Thursday, September 15, 2011
How Diverse Are The Directors Of Your Favorite Television Shows?
ThinkProgress: The Directors Guild of America has some new numbers out about the percentage of episodes of each major show that are directed by men. And they’re impressively terrible: white women directed 11 percent of the 2,600 episodes the guild analyzed, while women of color directed just 1 percent of episodes.
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6 comments:
To me, this article's argument was flawed because I think its mostly irrelevant if a piece featuring women is directed by a woman or a man. That's not the problem here. The problem is the unbalance in female are male directors overall. I agree with the writer that "there is no way that there are 82 men who want to direct television episodes for every 12 women who do."
I'm always surprised when I hear that the entertainment industry is biased in terms of gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Although I agree with the article on its main point, that there is an unfair balance of men and women directors, I also agree with Pia. The argument being used is unnecessary. If there needs to be no justification for the amount of male directors, why does there need to be a justification for the amount of females? I believe the article is not trying to justify a reason as to why there needs to be more females, it was only making a point about how strange it is that there are not even women directors used for shows with female leads. Hopefully these statistics will change in the near future!
I personally think that women are somehow always trailing behind men in various industries, not necessarily specific to television. It is clear though, that it doesn't matter if there is a woman in the leading role or not, it is the fact that there aren't enough women directors. To have a woman in a leading role is, yes, empowering on the one hand but it doesn't matter off the screen. I'm not sure if it is a matter of not enough women wanting to be a part of television but if it is a matter of discrimination, there is a real problem. I think that there is more than what the article is telling us and that should be looked into before it becomes a serious imbalance of diversity in the TV industry.
Although it is not necessarily the best of news, these numbers do reflect some progress in the role of female directors. It is a rarity but it's slowing becoming the norm, but we have to look at the times and understand that, yes, woman are still working their way up a ladder that men have been sitting on for years now, and not only in television. Plus, men have been writing women's roles for centuries now. Luckily we've steered away from men playing women because women were not allowed to perform. However, we're just now stepping into the grey area of female directors and this calculation should not be a shock. Women just need to prove that they can focus on more than the emotional aspects of women's days and instead portray women through an unseen lens.
It seems that the lack of female directors is a hot topic at the moment, but I wish that it was always a hot topic. However women are lacking in many fields. I agree with Madeline, it is progress, but I hope that it continues to progress. I'm surprised that these numbers haven't progressed further, considering the number of female directors I see in school. I hope that when I enter the field, that will still be changing.
I agree that the idea that shows with female leads should have a higher percentage of female directors is a flawed argument. And I also agree that the comment about there not being 82 men to every 12 women wanting to direct is something to consider. However, I wouldn't actually be surprised to find that there is a certain disparity between the number of men who are interested in working behind the camera compared to the number of women.
Just taking a look a smaller examples, in every theater group I was part of in high school and early college, there were a lot more women auditioning for roles on stage than men, and a lot more men were interested in working backstage than women.
Obviously discrimination in any form is a bad thing, but articles like this always seem to go for the "women are being oppressed" angle, without ever looking to see if there might be other factors behind these sort of numbers. I would be interested to see what the difference is in the number of women vs the number of men who apply for film school programs are. These days most schools try to keep their ratios even to avoid articles like this being aimed at them, so the numbers that apply for the program might be more telling than the actual ratios of attendees.
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