See Jane Salon – Women of Action: Redefining the Super-Hero – Recap

Attended by Leading Entertainment Industry and Corporate Influencers

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June 8, 2015
Hosted by The District by Hannah An

In a passionate and wide-ranging discussion led by Variety’s Malina Saval, Ali Adler, Victoria Alonso, Lauren Hynek, Lauren Shuler Donner and Famke Janssen shared their experience of Hollywood action films and the challenges faced by women working in the genre – both in front of and behind the camera.

Institute Founder and Chair Geena Davis got the evening off to an optimistic start with a new piece of research from C4 which showed that Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character played a key role in persuading cinema-goers to watch the latest Avengers film, Age of Ultron (43% of respondents said she had impacted their decision to see the movie, making her more of a draw than her male co-stars Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans and Mark Ruffalo). Did this finally debunk the myth that audiences aren’t interested in female action heroes?

Adler, currently executive producing the CBS series Supergirl, seemed to think so. However she was reticent to define her superhuman heroine Kara Zor-El in terms of gender. “We just want to focus on Supergirl as a human which is why it’s important that there are romantic and comedy elements to the show. Soon you’ll forget about the gender of characters onscreen. It won’t be about who’s the best male superhero or who’s the best female superhero. It will just be about who’s best for the job.”

Alonso outlined her belief that gender-specific childhood play was directly responsible for the current lack of women working behind the scenes on action blockbusters, specifically in visual effects. “Girls do go into engineering but they drop out in year 2 because they’re not taught to build three-dimensionally. From a really young age girls are given dolls and books while boys are playing and building things”.

In later life it was family responsibility that prevented women from throwing themselves into the demands of a career in production, she explained. “At a certain point some women want to go off and have children and at that point they have to make a choice between work commitments and their family. Men find it easier to distance themselves from family than women do.” Describing herself as “the only woman in the upper echelons of Marvel,” Alonso said that she felt a responsibility to make the company’s working culture more accessible to women wanting to balance family life with a career in filmmaking. “On one film a really great employee came to me saying that she was going to have to give up her job because the long hours meant she couldn’t be at home with her children in the evenings. I said, ‘what time do you need to be home?’ She said ‘6:30pm’ and I said, ‘tomorrow you’ll be home at 6:30pm’. People say that production doesn’t work like that but why doesn’t it? It’s up to us to get out there and change things.”

The panel also expressed a desire for more racially and age diverse casting. When asked about the recent controversy surrounding Emma Stone playing a “part-Asian” Hawaiian in Cameron Crowe’s Aloha, Lauren Hynek, the writer behind Disney’s upcoming live-action Mulan remake said that she appreciated the significance of her female warrior heroine’s ethnicity. “We haven’t decided about casting yet but I get the impression that people really want her to be Chinese.”

Lauren Shuler Donner and Famke Janssen both drew on their experience of working on the X-Men films to praise the franchise for its powerful female action heroes. “There was always this idea in Hollywood that a female superhero would not sell movies,” said Shuler Donner. “I desperately tried to make the Wonder Woman movie. It’s something we grow up with. Children’s movies – there are very few female heroes but mostly it’s the studios who say you need a male hero because girls will go to guy movies but guys won’t go to girl movies. When I questioned about Wonder Woman on two different occasions, they said no ‘we don’t want to make a female superhero.’ Fox never questioned that there were women superheroes in X-Men. That’s how it was written. If you want a good superhero movie, start with a good script.”

Despite this gender-balanced approach, Janssen still sees room for improvement. “I think the one aspect where we still see sexism is that actors like Patrick Stewart [who plays Charles Xavier/Professor X] come into the movie as both their older version and their younger version but with the women, they recast the part. You don’t get to play the “15 years earlier” role. It could still change, you never know.”

The appearance – and more specifically, the wardrobe choices- of female superheroes was also hotly debated. It’s all very well having strong, active heroines onscreen but what message does it send to younger viewers if these women have to be conventionally beautiful and wear revealing outfits to be considered powerful?

While Shuler Donner said that “both men and women being sexy is part of comic book law” Adler was optimistic that female action heroes will become increasingly defined by what they do, as supposed to how they look.

“With Supergirl our partners at Warner Brothers and CBS never said ‘what size chest does she have?’ or ‘is she too big?’ Melissa Benoist [who plays Supergirl] has this really practical costume without heels. No one ever asked those questions I was so terrified of.”

However, for Alonso, the secret to a strong, exciting female action hero lies in her complexity. She urged filmmakers not to be afraid of creating multi-faceted heroines capable of being both physically attractive and fiercely intelligent. “If you make them sexy and dumb, I’m bored. If you make them sexy and smart, I’m in twice.”

Cue roars of laughter and appreciative applause from an audience of See Jane members reassured that as long as these five fantastic women continue to influence Hollywood’s approach to action blockbusters, the future of our female superheroes is in safe hands.

Ellie Austin is a journalist at Radio Times magazine, London and volunteers for The Geena Davis Institute.