Summer female blockbuster indicates systemic flaw


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It’s that time of year again -— when we return to classrooms, syllabi, assignments and beginnings as summer turns into fall and we have an entire new year of school to look forward to. For me, this new year rings a different tone, as I’m currently in the process of deciding whether to graduate a semester early or stay for the spring. My desire for a steady income dislocated from my parents and impatience to begin my career in earnest is close to winning out, but there’s something in the back of my mind that’s telling me to wait and bide my time.

For the past one and a half years, I’ve written this column dedicated to examining women’s changing roles within the film industry. How we’re being paid, where we’re getting jobs, who’s breaking out in the festival circuit and who’s had to wait seven years to get their sophomore effort off the ground. This column has been both emboldening and disheartening to write. There has been progress, no doubt, for new opportunities for women across the spectrum, but we’re in no way close to complete equality.

This summer we saw the unfortunate effects of a reboot gone awry in the all-female remake of Ghostbusters. Equality behind the camera aside (the movie was still directed and co-written by a man, though co-written by Katie Dippold), the announcement of the reboot initially felt exciting and encouraging, but backlash quickly formed on several fronts — naysayers disliked the idea of their favorite franchise going through a second round, and some people just plain didn’t enjoy the idea of women in roles formerly occupied by men. The Boston Herald stated recently that, “enraged fanboys … insisted that an all-female-led “Ghostbusters” was some kind of cinematic sacrilege.”

When the film finally premiered, the box office gross wasn’t what Sony (the film’s studio) or Hollywood expected, and the movie lost a reported $70 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter. What started as a seemingly positive turn from the studio system has now made way for accusations that women-led films don’t generate ticket sales — an opinion that may prevent other female-driven films from seeing the light of day.

However, George Clooney’s production company is currently underway with rebooting an all-female version of the 2001 remake of the film Ocean’s 11, renaming it Ocean’s Eight. Last year, when news of this remake first broke, I argued that maybe the female remake isn’t what audiences and Hollywood needed, but rather we should ask for whole new franchises for women altogether. Remaking a movie to include women in roles previously occupied by men feels a little bit as if actresses are only allowed the leftovers from their male colleagues, even if that feeling may be unintentional.

Of course, to simply ask for new franchises for women is definitely a simplified solution to an extremely complicated problem. Hollywood is having enough difficulty creating new entertainment in the wake of comic-book blockbusters without having diversity to worry about. And simply hiring women in front of the camera isn’t also the only thing we have to mull over, either. Warner Brothers recently released the names of the four male screenwriters hired to pen the feature. Even after they decided to re-write and hire more writers for the project, nowhere in there did they make the choice to bring a woman on board to write Wonder Woman’s movie.

And so as I attempt to envision the future and graduate early, part of me is a little afraid that the world isn’t ready for another woman to emerge in the industry right now. Since institutional sexism still abounds (Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn as a most recent example of a less-than-liberated woman) and our reboots are not getting any better, part of me wants to wait until Hollywood has gotten itself together and figured out that yes, female-led movies do make money, you just need to have more of them to prove it, and maybe more original roles to offer as well. When a male-led movie flops at the box-office, we don’t point fingers at the men and blame them. But the other part of me wants to take the problem into my own hands, not wait for the right moment to enter the job market. For now, I’ll keep you updated with this column every Tuesday, and don’t be afraid to write in with your own take on the problem.

Minnie Schedeen is a a senior majoring in cinema and media studies.  Her column, “Film Fatale,” runs on Wednesdays.