The (Male) Fall 2010 TV Season

May 25, 2010

Yesterday, WMC Advisory Council member and Women & Hollywood blogger Melissa Silverstein took a gander at the gender justice of this year’s recently released fall television lineup.  And  the results weren’t good.  Fox, CBS, and CW are launching plenty of new shows this fall, but none of them were created by women.  ABC and NBC didn’t do much better.  Yet again, the voices of 51% of society remain resoundingly unheard in our culture-defining mediums.  We suffer from a consistent pattern of skewed representation, as demonstrated by these recent incidents (among others):

• None of the 18 films nominated for  the Palme D’Or – the Cannes Film Festival’s most prestigious prize – were created by a woman

• This year’s Broadway season features what director Sheryl Kaller called, “one of the most glaring gaps I can remember between the monumental men’s roles and the female characters, who are on the margins or are defined in relation to men"

• And, despite Kathryn Bigelow's historic achievement as the first woman director to win an Oscar, the women of Hollywood continue to suffer from misrepresentation and lack of recognition

Through television, films, theater we define the human story, but that story would best be described as the male story as the driving narrative of women’s lives remains unspoken and unheard.  Proof of this skewed narrative arises time and time again.  And here at WMC, we point out this misrepresentation time and time again.  When will women's absence be recognized?  When will something be done?  When will the  cultural story of our shared human experience actually reflect ALL of humanity?