The Geena Davis brand of fem­i­nism is irresistible

It’s dif­fi­cult to engage pos­i­tive­ly and con­sis­tent­ly with fem­i­nism. It’s an issue that to scep­tics seems to sat­u­rate the media, and to believ­ers, seems impos­si­ble to resolve. Gen­der imbal­ance with­in film and wider soci­ety is not a news item, but to those it effects it only becomes more press­ing. Thank the mer­ci­ful fates for Geena Davis who gave a sym­po­sium host­ed by crit­ic Han­nah McGill at the BFI on 8 Octo­ber as part of BFI Lon­don Film Festival.

Although still best known for her movie work (The Fly, Beetle­juice, The Acci­den­tal Tourist, Thel­ma and Louise), over the last decade Davis has been busy in a dif­fer­ent capac­i­ty. She is respon­si­ble for new research into gen­der rep­re­sen­ta­tion in media, par­tic­u­lar­ly in kids’ media. Spurred on by obser­va­tions made while watch­ing tele­vi­sion pro­grams with her daugh­ter, Davis began research­ing projects that led, in 2007, to the for­ma­tion of the Geena Davis Insti­tute on Gen­der in Media.

This writer was so moved by every­thing to do with Davis’ work and approach to advo­ca­cy that tears fell in the course of a won­der­ful and inspir­ing, yet frus­trat­ing and upset­ting hour. Great women pur­su­ing ideals and the shock­ing endurance of inequal­i­ty made for a mixed emo­tion­al bag.

Most inspir­ing was Davis’ belief in the pow­er of facts and ded­i­ca­tion to pre­sent­ing them in a way that makes irre­sistible sense. Watch the See Jane video below for evi­dence of her abil­i­ty to cut to the core of the matter.

We can all stand to learn from Geena Davis. With that in mind, I have pulled out a few obser­va­tions about how she oper­ates, backed up by her own words.

The sym­po­sium began with a hearty recap of Davis career, start­ing with the instance at the age of three when she told her par­ents that she want­ed to be in movies. This con­tin­ued up to her role as the US Pres­i­dent in the 2005 – 6 TV series, Com­man­der in Chief. Davis took a wit­ty approach to describ­ing how she was cast in her first film role, 1982’s Toot­sie. The part required her to be in her under­wear. She recapped how her agent told her to go to audi­tion wear­ing a bathing suit under her clothes, as if she did well, those cast­ing would like­ly want to see her unclad. We, the audi­ence, wait­ed with bait­ed breath for signs of out­rage. None came. The sto­ry pro­gressed. The cast­ing agent for­got to tell her to strip and so the pro­duc­tion had to access that infor­ma­tion lat­er. Davis was work­ing as a mod­el at the time.

“I hap­pened to have been in a Victoria’s Secret cat­a­logue. So, they send over this cat­a­logue: air­brushed, per­fect­ly lit, wind-blow­ing, lip gloss, as opposed to all the oth­er actress­es who were stand­ing there under a flu­o­res­cent light in their bathing suits. They were like, ​‘Let’s get her!’” The punch­line wasn’t about the evils of objec­ti­fi­ca­tion! The punch­line was about the prov­i­dence of appear­ing in a Victoria’s Secret catalogue!

On turn­ing on the TV on the day of the 1989 Oscars (the year she won for The Acci­den­tal Tourist) to see crit­ics eval­u­at­ing her chances: ​“They were just then doing the ​‘Sup­port­ing Actress’ cat­e­go­ry. They were talk­ing about each per­son and when it came to me, every­body said, ​‘least chance’ ​‘absolute­ly not’ ​‘no way’. Gene Siskel said, ​‘She’s def­i­nite­ly not good enough. Some­body said, ​‘The character’s sup­posed to be more unat­trac­tive. In the book the character’s not that attrac­tive’ and then some­body else said, ​‘Are you kid­ding? She’s sooo unat­trac­tive.’ And there I was sit­ting there like [mimes open mouth] I had no idea that peo­ple were look­ing at it this way. I was like [does lit­tle voice], ​‘I guess I’ll still go.’

On the ear­ly after Thel­ma and Louise was released in 1991: ​“All the press was about, ​‘This changes every­thing.’ ​‘Now every­thing has changed.’ I believed it when they said, ​‘Now there’s going to be so many more movies with impor­tant female parts.’ Noth­ing hap­pened after that. It was the begin­ning of a big awak­en­ing. Peo­ple think that things are chang­ing but they’re not. Every few years it would hap­pen. ​‘First Wives Club proves now for once and for all that women over 50 can have a big box office hit!’ It con­tin­ues: ​‘Now there’s been The Hunger Games’, ​‘Now there’s been Frozen’, I’m sure peo­ple will say, ​‘Now there’s been Suf­fragette and now things are chang­ing’ but the num­bers don’t back it up.”

“I did the math myself. Based on the research that we did, if we add female char­ac­ters at the rate we have been for past 20 years, we will achieve par­i­ty in 700 years. The ratio of male to female char­ac­ters in films has been exact­ly the same since 1946, the 3:1.”

“The whole point is to work direct­ly with the cre­ators. In oth­er words, I didn’t do the research so I could edu­cate the pub­lic about it. One way to try to effect change is to get every­body to know and then rise up and ask for bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tions but because I’m in the indus­try I knew that I could just go direct­ly to the cre­atives and share the research. That’s what we do in a very pri­vate and col­le­gial way. We say, ​‘Did you hap­pen to know that this is the case?’ and it’s actu­al­ly proven to be a very effec­tive tactic.

“I found that, espe­cial­ly with­in the indus­try, peo­ple had no idea until they saw the research how few female char­ac­ters there were. We were cre­at­ing fic­ti­tious worlds that were near­ly bereft of female pres­ence. Peo­ple didn’t realise. The imme­di­ate reac­tion has always been, ​‘We want to do bet­ter. Why are we doing this? Be it a meet­ing at an ani­ma­tion stu­dio or some­thing, I bring up that only 17 per­cent of crowd scenes in ani­mat­ed movies are female and their jaws drop. Right then they say, ​‘Well guys (because it’s almost all guys) can we just decide that we’re not going to do that any more?’ ​‘Of course!’ What I’m talk­ing about is actu­al­ly very doable and makes a lot of sense. We are half of the pop­u­la­tion. There’s real­ly not a great argu­ment why we should show pro­found­ly more male characters.”

“I feel very con­fi­dent that we’ll be able to take both zeros from the 700 num­ber because it’s the one area of soci­ety – unlike par­lia­ment or unlike con­gress in the Unit­ed States – where it’s going to take time, you know, no mat­ter how hard we work to reach par­i­ty but on screen it can change overnight. The very next movie that some­body makes could be gen­der bal­anced, same goes for the very next TV show. It can hap­pen instant­ly. It can reflect the future right now. In fact, when sci­ence-fic­tion movies come out that still have most­ly male char­ac­ters, I’m like, ​‘Guys we’re going to be past this by then! There’s not going to be gen­der inequal­i­ty in the future. What do we have to reflect it now for?’

“There should be a rule: ​‘You can­not show a sci­ence-fic­tion movie in the future that has gen­der imbal­ance.’ It’s some­thing that’s doable. It’s some­thing that cre­atives say they believe is easy. We’ve sur­veyed peo­ple who’ve heard our research and 90 per cent say they think that gen­der bal­ance is impor­tant and doable – it’s just hav­ing the aware­ness to over­com­ing the uncon­scious bias that we’ve all been trained with, sev­en hours a day of watch­ing 17 per cent female char­ac­ters. It’s no won­der that every­thing stalls.”

Find out more about the Geena Davis Insti­tute on Gen­der in Media at see​jane​.org