I came across this interview from Go Into the Story with writer/director Liz W. Garcia whose film The Lifeguard premiered at Sundance in 2013 and will be coming out on August 30th.
It’s a several part interview and all you writer out there should read the whole thing. But one piece caught my eye talking about women working especially as directors in Hollywood which is in response to a piece she wrote in Forbes.
I think the obstacles that women face in being able to succeed in Hollywood are particularly difficult because so many of them can’t be seen, or easily identified, because they’re deep. They are unconscious, and they built in to the way that we see ourselves. I was writing about in that piece is the idea is that men and women alike have a certain idea of what a person of authority, persons who can be trusted with a $5 million, $10 million, $100 million investment, what those people look like. Historically, those people look like men, and they look like white men.
When women are going in and they’re asking for these jobs, they want to be included, they want to be considered, what’s insidious is that…what’s working against them isn’t something that the people that are making the decision may even be able to admit is working against them.
There are deep notions of what qualities a person who should be trusted with money, and trusted in steering a ship should have, and that because of these are so deep, because these are essentially archetypes for particularly difficult to subvert, and that’s what concerned me.
It’s hard when you’re girlish looking woman who’s five foot four, and you know what the idea of entrusting you with $10 million would be easier were you a six foot two white male with a deep sonorous voice, because that is someone who looks, and sounds like, say a CEO of a corporation, or the coach of a football team, or any of these other kinds of American figureheads of power and authority.
It’s frustrating because I’m never going to look like them. I’m never going to sound like that. So, what can I do? I guess just wait for history to, I hope unfold in the direction it should, where more and more women emerge as visible icons of competence and authority, and as people who can be trusted with essentially with corporations, which businesses which is a movie is, right?
You have all these people, dozens, and dozens, and dozens of people working for you over this money that you are in charge of making sure that it’s protected, and allocated correctly. Every time someone like Hillary Clinton emerges in history, her victories trickle down to the victories to women who are trying to be directors in Hollywood.
AWESOME.
Go Into The Story – Interview with Liz W. Garcia, Part 4
Women Can’t Gain Influence in Hollywood Because Women Don’t Look like Men (Forbes)
