Meryl Streep Tells Why We Need More Women Movie Critics

Meryl StreepWhen I was a teenager, the James Bond films were all the rage.  I was talking about the films with a  family friend who happened to be a psychiatrist. As we talked I saw that he assumed that I was identifying with the sexy females that Bond seduced.
“Oh, no!” I exclaimed in horror. “I identify with James Bond! The women don’t have any fun.” He was stunned and amazed that I could imagine myself a male character.
Which proves a point Meryl Streep has made about why there are so few strong female characters in films and television. She says it’s hard (maybe nearly impossible?) to get a straight male audience to see through the eyes of woman character.
Public Radio’s Terry Gross interviewed Streep, and they talked about the actor’s 2010 speech to the Barnard graduating class. Streep said,  “It’s easier for women because we were brought up identifying with male characters in literature. It’s hard for straight boys to identify with Juliet or Wendy in Peter Pan, whereas girls identify with Romeo and with Peter Pan.
Or James Bond!
“I watch movies and I don’t care who is the protagonist,” Streep said. “I feel what that guy is feeling. You know, if it’s Tom Cruise leaping over a building I, I want to make it, you know?”

Women have learned to do that partly because we are acculturated to identify and empathize with others. Also, there hasn’t been that much great girls’ literature. “Nancy Drew maybe. But there weren’t things. So there was Huck Finn and Spin and Marty. The boys’ characters were interesting and you lived through them when you’re watching it. You’re following the action of the film through the body of the protagonist.
Streep says she just took it for granted that we can all do that. “But it became obvious to me that men don’t live through the female characters.” She speculated that for a man, “imagining yourself as a girl is a diminishment. I really think there’s a difference between how men critics see things than how women tend to.”
Film critic Jan Lisa Huttner blogs as “The Hot Pink Pen.” In a recent post she  noted:
“Since becoming a film critic, here’s something I know that most of you don’t: Only 5% of 2011’s commercially successful films were directed by women. Put another way: Men directed 95% of the films available to most of you in your local multiplex.
“Many wonderful films written and/or directed by women have been released in the past decade. Despite all the obstacles, many women have, in fact, completed their films; that is not the problem. The films are there, but what’s missing is the audience.
A different diagnosis suggests a different treatment plan: We need more women film critics to balance out the male critics who “professionally can’t hear us,” and we need more committed audiences willing to “to identify with a woman character.”
As Streep says, “There is only change and resistance to it and more change.”

by Maggie Castrey for WomenSpeak

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