Women in the media

Ellen Page, a well-known actress... (you may know her from the film, 'Juno') admits to being a feminist. Page talks about the issue of women in the media.

“...And everybody is so critical of women. If there's a movie starring a man that tanks, then I don’t see an article about the fact that the movie starred a man and that must be why it bombed. Then a film comes out where a woman is in the lead, or a movie comes out where a bunch of girls are roller derbying, and it doesn't make much money and you see articles about how women can’t carry a film.”

Funnily enough, the movie Ellen Page starred in, Whip it (2009), was only able to achieve $16 million worldwide. Why though? If you look at a film lead by male actors, Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, 'The Hangover' (2009), made a whopping $299 million – Wow! Now if we look at this way, two movies, both have a 'funny' theme or genre attached to them and both came out in 2009, although one of them does better then the other... and in this case, 'The Hangover' was more successful. This just raises the question of whether a movie being too based on female drama and girl power is considered “boring” or “not interesting” by the audience, specifically the male population. These certain ideas that are currently flowing around, raise the issue of how leading actresses (particularly in the famous “Hollywood”) are being treated quite differently to actors. 

NEVERTHELESS, the negativeness stops there. The most popular, classic movie of all time... 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious' – yep you guessed it right, Mary Poppins!!! Film led by a female actress, Julie Andrews made $629, 363, 600 million in 1964. Incredible. I say, girl power all the way.

Article:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/apr/04/ellen-page-interview


Caroline Lazar