In the NY Times, film critic Manohla Dargis is all worked up over Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first women to win the Best Director Oscar: a triumph for feminism!
Dargis is smart enough that she seems vaguely uneasy over the fact that it's a little more complicated than that. (For example, women are on-screen for no more than 2 minutes in "The Hurt Locker.")
The dirty little secret that Dargis can't quite bring herself to mention is that the triumph of her kind of auteur-worshiping film theory that lionizes titans like Orson Welles has lessened appreciation of women as directors, few of whom have the requisite ambitiousness.
For example, the 1988 comedy "Big" was, in retrospect, the first of a long run of good movies starring Tom Hanks, but few could see Penny Marshall (Laverne on Laverne and Shirley) as a Best Director for "Big." On the other hand, if you conceive the role of the film director as less a Beethoven-like giant of self-expression molding his profound artistic statement and more as a presiding coordinator who keeps everybody moving together in the right direction, well, then, sure, Penny Marshall did a bang-up job on "Big."
But there are lots of other demographic oddities when you look through the history of the Oscars. I've pointed out before that no woman has ever been nominated for Best Cinematography. (One reason is that it's very hard for a woman to serve as an apprentice in that craft because the entry-level job is lugging heavy lights up ladders, so upper body strength is a requirement).
Another disparity I've just noticed is the lack of women nominees for Best Score (background music, not songs). Rachel Portman was nominated three times between 1996 and 2000, and in 1996 became the first woman to win. Before her, no woman had been nominated since Ann Ronell in 1945 (at least that's my guess based on first names).
And no woman has been nominated since 2000, so that's 45 men out of the last 45 nominees.
Granted, Best Score is one of those awards where you aren't really certain if the person nominated did the actual work. Randy Newman's uncle Alfred Newman received 45 nominations because he was the head of the music department at his studio and insisted that he get sole credit for all the work done by his staff. And, it's a small and nepotistic business: six Newmans have been nominated. (All male, by the way.)
So, it could well be that an anonymous female staffer actually wrote the music for one or more of the last 45 films nominated for Best Score. The Writer's Guild offers a credit dispute resolution system for ensuring that screenplay nominations go to the people who wrote the largest parts of the script, but I don't believe anything like that exists for scores.
Still, it's a remarkable disparity between the sexes.
Orchestral composition is one of those skills that are so far beyond my talent range that I really have no concept of what is involved, and why men so outnumber women at it. Two centuries ago, from Beethoven onward, composing for orchestra was perhaps the single most lionized of all artistic trades, so it's not surprising that the mystique surrounding it would attract the most ambitious of artists, such as Wagner, and that it would remain an all-male domain.
Yet over the last half century, however, it's dropped off to a niche field. Moreover, film scoring itself isn't on the cutting edge of musical art. It's more of a nice-paying job for musicians who are very highly skilled but lacking in the Beethoven-like ambition to assault Olympus, and instead are willing to subordinate their egos to help punch up the emotional impact of the scene where Jennifer Aniston realizes how much Owen Wilson's dog means to him.
So, the sex disparity in Best Score nominations presumably reflects actual disparities in compositional talent at the far right edge of the musical bell curve.
Dargis is smart enough that she seems vaguely uneasy over the fact that it's a little more complicated than that. (For example, women are on-screen for no more than 2 minutes in "The Hurt Locker.")
The dirty little secret that Dargis can't quite bring herself to mention is that the triumph of her kind of auteur-worshiping film theory that lionizes titans like Orson Welles has lessened appreciation of women as directors, few of whom have the requisite ambitiousness.
For example, the 1988 comedy "Big" was, in retrospect, the first of a long run of good movies starring Tom Hanks, but few could see Penny Marshall (Laverne on Laverne and Shirley) as a Best Director for "Big." On the other hand, if you conceive the role of the film director as less a Beethoven-like giant of self-expression molding his profound artistic statement and more as a presiding coordinator who keeps everybody moving together in the right direction, well, then, sure, Penny Marshall did a bang-up job on "Big."
But there are lots of other demographic oddities when you look through the history of the Oscars. I've pointed out before that no woman has ever been nominated for Best Cinematography. (One reason is that it's very hard for a woman to serve as an apprentice in that craft because the entry-level job is lugging heavy lights up ladders, so upper body strength is a requirement).
Another disparity I've just noticed is the lack of women nominees for Best Score (background music, not songs). Rachel Portman was nominated three times between 1996 and 2000, and in 1996 became the first woman to win. Before her, no woman had been nominated since Ann Ronell in 1945 (at least that's my guess based on first names).
And no woman has been nominated since 2000, so that's 45 men out of the last 45 nominees.
Granted, Best Score is one of those awards where you aren't really certain if the person nominated did the actual work. Randy Newman's uncle Alfred Newman received 45 nominations because he was the head of the music department at his studio and insisted that he get sole credit for all the work done by his staff. And, it's a small and nepotistic business: six Newmans have been nominated. (All male, by the way.)
So, it could well be that an anonymous female staffer actually wrote the music for one or more of the last 45 films nominated for Best Score. The Writer's Guild offers a credit dispute resolution system for ensuring that screenplay nominations go to the people who wrote the largest parts of the script, but I don't believe anything like that exists for scores.
Still, it's a remarkable disparity between the sexes.
Orchestral composition is one of those skills that are so far beyond my talent range that I really have no concept of what is involved, and why men so outnumber women at it. Two centuries ago, from Beethoven onward, composing for orchestra was perhaps the single most lionized of all artistic trades, so it's not surprising that the mystique surrounding it would attract the most ambitious of artists, such as Wagner, and that it would remain an all-male domain.
Yet over the last half century, however, it's dropped off to a niche field. Moreover, film scoring itself isn't on the cutting edge of musical art. It's more of a nice-paying job for musicians who are very highly skilled but lacking in the Beethoven-like ambition to assault Olympus, and instead are willing to subordinate their egos to help punch up the emotional impact of the scene where Jennifer Aniston realizes how much Owen Wilson's dog means to him.
So, the sex disparity in Best Score nominations presumably reflects actual disparities in compositional talent at the far right edge of the musical bell curve.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
With the 45 nominations, that wouldn't be Alfred E. Newman, would it?
ReplyDeleteher last movie was k-19. that was 2002. in between k-19 and the hurt locker, every bourne movie was released. 2002, 2004, 2007. none of her previous movies looked like the hurt locker. then suddenly, she has a new documentary filming style, a new color palette, and shaky cam. it's hardly some kind of bad thing to copy the leaders in your field, but she made a less skilled version of the bourne movies and it sweeps the academy awards?
ReplyDeletei heard she had been offered the spider-man reboot, but declined. what producer would risk 200 million dollars on bigelow, a proven money loser? taking a 60 million dollar loss on k-19 was not enough for them?
funny the writer of the article mentions thelma & louise, directed by ridley scott, an actual master director. i guess from the academy's perspective, scott's black hawk down was totally inferior to the hurt locker, despite being far more realistic, having been based on a real event and all. it was better, too, and people paid to see it, but that now counts for nothing. i wonder if scott's gladiator could still win best picture under the new academy rules: we punish success.
Bigelow is like Hillary Clinton; James Cameron made her.
ReplyDeleteMartin Scorsese's editor - Thelma Schoonmaker - is considered one of the best in the business. Perhaps editing is something more suitable to the female psyche.
ReplyDelete"I've pointed out before that no woman has ever been nominated for Best Cinematography. (One reason is that it's very hard for a woman to serve as an apprentice in that craft because the entry-level job is lugging heavy lights up ladders, so upper body strength is a requirement)."
ReplyDeleteFunny, I knew a woman who did theatrical lighting, and was apparently near the top of her field. She was fairly small too. Maybe theatre lights aren't as heavy. Or, given her astonishing beauty (in her 20s), maybe management just melted and gave her any job she asked for.
It should be noted that Beethoven's orchestral output is, in terms of numbers, overshadowed by his piano sonatas and chamber music:
ReplyDeleteHis orchestral output: 9 symphonies, 5 piano concerto, a single violin concerto, two masses, about 11 overtures -- four of them for his single opera. Vs:
16 string quartets, 32 piano sonatas, 10 violin sonatas, about 5 chamber works for wind instruments, four cello sonatas, 3 string trios, a string quintet, and so on. He spent his final years writing string quartets and not orchestral works, though he did begin to sketch a tenth symphony. Clearly, to Beethoven, solo-piano works and chamber music carried as much artistic import as orchestral music.
Even with Romantic composers like Mendelssohn and Schumann, the breakdown of chamber music Vs. orchestral is similar. It's also true of Brahms. Presumably back then composers had the incentive to compose solo/chamber music because there were audiences who bought the sheet music and actually performed it themselves. It also simply would have been easier for musicians to travel to salons/upper-class people's homes in order to perform such music.
Today, given the simple economic fact that it is more cost efficient to use $50 to buy multiple recordings of a great classical work rather than using that money to see the work live, the only works that classical music fans feel justify that sort of expense is orchestral works that offer some spectacle.
(But that doesn't address why people like Wagner and Mahler only worked in specific orchestral genres. Perhaps used orchestral bombast to cover up certain deficiencies in their talent.)
It's more of a nice-paying job for musicians who are very highly skilled but lacking in the Beethoven-like ambition to assault Olympus, and instead are willing to subordinate their egos to help punch up the emotional impact of the scene where Jennifer Aniston realizes how much Owen Wilson's dog means to him.
ReplyDeleteit's this kind of line that keeps me reading this blog. Hilarious.
i guess from the academy's perspective, scott's black hawk down was totally inferior to the hurt locker, despite being far more realistic, having been based on a real event and all. it was better, too
ReplyDeleteRight on -- Black Hawk Down was an infinitely superior war movie, really set the template for the modern war movie. A touchstone.
or it could reflect the sheer nerdiness inherent in being a modern composer, an aspect equally proven to dissuade female participation
ReplyDeleteBlogger Sine said...
ReplyDeletere:
>>Espenshade also found that
>>lower-income Asians are being favored
>>(that is, both regression-predicted and observed to be admitted at higher rates)
>>over whites of all income levels.
Steve asked:
>"Not sure what you are referring to here.
>Can you be more specific?"
I'm referring to Espenshade's slides, that were linked to and excerpted in this blog, and cited again in the fifth comment of this discussion thread:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/10/affirmative-action-numbers.html
http://www.nacacnet.org/EventsTraining/NC10/Baltimore/educational/Documents/C313.pdf
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/02/asian-american-admissions-in-boston.html
Specifically, the regression table for Model 6, figure 3.4, page 4 of the slides.
Steve:
"I think the most salient claim here is that if one tries to control for overall "quality" of applicant: grades, test scores, family background, leadership and athletic credentials, that Asians are admitted at a lower rate than other groups."
But that isn't what Espenshade found. The media reports of his work have been incompetent. If journalists are innumerate, that is what it is, but physicists don't have the same excuse. Espenshade's regression tables (or enough of them, anyway) have been published and anyone with some basic quantitative ability can read them.
Espenshade's model of his data indicated that whatever Asian effect exists is reversed at the economic strata below middle-class.
Five strata were considered: lower, working, middle, upper-middle, and upper class. For a lower- or working-class applicant, Espenshade's regression predicts that changing the applicant's race datum from White to Asian and holding all other variables equal -- SAT score, grades, high school type, etc -- improves the "odds"(i.e., the logistic odds-ratio predicted by the model) of acceptance by a factor of 91 for lower-class students, and by a factor of 3 for working-class students.
Repeat that, once again: Espenshade says that Asians are favored over whites by some factor between 3-to-1 and 90-to-1 in the economic range below the middle class.
In other words, Steve's comment to the Boston Globe, that colleges aren't buying the Asian poverty and immigration stories is hugely refuted by Espenshade's numbers. Espenshade is saying that colleges are giving a far higher value to the Asian poverty and immigration experience than any comparable disadvantage of poor, non-immigrant whites.
I'm surprised that no one, even you, has commented that Bigelow is the girl who makes movies for boys. Penny Marshal makes the kind of movies that you expect a woman to make. Indeed A Team of Their Own is a perennial feminist favorite.
ReplyDeleteBigelow on the other hand first became noticed with her little vampire film , Near Dark. Today vampires are seen in many films as Gothic sex symbols, but Bigelow's vampires were very gory. Her vampires could have come right out of a slasher film.
Next she had another guy oriented hit, Point Break starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. This movie alone has inspired two full Mythbuster episodes questioning if humans can really do all those crazy stunts. Bigelow wasn't drawn to Merchant-Ivory type themes.
Finally she gets recognition with The Hurt Locker, a film about men being driven by a lunatic need to be braver and less risk heeding than any normal man.
This chick should have her testosterone level checked.
Hey, how about we have best director and best directoress categories? Like best actor and best actress.
ReplyDeleteAnd, best cinematographer and best cinematopheress, etc.
That way, more gals will win.
I think a lot of women won in editing though. I suppose editing is kinda like threading or knitting, the sort of thing for a modern spinster.
Btw, if women REALLY care about power and dignity and all that, they should care less whether a stupid and corrupt institution like the Academy gives them awards or not. A truly proud person doesn't need accolades from others to know one's worth. Think of the Gregory Peck character in BIG COUNTRY.
Women don't need no oscars to know they got talent. The greatest female director, Lina Wertmuller, tore a new a--hole with just about every new film in the 70s. She didn't need no stinking award to know she was a great artist. But, feminists hated her because she was so brazenly honest about the sexes and sexual conflict.
Bigelow, as far as I can tell, is less of a feminist than Cameron is. She's one tough cookie who wants to be around the best--men or women--than around sisterhood.
If we really want to be egalitarian and fair, we should have other such categories as
Best Gaffer
Best Boom Boy
Best Caterer(they gotta eat!)
Best Storyboarder
Best assistant director(and directoress)
Best assistant to assistant director(and directoress)
I wonder why editing is the one area in filmmaking where women have been well-represented and acknowledged as world class talents? Thelma Schoonmaker, Marcia Lucas, Verna Fields, Anne Coates, etc.
ReplyDeleteANy theories?
"then suddenly, she has a new documentary filming style, a new color palette, and shaky cam."
ReplyDeleteStrange Days had lots of shaky cam. Too much in my opinion.
As for musical compositional talent, I dunno. Tons of talented gals: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, etc, etc. Maybe women prefer to work small than big.
ReplyDeleteSteve says orchestral music is beyond his comprehension, and I would agree if we're dealing with masters like Mahler or Beethoven.
BUT, this doesn't apply to film scores because 99% of them are so dull, boring, cliched, obvious, bombastic, unoriginal, derivative, etc.
I'm not schooled in music but I could come up with better music that most of these composers. Maybe they have real talent but they are hired to give people what they want, so we get the same of cliched music over and over. Third-rate Wagnerisms, second rate Holstism, 4th rate Handelisms, etc. A lot BAM BAM BAM BOOM BOOM BOOM.
For every master like Bernard Hermann or George Delereau(or Morricone or Rota), you got a 100 crapsters. Even the great ones do a lot of hackwork. 90% of Morricone's works suck. Goldsmith did great stuff for Patton and 13th Warrior but also a lot of shit.
It could be that music is the WORST element of most movies--even worse than the screenplay.
Also, orchestral music is not all complex in most cases when composed for populist taste. You take a simple melody and have a 100 trumpets play followed by lots of syrupy strings. Most people wouldn't know the difference between Wagner and mush anyway, just like most people don't know the difference between crap wine and fine wine.
Rare have been movies with truly excellent scores. Vertigo, Wild Bunch, Contempt, Duck You Sucker,etc.
I don't know where to put John Williams. Not much personality and unoriginal but he's very good at what he does. The greatest hack that ever lived?
I liked the music in HL. It was very functionally expressive... though I could have done without the rock music with the end credits.
Another disparity I've just noticed is the lack of women nominees for Best Score (background music, not songs).
ReplyDeleteIn general, women are exceptionally under-represented in the ranks of song-writers and composers. There are far more women performers on pop/rock radio today than ever before, but with few exceptions they are singing songs written for them by men.
I'm not schooled in music but I could come up with better music that (sic) most of these composers.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm sure that's the case. Go ahead. Write a piece of music, record it, and then post it online. We can critique your efforts.
The FIRST woman ever nominated for Best Director was the Italian Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties back in '76. In a classic example of the feel-good, crowd-pleaser winning over the edgy, superior, art film, Seven Beauties was shut out that night as Rocky cleaned up. Yet 30 years later it is clear that Wertmuller's uncategorizable horror-slapstick-concentration-camp-comedy
ReplyDeleteis the superior film (in my estimation among the top 10 of all time- check it out if you haven't seen it).
Wertmuller is a great example of Steve's blonde butt-kicking babes. Her Italian nationality is somewhat of a misnomer as Wertmuller comes from the heavily-Germanic northern part of Italy and a common theme in her films is the disparity between Italy's modern, prosperous, Teutonic north and its backwards, feudal, Latin south (it ain't for nothing that Italians say: "Africa begins in Naples"). Despite being a committed communist and feminist (or, perhaps, because she was both) Wertmuller did not fail to recognize that the enlightened social attitudes she cherished as a feminist were in short supply among the poor and oppressed of the global south, as explored in her other classic, Swept Away. Anyway, while Bigelow seems like a great gal and all, Lina is the real deal: not only did she direct (and write) the indisputably best picture of the year, she got recognized for it despite working in a foreign language and not having an obnoxious diversity choir breathing down Academy voters' necks telling them to "make history".
as for music in movies, it has been on the decline since the 80s, the same as pop music.
ReplyDeleteoriginal scores which are immediately recognizable used to be in most movies. even action movies like predator had an instantly identifiable theme. you think "predator" as soon as you hear it, just like william's jaws theme. the predator theme is used today by the boston celtics for player introductions.
in the 80s it was normal for a major composer to spend months scoring any movie with a decent budget, not just epic movies. the london symphony (!) scored a 1985 vampire movie called lifeforce. it was directed by tobe hooper, the guy who made texas chainsaw massacre.
there was also a lot of synthesizer music in the 80s, used appropriately in horror movies. john carpenter was one of the main proponents of this. robert rodriguez and quentin tarantino play carpenter music on their sets to create a mood. carpenter's halloween theme is, again, instantly identifiable. you immediately know it when you hear it. brad fiedel's score for terminator is another one you know right away.
i don't think there was a single movie released in the 00s which had a score that you could instantly identify. "Oh, that's from (movie x)".
John Simon's review of SEVEN BEAUTIES in the compilation 'Something to Declare' is something to declare.
ReplyDelete"Despite being a committed communist and feminist (or, perhaps, because she was both)"
ReplyDeleteNo, she was a humanist-anarchist.
There were more women than you'd imagine involved in the rough and tumble of American moviemaking back in the anarchistic pre-studio days. Wikipedia can tell you about Alice Guy-Blache and Lois Weber, both very impressive filmmakers and businessgals. Many screenwriters in the silent years were women, and the female stars were often driven and commanding forces in their own right. As the business consolidated and became institutionalized, it was made harder and harder for women to do these jobs. Editing was one of the few jobs that remained generally open to women.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I sometimes think the role of innate ability gets a shade overdone in these discussions, and the roles of drive and ambition get under-recognized. For all we know, it may be that as many gals have film-directing (or film-scoring) talent as guys do, they just don't feel like going through all the hoops and battles you have to go through to get into a position to put those talents to use professionally. How would we know? But in any case, it usually takes not just talent but also a fantastic amount of determination to succeed in the movie business in a creative role.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the arts generally are pure meritocracies where the most successful people are unquestionably the best, btw. (Given Sly Stallone's success, how could anyone argue such a thing?) They seem to me to be fields 1) where you generally have to be good enough, but 2) where, once you're good enough, success depends more on luck, drive, push, persistence, connections, etc than it does on raw talent or ability.
Right about connections. For example, my neighbor has been in small roles in something like 400 movies, TV shows, and commercials going back to 1956. He can't actually act to save his life, but he's a great guy who is wonderfully friendly (along with having a really unusual looking tough guy face). And he works hard at being friendly. And so he's gotten a huge number of bit roles over the years from people who like him.
ReplyDeleteRe: connections and likeability, it works both ways in Hollywood. You get a Greg Grunberg who is very ordinary looking and a middling actor at best who owes his entire career to a combination of being a good guy and (most important) a close childhood friend of writer/superproducer JJ Abrams. And then you have someone like Judge Reinhold, who is talented and appealing onscreen and could have had Tom Hanks' career if he wasn't a horrible human being and nearly universally disliked by coworkers.
ReplyDeleteAnd then you have Robert Downey, hugely talented but often self-destructive, but so well-liked that everyone was willing to keep giving him chances until he straightened out his life and found the right starring vehicle in Iron Man.
Hmmhmmhm, so it sounds like Judge Reinhold will have time available on his schedule to play the lead in "The Steve Sailer Story."
ReplyDeleteAll the pieces are falling in to place ...
"i don't think there was a single movie released in the 00s which had a score that you could instantly identify. "Oh, that's from (movie x)"."
ReplyDeleteLord of the Rings maybe? I've got a copy of the Fellowship of the Ring score and that score has a definite feel to it, for example there is a particular motif in almost all the pieces that stands out. But it's not memorable in the way that Jaws or Star Wars is.
"Goldsmith did great stuff for Patton and 13th Warrior but also a lot of shit. "
I doubt that 13th Warrior's soundtrack made up for it being a shitty film.
"Also, orchestral music is not all complex in most cases when composed for populist taste. You take a simple melody and have a 100 trumpets play followed by lots of syrupy strings. Most people wouldn't know the difference between Wagner and mush anyway, just like most people don't know the difference between crap wine and fine wine. "
That will be because there isn't actually a difference. The 'difference' is an illusary creation of the pseudointellectual mind. Wine is wine and any cheap plonk will get you pissed if you imbibe enough.
Films are made to be watched and the score is to support the film not the other way round.
""i don't think there was a single movie released in the 00s which had a score that you could instantly identify. "Oh, that's from (movie x)".
ReplyDelete25th Hour, the 2002 Spike Lee film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihmeUP0HyEQ
"Hmmhmmhm, so it sounds like Judge Reinhold will have time available on his schedule to play the lead in "The Steve Sailer Story."
ReplyDeleteI'm feeling Liam Neeson. He's about 6'4 250 and all; if he can master a CA accent, and lay off the workouts for a few months.
"I'm feeling Liam Neeson."
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Unfortunately, that's the first time I've ever reminded anybody of Liam Neeson. So, Judge Reinhold it will have to be.