Variety: “If no one is dying, nothing is exploding and no one is trying to kill each other, you shouldn’t be calling me,” says Jane Wu, a storyboard artist with credits including “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” “Thor: Ragnarok” and Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of “Mulan.”
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Jane Wu herself pointed out the gender disparity within her field of storyboarding, saying she "was the only woman in the story pit. No women directors, no women story artists." So she did her best to fit in with the men until she was accepted, and currently possesses a long list of formidable credits and a good reputation to boot. It is people like Jane Wu we need in the industry. As an Asian American woman myself, I see people like her thriving in her field and I feel inspired to push forward and succeed. In a white and male-dominated world, opportunities for people of color and women are often limited, and when available, are often underappreciated and sometimes even a token position for the argument of diversity. To see Wu succeed because of her own talent and tenacity is incredibly encouraging, not just for me, but for minority groups all around.
Over the past year, I have read a lot of these interviews about the paths of women in film and how they were able to break into the business. It is disheartening to read again and again that the only way these women were able to hold their own in their male-dominated fields was by essentially getting the men to forget that they were women. I know that a lot of recent research shows that there is some movement towards gender equality in the arts, but it is mind-bogglingly slow. My hope is that as the predatory, misogynistic leaders of the industry are brought down, they will be replaced by better people. I am not optimistic that this will happen without great public clamor, however. It is absurd to me that we must keep celebrating these remarkable, talented people not for their remarkable talent but because they are women doing things that women do not normally get to do.
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