Inductivist

Why have almost all of the greatest movie directors been men?  Don't women like movies just as much as men?

Feminists, of course, would blame the patriarchy: Men have mysteriously gotten control of the world and will not let the helpless women do fun things like make movies.

But if discrimination has been so pervasive in the film industry, why in the world have we seen so many top homosexual directors?  I'm not convinced that men before the 1970s were that dead set against women occupying important positions. Just the other night, I watched an old film titled, "Kansas City Confidential" (1952), and the lead female was studying to take the bar, and none of the male characters cared in the least.

Now, imagine the same story, but the romantic interest is a gay man preparing for the bar.  Do we see movies like that for most of the 20th century?  Hell no. Off the top of my head, I know that Clark Gable did not want George Cukor--known to be a homosexual--to direct "Gone With the Wind" and was influential in having him replaced by Victor Fleming. While there were plenty of homosexuals in Hollywood, people loathed it.  No matter--gay men thrived in Hollywood and Europe as well. Perhaps you doubt this.

I went to the website "They Shoot Movies, Don't They? and looked at their list of the top 250 directors of all time. The ranking is based on such factors as voting by directors and critics. I categorized a director as gay or bisexual if Wikipedia indicated they were. I put together the following list:

Gay Directors (from top 250)

Pedro Almodóvar
Lindsay Anderson
Kenneth Anger
Marcel Carné
Jean Cocteau
George Cukor
Terence Davies
Jacques Demy
Rainer Werner Fassbinder (bisexual)
Robert Hamer
Todd Haynes
Vincente Minnelli (bisexual)
F. W. Murnau
Pier Paolo Pasolini
John Schlesinger
Gus Van Sant
Luchino Visconti
Lana Wachowski (male-to-female transgender)
Lilly Wachowski (male-to-female transgender)
James Whale

I included the transgender Wachowski brothers since transgenders should face discrimination, if it is indeed such a profound problem.

That's 20 gay, bisexual, or transgender directors or 8% of the total. Keep in mind that sexual minorities are less than 8% of men, so they are over-represented among the greatest directors.

How about women?

Female Directors (from top 250)

Kathryn Bigelow
Jane Campion
Claire Denis
Danièle Huillet (co-director with her husband Jean-Marie Straub)
Leni Riefenstahl
Agnes Varda

That's 6 or 2.4% of the total, and let's not forget that if women we're punching at their weight, they would be half of the best directors. Their numbers are abysmal.

You might counter that discrimination was intense through 1970, but things have changed and that is why we see that all top women are from the past few decades. Again, I would argue that if bias was intense prior to 1970 for women, it should be even more so for gay men--a hated minority if I've ever seen one--yet easily half of them worked prior to 1970.

The facts suggest that men are simply better at making movies. If a studio exec wanted to make the best "Little Women" possible in 1933, he needed to hire George Cukor and not give a damn about his "quirks." If a woman would have done it better, I submit that the studio execs would have swallowed hard and given her the job, even in 1933. A lot of money was on the line.

What qualities do men possess that give them such an advantage? Well, I'm no expert on directing, but I know that these are incredibly talented people at the highest percentiles of all relevant traits. These would include: intelligence, leadership, charisma, confidence, decisiveness, technical mastery, visual skills, writing skills (plot, character, dialogue, mood, humor), effective criticism, and ability to deal calmly through all the drama that comes with managing creative types. There is evidence that at the highest levels, men surpass women on these traits. And, by the way, the traits are all rooted in biology.

I avoid angry black movies because they're so boring. The recent "Blackkklansman" by Spike Lee was unbearable.

That was not always the case. When I was in college, I went to see "Do The Right Thing" and was sympathetic. I felt the same when I watched the LA Riots and "Malcolm X" three years later.

Since that time I got a real education on racial issues, but I wondered how I would react to seeing "Do The Right Thing" after 30 years.

It struck me as a fairly realistic portrayal of a black urban neighborhood minus its menace and criminality. (I lived in Brooklyn in the mid-80s and wouldn't be caught dead in a poor black neighborhood.)

The only black person working is Spike Lee's character--the protagonist--and he must be the slowest pizza delivery guy in the history of the world. The guy has no real plans and doesn't support his girlfriend (Rosie Perez) and son much.

Nobody seems to be employed (okay, Lee's sister works), but everyone is good at bitching about whatever, and people talk and talk as if they're going to accomplish something.

Sal, played well by Danny Aiello, is an Italian who owns and runs a pizzeria in the middle of the black neighborhood. He and the Korean shop owners across the street are the only industrious people around.

The martyr of the story, a young black man who gets accidentally killed by the police, is a narcissist who ticks off much of the neighborhood by constantly blasting Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" from his boom box.

How does the neighborhood respond to excessive use of force by the police? Do they organize in order to get police reforms? Do they donate money so the young man's family can sue the police department and the city?  Do they teach their youngsters to comply with police demands, and if they're mistreated to file a complaint at the department?  No, Lee knows his people. They burn down the best restaurant in the neighborhood.

But then we have the true race realism moment:


What a great scene. Sometimes Leftist movies accidentally spill the truth.


P.S. Some might see Lee's movie as prescient since it focuses on police violence. It is better described as influential. The elite college students from my generation absorbed a vision of the world held by people like Spike Lee, and they now run organizations like the New York Times. The police have been killing blacks for a very long time, but only now it's The End of the World.

I know some whites are angry about Robert Rodriquez' Mexocentric movie Machete, and it is true that the message is the worst kind of submental propaganda, but how can anyone take seriously a political philosophy inserted into a Mexploitation film?  I mean, who is going to care about "revolucion" when everyone is going to the movie to see boobs and  blood?  Does any non-retarded person actually believe that U.S. Senators pick off border crossers with deer rifles just for fun? The only thing that saves the odd coupling is that the politics is as moronic as the action.   

Ingmar Bergman, RIP: In honor of Bergman's death, I watched The Seventh Seal again tonight. It's theme of death seemed fitting. I watched and admired most of his movies in my 20s, but have not seen any in many years. With all my additional experience and development into a pro-religion conservative, I had planned to mount an attack on the film, but now the desire is not there. The Seventh Seal is simply a masterpiece. The tragedy, terror, and beauty of life and death; the ache for meaning and God; seeing only emptiness. But look beyond the textbook stuff: this movie, of all movies, is often funny and light and hopeful. And it shows Biblical verse as the poetry that it is.

So thank you Mr. Bergman for making life a little more interesting, and I for one hope that someone more pleasant than a man in a black cloak was waiting for you.