A Win for Bigelow Could be a Boost for Women Directors

A win for Bigelow could be a boost for women directors — or no boost at all
By Beth Wood, SPECIAL TO THE SAND DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 12:05 a.m.

Kathryn Bigelow is only the fourth woman to be nominated for a best director Oscar. Tonight, she could become the first to win. But she’s already made history. “The Hurt Locker,” a tense war movie set in Iraq, earned her the Directors Guild of America award and the British Film Academy Award (BAFTA), making her the first female director to receive those prestigious prizes.

An Oscar victory for Bigelow could help expose the scarcity of females in pivotal positions in movies — or it could brush inequity back under the red carpet.

Martha Lauzen, the nationally known professor and executive director of San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, says it could go either way.

“We have to have reasonable expectations about how much one individual’s career can do for an entire sex,” Lauzen said. “Bigelow’s nomination could bring greater attention to women’s underrepresentation as directors — and to their talent. Or it could suggest to people that women have no problems anymore and that they’ve achieved equality.”

San Diego screenwriter Deborah Serra considers Bigelow to be only the second woman to be nominated, although Italy’s Lina Wertmüller (for “Seven Beauties”) and Sofia Coppola (for “Lost in Translation”) were also nominated.

“I don’t really count those two as nominees because Wertmüller was a protégé of Federico Fellini, who was much admired in Hollywood, and Sofia Coppola is, well, a Coppola. Both women come from film royalty,” said Serra from her North County office.

“As far as being honored for the work’s sake, Kathryn (Bigelow) is the second, after Jane Campion for ‘The Piano’ (1993). Prejudice against women trying to reach the heights in film isn’t any greater than in any other industry. But this industry is more difficult in terms of access.”

While comparisons to other business fields could be debated, the numbers in Hollywood specifically speak volumes.

Lauzen’s most recent research study is “The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 250 Films of 2009,” which was released in last month. It found that last year “women comprised 16 percent of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films.“ The report, which comes out annually, stated that the percentage was also 16 percent in 2008, down from 19 percent in 2001.

To Serra, who is scheduled to teach a spring course in Advanced Screenwriting at UCSD Extension, Bigelow is well-deserving of the nomination, because of the excellence of “The Hurt Locker” and her earlier films. But Serra thinks there’s a reason this director — rather than other female counterparts — is a contender this year.

“Bigelow is an extremely talented director and she met the men on their playing field,” said Serra. “She made a man’s film and did it as well or better than men. It made it hard to ignore her.

“Years ago, I tried to sell scripts for feature films and was told they were `too soft, too soft, too soft.’ So, I wrote a gritty, nasty thriller with bad language and sent it into the marketplace with my initials (instead of first name). I got a meeting with a producer. I’m a petite, nonthreatening-looking woman. The producer looked up at me and said ‘Did you write this?’ I said yes and he asked, ‘By yourself?’ ”

Lauzen, who has also researched box-office earnings and women’s involvement in independent moviemaking, says the issue is complex.

“There’s no single reason for women continuing underemployment in film,” she said. “Many factors contribute to those low numbers. One thing that contributes to it is the denial in the Hollywood community that it exists. If you’re talking about film studios, they don’t see women not working in powerful positions as a problem.”

The film awards season brings such disparities to light. Emanuel Levy, author of the 2003 book “All About Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards,” believes the peer system of voting for nominees contributes to the lack of female contenders in certain categories.

“The academy’s directors branch is extremely small, less than 400. And, of those, very few are women,” Levy noted.

He cites three examples of films that received nominations in the best picture, writing and acting categories, while their female directors were snubbed: “Children of a Lesser God,” directed by Randa Haines (1986); Penny Marshall’s “Awakenings” (1990); and Barbra Streisand‘s “Prince of Tides” (1991).

“I don’t know if the discrimination is implicit, latent or unconscious,” he said. “But Streisand, in particular, not getting nominated for best director was scandalous. What you think of the movie is a matter of taste, but when it gets seven nominations, including for actors and writing, you have to ask: ‘Who called the shots?’ That’s the point.”

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