Open Eyes – Stereotypes
I’ve been analyzing and blogging about the industry some four years now and one of the common reactions I get is this: “Twice as many male roles? I was never aware of that,- but since I’ve started watching it more closely I must say I’ve been noticing it all the time.” It’s somehow similar with stereotypes in films, on TV or on the radio, we grow up with them and they influce the way we see our society and the people in it and even our image of ourselves. Stereotypes are widespread and so much part of our culture that we hardly notice them any more as generalizations, distortions, omissions, prejudices or in the worst case defamations.
Last Saturday Pro Quote Regie held their annual Berlinale event at the Akademie der Künste / Academy of Arts near the Brandenburger Tor: a Reality Check of stereotypes, clichés and role models in front of and behind the camera, with a great, colourful show of key notes, talks, songs and performances. Alongside colleagues Nina Kronjäger and Julia Thurnau I was invited to Pro Quote Regie’s actresses panel at the end of which director and PQR member Barbara Rohm asked me about possible ways out of the misery. I mentioned the casting tool NEROPA that I developed early last year, a method with which all characters in a film are checked – the protagonists and larger roles as well as the smaller ones and all in between – to raise the share of women in the cast. And I proposed a new piece of action with which we could all help to put the focus on stereotypes and help to get rid of them: #OpenEyes.
Open Eyes and Open Mouths – Observing and Challenging Stereotypes
It is quite easy and this is how it’s done:
You notice a stereotype on gender, on women or men, on some other group in society or or or, in cinema or in a TV film or series, a radio show, in the media? Approach whoever is responsible for this. This is easily done via social media (using the hashtag #OpenEyes), or email. So when it’s a TV movie you find the account of the broadcasting or production company, for a feature film it’d be the production company or the distributor, the director or scriptwriter, for a radio show you look for the comissioning editors, for an advertising spot it’s either the company who produced the spot or the company whose product is being advertised, for a newspaper article you find the editor and so on and so forth.
If we all do this regularly, maybe once a month or once a week, – and read and share the posts of others in this campaign – then it will have an impact and lead to change.
Why? Because stereotypes will be discussed. Because the people responsible are made aware of stereotypes they may not have been conscious of. Or simply because it isn’t good publicity to be constantly addressed regarding your stuck in the mud gender stereotypes.
I am optimistic because I’ve been a little successful on two occasions:
- There is a children’s programme on public radio Deutschlandradiokultur, called Kakadu (cockatoo). In the programme from 2.11.13 they broadcast a feature called ARRESTED BY THE POLICE – WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? There we get to know the defendant, his barrister, the prosecutor, a judge and a witness. The world of a law court is presented as a male world, even if we have more female than male judges, more female than male prosecutors in Germany and also more than 50 % female law students. After I had blogged about this (´Tis early practice only…..) I wrote to the author and the contributing editor and they wrote back. As unbelievable as it may seem, they hadn’t even noticed the male bias when they produced the feature and appeared to be somewhere between surprise and shock. I think there is a good chance that they would produce such a one-sidedly cast programme again.
- Thomas Bellut, director general of the ZDF (German pulic televison channel two) at a press conference of the ZDF TV board two and a half years ago answered this to my question concerning the blatant male bias of casts: “No, I don’t know your figures, and I also don’t know how you came by them. (incredulous) That there should be more men than women in fictional programmes? I see. I would like to see the source for that. To be able to verify it.” I’ve been providing these numbers for years, and now finally the issue has reached broadcasters as well, as shown by the latest FFA research on Gender and television (in German only).
I’m writing – for example here and on twitter – regularly about stereotypes, generalizations and omissions, so here are a few occassion suitable for #OpenEyes, without any claim to completeness and without any weighing in the order:
- When a film clearly has more male than female characters, both for leads and supporting roles,
- when no woman in the film has a profession, but the men do,
- when a crime drama starts with the violent rape / murder of a half-naked woman,
- when the bad guys really looks like a baddie, right from the start (especially if he is from an ethnic minority),
- when the normal family or couple live in a luxurious flat that will cost 2.000 € monthy rent at least,
- when gays and black men are dubbed by German actors that talk at least an octave higher than in the Original version (the same applies to female voices at times),
- when the female lead is objectived and has no depth and no will of her own (read Alex Casey’s review on PASSENGERS)
- when commentary on men’s Grand Slam tennis matches is never by a woman but women’s matches are mostly covered by men,
- when the opening ceremony of the men’s football world cup in Germany 2006 consisted only of cultural elements from Bavaria,
- when the two German public TV broadcasters sent 90 % male reporters to Rio 2016,
- when every newspaper will print the results of the top 3 men’s football league but not a single mention on the Bundesliga top league of the women,
- when pharmaceutical advertisments only mention Ärzte (male doctors) and Apotheker (male pharmacists), even though 70 % of medical students and 75 % of pharmacy students are female,
- when the radioshow only talks of Ärzte (male doctors) and Krankenschwestern (female nurses) but never does it the other way around,
- when the tough, successful, mean business woman in a film will only start to relax and be likeable when the right man comes along,
- when the slightly stupid female lead in a comedy is of course wearing glasses
- and more and more and more
Yesterday I tweeted for the first time with #Augenauf (that’s the German hashtag), having listened to a radio interview with German actress Jasmin Tabatabai at the Berlinale Berlin International Film Festival. She was asked by journalist Britta Bürger how she could manage to continue in German TV series LETZTE SPUR BERLIN despite her three children. Would an actor who is a father be asked something similar?
And now it’s your turn!
If you like you can also post “your” stereotypes and possible answers by those responsible for them as a commentary under this blog text or send them to me via mail, no matter if it’s general remarks or specific criticism of a single programme or article. Dankeschön!
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