The Golden Globes are happening tonight and there’s been a lot of speculation about how the #TimesUp campaign is going to manifest itself. We know that actors are sticking to a black dress code as a sign of solidarity and we can expect impassioned speeches about the abuse and imbalance of power in Hollywood and beyond. The silver lining of this is that women have come together to take action and have already raised significant funds (I think the latest count is $15 million) for legal support for women who want to take action against their abusers. The Times Up Movement reflects the desire for change, the refusal to let #MeToo die down and, thanks to the legal fund, a meaningful way to progress.
Focusing back on the actual awards ceremony itself, what remains painfully clear by looking at the nominations is that we still haven’t come far enough in terms of distributing accolades fairly and making the industry more inclusive, enabling it to represent a broader swathe of people. Change isn’t happening fast enough. If you look at the headshots of the nominees you may anticipate that the #SoWhite slogan will burst back into the social media hemisphere. The Academy Award Nominations are yet to be announced, but the Globes normally give a good indication of what’s to come. What has particularly struck a nerve is the lack of nominations for female directors, both currently and historically. This year’s ‘Best Director for a Motion Picture’ will be chosen from this pool…
Not a single female director has been picked (Jordan Peele is also left out which is more dumbfounding than the plot of Lost). It is not good enough in a year that featured the following films:
Greta Gerwig – Lady Bird
Patty Jenkins – Wonder Woman
Kathryn Bigelow – Detroit
Sophia Coppola – The Beguiled
Dee Rees – Mudbound
In the past 20 years, only three women have been nominated for best director at the Globes and only one female has won an Oscar for Best Director (Katheryn Bigalow for The Hurt Locker).
It is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association members who vote, they currently have about 90 members. To become a member you have to (amongst other requirements) have a primary residence in Southern California and be sponsored by two active members of the Hollywood Foreign Press. In their defence, the HFP does a lot of good: they’ve given 29 million dollars to education funds that support young people trying to break into the industry, including 1,500 scholarships. There’s an article on their website featuring Wonder Woman actor Gal Gadot speaking to Meher Tatna, President of the HFP, the headline of which features the word ’empowerment.’ It may be empowering to watch Wonder Woman on the big screen, observing a powerful superhero rivalling the strength of male superheroes that have populated cinema for the past decade, and it may be empowering to have financial support to help realise your dreams of breaking into the film or television industry, but the good intentions of the HFP are thwarted by their inability to conflate those intentions with their most high profile event where they seem adamant that white men should still remain the key holders. You could argue that awards are swiftly forgotten by anyone who doesn’t directly work in the industry but the impact they make on peoples’ careers is undeniable and it strikes me as being particularly backward, ignorant and misguided to leave women out of the mix.
It should be the case that an award is allocated to whoever is most worthy, that choice should be blind to race, gender and sexuality. I embrace that sentiment fully. It is horseshit that not one of the women above were recognised for their talent in directing, so this piece is for them.
Greta Gerwig
Lady Bird is an irresistible, small budget, coming of age story that explores the sometimes painful relationship between mother and daughter. Saoirse Ronan is brilliant in a role written and directed by Greta Gerwig, who has stepped away from her creative partnership with Noah Baumbach for this project. Given that Lady Bird was nominated for Best Picture her absence in this instance feels particularly resonant.
Dee Rees
Mudbound was swooped up by Netflix after its warm reception at Sundance and has received a wide audience because of that platform. As award givers aren’t yet comfortable with giving prizes away to films that don’t make it to the cinema, Mudbound was also released on the big screen for a limited run to ensure it would be eligible.
Mudbound is an American period drama that follows two World War II veterans who return to Mississippi in a period of heightened racial tension. Dee Rees handles the brutality of the subject matter with compassion and clarity and has compiled an incredible cast, including the brilliant Mary J Blige.
Patty Jenkins
The first female superhero movie in this era, Wonder Woman absolutely smashed it at the box office opening worldwide at $821.9 million against a production budget of $149 million, it is the highest grossing superhero origin film. One of the most enduring arguments pitted against female-led movies is their supposed inability to appeal to a wide audience, Patty Jenkins has absolutely broken that myth.
Katheryn Bigalow
Bigalow has had two Golden Globe nominations for Best Director and no win (she did bag an Oscar though).
I was talking with a friend about Detroit recently, who had a completely different take on it than I did. I’d been impressed with the slow, purposeful beginning and then the long, drawn-out scene in the Algiers Motel which held the audience captive in a horrific scenario. We watch a young, racist and sadistic police officer (Will Poulter) abuse, humiliate and ultimately murder the guests of the motel against the backdrop of the 1967 race riots. He’d seen it as inaccurate torture porn which conveyed the events in skewed and loaded manner. I hadn’t thought the same whilst watching, but I didn’t disagree with his comments. I think it’s a highly uncomfortable film and I didn’t know enough about the historical events to properly argue it’s case, but I don’t think the power of the film can be denied. Bigalow has a way of creating tension, in the same way, Michael Haneke does. The camera often feels like a voyeuristic intruder that has gained access to something we shouldn’t be seeing but needs to be exposed. Her work is always urgent.
Sofia Coppola
I’ve written about my love for Coppola on here before so you’ll have to excuse the double entry. Of everyone on this list, her films have remained a staple in my film watching diet for over a decade. At Cannes in 2017, she became the second woman ever to win the Best Director prize. It’s a shame to see that the Globes failed to acknowledge her in the same way.
It’s the first time I’ve written about more than one woman in a single blog post and you may judge that I’m trying to cheat my way through the 52 posts I promised myself to write about women, but that’s not the case. I’ve been inspired recently by the coming together of women that has occurred in the wake of the #MeToo campaign, both publically and within my own social circles. Achieving as a group rather than as an individual is an empowering notion and honestly, had one of these women been nominated (let alone won) it would have been a win for everyone.
Becky Latham 