A Quote by Manohla Dargis

American commercial cinema has long been dominated by men, but I don’t think there has ever been another time when women have been as underrepresented on screen as they are now. The biggest problem isn’t genuinely independent cinema, where lower budgets mean more opportunities for women in front of and behind the camera. The problem is the six major studios that dominate the box office, the entertainment chatter and the popular imagination. Their refusal to hire more female directors is immoral, maybe illegal, and has helped create and sustain a representational ghetto for women.
Women are making strides in many areas and women have mentored and supported me along the way. I think that women are underrepresented behind the camera as directors.
We need more female directors, we also need men to step up and identify with female characters and stories about women. We don't want to create a ghetto where women have to do movies about women. To assume stories about women need to be told by a woman isn't necessarily true, just as stories about men don't need a male director.
What I'm really trying to do is recreate classic Hollywood cinema and classic genre cinema from a woman's point of view. Because most cinema is really made for men, how can you create cinema that's for women without having it be relegated to a ghetto of "chick flick" or something like that?
Over the years, the most ponderous problem for women has been that men think that men and women are very different. Another of our massive problems is that women also think that men and women are very different.
I absolutely adore and idolise women. All women. I think they are all amazing. The female musicians I've met have been far more inspiring than the male ones. Women tend to be much more creative and ambitious. I think I may have been a woman in a past life.
There's always been a shortage of roles for three-dimensional women, no matter what age. If you look at the statistics on women in film, be they behind the camera or in front of the camera, and it's pretty nauseous-making. It always has been.
I think that women are underrepresented behind the camera as directors.
All year there have been these cover stories that the women's movement is dead and about the death of feminism and the post-feminist generation of young women who don't identify with feminism - and then we have the biggest march ever of women in Washington. More people than had ever marched for anything - not only more women, but more people.
Macho in a different sense, the kind of things that we think makes us a man. It doesn't really exist right now. I really don't want it to seem that I think it's a problem that women are in development, I don't think it's as problem at all, I just think it's an interesting time that we're in. And maybe long overdue - maybe television for a long time was made for men and it's long overdue.
Let's acknowledge that men reach for opportunities more quickly and more easily than women. So often as managers, we give the job to whoever starts solving the problem, to whoever jumps in. Since we know men will jump in faster than women in so many circumstances, we have to slow down and encourage more women to sit at more tables.
Women's tennis has been around for a very long time - we're talking about the 1800s. But women's soccer hasn't had such a long history, so now they're right at the beginning of really trying to make things equal. We need to continue not only to advocate for women but to have men advocating for women.
I've been an actress for years, and I've worked with one female director. Statistically it's less than 7% or 12% - I mean, it's low, not representative. So, hopefully, more women will be given opportunities to direct, or create opportunities to direct themselves.
There still aren't enough[ roles for women of color]. And I'd say that's the case, not only for African-American women, but for all women in the Hollywood game. It's just slim pickings, and a very challenging time for us. I think that's why more of us need to work our way behind the camera in order to create roles that really illuminate who women are. We still have room for growth in that area, without a doubt.
Men have been domesticated, and I don't think it's necessarily good for them. They have been emasculated with the pill and women becoming more independent. I do think it's made a big difference for women to have more charge of their own bodies. It's made them feel more on equal terms and made the men feel less secure, less the master of everything.
I think men are more adventurous in that they're more likely to take chances. Women play it safe. But now, maybe more of the women that see how it's working for the guys think, 'I can do that, too'. Maybe they'll pick male players, not necessarily female players; it's just whatever that match is that works for that player.
Many women, particularly young women, have claimed the right to use the most explicit sex terms, including extremely vulgar ones, in public as well as private. But it is men, far more than women, who have been liberated by this change. For now that women use these terms, men no longer need to watch their own language in the presence of women. But is this a gain for women?
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