Google Tests A Software That Judges Hollywood's Portrayal of Women

Slashdot reader theodp writes: Aside from it being hosted in a town without a movie theater, the 2016 Bentonville Film Festival was also unusual in that it required all entrants to submit "film scripts and downloadable versions of the film" for judgment by "the team at Google and USC", apparently part of a larger Google-funded research project with USC Engineering "to develop a computer science tool that could quickly and efficiently assess how women are represented in films"...

Fest reports noted that representatives of Google and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy appeared in a "Reel vs. Real Diversity" panel presentation at the fest, where the importance of diversity and science to President Obama were discussed, and the lack of qualified people to fill 500,000 U.S. tech jobs was blamed in part on how STEM careers have been presented in film and television... In a 2015 report on a Google-sponsored USC Viterbi School of Engineering MacGyver-themed event to promote women in engineering, USC reported that President Obama was kept briefed on efforts to challenge media's stereotypical portrayals of women. As for its own track record, Google recently updated its Diversity page, boasting that "21% of new hires in 2015 were women in tech, compared to 19% of our current population"....

Comments

So, how does this work exactly?

[Derekloffin]

Seriously? Trying to say X is a good portrayal of anything seems like a completely subjective thing to me and further practical impossible on any single element. Any portrayal can potentially be bad if it is overused, while at the same time any portrayal can potentially be fine so long as it is used in appropriate balance, but you can't determine either of things looking at an individual production. Likewise the standard for what exactly is a good or bad thing are basically totally subjective, especially in fiction. A complete cold bloodied murderer can be an excellent character, while a total altruist and general humanitarian can be a terrible character.

Jobs Are Jails

[alternative_right]

It's time some women stopped bitching about not being in the same positions as men, and started asking whether men's positions are something they want to be in.

And maybe at that point we can ask if we could find a better use of our time than endless jobs, shopping, commuting, television...

Jobs are generally miserable, but the biggest misery is (1) you are judged on appearances (2) while doing work that is most of the time not essential or not really a positive contribution in any sense.

It's like something Solzhenitsyn would come up with. The prisoners count beans and file TPS reports, and if they do not, they get half the ration of borscht for the day.

Re:Morons

[thesupraman]

Well, that is really quite simple to answer.

While you keep the general masses divided over issues where they can point the finger at each other as being at fault..
And while you can, as central government, say 'oh no! that is terrible! let me make some new regulations to help' without impacting your own plans..
The sheeple are just so much easier to heard.

Then throw in a nice big serving of 'mass media profit is maximised when content gets an emotional reaction' (just about any reaction will do).

And not to mention a little 'my life is actually very easy and I feel inside I am achieving nothing, but if I yearn for a cause, I am moving the world!'

Does that answer your question?

Re:Morons

[quantaman]

Why do people think things like the Bechdel test are worth more than a fart in the breeze/

Because you think the Bechdel test is a poor measure of female portrayal in movies, or because you don't think having substantial female characters is important?

More hyper-liberal stupidity

[Sqreater]

Of course, let's have history-changing, gender-leveling gender-pandering required in every movie, just like in "Halt and Catch Fire". We CAN propagandize our way toward filling those 500,000 tech jobs. We just have to lie about reality strongly enough and long enough to change it to suit us.

Bechdel Test

[_KiTA_]

All this talk about the Bechdel test reminds me of the Galbrush Paradox, a related mess that was codified during GamerGate. During a discussion of noted con artist Anita Sarkeesian -- who has managed to run TWO wildly successful Kickstarter scams stealing close to half a million dollars from rubes -- and her completely unobtainable standards for female characters:

Absolutely not. If you can't tell a two bit con artist from one of your own, you really need to clean up your movement before you start 'suggesting' anything.

But maybe you're just naive and don't understand the problem. Do you know why there's so many white male characters in video games? Especially leads? Because no one cares about them.

A white male can be a lecherous drunk. A woman can't or it's sexist. Sexualizing women and what all. A white male can be a mentally disturbed soldier who's mind is unraveling as he walks through the hell of the modern battleeld. A woman can't or you're victimizing women and saying they're all crazy.

Consider Guybrush Threepwood, start of the Monkey Island series. He's weak, socially awkward, cowardly, kind of a nerd and generally the last person you'd think of to even cabin boy on a pirate ship, let alone captain one. He is abused, verbally and physically, mistreated, shunned, hated and generally made to feel unwanted.

Now let's say Guybrush was a girl. We'll call her Galbrush. Galbrush is weak, socially awkward, cowardly, kind of a nerd and generally the last person you'd think of to even cabin boy on a pirate ship, let alone captain one. She is abused, verbally and physically, mistreated, shunned, hated and generally made to feel unwanted.

Now, you might notice that I've given the exact same description to both of these characters. But here's where things deviate. While no one cares if Guybrush takes a pounding for being, for lack of a better term, less than ideal pirate, Galbrush will be presumed to be discriminated against because of her gender. In fact, every hardship she will endure, though exactly the same as the hardships Guybrush endured, will be considered misogyny, rather than someone being ill suited to their desired calling.

And that ending. She goes through ALL that trouble to help, let's call him Eli Marley, escape the evil clutches of the ghost piratess Le Chuck, it turns out he didn't even need her help and she even screwed up his plan to thwart Le Chuck. Why, it'd be a slap in the face to every woman who's ever picked up a controller. Not only is the protagonist inept, but apparently women make lousy villains too!

And that's why Guybrush exists and Galbrush doesn't. Men can be comically inept halfwits. Women can't. Men can be flawed, tragic human beings. Women can't. And why? Because every single female character reects all women everywhere.

The horrible truth ls you and Sarkeesian want to craft a box into which you can force every female character into. Some idiotic 'ideal'. Putting aside the stupidity of exchanging one unobtainable role model for women with another, this has the added problem of making all female characters exactly the same. And when all characters are exactly the same, that's boring And boring characters do not sell video games.

And when applied to film, this is why the Bechdel test fails. Because writing female characters is an identity politics minefield, and trying to give them any character development other than talking about the characters you ARE allowed to take risks with or write as less than perfect gets you in trouble with idiots writing for The Mary Sue or Jezebel, who then rile up a lynch mob at you.

Re:Bechdel Test

[serviscope_minor]

She made some "tropes vs women" videos. Then had a kickstarter to make "Trops vs Women in videogames" initially promising 5 videos of length 10-20 minutes. After receiving $160,000 instead of the requested $6000, she bumped it up to 12 videos, of which she has made 14 of a longer length than promised and it appears that production is still continuing so there will likely be more.

But anyway because you consider yourself a rationalist, I invite you to back up your assertion. Provide evidence. And I don't mean random partisan blog posts. You can see the kickstarter page. I bet the wayback machine has older copies too.

If there's actual real evidence, not wishful thinking from the blogosphere, you can find it.

You have made the claim of fraud, it is up to you to back up that claim with evidence.

I don't however expect you to trouble yourself with such trivial matters of backing up allegations. I expect you to change tack or move the goalposts and start complaining about something else she did (e.g. having an opinion you dislike on the games themselves), leaving your unfounded claim of fraud just dangling there in the breeze.

Re:Idiots Rule The World

[ArmoredDragon]

Ugh...you're really part of that movement? Hay caramba...

I mean I get it, I've had enough with trigger warnings, safe spaces, unfair campaigns, and the fact that Bruce Jenner can kill somebody, and then proceed to sue one of his victims, but once he gets a sex change suddenly he's a stunning and brave hero. It's all a big load of 100% grade A bullshit.

This alt-right, and the fact that Europe now has 25% of the voting population favoring self-identified fascist parties, I think it's more of a reaction to the insane notion that you MUST hop aboard the pussy wagon and truly believe in all of the bullshit I just described above, and if you don't then you MUST be a Nazi IRL and we cast the out. Well, it kind of leaves very little choice, doesn't it?

But, I'm not going to go repeat world war 2 (I mean shit, I still have yet to see what exactly the world's beef with the Jews is) however at the same time I'm going to disregard that notion of "they came for..." because I honestly think both sides of this issue are evil.

It's not Bechdel - it's puritan test

[denzacar]

Technology to analyze and transform gender disparities in media
Problem

Women are outnumbered by men three to one in the U.S. media and five to one in careers behind the camera. Additionally, women are six times more likely to be depicted in sexually suggestive clothing or partially nude in family films. Over the long term, these negative images can contribute to poor academic performance, body image issues, and less promising life choices.

Soo...
Woman showing skin in movie is presupposed as negative. Female skin is skin of evil.
Skin of evil "contributes" to bad grades, "body image issues" and will fuck up lives of people who see it.

Basically... women are witches who should be wearing burkas so as not to ruin people's lives, cause bad grades or mental issues with "body image".
It's the only way to be sure.

Re:It's not Bechdel - it's puritan test

[denzacar]

Technology to analyze and transform gender disparities in media
Problem

Women are outnumbered by men three to one in the U.S. media and five to one in careers behind the camera. Additionally, women are six times more likely to be depicted in sexually suggestive clothing or partially nude in family films. Over the long term, these negative images can contribute to poor academic performance, body image issues, and less promising life choices.

Soo...
Woman showing skin in movie is presupposed as negative. Female skin is skin of evil.
Skin of evil "contributes" to bad grades, "body image issues" and will fuck up lives of people who see it.

Basically... women are witches who should be wearing burkas so as not to ruin people's lives, cause bad grades or mental issues with "body image".
It's the only way to be sure.

And a special "Well hello there - AGAIN!" to my down-moderator for voicing his/her disagreement with reality by down modding my original post above.
We can keep on going like this until you run out of mod points or I run out of copy/paste. Plenty more where that came from.

Re:It's not Bechdel - it's puritan test

[AmiMoJo]

Read it again. They don't say "female skin is evil".

Generally speaking there are lots of diverse roles for men in movies. All sizes, good looking, average, and they are generally not required to be provided some eye candy for a presumed straight male audience.

On the other hand it really looks like to succeed as a woman in Hollywood you have to be hot and willing to flaunt your sexuality. Nothing wrong with doing that per-se, but when it becomes a virtual requirement...

Re:It's not Bechdel - it's puritan test

[Megol]

Technology to analyze and transform gender disparities in media
Problem

Women are outnumbered by men three to one in the U.S. media and five to one in careers behind the camera. Additionally, women are six times more likely to be depicted in sexually suggestive clothing or partially nude in family films. Over the long term, these negative images can contribute to poor academic performance, body image issues, and less promising life choices.

Soo...
Woman showing skin in movie is presupposed as negative. Female skin is skin of evil.
Skin of evil "contributes" to bad grades, "body image issues" and will fuck up lives of people who see it.

Basically... women are witches who should be wearing burkas so as not to ruin people's lives, cause bad grades or mental issues with "body image".
It's the only way to be sure.

No. Example: a scene where a woman is dressing not done in a sexually suggestive manner isn't a problem. I wouldn't think a scene where a woman breastfeeds a baby with boobs and nipple(s) showing to be a problem either but the US puritans do. I don't think full nudity for either men or women is a problem and not even explicit sex scenes (if not done in an obvious pornographic manner).

But almost always sexualizing the female body in combination with the choice of female actors (looks are everything with a few exceptions) is a problem as it does cause body image problems of females - this is well documented. The same isn't true for men as looks are less important in the choice of actors and sexualization of the body including semi-nude and nude scenes are less common.

How about applying reason before going out on a rant? Otherwise you just contribute to the dummheit.

"A software"

[ScentCone]

Come on, editors, really? Shall I say to my friends, "Today I saw an interesting news on slashdot."

Seriously, we have the government we deserve

[argStyopa]

Russia has INVADED and IS OCCUPYING a neighboring country (one they laughingly signed a note to protect, no less).
China is essentially playing Age of Empires 2 in the South China sea, grabbing territory by building watchtowers and not giving a fuck about what anyone thinks.
The EU is disintegrating as people start to realize manually bolting countries together doesn't actually make them act like a single country.
Our economy is a sham based on completely phony numbers, contrived to enrich a tiny cadre of elites that drift in and out of power (always making more money with each step) like minglers at a garden party.
Our media is essentially a giant cumrag, soaked and dripping with the lowest-common-denominator vulgarity and venality.
We have one candidate for president that is a COMPLETE ASS and a know nothing buffoon who's like a cartoon character of himself, while the other candidate is corrupt to the very soul of her being, if she HAD a soul.

And what we're worrying about is whether films fairly represent women?

Where the fuck are the Visigoths to come climbing over OUR walls? Seriously, it's about time. If Rome was like this near the end, they probably welcomed it.

Re:How women are portrayed in movies

[Darinbob]

You need to watch a lot of older movies. Men have been the butt of jokes forever. And there's certainly good reason for it, you make fun of the ones at top not at the bottom.

Though in the past there were some strange oddities, amazingly sexist to very fair and balanced. I saw one about the first female president, a comedy about the husband trying to cope with being number two, and it ended when the president got pregnant and resigned, thus restoring order to the family.

Re: Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure.

Put away your clipboard and stop running a tally on dicks vs vaginas, and what color they are.

If women want roles of substance, they will pay for those movies and capitalism will make it happen. To date they haven't, because it isn't what they actually want, so stop trying to force your fucking agenda down everyone's throats.

Don't watch movies you don't like. The end. Fuck off.

Re: Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

How about some male stereotype tests? Does this movie contain:

A male action hero who isn't good looking?
A male nerd who is good at talking to girls?
A fat guy who isn't the comic relief?
A cop who is happily married?
A gay action hero?
An asian guy who is a stud and doesn't know martial arts?

And what if they find there is no problem?

[inhuman_4]

The central problem with projects like this is the result is already determined. They've already decided that movies are horribly sexist before the first line of code was written. Think about it. What if, after detailed analysis, it was determined that there is no problem, that women and men are treated roughly equal? What happens then? It can't happen, it wouldn't be acceptable. The funding would dry up, and they would be shutdown. It would be like the NRA releasing a study saying guns are bad. And good luck getting funding in the future, if you can't produce results that affirm what we "know to be true" then clearly you are a terrible researcher.