We Only Want Women Once
What do Twilight (2008), To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018), and Mamma Mia (2008) all have in common? Not the aesthetics, that’s for sure – nothing could be further from the sun-soaked Greek islands and Abba soundtrack than the town of Forks, afflicted with a serious case of grey/green filter. And I’m not here to debate the artistic value of any of these films either. I will die on the hill that there are few truly bad films (and the ones which are bad really work hard to achieve their badness).
You are more than welcome to disagree with me and believe that a triple-feature of angsty teen vampires, angsty teen letters, and angsty middle aged wedding drama is the worst weekend plan possible. I, however, think it sounds excellent and might cancel all my other plans this weekend to test it out.
The unifying traits of these films are threefold: they were directed by women (Catherine Hardwicke directed Twilight, Phyllida Lloyd brought us Mamma Mia, and Susan Johnson directed TATBILB), they were the first of their series, and their sequels were directed by men. These aren’t the only film series where the opener was directed by a woman, only for the bigger-budget sequel to be handed over to a man. In some cases, there is nothing underhand or unusual about a director stepping away from a series of films after the first one. Sam Taylor-Johnson famously extricated herself from the Fifty Shades series, citing conflict with E.L. James and “two different creative visions”. But the pattern of female directors being the guinea pigs to test a film series broadly targeted at women (let’s not pretend that Mamma Mia was ever marketed at male fans of Fight Club), and then promptly replaced by men for the more predictably successful sequels is a problem. In fact, it is part of a much broader problem; the creation and curation of the public sphere as a “man’s world” where women are a minority.
Let’s widen the net for a moment and consider how much of the world around us (at least in Western countries like the UK and the USA) is coded that men are the norm from which women deviate. We can see this in relatively mundane things like razors and shaving products being “specialised for women” (read: pink and/or with a floral scent) and therefore “justifiably” more expensive, and in much more dangerous biases in medicine where theories, measurements, and textbooks are based off a study of white men and applied to every other kind of person despite the damaging inaccuracies. In the world of books, J.K. Rowling published the Harry Potter series using her initials, not her real name, because her publishers told her to hide the fact that she was a woman and make her books more appealing to boys. The message – that normativity is white, cis, and male – is clear.
When this philosophy of normative masculinity is applied to the creative sphere, it creates the idea that the most accessible stories will be told by men, and anyone who isn’t a man can only tell stories that resonate for the minority they’re a part of. The 2011 film Bridesmaids was promoted as “the movie every woman should see” and called the “girls’ version” of 2009’s The Hangover. By the way, in spite of all the branding and celebration of it’s gross, gal-pal feminism, Bridesmaids was directed by a man. But men weren’t the target audience of Bridesmaids – we know this because the characters’ outfits in the trailers were pink – and there was genuine surprise that women did gross-out humour like men.
Sometimes, films need a director with a lived experience similar to that of their lead character. Get Out (2017) simply wouldn’t have worked with a white director. Jordan Peele (an African American man) made a deliberate (and brilliant) commentary on racism during Obama’s presidency by making the middle-class, liberal, white family the villains of the film. Promising Young Woman (2020), a story about sexual violence, public accusations, and institutional coverups, would not have worked if it was directed by a man. Frankly, neither Get Out nor Promising Young Woman would have been made by white men.
But good films (and good art) don’t need a director with personal experience of the subject matter. If they did, there would be no fantasy films, no sci-fi thrillers, and no superhero blockbusters. So why do men dominate in the world of directorial sequels? Are men just better directors than women?
Well, not really.
Mamma Mia, directed by the fabulous Phyllida Lloyd, remains one of my absolute favourite comfort films. I am yet to have a day that can’t be improved, at least a tiny bit, by a sofa, a blanket, and the incredible “Dancing Queen” sequence. Another one of 2008’s offerings was the first instalment of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man. Which do you think grossed more – the (at the time) risky comic book film, or the adaptation of a Broadway/West End/global theatre smash hit, helmed *by the original production’s director*? The MCU became a behemoth of cinema, but it was Mamma Mia that did better at the box office. So why did Phyllida (who, as I mentioned, had directed the original theatre production as well as the incredibly successful film) not get given the sequel? Jon Favreau directed Iron Mans (Men?) 1 & 2, and was replaced by the similarly male Shane Black for 2013’s Iron Man 3.
And now, we return to Twilight. Twilight was not trying to be a ground-breaking film. It didn’t need to be; it was an indie-budget adaptation of a phenomenally successful YA romance book. Its audience was solidly teenagers (and their mums) who related to the lead character of Bella, a high school student whose life was turned upside down when the ~edgy and interesting~ hot boy in her class got a crush on her. What Catherine Hardwicke did with Twilight was, if we’re being honest, massively impressive. In the midst of an industry-wide strike, Hardwicke took a tiny budget, underage actor working hour restrictions (Kristen Stewart was 17 at the time and had to work shorter days), and a ridiculous time limit of 44 days for principal photography, and gave us a full-realised, female-centred indie film. It still ranks fifth for pre-sale tickets, behind its sequel, New Moon (2009), Star Wars Episode III (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2008). That is a ridiculous list to be a part of. And yet Hardwicke was replaced by Chris Weitz for New Moon, which was objectively a less-good film.
Is it that female directors went too hard against the grain of Hollywood studios? Unlikely in the case of the spectacularly uncontroversial Mamma Mia (apart from Piers Brosnan’s singing voice). Is it that women don’t have good records of turning a profit? Again, this seems unlikely. Ol Parker, who directed Mammia Mia 2: Here We Go Again (2018), did not have a good track record of making financially successful films, taking just over $5 million at the box office from his previous two films.
The answer, as it so often seems to be, is that anyone who is Not A Man is simply not the favoured demographic for public-facing positions of power. The public sphere remains curated and controlled by rich white men, and they prefer to fill it with their friends, their acquaintances, or at the very least people who look like them. Women are handy for getting nice inclusivity points (just look at the massive publicity campaign for Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman in 2017), but it’s just easier to have a familiar man taking charge when a project is taken to the next stage.
Also, 2008 was a hell of a year for films. And that is indisputable.
