The Film industry is totally male dominated, and this is a problem for women.
Why? The Gaze.
In the book Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, Sharon Smith states, “Women, in any fully human form, have been almost completely left out of film.” (Thornham 14) It is easy to read this quote and think "Are you serious? I saw a movie just yesterday with a woman in it!" It would be a mistake, however, so interpret her so literally, because what she meant was not that women are absent from the medium of film altogether, and not that the only women depicted are space aliens or mutants, but that the women that are present are not accurate depictions of real life women. The women in film are misrepresentations, stereotype laden impostresses. Such a thing cannot be a coincidence, so why does film have this issue? The misrepresentation of women in film can be attributed to a concept called "the gaze."
“Through history males have done almost all of the writing and filmmaking, naturally from a male point of view,” states Stone. (Thornham 14) This male point of view is what constitutes the gaze. Everyone is biased, and this is not necessarily a reprehensible thing since bias is simply the result of different upbringings, viewpoints, desires, and experiences. No one is truly able to see the world in a way that is completely impartial. The problem with bias, in the case of the gaze, is that it means that most films made by men, which is most of them, depict women solely through the eyes of men. This depiction, in current entertainment cinema, is often “…a projection of male narcissistic fantasy,” as many female characters are oversexualized or depicted as unintelligent, weak, materialistic, or dependent on men. (Feminism & Film 25) The gaze also leads to underrepresentation of women, apparent in the fact that, in 2013, males with speaking roles outnumbered females by more than two to one. (Moving Beyond the Bechdel Test)
The Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State University tracked the numbers of women in behind-the scenes jobs in the U.S. film industry from 2012 to 2013, and found that "women accounted for 16 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors for the top 250 domestically made films in 2013. (The Status of Women in the U. S. Media 2014 41) This statistic demonstrates just how male dominated the film-production industry is. It seems that, unless this trend lessens or unless Hollywood establishes a standard for the representation of women in film, the gaze will continue to prevent accurate depictions of women in film
“Through history males have done almost all of the writing and filmmaking, naturally from a male point of view,” states Stone. (Thornham 14) This male point of view is what constitutes the gaze. Everyone is biased, and this is not necessarily a reprehensible thing since bias is simply the result of different upbringings, viewpoints, desires, and experiences. No one is truly able to see the world in a way that is completely impartial. The problem with bias, in the case of the gaze, is that it means that most films made by men, which is most of them, depict women solely through the eyes of men. This depiction, in current entertainment cinema, is often “…a projection of male narcissistic fantasy,” as many female characters are oversexualized or depicted as unintelligent, weak, materialistic, or dependent on men. (Feminism & Film 25) The gaze also leads to underrepresentation of women, apparent in the fact that, in 2013, males with speaking roles outnumbered females by more than two to one. (Moving Beyond the Bechdel Test)
The Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State University tracked the numbers of women in behind-the scenes jobs in the U.S. film industry from 2012 to 2013, and found that "women accounted for 16 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors for the top 250 domestically made films in 2013. (The Status of Women in the U. S. Media 2014 41) This statistic demonstrates just how male dominated the film-production industry is. It seems that, unless this trend lessens or unless Hollywood establishes a standard for the representation of women in film, the gaze will continue to prevent accurate depictions of women in film
This is a problem for a few reasons. First it perpetuates stereotypes about women, causing improper and demeaning ideas about them to be believed (by both men and women), and secondly, men aren't the only ones watching movies! In her book, And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory, Anneke Smelik states, “The spectator in the theatre is automatically and often unconsciously made to identify with the male look, because the camera films from the optical, as well as libidinal, point of view of the male character.” (Smelik 10)