{"id":8515,"date":"2018-11-05T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T07:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=8515"},"modified":"2018-11-04T12:26:21","modified_gmt":"2018-11-04T11:26:21","slug":"8515","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/8515\/","title":{"rendered":"A paucity of talent"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the BBC<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This year, we felt it was time to direct the spotlight away from Hollywood and celebrate the best cinema from around the world. We asked critics to vote for their favourite movies made primarily in a language other than English. The result is BBC Culture\u2019s 100 greatest foreign-language films.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem with asking people what they think is they might give troubling answers, as the BBC has discovered:<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s anything disappointing about the final list, it\u2019s\u00a0the paucity of films directed or co-directed by women. There are just four out of 100. But we made sure to contact as many female critics as male ones; of those who responded, 94 (45 per cent) were women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The obvious conclusion is women don’t make particularly good films, something even women critics agree with. However, the BBC devotes an entire, separate article<\/a> telling us this isn’t so. So what is? Why, sexism, of course!<\/p>\n

This troubling result puts the current conversation about the dearth of women film-makers in a wider context: by being barred from the exercise of their craft in cinema, women run the risk of being excluded from its history.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So women were barred from being directors, eh? Then how come four films directed by women made it onto the list?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a matter of volume,\u201d says producer Deborah Calla, Chair of the Diversity Committee of the Producers Guild of America, the West Coast Chair of Women\u2019s Impact Network, and advisor to the Geena Davis Institute. \u201cThere are fewer films directed by women, and so there are fewer films directed by women winning awards or being picked by festivals. Women directors end up having a smaller footprint.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wouldn’t have thought it matters if only ten women were directing films if their output was good enough. Welshmen are not underrepresented in marathon running because not enough of them train.<\/p>\n

Scarcity leads to invisibility, and invisibility leads to more scarcity \u2013 and thus the history of cinema comes to be written and taught with little or no women in it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve written about this before<\/a> and asked why, if sexism prevents women prevailing in the arts, they have been so staggeringly successful in publishing. Are we to believe studios were hotbeds of patriarchal oppression while publishing houses were staffed by woke feminists?<\/p>\n

As cinema progressed from novelty to business, however, women were pushed off sets and out of studios.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So despite their talents, women were kicked out of studios because of business interests? Is this a roundabout way of saying their output didn’t sell? After all, our aforementioned booksellers didn’t seem to mind Agatha Christie, did they?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are on the cusp of great change, not just in Hollywood and the West, but worldwide,\u201d adds Kelly. \u201cWe are half the world and we need to tell at least half the stories because up until now we have been hugely outnumbered. The exclusion is systemic, and the change will not be easy, but it is happening. I look forward to a time when it isn\u2019t an issue and a director doesn\u2019t need the prefix \u2018woman\u2019 in front of that title.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have a feeling Kelly is going to remain disappointed, unless she’ll be satisfied with watching mediocre female directors being applauded by SJWs as they receive participation trophies for films nobody will watch. For I suspect what’s happening is being a director requires a certain technical ability, obsession with details, risk taking, and stubborn perseverance which are more commonly found in men than women. Simply put, most women aren’t interested in becoming directors and, when they are, they don’t do a particularly good job of it. There are some exceptions – Kathryn Bigelow and Sophia Coppola have made some good films, although it would be hard to deny they’ve benefited from close proximity to male masters of the same craft – but in general women don’t make very good films, and can’t compete with men in the way their sisters who write books can. The BBC may just as well have compiled a list of the 100 best rock drummers and complained only a handful of women were on that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the BBC: This year, we felt it was time to direct the spotlight away from Hollywood and celebrate the best cinema from around the world. We asked critics to vote for their favourite movies made primarily in a language … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[79,9,74],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8515"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8515"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8519,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8515\/revisions\/8519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}