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."

Comments

Who cares?

[alvinrod]

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?

Re:Who cares?

[saltydogdesign]

I think you're missing the point. If there's something systemic that is preventing women from breaking into directing, that's potentially a huge pool of talent wasted. 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. We got Frankenstein (the novel) in spite of systemic sexism. What all did we miss?

Re:Who cares?

[phantomfive]

I think you're missing the point. If there's something systemic that is preventing women from breaking into directing

Then point to that specific thing instead of making vague allusions. If there is a real problem, most of us are willing to help. The vast majority of us favor gender/race/human equality, but if you're just going to go around insulting people as "too white, too male, and too whatever" without even being able to identify a specific problem, I'm going to tune out.

Groups that are more interested in insulting than in fixing lose support.

Re:Who cares?

[phantomfive]

There isn't just one specific thing. Strawmen challenges are pointless. If there was just one specific thing, then the problem would have been solved long ago. Point to any specific thing, and watch the goalposts shift.

If there are multiple problems then point them out, and I will support solving them. But your vague allusions are empty. When you say, "watch the goalpost shift," do you mean, "watch the problem get solved?" Because that's what it sounds like you are saying.

Re:Who cares?

[JBMcB]

A female director could still direct "male gaze" shots because she's got a hundred years of past movies to study; "female gaze" shots she would have an instinct for.

It sounds like you've never taken a serious film class. There is plenty of female, for lack of a better term, "fan service" to be had. Watch the last 50 years of soap operas on US TV, or Mexican Telenovellas, or any one of the slew of TV shows on BBC or ITV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

There are entire TV shows based, more or less, around this one scene.

Re: Who cares?

[Insanity Defense]

How many customers are willing to pay for movies from female directors ? Everyone paid for Weinsteins movies. The product is that matters, not the personality of the products maker.

Relatively few people care who directs. The average person cares more about the stars of the movie. Until Weinsteins indiscretions came out recently I didn't know who he was and wouldn't have cared if someone told me. I couldn't name a single movie he was associated with. If your face isn't on the screen the typical person couldn't care. Have there been exceptions? Sure Spielberg for instance had his name associated with a number of hits and could draw people to films with his name. But he was an exception not the rule.

If I find out a woman directed a movie or TV show I want to see my response is SO WHAT and I promptly forget that fact and watch the show.

Re:Who cares?

[phantomfive]

The onus is on you to tell us

The onus is on the one who cares and wants change.

when did equality hit with such force that this is no longer an issue you should be fucking figuring out yourself

I have my own problems. I don't need to busy myself figuring out other people's problems for them, especially from people who want to insult me.

Re:Who cares?

[ooloorie]

Here is a list of the first 100 film directors listed alphabetically. There are exactly two that are women. Now, do you really think that there is something about having a penis that is a requirement to direct a movie?

Feminists certainly believe that there is something different about having a penis because men supposedly suffer from "toxic masculinity" and women supposedly listen and collaborate better. But, as it turns out, many of the traits that feminists claim to despise in men are traits that are actually important for leadership positions.

So, there is something about having a penis that is a requirement for succeeding in a cut-throat, competitive environment; for directing people with big egos under lots of stress and time pressure; for dealing with complex abstract concepts and spatial relationships.

Re:Who cares?

[ooloorie]

Feminists may say that women want wimpy, obsequious men. But feminists don't represent women. The only thing that ultimately matters is who women who reproduce choose to reproduce with, and the criteria there haven't changed much: they want competitive, successful alpha males. Women can't even overcome their preference for such superficial criteria as height in mate selection.

Re:Who cares?

[lucm]

women supposedly listen and collaborate better

Anyone who has worked in a sewing shop or in any other mostly female work environment (nursing, beauty parlors, etc) will tell you how untrue that is. There's endless drama, arguments over who spent too much time in the bathroom or who gets to work next to the window, nonstop backstabbing and whining, etc. It's as toxic as it gets and usually comes with a tsunami of harassment complaints, burnouts, bickering in the cafeteria, and so on.

Ask any trustworthy women around you, would she rather work for a man or a woman, you'll see.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Men and women enjoy different content. Period.

The publishing industry knows this well. Magazines for men and women can't be more different. Look at a woman's Facebook feed and compare it to a man's. Also there, the content can't be more different.

These are differences based on individual selection.

What the film industry is trying to do is create content that appeals to two audiences. That part is logical and understandable given the financial realities of film.. But what isn't logical is to solve this problem by forcing women into traditionally male genres and male roles and then to attempt to market it to both genders. Needless to say this strategy produces content that neither gender likes particularly much. And this is what female directors and female run studios invariably try to do.

There are a few things going on here:

There first is that men grew up with sci fi and comic books and most women didn't. Pretending that female directors and male directors can do an equally good job because of directorial capacity (which is equal) while ignoring the differences in lifelong tastes is absurd. Yes, there are some female directors who did grow up with comic books and sci-fi... Not only is Hollywood terrible at finding these rate birds, but even if they could these are women who have traditionally male tastes. They run into the same problems as men do if they try to make content that appeals to two genders.

Another thing that's going on is that most female directors are products of liberal Western feminist thought. They are therefore desperately unqualified to represent gender on screen because they do not understand gender. In their minds men and women are interchangeable. Which is why portrayals of women in sci fi are mostly male roles played by women.

Remember men and women like different things. The solution is not to blur gender roles and try to pass off the result as universal content.

These efforts create awful hybrids like The Last Jedi which nobody sees twice.

Sci-fi is a genre that men have always clamored for more than women do. Yes, you can change the definition of sci fi to make it more female friendly... But then you've changed the nature of the genre to the point where most men are disinterested.

What's the solution?

Why does there need to be a solution? Let men and women enjoy their own content and stop whining about gender representation behind the camera for one specific male loved genre.

Re:Who cares?

[swillden]

I think you're missing the point. If there's something systemic that is preventing women from breaking into directing

Then point to that specific thing instead of making vague allusions. If there is a real problem, most of us are willing to help.

The thing about systemic biases is that it's entirely possible that no one knows what, specifically, is the problem. Systemic biases can be deeply buried in common processes that no one realizes are favoring one type of person over another, often due to the way processes interact with characteristics of the categories of people.

One of my favorite examples is observed variation in salary. Even when controlling for every factor that researchers could think of, and even when HR departments are doing their dead level best to ensure pay equity, we see women in professional positions getting paid less than their male counterparts. Finally, some researchers noticed that part of the typical professional hiring process was salary negotiation, and wondered if perhaps women didn't negotiate as hard, or if they negotiated less effectively. That led to a series of studies that found that (a) women generally don't negotiate as aggressively as their male counterparts, and (b) women who do negotiate aggressively are more effective at it than their male counterparts. Further studies delved into why women negotiated less aggressively and decided it's probably due to the cultural expectations of "niceness" and non-confrontationalism that women are raised with... and maybe even due to some inherent genetic bias in those directions.

In this example, we have a hiring process that was established around male behavioral norms, in an era when this made sense because only men were in the workplace. As women were introduced, no one thought to re-examine the process to decide if was applicable to them as well. In some jobs, skill at negotiation is a key job requirement and it actually makes sense to pay those who are more aggressive and better at it more money. But in many jobs it's not, yet the process is still applied.

As a result of this observation, some employers have abandoned the salary negotiation process, and instead just calculate a take-it-or-leave-it offer based on experience and qualifications. This actually turns out to eliminate another systemic bias that lowers female pay, the salary history. Traditionally, employers ask for salary history and use that to choose a starting point for negotiation. Since women were typically paid less than men at their previous jobs, this downward bias is carried forward.

Note that this is an example of a hidden, systemic bias that was uncovered and is now understood. But systemic biases can stay hidden for a very long time. They can be subtle and very hard to spot. The existence of bias is often very easy to spot, even when the reasons are not: Just look at outcome equality. If outcomes are unequal, there must be some reason.

Re:Who cares?

[another_twilight]

In one of the most progressive industries

Sure, for old, white and male values of 'progressive'.

in one of the most progressive countries in the world

You're number 20 on this list and the number of first world countries you're ahead of isn't that high.

That you believe what you typed is one of the problem with systematic biases. They are hard to identify and confronting when they are.

Here's a study that takes a stab at 'why'. It's a small sample, but among other factors female directors who have been successful on short films find it harder to attract funding or investment in feature films.

Here's a list of successful female directors talking about the problems they have experienced based solely on gender.

I've found those from a quick google search and memory of some similar articles. You raise mechanics, but a similar search shows females interested in being a mechanic facing even more overt cultural pressure to not. You imply that maybe women don't want to be directors, but a trivial search shows considerable evidence that counters this.

Culture is self re-inforcing. Biases are hard to identify. There's a massive difference in gender among feature film directors. There's a marked difference in the usual path of successful directors (from short films and documentaries, to longer, feature films) based on gender. Small wonder that this means that less females choose a path where an equal amount of work does not result in an equal outcome, or have to have a backup plan for when they can't pick up funding or have to spend another decade getting 'experience' that their male colleagues don't seem to need.

Re:Who cares?

[Oligonicella]

And I think you have a problem with "aspersion" and "assertion". Easy to throw around the word systematic. Remember that the assertion requires proof on the part of the asserter, not disproof by everyone else.

Re:Who cares?

[Oligonicella]

The straw is in the assertion that there's something systemic. Keeping it vague and sans examples is a tactic.

Re:Who cares?

[Oligonicella]

The thing about systemic biases is that it's entirely possible that no one knows what, specifically, is the problem.

That is a big, juicy line of bullshit designed to never, ever be resolved because that would eliminate the complaint industry.

Re:Who cares?

[ganjadude]

Can you imagine the outrage if someone said something was "too black"???

but "too pale" gets nothing????

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the MRAs had actual problems they could point to, then maybe they could gain some support.

What, like the massive bias toward women in divorce and family court that sees women get the kids 9 times out of 10, whether or not she's on drugs and dating a child molester?

Re: Who cares?

[david_thornley]

There first is that men grew up with sci fi and comic books and most women didn't.

That's WAY overgeneralizing. Most boys back in my high school were't interested in science fiction, and some of the girls were. Comic books were much more heavily boy-oriented, but even today there's lots of science fiction movies that have nothing to do with comics. Over the past decade or so, Marvel has been coming out with a lot of quite successful comic book movies, but there's still been other science fiction movies.

Another thing that's going on is that most female directors are products of liberal Western feminist thought. They are therefore desperately unqualified to represent gender on screen

In other words, there's absolutely nothing unbiased about this post. You're assuming that you're right, and that a statement that liberal Western feminist thought is completely wrong, to the point where you think you can toss it out there unquestioned.

In their minds men and women are interchangeable.

In which case you haven't been reading female-written fiction or watching female-directed movies or paying attention to any actual liberals or feminists, because that's not true. The quote 'Very few jobs require a penis or a vagina, and the others should be open to anyone" refers to equality of opportunity in employment.

50% of which population?

[holophrastic]

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 Cameron

[Kohath]

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.

Re:Dear James Cameron

[skam240]

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?

Whats so wrong with male and pale?

[AHuxley]

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?

We need to fix those statistics!

[gweihir]

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.

Pale == Too white

[execthis]

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.

Re:Dear James Cameraon

[dmomo]

I sort of thought his comments were exactly that; laying the PR seeds early in the production of his long-term films. "I predict that sometime in the next five to 10 years you will have a science-fiction film win Best Picture". So, basically he's trying to sway the opinions of the Academy, using a time frame that happens to coincide with the next few Avatar film releases. He goes as far as saying, "I would argue that there's nothing more quintessentially human than dealing with these themes. But Hollywood tends to pull short from that.", practically daring Hollywood to applaud his efforts.

I chose SciFi b/c of story, not authors genitalia

[gotan]

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.

Standard hyper-liberal thinker

[Sqreater]

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.