Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sci-Fi Is Still Working on Its 'Stale, Male, and Pale' Problem, Says James Cameron (indiewire.com)

Posted by msmash on from the reckoning dept.

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."

12 of 796 comments (clear)

  1. Who cares? by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Who cares? by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re: Who cares? by Insanity+Defense · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Who cares? by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    4. Re:Who cares? by lucm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    5. Re:Who cares? by swillden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    6. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

  2. 50% of which population? by holophrastic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Dear James Cameron by Kohath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Dear James Cameron by skam240 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      --
      I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
  4. Pale == Too white by execthis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Standard hyper-liberal thinker by Sqreater · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.