probably reading way too much into it, but when I discovered the change I was pretty upset, especially when you consider that huge dearth of women DPs in Hollywood at present. In fact, when watching the Oscars this year, one couldn’t help but notice that the only categories which consistently recognized women are Production Design and Costume Design. I didn’t end up going to that school.
Later, as a screenwriter I was contacted several times to polish or rewrite or punch up dialogue, because I “write women so well.” That’s not a bad thing, but for crying out loud, can’t a girl write a good car chase or epic war battle every now and then?
To better illustrate my point, here’s a great infographic from the New York Film Academy:
Writing is Hard 
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