HEY DISNEY/MARVEL/LUCASFILM/PIXAR… WHERE ARE THE FEMALE DIRECTORS?!
Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn is wondering: “Why is Disney so behind in the diversity race?” – Warner Brothers
Today it was announced that Cathy Yan will be helming the Harley Quinn film starring Margot Robbie for Warner Brothers. This makes her the third female director, and second female director of color to be directing a mega blockbuster superhero film for DC/ Warner Brothers…. Which begs the question: What the hell is the Disney empire doing?
Disney, which owns Walt Disney Studios, Disney Animation, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, and Lucasfilm is BEYOND behind in the diversity game. So far they’ve announced ONE female director in the Marvel universe, and she isn’t even helming the film alone. While it’s exciting that Anna Boden will be co-directing Captain Marvel starring Brie Larson, it’s rather insulting that they’ve put out 10 years of films, and haven’t had a single one helmed by a female director solo.
There are a couple of arguments that always rear their head when this topic gets brought up, so let me sound like a broken record and refute them now.
There aren’t enough female directors with the experience to handle a film of that scale:
1) There will NEVER be if you don’t give them a chance in the first place.
2) That argument almost never gets brought up about men. Look at Taika Waititi and Ryan Coogler. Neither of them came from blockbuster backgrounds, and yet they both directed two of the most successful Marvel films of all time. The latter directed one of the most successful FILMS of all time with Black Panther.
No one STARTS out a blockbuster director, at least not these days. I get why there might be an initial fear to hand the reins of a project that involves that much money over to someone with limited experience, but you have to take a chance on people at some point or they’ll never gain the necessary skills.
SURPRISE! Taika Waititi hadn’t directed a blockbuster before, and he did just fine. – Marvel Studios
Another argument I’ve seen favored by trolls is saying that (and this quote comes directly from an actual piece of garbage):
“Thinking a non straight white male will do a better job SIMPLY because they’re not straight and not male?”
This was followed by a string of profanities and rudeness, so basically film criticism at it’s best.
Well…. sir with the clearly tiny dick, homophobic issues, and who from their Twitter profile picture appears to be a white male. To you I say: No, one does not ASSUME that a person of color, or a woman, or someone who is LGBTQIA+ or any intersection of any of those things will be “better” simply because they are any or all of those things. However if no one from any of those categories is ever allowed to tell stories, how will you KNOW if you’d prefer their style of filmmaking if you never see it? Again I cite Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther as the PERFECT example of “well, we didn’t KNOW if we’d like it more than a white director’s superhero film… UNTIL WE SAW IT AND GAVE IT ALL OF OUR MONEY.”
But wait, there’s more!! Remember how much we all loved “Black Panther”?! Guess what…. it was directed by someone with NO blockbuster experience going in to it AND who was a person of color!! – Marvel Studios
It’s not necessarily even a question of better, it’s a question of different. Especially in a world like superhero films, there tends to be a certain formula that gets followed. So if we see the same formula over and over, executed by the exact same type of (for the purposes of this analogy) scientist, we’re going to get the same result, and eventually get bored. So what happens when we change the equation? We get something new and different and possibly much more exciting.
So Disney, what’s going on? Sure at Walt Disney Studios, there’s the upcoming live action Mulan which is being directed by Niki Caro. While yes she’s a woman, I have a little bit of beef with the fact that she’s a white woman, and it’s a particularly Chinese story. However it’s certainly preferable to having a white man direct, and the care Caro took with Whale Rider and the Maori representation speaks to her ability to be respectful of a culture not her own. There’s also The One and Only Ivan about a gorilla, directed by Thea Sherrock.
Look how cute the Bao is! – Pixar Animation Studios
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From Pixar Animation Studios there’s also Bao which is the first film there directed by a woman, who ALSO happens to be Chinese! However…. As great as the shorts from Pixar are, it’s not a feature film.
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“Bao” Director Domee Shi – Pixar Animation Studios
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Over at Disney Animation Studios there sits Jennifer Lee, alone on her ice throne. Lee co-directed Frozen for which she won an Academy Award. Again with the not trusting women to helm films on their own….. She’ll be back in the director’s seat for Frozen 2, however so will her co-director Chris Buck. I suppose the argument could be made not to mess with a good thing, but of Disney Animation Studios upcoming announced films, no others have women in the director’s chair.
At Lucasfilm there is a big fat NADA. This is actually the thing that frustrates me most. Lucasfilm has been announcing a bevy of upcoming projects, and it feels like they’re absolutely blind to the benefits of diversity. So far they’ve announced upcoming projects from Jon Favreau (white straight man), Game of Thrones duo D.B. Weiss and David Benioff (white straight men), and a trilogy from Lucasfilm golden boy Rian Johnson (white straight man). Notice a pattern? For the record I LOVE Game of Thrones, and The Last Jedi is one of my favorite Star Wars films. However since clearly they’re willing to make room to play in a galaxy far far away, why can’t some of these new stories come from women and people of color?
The upcoming Star Wars/Lucasfilm creatives…
Jon Favreau
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David Benioff, D. B. Weiss
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Rian Johnson
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versus
the upcoming DC Entertainment/Warner Brothers creatives…
the upcoming DC Entertainment/Warner Brothers creatives…
Ava Duvernay
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Cathy Yan
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Patty Jenkins
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James Wan
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NOTICE ANYTHING DIFFERENT?!?!
What’s particularly upsetting about this is Lucasfilm’s president is Kathleen Kennedy, who took an incredibly strong stance after the Weinstein debacle and proposed an industry commission to help combat sexual harassment. While that’s all well and good, why is one of the top executives in film, who just so happens to be a woman, NOT also hiring women for leadership positions on films?
So to Cathy Yan, I say thank you for being a badass enough filmmaker to fight through all this bullshit and get the job you did. (Also no pressure but please do an amazing job, because you know they’ll try to use any excuse not to hire women and women of color for one of these directing gigs again if you fail…)
To Disney/Pixar/Marvel/Lucasfilm I say: get your shit together. It’s 2018. Women make up ~50% of the world, let’s start to reflect that in the director’s chair. (Really I say this to ALL studios, but if the largest film company in the world doesn’t bother to instigate diversity, why would the smaller ones follow?)
So to Cathy Yan, I say thank you for being a badass enough filmmaker to fight through all this bullshit and get the job you did. (Also no pressure but please do an amazing job, because you know they’ll try to use any excuse not to hire women and women of color for one of these directing gigs again if you fail…)
To Disney/Pixar/Marvel/Lucasfilm I say: get your shit together. It’s 2018. Women make up ~50% of the world, let’s start to reflect that in the director’s chair. (Really I say this to ALL studios, but if the largest film company in the world doesn’t bother to instigate diversity, why would the smaller ones follow?)