The Mary Sue: Blumhouse is one of the smartest studios working today. Their horror films are more often than not well received, and producer Jason Blum has had his name on some seriously big projects. He’s worked with some stellar directors and writers, but with the upcoming release of Halloween, it might be time to ask why none of the directors of their theatrically released films have been female. Of course, Blum had an answer. A pretty terrible answer.
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If you have to call your assistant and go “Who was that nice lady who we interviewed for a movie? You know. The only lady we interviewed for that movie.” You’re probably doing it wrong. Very. Very wrong. I’m not the largest fan of horror movies. I have a friend who is working on that for me by slowly introducing me to the good ones. My favorite so far has actually been Babadook because it plays on that primal fear of grief and is an amazing allegory to how we can let strong negative emotions such as grief completely control our lives and make them horror movies. While Oculus gave me nightmares, The Babadook has stuck with me in a pretty strong way in how it conveyed its lesson. I really feel that horror stories have an amazing opportunity to be lessons, many early horror stories about things that go bump in the night were in fact lessons. All genders can write this way very well, but there is something in how we as a society train story tellers depending on their gender that affects how they tell their stories, and I think that we have allowed women-identifying story tellers to be more in touch with the emotional impact of their stories than we have allowed their counterparts. Also, there’s something inherently refreshing about watching a horror movie that is not completely centered on the male gaze of the desirable blonde virgin getting murdered in a corn-field that represents the womb of her rebirth (The Rise of Leslie Vernon, for those of you following along with references). Know your audience. If the interwebs is mostly women chattering about your spooky stories—maybe let them control the content. Especially considering how much real world fear women have to draw from. Shoot—all minorities. There’s a reason Get Out is so bone chillingly terrifying. It plays on real honest fears. Not just spooks and bumps in the night.
I feel as this article goes back to one of the phenomenon’s that I hate when it comes to diversity and inclusion and it is this checking the box idea, that we’re satisfying the progressive nature of the world by saying things and sometimes doing things that are pressed upon us and we feel obligated to do. But this company isn’t even going that far. It’s clear that there are different ideas of actively searching for female directors because I have no doubt if they were genuinely trying to find female directors for horror films they could have done it by now. It’s really just the same old tired excuses that this guy is fronting to try and hide the fact that for some reason whether it be effort or change or sexism that they aren’t bringing women into their company. Frankly it’s stupid for a multitude of reasons because new perspectives and talent would only make their company better.
When I saw the title for this article I just had to stop and read it. First of all, what?! This man has gotten away with not hiring women and he has tried to explain his reasoning behind it? My thought before reading this article was "good luck buddy". After reading the article I have to agree with everything the author says. The excuse that there are not enough women interested in directing a horror film is stupid. Just because there are currently more old men getting projects directed doesn't mean there aren't women searching hard for the opportunity to direct as well. It takes more than asking your friends about female directors because I'm guessing your friends haven't done their research either. I think the article brings up the great point that Blum's films are low budget, high quality films which make them the perfect environment to bring in any new talent, especially women.
I would personally feel better if he Jason Blum said he did not want to work with female directors rather than giving a very silly explanation for not working with female directors. Granted, there are not as many female directors as there are male directors but that is no excuse to not find a female director to work with. There are female directors that would love to work in the horror genre, you just have to search well for them. Just because one woman turned down an offer does not mean fifteen other women would turn down the offer. Blum needs to do more research and put in a little more effort in finding female directors to work with. It is very important to note that there are women out there who would perform better than the men he is giving the work to. Like the author of the article says "To just write an entire gender off based on a generalization is completely ridiculous. It’s exclusionary and, pardon my French, absolute bullshit."
The excuses he gives here are utter bs. If he doesn’t like working with women directors, then he should say that, rather than making up something completely absurd. You can’t say that you’ve tried to hire a woman director when you’ve barely contacted any in the first place and can’t even remember their names. The other part of his statement that I disagree with, but the article does a nice job explaining, is that a lot of horror fans are actually women; and that saying something like “women this” or “they don’t like that” is an incredibly crude generalization to make about half of the world’s population. They’re not all the same, so obviously some will be drawn to different things, but you can’t just sit there and say that they don’t like horror. I’m more than certain that there are plenty of female directors who would absolutely love to get a chance at directing a horror film at such a known studio. All he has to do is actually put in the effort to find them… but in all honesty I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t. If everything that he’s been doing has been historically working out for him and getting where he wants, there’d be no reason for him to change his actions or put more effort into something that he doesn’t think will necessarily do anything to further the studio.
Oh gee. What a fun article to comment on as a student here at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama, where we are taught that women do not want to work on Broadway. One of the most influential professors at our school spoke to some of my classmates in a class last year, and when they talked about sexism in the professional theatre world, the professor said that there were not a lot of female designers on Broadway because women simply did not want to work on Broadway. That sounds sooo much like what Jason Blum said about female horror directors that it is absolutely insane to me. Of course you don't know about any female directors when you haven't taken the time to listen to any of them. Do you really think there are just not women interested in working professionally in the horror film industry? That takes a special level of ignorance and complacency.
Ooof. Well as soon as I saw the article's name I knew it was going to be a rough one. I do have to point out the title of this article is intentionally clickbait, and is meant to shade the reader to being antagonistic towards Blum from the get go. I have some grievance with that, The Mary Sue, be better. Reading through the comments posted by my peers I agree and disagree with points brought up. Yes, Blum should be trying harder to hire more female directors for his films, absolutely. However, if there's not a market for it, then there's not a market. You can't hire what you can't find... And we don't know if there are any outside factors that informed his decision. This isn't a defense of his actions at all, but say Blum needed to churn out a horror movie before Halloween, and the most easily available directors were all men, then it makes business sense to hire one of them. However, there should have been a more thorough search for a female director.
I see this type of response all the time when people try to justify not being inclusive by trying to say that the type of people they are excluding just don't exist. This is of course very wrong, and often it just requires a little bit of extra research or a different job posting method or place in order to attract people of diverse backgrounds. In one of my classes we talked about creating gender-inclusive job postings because many adjectives have a strong male connotation, and how employers can word their job postings to attract a diverse applicant pool. I also saw another article this week featuring a number of female horror directors in response to his comments. If some reporter can find these women on the internet, then surely he can too. These types of excuses do nothing to further diversity and inclusion in film and always perpetuate unhelpful and incorrect stereotypes.
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