"Female-driven films work," she said at the event, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "Films with women at the center are not a public-service project, they are a big-time, bottom-line-enhancing, money-making commodity."
And she has first-hand experience that it's true.
3 comments:
The question that Reese brings up in her speech, "Why do people have prejudiced opinions against women who want to accomplish things?", is a question that can hold true in any aspect of society today and that is not too comforting. Although what I have observed of this topic is subtle, I think that it is the kind of treatment that comes from many decades of women being looked down upon for sharing their opinions and one that we have yet to get rid of. While Reese brings up this question, she certainly has provided many opportunities to get rid of this problem through things like her "female-driven works' and her #AskHerMore initiative. This article did a great job of explaining many of the things Reese has done to eliminate the problem that she feels strongly about and to inform the readers of the problem as well. I think that many female celebrities have spoken up on this topic but have done nothing or very little to help solve it. It is great to hear all that Reese is doingto not only get the word out on the problem, but also fix it.
Yet another powerful actress and producer facing the facts of the inequality of the entertainment industry and how truthfully bullshit it is that it happens. Her statistics and income and general success just prove that the prejudices held against women in the industry are completely constructed from myths and ideas that hold no validity in the grand scheme of society. By backing up her career with amazing movies and tv shows that all feature female leads – that in my experience completely bust through the mythical norms of having a tall, curvaceous, blonde with a lack of intelligence is the way to produce great entertainment and film – she proves that what people are looking for is completely framed around what is made available to them. If you give the audiences films that have inherent equality between genders or races, they won’t fight it, they’ll accept it as a truth and begin to fight the films that coast upon these stereotypes.
Reese Witherspoon's recent push for more female voices in media, especially in this article, shows that one of the most important things that we as consumers can do is support these projects by going to see them in theaters and giving these projects our own financial support. The way that studio executives determine the success of a certain film is by how much money it makes at the box office, and as this article shows, this is the main argument that Witherspoon is using to prove her points. Gone Girl and Wild, created and backed by Witherspoon's production company, prove that female-driven projects can very easily become financial successes, making future projects of this sort more appealing to white male studio executives who may have otherwise passed on them. I'm really looking forward to what comes next for Witherspoon's production company, and my hope is that her successes will encourage others to follow in her footsteps to make more diverse media for everyone.
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