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Sci-Fi Is Still Working on Its 'Stale, Male, and Pale' Problem, Says James Cameron (indiewire.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: As science fiction finally earns mainstream acceptance in Hollywood, James Cameron believes the genre's awards drought will soon be over. "I predict that sometime in the next five to 10 years you will have a science-fiction film win Best Picture," he told reporters while promoting "AMC Visionaries: James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction," which premieres Monday. Films like "Arrival" and "Ex-Machina" have earned nominations, but as the older guard ages out of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Cameron believes that the membership's "prejudice" against sci-fi -- which he says "definitely exists" -- will fade. "They're definitely a red-headed stepchild when it comes to the acting, producing, directing categories," he said.
"Science fiction is kind of a commercial genre, it's not really an elevated dramatic genre. I would argue that until I'm blue in the face that science fiction is the quintessence of being human in a sense. We are technological beings. We are the only truly conscious species that we know of. We are struggling with ourselves over the issue of our own question for understanding, our own ability to manipulate the fabric of our reality. Our own technology is blowing back on us and changing how we behave amongst ourselves and as a civilization," he added. "I would argue that there's nothing more quintessentially human than dealing with these themes. But Hollywood tends to pull short from that."
But as Hollywood changes its perception of science fiction, Cameron stressed that the genre itself needs to continue to evolve from its origins of being too "stale, male and pale." "It was white guys talking about rockets," Cameron said of early sci-fi. "The female authors didn't come into it until the '50s and '60s and a lot of them had to operate under pseudonyms." But even now, "women are still unrepresented in science fiction as they are in Hollywood in general," he said. "When 14 percent of all film directors in the industry are female, and they represent 50 percent of the population, that's a big delta there that needs to get rectified."
"Science fiction is kind of a commercial genre, it's not really an elevated dramatic genre. I would argue that until I'm blue in the face that science fiction is the quintessence of being human in a sense. We are technological beings. We are the only truly conscious species that we know of. We are struggling with ourselves over the issue of our own question for understanding, our own ability to manipulate the fabric of our reality. Our own technology is blowing back on us and changing how we behave amongst ourselves and as a civilization," he added. "I would argue that there's nothing more quintessentially human than dealing with these themes. But Hollywood tends to pull short from that."
But as Hollywood changes its perception of science fiction, Cameron stressed that the genre itself needs to continue to evolve from its origins of being too "stale, male and pale." "It was white guys talking about rockets," Cameron said of early sci-fi. "The female authors didn't come into it until the '50s and '60s and a lot of them had to operate under pseudonyms." But even now, "women are still unrepresented in science fiction as they are in Hollywood in general," he said. "When 14 percent of all film directors in the industry are female, and they represent 50 percent of the population, that's a big delta there that needs to get rectified."
When 14 percent of all film directors in the industry are female, and they represent 50 percent of the population, that's a big delta there that needs to get rectified.
The last time I had my alignment done I wasn't at all bothered that I couldn't find a female mechanic. Why should I care any more or less who's directing the movies that I watch?
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"needs to?"
This is the story of the first man to go to Mars. He made a first post to Slashdot. btw I'm white.
The awards committees will never allow a best picture to a genre that abstracts away race relationships. Much more important to show white men as the one source of problems in the world.
So that means that a science fiction story can't be critically acclaimed unless it features diverse races and sexuality? I guess that explains why "A Wrinkle in Time" is smashing all those box office records and award shows.
I've been done with hollywood for over a decade and every time they open their mouths I'm reminded why.
Cramming in as much tokenism and general liberal preachiness as you can won't make your shitty scripts any less shitty. Quite the opposite.
This notion that every industry, every hobby, and every interest ought to be equally populated by women is perhaps the biggest error imaginable.
Who ever said that women are interested in the same things as men? I've never met a woman who likes using a urinal. Should we organize funds to teach women to get on-board?
There's nothing wrong with a reality where women don't prefer to be directors. I'm not interested in convincing women to avoid being directors, and I'm not interested in convincing women that they should be.
Give women the freedom to choose, and then let them follow their own choices.
Just like with every other thing in life, you'll find that women don't want to be everywhere. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, having a choice and making one, especially one that defies statistical likelihoods, is the very definition of free choice.
Dear James Cameraon,
Shut the fuck up and go back to making Avatar 2, Avatar 3, Avatar 4, and Avatar 5 so they can flop already.
Seriously why does it seem like everyone is stuck on race and gender lately?
People like you who obsess about race and gender are the problem. Drama isn't a race. Entertainment isn't a gender. Your audience does not care about the social justice identity bonafides of your characters. Except a very tiny, tiny fraction of that audience. And no on can ever make that fraction happy, regardless of anything anyone does, because that fraction regards complaining about race and gender as a sort of religious sacrament.
Get back to us when you're trying to entertain. Until then, you are entirely useless.
Should every new work of art pass some art test to see if it can be published?
An author has to go back and add in more diversity just to get published?
Books to be considered for new movies and series will all have to have a mandated set amount of diversity?
Once work is approved as been within a "male and pale" limit will further revisions be needed to remove more "male and pale" before a movie can be made?
Will an artist have a say in how their work is further corrected?
An artist freedom is now reduced to filling a quota of characters who are not "male and pale"?
Will past art get rewritten to remove most male and pale roles?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I guess it is to Mr. Cameron, but in reality, does it matter if a Sci-Fi movie wins an Oscar (for anything)?
We're living in a golden age of TV; CGI and more liberal rules regarding stories and content allow for longer, more engaging stories to be told that appeal to more specific audience. Movies are tied into a shorter time base with more restrictions on content with the expectation that there needs to be a definite punch that knocks the viewer out of their seat and is tweeting to their friends that they must see this movie NOW.
Yesterday I saw "Ready Player One" and, despite not loving the book, the movie is engaging and fun - it is a true Spielberg movie that keeps your attention, gets a few smiles but won't make me think about it much afterwards. I can't think of anybody (including Mr. Cameron) that could have done it better. It will make a few hundred million dollars (like the latest Avengers or Star Wars) but non of them are worthy of any accolades (other than box office records).
In the current world, I don't think Sci-Fi should be shooting for an Oscar as a standard for being good. I thought "Arrival" was very good with an interesting twist at the end - but I know of very few people who really understand what had really happened at the end with regards how Any Adams' character's perspective on everything had changed (left vague to avoid spoilers). The movie did win an Hugo and that's probably what Sci-Fi movies should shoot for - great Sci-Fi makes the reader/viewer think and challenge their views and perspectives on things.
These are things I don't think movie execs/suits want.
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Just one more thought that occurred to me; with how Hollywood regards movies, would I be interested in an Oscar winning Sci-Fi film?
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Avatar was derivative and showy without substance. Avatar got the only Oscars that picture deserved, Art Direction, Cinematography, and Visual Effects.
Well... then why Cameron is not filming "red spider, white web" by Misha Nogha if he thinks thats a problem?
"I would argue that until I'm blue in the face that science fiction is the quintessence of being human in a sense." James Cameron is, after all, very familiar with blue faces.
I note that Mr. Cameron is himself white and male. I look to him to take the lead here by completely ceasing to make movies, so that there will be one less "stale, male, and pale" moviemaker contributing to this problem.
They have the same freedom to choose men do. The fact that they refuse to assert themselves means we have to put training wheels on them and give them set-asides? Gender-based affirmative action?
Fuck that, and fuck you.
Does a story become good or bad because of the race or gender of the author?
Does a movie become good or bad because of their race or gender?
Does a piece of music become good or bad because of the race or gender of the player, the singer, the writer... whatever?
It is irrelevant.
The only issue here is "stale"... not pale or male. A white guy can write something everyone loves or write complete garbage. A black woman can write something everyone loves or complete garbage.
No one really cares who you are. We care what you did.
Now, on the issue of Cameron personally... Ironically he "IS" stale.
Anyone see Avatar? The movie is dogshit on so many levels and its all his fault.
The movie had top tier special effects which people loved. Great. Very pretty. But Cameron really didn't have anything to do with that besides getting money in the special effects budget.
Terminator 2 is a cult classic as well as a huge commercial success. Titanic was a very popular romance movie.
Avatar is whilst successful on release is widely regarded to be a bad movie and I don't see it having any legs in time.
Cameron is stale. Not because of his race or gender. He just got old and lazy.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Women need to use urinals and men need the option to relax in a fresh smelling clean female bathroom to take a sit down piss or drop a deuce.
It's only fair if women get to act more like men that men get to act more like women, amirite folks?
Sometimes we have a bad few days of the month too, y'know.
There simply is no talented women. They do not have to be talented to be sought after, so these traits are not favoured by evolution.
Fine, James. Let's see you back out of TERMINATOR SIX
I had a sucky sig.
99% of people have no idea who is producing, writing, and directing movies. I'm sure if a women makes a good movie, writes a good script, or is a good actress then they are still doing just fine. If something makes money the person that made it will make money, no question about that.
Is The Shape of Water not considered a sci fi film ?
It just won Best Picture and Best Director .
Most of us don't.
I like the part in the "Restaurant at the end of the universe" where thet package all the useless middlemen/women and ship them off to another planet. There are often questions about how to finance a Mars colony. Well, if we ship off all the SJWs and leave useful people, like actual female science fiction writers, on Earth, I say the expedition will pay for itself in no time.
Because a single number from a statistic tells the whole story, right? And when it comes to gender, everything must be 50:50, obviously. Hence I hereby demand that women stop giving birth to children, because that is the only way to fix that so far 100% of people giving birth are female! That cannot go on and obviously is an extreme problem!
In other news, people that look at numbers without understanding are still morons.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Most of the early Sci Fi writers were writing for teen age boy. Even Jules Verne. Now the second Alien movie was really good. It showed the strength and vision of men and women. I have little to say about the first and third movies as they were cookie cutters. I could write that script in a week.
'Forbidden Planet'? Great but almost all male. They never addressed the issue why women were not crewmen too. Two years in hyperspace? You better have some dark corners for men to get it on; we are social and sexual. Short of some drug to reduce our testosterone levels, you need dark corners if for nothing more than to masturbate. Gods it was hard being on a Navy ship for six months with 80 Marines. They only give you two minutes to shower. That was six months. I was looking over beefy guys hoping. I was young and very sexual. I would love to see a remake of that movie. I'd love to see the captain say 'Alright you two. Get a room.' before they drop out of hyperspace.
Oh. Why would you build a planet buster into your world? That didn't make sense at all. Melt down the 'machine' OK. What sort of idiot would dream to destroy all life on a planet to protect what? What they left behind if you were dead? They didn't expect to be dead after their grand and failed experiment. So the simple tool to overload the planet's core made no sense. Also not in a good location. Just inside the main entrance? I think I would put that at the bottom of the stack. I am a good engineer.
women have very different tastes than men, and by and large they make the purchasing decisions in most families. The people running these shows don't care so much that you enjoy what you want so long as you watch it. If the reason you watch it is your wife/girlfriend wants to that's fine too. Though ultimately the Goal is to have crossover shows and movies that appeal to both. Like Pokemon but for adults.
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replaced by science fact :)
[($)]
The simple fact is that there is a dogmatic push to lay accolades on women and minorities having anything to do with science fiction.
If there's filtering going on, ACTUALLY keeping them out of the field, that needs to stop.
But what I strongly suspect - like sexism, racism, etc today - is that people are reacting to the way it was more than the way it IS.
I personally feel handing someone an award preferentially because she has a vagina is as sexist and stupid as NOT handing it to her for the same reason. I think to assert that somehow the canon of Science Fiction literature is corrupted by the fact that it's mostly male and white is a sort of Stalinist revisionism. Yes, women shouldn't have been kept out (if they even were; I don't recall any ACTUAL evidence to that fact, imo) but that doesn't make the greats any less great, or mean we have to have X years of opposing bias to 'counterweight' the canon.
How about we just enjoy books that we enjoy, and not give a shit about the chromosomal makeup of the author at all?
-Styopa
there's two huge benefits. You get that 50% as customers (and then some, since women tend to make the purchasing decisions in most families) and you get access to a slew of new employees, thereby dropping the wages you have to pay. From a business standpoint it's win/win. With sci-fi you have to be careful since the nerd demographic gets a little testy on the subject, but there's plenty of sci-fi and fantasy that have broken out into the mainstream (Avengers, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Fallout 4/Skyrim) and that's worth a lot more caps than the nerd demographic (too much Fallout 4 for me :) ).
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Cameron should get a sex change operation.
Set an example for others to follow.
Nothing like trying to seem progressively anti-racist/sexist and then trot out the old bigotry of "red-headed stepchild".
If there's something systemic that is preventing women from breaking into directing, that's potentially a huge pool of talent wasted.
True but the problem here is that having fewer women directors than men does not automatically mean that there is something systemic that needs to be fixed and even if there is something like this then this sort of bean-counting tells you absolutely nothing about what the problem is.
We need to move beyond simply counting the number of men and women in each profession and find out the reasons behind why there are more women in nursing or more men in directing etc. If it is due to sexism in the profession or industry then this has to be fixed but if it due to sexism at home e.g. women taking on more childcare responsibilities than men then forcing quotas, positive discrimination etc on those hiring will have no effect in addressing the problem and will cause a backlash because you are now adding unfairness to a something which, in this scenario, would be reasonably fair.
It was white guys talking about rockets," Cameron said of early sci-fi.
As more countries and cultures will participate in the collective efforts of human space travel, some of that will change and new authors will emerge. There is also the connection bias. It would be shame if the new authors with something to say would be recognized only posthumously. Speaking of genre bias, is it true that many female authors rather focus on historical and fantasy genres with nice dresses more that on the creation of futuristic worlds which could also have the nice dresses if they would make it so? Maybe the impact of 1984 is still felt.
Pale? That means: Too white.
Funny, no one would ever say that a genre is "too asian" or "too black" or too any-other-race. Only white.
This is blatant anti-white racism.
Fuck you Slashdot.
When the science fiction convention committee spends all its time arguing how to mark bathrooms for gender, non-gendered, transgender, "elfkind", "furkind", and insists that every panel presenting anything have at least 3 genders represented, you know the "equal rights for me means unfair treatment for everyone else" movement has gone too far. I went to the Arisia science fiction convention last year, and it was a political disaster. Every panel presenting anything had to have at least 3 genders, even if the panel was specifically about "how to publish science fiction for women". If the scheduled session was small and only one or two panelists could be found or a panelist didn't show, they'd cancel the session if not enough genders did the panel. It was *nuts*. One of the things I miss about science fiction was the hard reality that some of us lived in and worked with, and fantasizing about *that*, about the science and the problems with it, instead of about the "lesbo-trans-gender-elven-werewolf-hacker" trend I'm seeing at the "new author" tables.
I wanted orbital mechanics problems! Details of star drives and the trade-offs of time and fuel! How biology could work in a high-grav planet! There were some science panels, but I had to wash my clothes to rinse out the results of the first transgender athletes in the Olympics. Their consistent ranking contradicts the idea that all gender difference in sports is the fault of the male patriarchy and social disparity. The difference is the hormones, baby, especially their alteration of the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood. But *ooohhh*, did I get in trouble for taking it to the logical conclusion, that men and women are *different* and need separate competitive events..
The truth is, sci-fi is about exploring ideas just as much as it is about human relationships. For whatever reason, most people just don't have that much interest in new ideas and speculation about different possibilities.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
This article is sexist.
Oh yeah. And then there's Alien.
Have gnu, will travel.
Oscar for Best picture - The Shape of Water (Sci fi)
Woman directors (Sci-Fi/Fantasy)-
Patty Jenkins - Wonder Woman
Kathern Bigelow (Cameron's Ex-Wife) - Strange Days
Penny Marshall - Big
Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson -Shrek
Mimi Leder - Deep Imact
Ava DuVernay - A Wrinkle in Time
Wachowski Sisters - Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending
Claire Denis - High Life
Susan Seidelman - Making Mr Right
Stéphanie Joalland - The Quiet Hour
The problem sci-fi had, traditionally, is a lack of a budget. When the story you want to tell involves high-tech, futuristic things that are often supposed to be happening on other worlds -- it's difficult to make that really believable when you're limited by tight financial constraints and a lack of tools at your disposal to pull it off successfully.
Look how many of the 50's and 60's sci-fi movies have been relegated to "b-movie" status, ripe for poking fun at via a TV series like MST3K. They're kind of painful to watch if you're trying to take them seriously. It often seems like the most commonly found building material for a spacecraft was aluminum foil.
Even Star Trek struggled with those issues .... requiring putting together props from junk found in dumpsters.
I think movies like Star Wars showed people what could be done if more effort and money was put toward making a quality result. But even today, it seems like funding gets in the way of many great works. (Remember the complaints by Sci-Fi network about the high cost of doing the Battlestar Galactica remake?) Other times, I see independent sci-fi movies that are great, yet the whole time, you have an awareness that part of what you like so much is how much they're able to do with so little. ("The Cube" was a great example of this.... and I'd say "Moon" was, to an extent, another.) Because really, a great story is still a great story no matter what. But you can still tell when the same few backgrounds are re-used as much as possible to cut costs....
Pretending the problems are because sci-fi is too "stale" with a bunch of pale, white guys doing most of it? Give me a break! That's the Hollywood B.S. answer for the fact they don't have enough imagination or quality screen-writers to pull of more good science fiction.
And as others pointed out, Cameron's Avatar seemed to be an attempt to throw tons of money at a concept that really wasn't all that original or "deep" - which led to a visually amazing movie that still didn't have half the impact of so many better sci-fi stories.
James Cameron is certainly right in that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences certainly has treated the sci-fi genre poorly. Remember, in 2004 The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King massive Oscar sweep included Best Picture so if an epic fantasy movie can win then a sci-fi movie can too. So there's proof that, with the right story and high quality film, the Academy's prejudice against a genre can be overcome. I'm sure that in the near future a sci-fi movie will receive Best Picture.
As for James Cameron himself, I lost my respect for him a long time ago. His most popular sci-fi films are derivative of other works (Terminator 2 was a ripoff of Cyborg 2087 and Avatar was just repackaged Dances with Wolves). I think Cameron is trying to maintain relevance (he's been out of the limelight since 2009's Avatar) by getting some attention with his obvious virtue signalling about gender equality.
This is ironic coming from the director of "stale, male, and pale" formulaic junk like half a dozen Terminator movies, Aliens, The Abyss, and Avatar.
Cameron built his career on appealing to the testosterone-driven urges of young males. Although, granted, with Avatar, he's more trying to appeal to warped teenage political idealism.
I thought the whole point of Arrival was to showcase an attractive ginger Uhura.
Enough of the male-bashing.
When 90% of candidates, professionals, directors, programmers or whatever belong to category A and 10% to category B, we got a problem.
Why?, do you ask?
After all, maybe the 90% category A individuals are good; you can even assume they are 90% because category A has individuals more adequate for a given task. Maybe you find there's no loss for the objective task involved, so why care?
Immediately, as someone already posted, it bothers most people when the better ones are not successful. But most also assume the most successful ones are obviously better. Not so fast. Our society may have developed vicious behavior (as a system) and may be awarding the wrong guys.
If that happens, maybe some 30% of the 90% A guys were forced into a career they're not good , they don't care about and maybe they're OK with that... because that's where they "should" be. These 30% should be doing something else. Maybe the same number of the best B guys would do a better job than these worse A's.
As it happens, due to lack of job positions in other areas and status, those 30% worse A's won't accept the best B's being better than them. Thus start the name calling:
- about B's not being intelligent enough -- a blatant lie, obviously there are smart B's and dumb ones;
- because it's a leftist thing to go against traditions (i.e. A's getting the jobs);
- or because those wanting a better balance are Social Justice Warriors, a name which implies A's are OK with social injustice;
- about how A's worked hard and therefore B's should struggle, too (another lie, being an A almost lands you a job);
- about jobs lost to B's, which maybe better pros but everybody says it's because they accept less pay for the same tasks.
The list goes on and on and on.
At the end of the day, I could have a bright coworker to talk about the work I love, but maybe if I'm an A and said coworker belongs to B, lots of embarrassment and anger will probably prevent us from drinking some beers. Too bad.
Bitches and Coons, stop expecting Whitey to produce culture for you
I would think that the best movie would be the movie that's going to have the longest lasting impact on either culture, or the industry. I can think of a movie that's unquestionably had a huge impact on both culture, and the movie making industry, which was released in 1977, and yet did not get best picture. I realize that best picture shouldn't just go to the movie that sold the most tickets, but the academy seems to eschew movies for best picture which do bring in ticket sales. I think they'd get more respect if ticket selling movies were the top competitors for best movie.
It's all those dreadful, pale, stale white mothers who keep having white male babies and then pushing them to succeed in whatever they do in life. If Philip K. Dick's mother that aborted him, there would have been fewer classic books and movies from at least one white male. One could go on and on from just those writers from the classic era of science fiction. And classic directors like Ridley Scott. And, hey, didn't he direct "Thelma & Louise." So come on white women. Stop having male babies, except for white women in a mixed race relationship, like Barak Obama's mother.
Female directors don't represent 50% of the population. They "represent" the part of the female population that's qualified as a director. So the question becomes: How big is the director talent pool really, how many of them happen to be female, and how does that percentage match up with the "made it as a director" pool? It is not a given that either percentage must automatically be 50%. Just like the talent pool for car mechanics isn't 50% female and the talent pool for nurses isn't 50% male. Both those percentages are not automatically the same as the respective qualified pools percentages, mind.
I'm sure hollywood feels it has a problem, maybe there is systemic sexism, but if you're honest you recognise it isn't a cut-and-dried "50%" problem. Besides, if you choose to focus solely on the female part, how do you decide to stop doing that, for if you keep doing it then eventually you'll just inverse the problem and what all did we miss, etc.? Don't go "correcting" one problem by sowing the seeds of the reverse problem.
That means that if you're bothering with the "What all did we miss?" question, then you better go find ways to measure those metrics, instead of assuming like James Cameron here does.
Anyhow, I haven't watched a hollywood movie in aeons, except insofar they pop up on the telly. I tend to tune 'em out after a bit. SO BORING. I'm not sure a feminine directing hand can fix anything there.
Most of the stuff written by women under the heading "SciFi" ... isn't. There are exceptions, for example, Bujold has written some good stuff. However, lots of what claims to be science fiction has no science in it. Just stating "this story is in the future" doesn't make it SciFi. Some authors will try to toss in some random sciency-sounding words, but these turn out to be gibberish.
Why are there fewer women authors of actual science fiction? I assume for the same reason that there are generally fewer women in science and engineering: lack of interest. On average, women seem to prefer interacting with people, whereas on average guys tend to like things. The one area where women have entered in larger numbers is medicine - i.e., science dealing with people.
Regardless, SciFi does not have a problem of stale-pale-and-male. It happens that some people apparently object to what actually is scifi, and want to change the content underneath that label. That's fine, I'll go right on reading hard SF, which is mostly written by pale-and-male authors.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I'm talking about the phrase "Stale, Male, and Pale". So much for equality,. We're just going to throw out one set of tyrants and replace them with another.
"Pale" is a very interesting way to word around the problem that not just Caucasians, but also East Asians are succeeding when Black Lives Matter style skin color navel gazing and victimhood thinking is not.
The first step to go ethnically neutral is to stop staring at skin color. It seems it's impossible for some, because they fear making politically incorrect judgement if they can't see the color and are caught in the act of not being preferential for strategic minorities.
All this reminds me of recent StackExchange post where they started talking of "people of color" and "minorities". Hell, I've never spent a half a second at thinking of SE participants' gender, sexual orientation, nationality and even less skin reflectance. I suppose now I should move these thoughts on the center of my thinking. Why? I thought just maintaining professional attitude towards quality and effort on the platform was enough...
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Yes, because in Star Trek Discovery the only single character which was a white heterosexual male was Lorca (of course they had to give him an hispanic name) and it turned out to be a great sci-fi series, right?. Because Sci-fi is not about rockets, it is about diversity.
that at least part of the reason that women were under-represented as directors/producers and all kinds of "high power" jobs in all industries is because women are considerably less likely to be power-lusting assholes and that's the kind of person you have to be even to want those jobs.
there is also "delta" in other areas. Like prisons or waste management (down there in the collector). ..."
Should we catch random females to fill the quota?
Or sack ~50% of teachers ?
"... wouldn't it be nice if
My preferred SciFi authors are Iain M. Banks (Culture), C.J. Cherryh (Alliance, Chanur), David Brin (Uplift), Alan Dean Foster (Flinx, Spellsinger), Neal Stephenson. I like Stanislaw Lem and Arkadi and Boris Strugatzki for their unique style. Douglas Adams is a category for himself, as is Terry Pratchett. Films I very much liked are Bladerunner (after P.K. Dick) and Dune (Frank Herbert), Neuromancer (W. Gibson (Cyberpunk)), Enders Game (Orson Scott Card). I also like good fantasy, e.g. Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer-Bradley), Earthsea (Ursula .K. Le Guin).
And sure, there are lots of authors not mentioned since I don't have all day.
As evidenced above I really don't care if an author has a penis or a vagina, neither would I care if an author had both or neither. I don't care about an authors skin-, hair-, or eye-colour, ethnic background, lineage, weight or height.
What I care about is the story. Does it interest me, is it well told.
What I definitely don't want: Political correctness bullshit forced down my throat or a "quota" in my fiction.
The ghostbusters reboot debacle is an indicator, that I'm not the only one with that sentiment. And no, not wanting to be fed pc-bullshit has absolutely nothing to do with "misogyny", but very much with not wanting to be served a heap of pure political propaganda with the transparent intention to "educate" the audience.
There's no problem with fiction containing a "message", "1984", "Brave new world" and "Farenheit 451" are prime examples, but most SciFi includes a "vision" how society should or shouldn't be in the future. But it has to be put in a good, enjoyable story, leave me room to think for myself and avoid today's uptight pc bullshit.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Don't forget Kale -- it's good for you. Boil it in buttermilk first to get rid of the bitterness.
Stargate had females and blacks, so JC, buy it of CRAP MGM who cant do shit, and make it grate again!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
This is the problem with current day "Gender Studies" feminisim. Unlike "classic" feminism they completely disregard actual differences between men and women. You know, the actual reasone we call men men and women women?
A-Level Hollywood directing is competitive at a level most humans can't even comprehend. You need every edge you can get to succeed and you have to be so convinced about your vision that you will squish anyone questioning it on sight and inmediately. Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Luc Besson, George Lucas, JJ Abrahams, Steven Spielberg and the likes are extremely competetive vision-driven super-nerds that mostly got into total- all-out filmmaking in their early teens. Look at the hours Cameron puts into his projects. It's basically insane.
Have a whomb and some hormones that curb that insanity and have you tend to direct a part of your passion and love to little humans you squeeze out (in general a more sound perspective on life IMHO) and you're just about out of the game. The only two women in that lineup I listed above are Kathreen Bigelow and Leni Reifenstahl (yeah, the 'Nazi Movie Chick'), and both were fighters, total non-prissies. Riefenstahl was avantgarde, spend weeks sleeping on the cutting room floor and had a fan in Hitler and bigelow carved herself out a niche of compareatively cheap quasi-independant formats and acutally does seem to know that filmmaking is 99.5% planing and .5% execution. And she only does a film every few years.
The truth is quite simple: At the very very top in every field the environment is so extremely competitive that simply having a whomb is a measurable disadvantage. Steve Jobs said it pretty clearly to Bill Gates in their last long talk: Without our wives we'd probably would've gone insance. Yeah, you have women like Bigelow, Bettencourt or Madama Curie you are up there along with the extreme boys, but the truth is that the extreme are made up of boys so much because they feel the competitive pressure way stronger than the ladies and have on average more of the motivation to walk over dead bodies if the need be.
I do think we need more women in art and especially more women getting a hold on shaping it and I'm also pretty shure their share will increase. But there are aspects of current day art production that have demands that - at the very top - favour every advantage. And that is also having traits generally regardes as male.
Call that conscious "discrimination" and I call bullshit.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Instead of females creatively aggressing their way to equal numbers the hyper-liberal thinks we have to artificially level the percentage participation. All that will do is allow a politically correct level of mediocrity. And "pale?" Wow. Does the hyper-liberal EVER perceive racism in himself? Can one say there is too much "dark" in rap? Of course not. Cameron is just another mindless male sociopathic feminist and a POC (person of color) racist fellow-traveler.
E Proelio Veritas.
Ok, so the great white male director wants to fix a system that works great by implementing some kind of "Affirmative Action" plan for women and minorities in film direction. Maybe he is really just trying to secure his legacy as one of the greatest directors of all time by ensuring those who follow aren't chosen by ability, but rather by gender and skin color.
If there's something systemic that is preventing women from breaking into directing
Stop right there. Don't even try to forward this bogus agenda by merely positing a specious question.
If women want to be directors AND if they have any talent, they can absolutely become directors. There are many female directors including Cameron's own wife. Though I question her talent, so maybe "and talent" isn't a requirement after all. For evidence, here is a lengthy list of female directors.
The constant media and Twitter(seriously?) onslaught of 'only a minority percentage of X work in field Y and this needs to be addressed' is nauseating horseshit. There are less women in automotive mechanics, IT, movie directing, garbage collection because less women choose to apply themselves to such positions. Attempts to force some sort of affirmative action for the sake of numerical balance or the advancement of unqualified untalented individuals is asinine and in itself sexist/racist. 'Oh poor women, they can't get movie director jobs, we need to mandate half the jobs for them.'
Fuck right off!
There are lots of men out there that would be more talented directors than Cameron who will never work as directors, even when they want to, simply because you don't always get what you want out of life. Why doesn't anyone talk about affirmative action for them? Seems sexist.
Only 2.9% of dental hygienists are male. This seems pretty sexist. Why isn't anyone crying for male wannabe dental hygienists?
Only 9% of nurses are male. This seems pretty sexist. Why isn't anyone crying for male wannabe nurses?
Only 13% of paralegals are male. This seems pretty sexist. Why isn't anyone crying for male wannabe paralegals?
By the way, fun fact: The percentage or female producers and directors is 38%.
We need more women working manual labour, I'm thinking a 50/50 distribution on construction, garbage truck duty, oil rigs, etc. this gross inequality has gone on far too long and women deserve their spot in the industry.
Reality is for people that can't handle science fiction.
I love these white males virtue signaling while not stepping out of their position of power. Step down or you are a hypocrite!
Fahrenheit 451 isn't a dystopia. It's the masturbatory fantasy of a writer who desperately needed to believe that his career was more than just a way to pay the bills. If he wasn't eyeball-deep in his own literary circle jerk he would have noticed that the course of human history had changed eight years earlier, and that at 10830 degrees F everything burns.
As a business owner, you're laser focused on reducing cost and increasing profit. One of the best and oldest ways of reducing cost and increasing profit is by cutting labor costs. "Under pay" the workers!
Look at the cost of a movie director. Hiring Cameron to direct your movie will cost you millions! Look at the millions you could save by hiring an 'equally as talented' woman to replace Cameron. It's already a forgone conclusion that women are paid less for the same job, right? I'm pretty sure I saw a hashtag on Twitter about it.
It makes perfect sense. Replace the directors with cheaper women and make much greater profits from your movie remakes. Genius! Why hasn't anyone thought of that before? Especially, since everybody knows that you don't pay women anywhere near as much for the same work. Fuck giving men jobs, especially those over priced pale ones. Hire women and increase your profit!
Why is it that men aren't the minority in the workforce? If women do the same quality work for less, then business economics dictate that these positions should all be filled with women. How did pale males succeed against market forces?
Is it possible that the women that choose to do that job don't always do the same quality work for less? Is it possible that there are less women of the same talent interested in doing that type of work?
No, it can't be those things. It's clearly pale males keeping the snowflakes down. /s
The real gender bias is when you count the male/female roles rather than enjoying the narrative.
Sci-fi is traditionally written and preferred by libertarians and conservatives. Fantasy is typically written and preferred by leftists. This is obviously not a hard and fast rule, but it generally holds true.
James Cameron, however, is an eco-fascist who wants to commie up the sci-fi genre.
All of the problems you think are there actually come from government economic controls; primarily central banks but also others.
For the sake of humanity, please do some study.
https://tomwoods.com/learn-austrian-economics/
With sci-fi, even the best movies will still be "just sci-fi" because everyone can relate to a drama. It's easy to follow and gets to you emotionally.
Truly great sci-fi requires that the user think about what is happening while having all of the characteristics of a drama.
I'd even say that Terminator 2 is probably one of the best sci-fi movies EVER! Thing is, while there is emotional attachment, people that are not fans of the genre will not get that emotional attachment like I did. And I'll admit that the emotional tie to the characters are not like they are in Titanic, where you feel for the characters deeply.
Sci-Fi will forever be a genre that people should follow through sci-fi targeted awards shows that reward movies for symbolism, logic puzzles and outright original ideas!
Sci Fi Fans ....... watch Nightwatch and Daywatch back to back to see one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever. And when you finish the second movie you should have a OMFG moment about both films. My friend somehow missed it but I saw it and was mesmerized.
Actually, Nightwatch and Daywatch have a lot of the endearing qualities of a drama while also being a fantastic sci-fi movie in it's own right.
Men and women are not the same. Both genders are "people", but there are interests and motivations that are different between the genderds. That being said, there is no reason to expect a 50/50 distribution of genders in any particular activity.
Remove any active discrimination and let the cards fall where they may. The line of thinking that says that things must be 50/50 or they are unfair is only applied to areas where people might possibly see an advantage. This is unethical and discriminatory... the EXACT opposite of what all this bullshit is about.
Just stop.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
The primary market for western science fiction is male and white, so it's fine.
Let's not pretend that equality of outcome was ever a good idea. The only metric we should be concerned with here is equality of opportunity. Just because we don't like the numbers as they are now, doesn't mean that we should start discriminating by race and sex, even if it's an effort to counter balance the equation; just ask James Damore (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFDUD7VbsLM)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_of_outcome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity
...is not science fiction. It has nothing to do with science fiction. There are some notable female sci fi authors, and plenty that are in some other special category. Probably a few that obsess over issues of gender and "race". If they have a following among fans of science fiction instead of identity politics fiction, more power to them. But if they don't, whose fault is that?
Let's not forget that LeGuin won a Hugo and Nebula award for The Left Hand of Darkness nearly 50 years ago. She was not hiding her gender, and the book is based on gender fluidity. Long before the sci-fi pretenders of today were even born, or were too young to remember.
Yet Cameron can make this stupid claim because he's pretending to be woke so he can get his films made - by a male who is pale and his work is stale.
Too late to the party James. You never said anything about this stuff yet better authors and filmmakers were ahead of you. Far too late.
Men and women come from very different life experiences. Likewise for non whites from whites. Is it really such a stretch of the imagination that it would be good to have more variety in who directs in such a culturally dominate medium such as cinema?
You mean like Tyler Perry?
There is more to cinema than just Hollywood. A lot of white male directors can't get money for their projects. You think Denis Villeneuve was given Bladerunner 2049 right out of film school, or Rian Johnson Star War 8?
Both made quite a few small, low budget films before getting to the big leagues. Now that Jordan Peele has had all sorts of accolades with "Get Out", he's going to get offers for movies that are higher (financial) risk, just like Villeneuve went from Sicario and Arrival to BR2049.
There are more "non-Hollywood directors" (and writers, actors, editors, etc.) than Hollywood ones. It's just Hollywood gets the headlines. Take a look at the itinerary for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and see how many in there get the big marketing bucks. Probably less that 10%.
Screw you, you stupid, hypocritical, ignorant racist. This is nothing more than discrimination.
I don't think the complaint is really accurate. Gravity won several academy awards and had a female lead. Passengers had a female star and was nominated for two academy awards.
See also the Alien franchise, Villeneuve's Arrival and Sicario, Garland's Ex Machina.
Stale Pale and Male, eh? OK make you a deal- you tell me a good story and I won't care who's in it. You load things down with checkboxes to show your superiority, and you're going to have a much harder time fulfilling your part of the deal. I don't pay to be preached at, I pay to be entertained. Which is why I never saw Avatar.
Seems like every new SciFi book I listen to on audible now has a female "of color" as one of the main characters and it's mentioned extensively even though it makes no difference to the plot.
Can't we keep something around and not dilute and destroy its meaning until it just resembles the same as everything else. Don't we have plenty of avenues by which to promote anti-sexism do we really have to corrode Scifi with reflections of today? Stop turning all our entertainment into seriousness for a social movement. This is why we can't have nice things
Just don't allow women to work in the male dominated world. Only allow women to stay in the house, take care of the children, and cook for the husband.
This will end systemic misogyny.
Let's just ban white people from holywood so we don't have to keep hearing this.
U wanna detailed analysis of Neolith nibber stupidity or I wanna-B-baba-mama femtems .... or will facts-just-the-facts do ya ?
Iain M. Banks had it figured out from his first (or was it second?) Culture book. (published in the '80s, way before most of this pronoun nonsense)
The narration is "in world", breaking the fourth wall (or the third, or the fifth?) section at the beginning to explain the "translation".
Those of you unfortunate enough not to be reading or hearing this in Marain may well be using a language without the requisite number or type of personal pronouns, so I'd better explain that bit of the translation.
Marain, the Culture's quintessentially wonderful language (so the Culture will tell you), has, as any schoolkid knows, one personal pronoun to cover females, males, in-betweens, neuters, children, drones, Minds, other sentient machines, and every life-form capable of scraping together anything remotely resembling a nervous system and the rudiments of language (or a good excuse for not having either). Naturally, there are ways of specifying a person's sex in Marain, but they're not used in everyday conversation; in the archetypal language-as-moral-weapon-and-proud-of-it, the message is that it's brains that matter, kids; gonads are hardly worth making a distinction over.
Boom, solved. I bet SJWs still bitch about it 30 years later.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Unless the systemic factor is that women are less prepared to make the kinds of personal sacrifice that this kind of career demands.
I made that personal sacrifice myself, long ago, by reading everything Heinlein ever wrote (fat chance) starting at the age of twelve. At one point in my life, everything I knew about women came from Podkayne of Mars. No sane female would have made such a severe social mistake.
The point here is that men and women have fundamentally different drives.
Imagine you had a woman-world with many Shelleys and Ursula K. Le Guins. Le Guin's science fiction is rooted in the social sciences (such as anthropology and cultural studies). Shelley's story was based on her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, being something of a dick wad.
So on woman-world, you'd have a lot of this kind of SF and it would achieve some kind of market equilibrium based on the media consumption patterns of other women.
Back on man-world, you'd have a ready supply of Starship Troopers and Kubrick's calculated, cold, and sterile—in the highest service of art—2001. This, too, would achieve a market equilibrium, based on the tastes of men.
Obviously, these two equilibria would be the same, because men and women aren't really different biologically, Winston Smith would add the newspaper on a daily basis, from somewhere deep inside the nuclear-cooling-tower Deep State of a Brave New World.
The only reason I knew who he was from his earlier company Miramax and the only reason I remember is because the name was a portmanteau of his mother and father (Miriam & Maxwell??). When he was kicked out of the company I thought at the time that it must have been a major boot to the nards to lose the company you built and named after your parents.
FWIW, Alice Norton published under the name Andre Norton. I don't know if she would have done as well under her own name, but she knew the scene back then and thought it wise to have a male pen name. Of course, we're talking about something from my youth, when the Hugo Awards were normally handed out by hadrosaurs.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Alice Norton started writing in 1934! For fuck's sake, things have changed in the last 80 years. And, seriously, have you ever looked at the sex of an author to decide if you wanted to read a particular book?
Today, we have Hugo awards for absolute nonsense like "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love". Personally, I think those hadrosaurs you dismiss did a pretty damned good job compared to the tripe we have today.
> they [females] represent 50 percent of the population, that's a big delta there that needs to get rectified.
Interesting that he says nothing about Blacks, Latinos, Asians and others. Hollow-words has an ongoing pale problem that's occasionally dealt with with a token actor. tbf, some Movies/TV shows have done a great job tackling this - in a way that integrates naturally into the story. I remember when the TV series 'Heroes' aired. They handled this eyesore of an issue withOUT all the self-congratulations common among those that only talk the talk. They just made it happen.
Anytime I see a scene (movie/tv) centered around 'The Big City' life in the US and only see "pale" actors with an occasional token (that's perfect in every way), it makes my stomach turn. Supergirl is a good example of this.
Isn't Cameron the guy who dumped his actress wife because she got old on him?
This means for anyone who isn't totally 50%-50% bisexual there will be a certain amount of bias one way or another.
I'm a heterosexual male and I'd choose a Bill Lumbergh over a female boss, no matter how attractive she is. Twice in the past I have worked for women and it will never happen again. I've had plenty of female coworkers, some awful, some amazing, but I have yet to meet or hear about one female leader that doesn't suck.
If you look at famous female executives you can see it immediately. Marissa Mayer, Ellen Pao, Carly Fiorina - all terrible people. And when there's one that doesn't plainly suck, she turns out to be a greedy ruthless type (like Sheryl Sandberg, who was instrumental in transforming Facebook from a true social network into an ad platform that sells its users privacy to the highest bidder).
lucm, indeed.
Have you ever had to do anything at a union jobsite?
I assume you're talking about a mostly male union jobsite, since you're engaged in both making fun of and using archetypes. Then yes, I have, and in that world, problems tend to get resolved by a well-deserved ass kicking typically followed by no resentment, as opposed to lovely ladies teaming up to make the life of their black sheep miserable until she quits or goes on sick leave.
lucm, indeed.
Where 18% of the population get to dictate what the majority watches.
.... sexist, and racist.
"Who is to say there aren't women out there that could do a better job with a film than the male director that gets selected in part because of his sex? Making films isn't a cut and dried task -- talent matters."
This is true for every profession and all people. Life ain't fair. I've been passed over for engineering jobs because I have bad fashion sense. I know really talented people who were not hired because they are timid and think a little too long before they answer questions. Hey, they were born that way. Is that fair?
But here's the war words -- It is well known that the quality of our education system has been in decline since the 1960s. Yes, standardized tests and all, but what about creative thinking? Problem solving? Critical analysis-- the kind that helps you see through the bullshit in political campaigns? it's all down. But why?
I don't have the data at my fingertips, but someone did the research and crunched the numbers. In the 30s, 40s and 50s women only had three real career options: Receptionist, nurse or schoolteacher. Now, when you limit HALF the population and allow them only those choices, guess what? The best and the brightest become the best and brightest school teachers this country has ever had.
Now, no one wants to force women back into that box. At least, no one I know. But we should all understand that everything, including new freedoms, come with a cost. Yes, we need better movies. We need better customer support people too. We need better engineers and better managers. Too get that, we need better teachers who teach more than the test.
I'm not here to solve this problem. I want to inspire an army of thinkers to do it, before we run out of creative thinkers who are interested in more than just how to get themselves a bigger paycheck. Think about it. The future is at risk. Or don't you care about that? If you have kids, you have to.
Star Trek inspired a LOT of kids to want to be scientists and engineers. But it was the teachers who walked with them on that path. Movies are good. We need all the best directors and storytellers we can find. But we also need better teachers. Make it so.
"...needs to get rectified." Hummmmm....Let's see: We could reject good books by male authors, and accept bad books by female authors, or genetically modify the two sexes interests, or somehow learn to love "love stories" set in the future, what else?
I myself vote for let the SF community decide for themselves what their needs are.
Sorry, James Cameron.
Can't we keep something around and not dilute and destroy its meaning until it just resembles the same as everything else.
Nope. There's a Star Wars Battle of the 97 Genders coming out in a few years, with the non-binary genderqueer ambidrogynous rebels taking on and destroying the BlackHawk Helicopter Hegemony once and for all.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Check out this site: https://rosecode.io
At least one of the authors is female, judging from the bio for her presentation talk at Linuxfest. Wonder why she doesn't use her real name?
First of all, who the hell cares what's between the legs of the person directing a film? That should have absolutely no bearing...it should be 'can this person do the job and do it well?' Forcing people into roles they may not be suited for, male or female, isn't going to produce quality work.
Secondly, what Mr. Cameron is forgetting is that media advanced extremely rapidly in North America, a predominantly white part of the world. This is one of the reason why American culture is currently so dominant...it was there first, and it did it the most, and at one point was actually the best hands-down in terms of quality. It's only been relatively recently that other nations have been really getting into the meat of the entertainment industry, and with time they will produce more and more material for themselves. As white people become minorities in the countries they created (which is going to happen, for good or for ill), you will white actors less and less...it's just a matter of math.
Third, girls on average aren't as interested in Sci Fi as boys are, (which is why finding a woman who can appreciate Star Trek, Star Wars, or just Sci Fi in general is awesome) which is why you see so many men in those roles. And hell, Sci Fi wasn't part of normal culture since its inception...most girls didn't give male geeks and nerds a second glance, going after the athletes and rock bands and more 'normal' boys, so that -also- reflects why sci fi is how it is...it had to appeal to its market, which was in general and by majority, and still is, geeky and nerdy males.
Changes in the industry will happen naturally and will reflect society...getting militant and forcing this kind of change will only create hostility and bickering, and further separation.
TL;DR Shut up and enjoy the stories, let whatever will be will be and don't force change that will happen naturally anyway.
Mostly,entitled males desperate to explain away the bias for white old male power
Interesting to read these perspectives from people who are not in the film industry, trying to apply "real world" perspectives on why there aren't more female directors. Hollywoood is its own beast. It does not adhere to the same rules as the corporate world that people are trying to compare it to, especially when it comes to "equal opportunity". Most of the power is held and the decision-making made by a select few powerful white men - Weinstein is just one of them.
Someone made a very good observation that women filmmakers, beyond the short film level, have a much harder time finding funding for their film and they are not wrong. I have first-hand knowledge of these things happening. I think what most of the commentators here need to realise is that movies are a product, and should also do some research on how movies get funded. Bottom line is, movies need to be able to sell, otherwise you will not get investors and/or distribution deals. And unfortunately, there is a perception within the powerbrokers (such as the people who fund these films) is that the product that women directors come up with will not sell. It's not because they're less talented, or less able to helm the movie than a male director. It's a real glass ceiling. Sure, the average moviegoer won't care if it's a man or woman directing it, but they're not the ones making decisions when it comes to spending $150+ million worth of investor money. It's always a gamble producing a film, and producers want to minimize the amount of risk when producing a movie. The more money involved, the greater the risk, so it's "safer" to choose a man. Also the same applies to minorities. Have a look at the number of non-white directors leading Hollywood blockbuster films. Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok) and Ryan Coogler (Black Panther) are the only ones who come to mind right now.
As much as I hate it, money is the bottom line in this industry. It's not talent. Before Wonder Woman, Patty Jenkins had a league of doubters. The director of Harley Quinn will also be facing the same scrutiny. And they get that extra scrutiny because they're women. Men don't have to go through that.
Although, for the bottom end - movies that are $5-$20 million range - I see there's a general move away from traditional studios, and towards being funded and distributed by streaming companies such as Netflix and Amazon. Those types of films do provide more opportunities for women because there are a lot less commercial factors at play there. If you look at the 14% of women directors out there working on narrative films, you'll see the majority of them are directing indies, not Hollywood blockbusters.
Also, someone else mentioned that more women need to be encouraged to take up directing. I agree with that as well. A lot of women don't want to get into directing because they believe it's too difficult, hence less female directors, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyways, that's just my 2 cents. It's not a liberal/SJW agenda trying to get more women directors. There are real sexist forces at play here that a lot of people here don't have visibility into.
What? Sci-Fi IS the most popular genre. Just take a look at the top-10 highest grossing movies of all times. Except for Titanic and "Fast And Furious" it's all Sci-Fi (Avatar, Star Wars, Jurassic Park), Fantasy (Harry Potter, LOTR, ...) and Comics ( Avengers, Black Panther, ...).
Sci-Fi is as mainstream as it gets.
maybe the simplest solution is the one taken by the wachowski brothers err sisters :) Ticking two boxes at once :)
Linkedin http://in.linkedin.com/in/robinsaikatchatterjee
You sir/Madam are a person of taste ! I love your author choices !
Linkedin http://in.linkedin.com/in/robinsaikatchatterjee
The next Trek is being directed by a woman. Times are changing.
if there's any of the toxicity you mention it's being well-hidden from me for some reason.
Peculiarly, this was also the case when I worked for a non-profit that was well over 90% women
The obvious conclusion here is that people make fun of you behind your back and you're too busy being a self-righteous cunt to notice it. Also one reason that can explain why they don't involve you in their bitching and whining is that you clearly suck at being sarcastic.
lucm, indeed.
He couldn't go even one interview without plugging Avatar . . .