Cold Bishop wrote:But women aren't a minority group in America. That's the problem.
...And? How does women not being a minority prevent my point from being valid? Let's pretend it does though, just for the sake of argument. How about latino directors or films. Percentage wise they're on about equal footing with white people and have a higher percentage in Hollywood too.
But how many of these do anything to change the "niche audience" perception of women?
Admittedly, I am no insider, but from what I've been reading around the Internet for a little over has been an increased awareness of a market for women. Now this doesn't mean quality cinema for women, but as we are talking of Hollywood any quality is accidental. From this I see an increased shift to women focused films, which admittedly keeps them as a 'niche', but if the goal is to have films by women directors and/ or catering to women in a way that isn't any more pandering than the male equivalent than I believe they'll have to be a audience. As long as Hollywood works in the capitalist mode it does, and even if it shifted modes dramatically, they won't be selling where there is no market.
I think her point is the genres have already been ghettoized by gender, but male filmmakers are allowed to breach it successfully.
This goes back to my point that it is the wrong year for this sort of comment, or at least this sort of comment being phrased this way. A lot of her argument should be directed more toward women for not trying to do that same breach breaking. Yes it is a hell of a lot harder, but that is for lack of reputation. Even just with Bigelow that glass ceiling is cracking. To go back to the article though even that isn't necessarily true. For example when Bigelow was entrusted with 100 mil for K-19, far more than Anderson has ever been given, she was still a very unproven quantity with only one hit and no cult to back her. Really after the degree of bomb that was it was a miracle she got any financing at all for as risky a project as The Hurt Locker. I'll admit to only using one example here which proves that the state of affairs for women filmakers is not good, but the degree to which is being severely overstated and causing just as much negligence to other groups who are much more mistreated minorities then women have ever been.