Wednesday, 12 February 2014

The document that keeps Hollywood sexist

“In this breakdown, the two characters are a couple: ‘Male: 30. 30 going on 21. He’s married to [female]. He’s a fun, hip guy, but at his core, he’s become a family man’. ‘Female: 29 – 30 years old . She’s both beautiful and cool and just a few notches this side of New-Agey’. The man is described by his personality and his character’s transformation, but the woman’s personality description is intertwined with a description of her looks.”
Frings looked over as many casting breakdowns as she could get her hands on, and found that more often than not, female characters were defined first by appearance; for male characters, appearance was an afterthought. Women can either be attractive, or abject terrors employed for comic effect, and very little in between.
(Of course, the rot begins to set in well before the casting notice goes out; if you’ve read scripts with any regularity you’ll be aware of how often the (inevitably male) writer will describe female characters with such witless sentences as “pretty without trying”.)

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