Poll of the Day > Does the gender of writers, directors, producers matter in entertainment?

(+) Yeah! (+)

For example: If the next Wonder Woman movie was written and directed by a man........would anyone have a problem with that?

If so...why?

Does it NEED to be a woman for the sake of "credibility"???

What if a new Fast & Furious movie was directed by a woman? Would that somehow taint the "masculinity" of the project?

Do you personally pay attention to the names of the directors/writers/producers for entertainment you consume? Would you be more or less likely to watch something based on the gender of the creators?

Does their gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation play a big role in your decision to watch it....and your ability to enjoy it?

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First yes men bad. Second no women good.
Last yes it determines what you're allowed to like.

Quality directing matters so unless you say that 1 sex has more ability to direct the answer is no

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dedbus posted...

First yes men bad. Second no women good.
Last yes it determines what you're allowed to like.

*eye twitches*


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main thing that comes to mind is Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. (both written under pen-names by a variety of authors, not completely of the respective gender, but mostly.) I do feel that generally a male author can write a young-adult novel for males better than a female, and vice-versa.

this will apply to a lesser degree in movies/tv that are more targeted to one gender or another. (men are maybe going to make better action movies than women.)

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I believe that ET, for instance, wouldn't be as good of a movie if it hadn't had a female producer (Kathleen Kennedy) as part of its crew. For a script and/or movie to succeed, as far as I'm concerned, both genders should be involved in writing, directing and producing movies; not one group almost exclusively as it's been over the years. I'm not knocking male directors, producers and/or writers but the addition of a different perspective might make the movies BETTER.

Not to me, personally, no.

For example, Id like Rey just as much if it was a male character rather than a female.

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Only so far as a background similarity which may influence their stories in some cases, for better or for worse depending on the preferences of the reader.

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Does it matter to me? No.

Does it matter to other people? Yes.

SHOULD it matter to other people? No.
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I don't trust female directors/writers to write a good story about men and vice versa.

Espicially when women are more likely to put virtue signaling and other sjws shit in for no reason. Although you can say that about any Hollywood director.

Cruddy_horse posted...

I don't trust female directors/writers to write a good story about men and vice versa.

Then you simply don't expect good writing from entertainment. Which is a good reason not to consume it.
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Cruddy_horse posted...

I don't trust female directors/writers to write a good story about men and vice versa.

I don't trust humans to write good stories about aliens, or normal people to write effective stories about superheroes. Also, I consider it to be a huge case of cultural appropriation when people write stories about anthropomorphic cars and other objects. How is a cis white male going to understand the emotional traumas and hardships of a talking lamp? Outrageous!

No wonder we keep getting shit Star Wars movies - they need to find an actual space wizard to write the next script.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I don't trust humans to write good stories about aliens, or normal people to write effective stories about superheroes. Also, I consider it to be a huge case of cultural appropriation when people write stories about anthropomorphic cars and other objects. How is a cis white male going to understand the emotional traumas and hardships of a talking lamp? Outrageous!

No wonder we keep getting shit Star Wars movies - they need to find an actual space wizard to write the next script.

As hilarious and sarcastic as this is.......it's a fair point.

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Wouldn't have a problem with it (not that I care about Wonder Women or superhero movies in the first place), but an artist's history and experiences is definitely important in shaping the outcome of a film, so I would say gender is important as the perspective of the film will be different, but not necessarily better of course.

But going more to the specific question in the OP, no the film doesn't NEED to be a women for credibility, but thats definitely how plenty treat it which is pretty dumb. Its stupid that this discussion only comes up when its a female-centered movie. It's just fake progressiveness. Real progressiveness would be giving opportunities to female directors not only when they are pressured by people for movies like Wonder Women, but for every movie. But this isn't near the case when it comes to blockbusters yet, where every hiring of a female director is meant as a statement (or even indie movies, though definitely getting better there, still very unequal).

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Depends on the subject material but, in general., there are a lot of creative inputs in film and tv so there's always going to be at least some perspective. Obviously just being of a race or gender doesn't mean anything in and of itself, though.


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GreenKnight127 posted...

As hilarious and sarcastic as this is.......it's a fair point.

I dunno, it's not really a good point. Star Wars is not intended as being relatable to a "space wizard" audience. if you *did* want to write content that was relatable to space wizards, an actual space wizard would definitely be worth consulting and/or could make a better author. actual space wizards would find Star Wars rather ridiculous.

Star Wars is about fictional space wizards targeted at a regular human audience. regular humans are just fine at making something relatable to regular humans. if you want to target a subset of "regular humans" as your audience, then consulting (or being in) that subset definitely seems like something that can help you do that.

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Sahuagin posted...

I dunno, it's not really a good point.

I wasn't focusing on the Star Wars snippit at the end so much, because we all know that Space Wizards don't actually exist, bruh.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

How is a cis white male going to understand the emotional traumas and hardships of a talking lamp?

This is more like it.

Depending on the movie....I mean, a person can bring a lot to the table. Men and women can have experiences that can make them extremely empathetic to the opposite gender. Some might even be so genuine....you could have a man ghost-writing for a female author for years....and the predominantly female readers would never notice.

They believe the author is a female....because that's what the book cover says.

So their perception of every written word within is filtered through the assumption that the author has intimate knowledge of the female mind.

When it was actually a dude the whole time.

And vice versa.

Could a woman write a better Wonder Woman movie than a man? Simply based on gender perceptions? Or is that a perception of our own to believe such a thing?

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Sahuagin posted...

you want to target a subset of "regular humans" as your audience, then consulting (or being in) that subset definitely seems like something that can help you do that.

Consulting is what should be done by any respectable director/writer to flesh out areas they don't have intimate knowledge. Being a woman only helps avoid consulting on female-specific issues but creates the need to consult on male-specific issues, so it's redundant.

When it comes to targeting an audience, I think it's pretty stupid to aim at grils or buoys like that's a notable factor in their interests. A story is very rarely about being a man or woman and typically they're complete garbage. Anything else is just stereotyping men and women unnecessarily, shrinking the potential audience significantly.

We don't need bigots who discriminate against groups who don't fit in to neat little boxes. You can make an action film without using women as sexualised plot devices and you can make rom-coms that don't paint men as ignorant pigs who becomes decent when they see a Mary Sue.
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Definitely matters for writing. Men and women tend to write differently.

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It does, but I don't think it should. They're all human.

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To me, it's not important.

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

How is a cis white male going to understand the emotional traumas and hardships of a talking lamp? Outrageous!

I don't really understand the joke here. like if there were actual talking lamps, obviously a talking lamp would have a better understanding of the issues they face, & it would be good (purely from the sake of being written well, not idpol) to have some of them involved in the production of that movie?

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OniRonin posted...

I don't really understand the joke here. like if there were actual talking lamps, obviously a talking lamp would have a better understanding of the issues they face, & it would be good (purely from the sake of being written well, not idpol) to have some of them involved in the production of that movie?

The point is that you don't need to know the intricacies of someone's very general upbringing to write a compelling character than fleshes out the plot.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

The point is that you don't need to know the intricacies of someone's very general upbringing to write a compelling character than fleshes out the plot.

yea, its possible for men to write good female characters etc. I think you're totally missing the point, and are probably never going to get it

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Ya, I only watch movie from financially disadvantaged trans-person of colour handicapped left handed directors.

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Lokarin posted...

Ya, I only watch movie from financially disadvantaged trans-person of colour handicapped left handed directors.

Ah, so you're a fan of the Gremlins movies?

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What are you probing for here?

GreenKnight127 posted...

I wasn't focusing on the Star Wars snippit at the end so much, because we all know that Space Wizards don't actually exist, bruh.

"space wizards" is just a placeholder for "fantasy concept". POs argument was that no one can write relatable fantasy content because fantasy is not real, but he's misidentified the audience. fantasy is not written for a fantastical audience, it's written for a real audience and only has to relate to a real audience. real people can definitely write fantasy that is targeted at real people.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

When it comes to targeting an audience, I think it's pretty stupid to aim at grils or buoys like that's a notable factor in their interests. A story is very rarely about being a man or woman and typically they're complete garbage. Anything else is just stereotyping men and women unnecessarily, shrinking the potential audience significantly.

it's pretty common in young-adult fiction. I read a fair bit of Hardy Boys growing up, and tried Nancy Drew a few times as well. there's a pretty noticeable difference between the styles. Hardy Boys is definitely more interesting to me as a male than Nancy Drew. I don't know about the other way around though.

I think in general, the narrower your audience, the closer you can get to really giving them what they want (assuming you are capable of doing so). the broader your audience, the more generic your content is going to be. maximizing the breadth of your audience despite genericizing your content might be a good move financially, but it will leave out a lot more "extreme" kinds of content that will never appeal to a general audience, and you'll tend to (I guess) have less "zealous" fans.

I also think that focusing on gender so much definitely seems like something done at younger ages, but it's still at least partially relevant to more adult audiences. there are definitely movies that are targeted more to one gender than the other.

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Uh, yes, but not due to some sort of immutable authority of identity. In an ideal world it would not matter, but because people of different demographics have different life experiences, that has an impact on the types of art/entertainment they create, among other things. So it's less about direct identity and more about the perspective that someone with a given identity may have. For example, a white philosopher in the early 1900's could not have written The Souls of Black Folk by Du Bois because there's too great of an experiential racial gap.

The primary reason why people tend to go on about representation is because historically people of certain groups have been restricted either from participating altogether, or participating in a way that doesn't dehumanize them in some way, or from being compensated/credited fairly when they were able to participate (for example, male relatives taking credit for the artwork of their female relatives, keeping black people out of shows or stereotyping them when they are in shows, LGBT people being forced into the closet for fear of losing employment or even their lives, etc).

In addition to making life generally more difficult for people of marginalized groups historically, that's had the added negative of making it so that the perspectives of marginalized people are not often well-known. At first glance that might not seem like that big a deal, but it hinders the development of art, philosophy, history, political analysis, etc... it is in the interest of societal development to try and combat historical suppression of the perspectives of marginalized people.

That doesn't mean that it matters whether or not movie X is directed by a person of demographic Y... not unless the movie's content is tied up with that director's experiences as a member of that group... at least, I think so.

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Lokarin posted...

Ya, I only watch movie from financially disadvantaged trans-person of colour handicapped left handed directors.

You too eh? I don't get how people can watch movies directed by wealthy, cis, white, handi-capable, right-handed directors anymore. Nothing but toxic shlock there.

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I don't care if they are men or women, but it matters a bit because they tend to do things differently. Men are going to cater more towards men and vice versa.

This will all be solve once the machines take over. Join us for the sweet sweet robosexuality.

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frankspank posted...

What are you probing for here?

People's thoughts on the subject.

Do you think I have some kind of sinister intent or something?

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Usually writers, directors, producers are entirely unknown to me. As are most actors. I'd rather hear about the media in question, not who made it.

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I'd say yes, in the sense that men and women often have very different perspectives which are reflected in their writing, etc.

Of course it makes a difference.

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In general no none of this matters. Although a woman will probably write better about a womans story and a man about a mans due to experience of being that sex.

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I usually don't even know who the writer/director/producer are let alone care what their gender is. Ignorance is bliss.

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It doesnt matter if its written or directed by a man or a woman but if writers or directors are chosen because of their gender then it becomes a problem, especially if that bleeds over to casting choices. Every time a historically male character gets recast as a female its usually because woman and not for any legitimate reasons when a new character who is a woman would almost certainly be a better option.

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aDirtyShisno posted...

but if writers or directors are chosen because of their gender then it becomes a problem...

And I think that exact thing is starting to happen more and more often. And it's kinda interesting....


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GreenKnight127 posted...

For example: If the next Wonder Woman movie was written and directed by a man........would anyone have a problem with that?

If so...why?

Someone somewhere would. Because theyre unstable.

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Who made it doesn't matter, what matter is the contents.

I'll judge the result.
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