The Truth About Gender Inequality In Film

Controversy has recently been swirling around the new, critically acclaimed film "Saving Mr. Banks," starring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson. The film ostensibly centers around a charming Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) and his courtship of an irascible P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), not for love, but for the film rights to her book, Mary Poppins. (Disclaimer: having not yet seen the film, these comments are based solely on published responses to it). But why all the controversy? Some critics and children's book aficionados object to the film's negative portrayal of P.L. Travers, a women who fights against the misappropriation, or "Disney-ification" of her literary creation. These critics especially take offense at the film's uneven portrayal of Travers in light of its simultaneous erasure of  Disney's well-documented, yet unpalatable anti-Semitic, anti-labor past. Responding to this critique, some have pointed out that by all biographical accounts, P.L. Travers was in actuality a "frustrating and unkind" person (See Is Mr. Banks Too Hard on 'Mary Poppins' Creator?). Yet, is whether or not she was in fact a difficult individual relevant? As Amy Nicholson points out in her opinion piece, 

Why does it matter that Saving Mr. Banks sabotages its supposed heroine? Because in a Holly wood where men still pen 85 percent of all films, there's something sour in a movie that roots against a woman who asserted her artistic control by asking to be a co-screenwriter. (Another battle she lost - Mary Poppins' opening credits list Travers as merely a "consultant.") Just as slimy is the sense that this film, made by a studio conglomerate in a Hollywood dominated by studio con-glomerates, is tricking us into cheering for the corporation over the creator. We take sides because we can't imagine living in a world without the songs the Sherman brothers wrote for the film: "Let's Go Fly a Kite," "Feed the Birds," "Chim Chim Cher-ee." We wouldn't have had to either way; if Mary Poppins had collapsed, Walt planned to package up the songs wholesale for Bedknobs and Broomsticks. (http://www.laweekly.com/2013-12-12/film-tv/saving-mr-banks-mary-poppins/)

To me, what is interesting about this conflict is that it exhibits rising concern over the interpretation and representation of film history. Thinking about this made me wonder, just what is the social and historic context of the debate? Although the answer undeniably complex, I just came across a new and enlightening infographic created by the New York Film Academy (NYFA) that might be a suitable starting point for considering the problem: Gender Inequality in Film.

It may be a widely known fact that throughout film history very few women have been film directors and producers. Yet, aren't we all just a little surprised to find that today women are still so little represented at every level across the industry? In this sense, isn't P.L Travers just one casualty among many, in the sense that we all lose when women are absent from a globalizing industry that produces our most pervasive images of ourselves? The NYFA stated that, 

By shedding light on gender inequality in film, we hope to start a discussion about what can be done to increase women's exposure and power in big-budget films. 

What do you think? Is it up to those in the film industry to decrease the gap, or are we viewers also somehow implicated in the widespread gender inequality found across the film industry today? What do you think are the reasons of this phenomenon, and what can be done about it?


The above image of Julie Andrews (actress who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Mary Poppins in the 1964 Disney hit classic Mary Poppins), Walt Disney, and P.L. Travers was taken from: http://dancelines.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Scan089-e1382354206827.jpg