Point of view

Point of view

The other night, after returning from a week of travel for work, I found myself watching "The Shawshank Redemption". Snuggled in to the corner of my horsehair stuffed, genuine retro sofa, covered with blankets and surrounded by cushions, I was swept away yet again by the emotion that wells up when Andy’s library books arrive after a mere two years of sending letters every week, when he gives those beers to his team while they’re working on the roof, and when he eventually wades through shit to freedom. 

Back in the day, that film was my favourite, alongside "Dead Poets Society". As a young adult I was drawn to literature and film that explored aspects of our common humanity - how we respond to suffering, what makes us feel truly alive and free, and the triumph of the oppressed over their oppressors. As a drama student myself, I saw my own struggles in Neil’s experience, and had mandatory tissues on hand for the moment when Todd steps onto his desk as an act of resistance and in acknowledgement of his betrayed teacher. In many ways, these iconic films have shaped the way I look at life as an adult. It just never occurred to me to wonder why so many of the heroes in my favourite films were men. 

Now, fast forward two decades, and there I was in the age of #metoo, and the next wave of feminism. I suddenly realised, with a splutter of wine all over the couch, that neither of my favourite ‘90s films would come close to passing the Bechtel test, which asks three simple questions - 1) are there any women in the film?, 2) do they speak to each other? 3) about anything other than men? While not a single woman appears in Shawshank Redemption, given that it is set in a male prison, the women in Dead Poet’s Society exist mainly as objects of the boys' affections, and consent is not a major consideration. 

But there’s something else that I realised about the films of my youth. It’s not just that the heroes were predominantly white men. The producers, directors and creative teams of most films in the ‘90s would almost certainly have all been white men as well. On the website of “Women in Hollywood”, a group that advocates for greater gender diversity in Hollywood and the film industry more generally, it is revealed that more than 95% of films made in the past 10 years were directed by men, and 80% of the creative teams were men. Twenty years ago that proportion would have almost certainly been even higher.

This means that the perspective of most films from that time, even the ones with women in lead roles, would have been that of a white male. So, why is this necessarily a problem? Because we are socialised to see the male experience as the norm, and representative of the rest of us. As Simone de Beauvior wrote almost 40 years earlier:

Representation of the world,

 like the world itself, 

 is the work of men; 

they describe it from their own point of view, 

 which they confuse with absolute truth.

- Simone de Beauvior

With lead actors, directors, and producers all being men, it’s pretty clear who they imagined would be sitting in the cinema. The concept of the “male gaze” refers to films whose intended audience is a heterosexual man. The male gaze is also characterised by a tendency to objectify or sexualise women. In the 1990s most of the female leads were the sexy sidekick or love interest of the male protagonist. And according to recent research, not much has changed. Women still say less, appear less, and are more sexualised than their male counterparts.

There’s also a sense that strong female leads, such as in Wonder Woman or Tomb Raider, are simply scripted as men in a sexy woman’s body. Brit Marling, an actress who moved into sci-fi script writing because she wasn’t seeing female characters that inspired her, complained that strong female leads tend to be written into action films as “give me a man, but in the body of a woman I’d still like to see naked”. She also noted that these strong female leads typically adopt the attributes of a strong man - physical strength, ambition, and rationality. On the other hand, she argues, women in film who are unfettered, spirited and display feminine bravery like Thelma and Louise face brutal consequences.

All of this has led women of my generation to experience an identity crisis. On the one hand, we're told that those male heroes we resonated with do represent us, and that we women can absolutely do anything men can do. On the other hand, the limited diversity of faces we see and the limited complexity of female characters reinforce for us a different message - that women are weak, simple, objects of desire, and above all - not the hero of the story. 

Around the time that I became aware of the gender bias in film, I also began to explore race and white privilege as another lens from which to consider the messages fed to me through pop culture. When I examine The Shawshank Redemption from this perspective, I realise that Red, the character played by Morgan Freeman, exists within a system that has marginalised, discriminated against and enslaved black people, and yet his history and character are given very little development. Instead, he essentially just narrates the story of Andy, a white man who is innocent of the crime that put him in jail for 20 years. Andy ultimately acts as white saviour, and hero of the story, enabling Red to be redeemed, released and to begin his life again in Mexico. I hadn’t noticed any of this previously. My own white perspective had its biases and limitations.

But things are changing. We now know how important it is for young people to see their own faces reflected in the faces of role models, rather than all of us having to see the world as experienced by white men. It’s encouraging that more complex and diverse leads are appearing in films, tv and books these days. Squishy Taylor is a series of Australian children’s books (written by a totally awesome friend of mine) with a great female protagonist of Fijian-Indian descent. Outlander, whose protagonist is a woman whose pleasure and needs are in the foreground, has been described as deliberately adopting a “female gaze”. Chimamanda Adichie’s book “Americana” and her ted talk about the danger of a single story shed light on the impact on others when we don’t question our particular, privileged view of the world. And "Orange is the new black" provides similar insights into the nature of humanity, and suffering, and injustice as Shawshank Redemption, but this time through the experiences of a diverse collection of women in prison.

So, when I curl up on my mid century couch the next time, I’ll be reading “The Parable of the Sower”, a near future science fiction novel written in the ‘90s about a young African-American woman who becomes the local hero in the year 2026 where society that has all but collapsed due to climate change, corporate greed and wealth inequality. Her strength is in her empathy, intellect, and resourcefulness, and I can’t wait to find out how the story unfolds. Also, I’ve sent my nephew a copy of “Spirited Away”, an award winning children’s anime film who’s central character happens to be a brave girl who must rescue her parents from a haunted island. These might seem like small gestures, but they are steps in the right direction. I yearn for the day when the most powerful heroes and role models of the stories that shape the next generation are just as likely to be women as they are to be men, and just as likely to display strength of character and emotional intelligence as they are to exhibit physical strength and ambition.