There’s, on the surface, no obvious reason why it should matter whether an episode of television is directed by a man or a woman. Or a black person or a white person. Or a gay person or a straight person.
It seems a bit questionable to try to get around that by saying “Well, I’m promoting my show as one where all the directors are women. Therefore, I have a legitimate justification for hiring only women.” I mean, if you can just say “part of the appeal of X is that the consumer knows that all the people producing it had characteristic Y”, well, then you can say that about anything at any time and always have a justification for discrimination in whatever direction you want.
“Sure, my extremely whitewashed production of The South Shall Rise Again hired only white men as directors, editors, sound designers and cameramen. But you can’t sue me for employment discrimination, because part of the appeal of the show to its core audience of racists is knowing that it was produced in a racially pure fashion…”
…I’m entirely comfortable characterizing and lumping in all the major studios and production companies as an entity called “Hollywood.” The statistics are the same across the board: there are no outliers, there is no need to make a distinction.
I don’t think its that hard to prove at all. The numbers say it all.
She is, she will, and if you want to sue her then go for it.
That is a gross mischaracterization of what is happening here.
The position of many libertarians is that people should be able to hire whomever they like. So how would you answer this question?
“Discrimination” is such a loaded word. From the dictionary definition, it requires either a measure of “unjustness” or “prejudice”: and I don’t see either of those two things applying here.
A Wrinkle in Time wasn’t financially successful and received only moderate critical attention, and many attributed its relative failure to the fact that Ava was a woman, and that she tried to make the movie “SJW.”
This was the biggest budget ever given to a black woman. She was positioned as representative of what happens when you “give a woman money to make a movie.” There are people out there using this as an example of why women aren’t capable of making big budget movies.
So the “risk” of giving women the opportunity of running a show isn’t really a risk. All of the consequences you mentioned will happen anyway: they will happen even if the TV show turns out to be a success.
What you are doing is you are holding woman to different standards than you do men. Nearly every show on TV right now is male dominated in production, below and above the line, in casting, in everything. If a show with all male directors and all male writers fail (and yes, they actually exist), do you attribute their failure to the fact that it was an all male production team?
Nah, it wouldn’t be “any more than normal.” It would just be the same.
Who is making a “big deal?” Ava shared an anecdote during a talk, and the the anecdote went viral. And it went viral because there are thousands of women who are happy that there are people who are willing to stand up for them in the industry. It went viral as a show of solidarity: you can’t fight that. And if that bothers you: well, so what?
No shit. Anyone trying to take this nonsense to court is going to be laughed right out of it, but let’s play hypothetical. Say someone successfully sued DuVernay regarding her “all women” policy–I figure the next step would be seeing a hailstorm of suits going the other way demanding parity of women in all aspects and levels of film making and tv. Literally sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander. How many production companies, studios, tv shows, etc., could actually bear up to scrutiny regarding hiring practices when the only way to prove you don’t discriminate against one sex or the other would be to demonstrate that the percentage of each gender working for you is exactly the same as the population in general? Hint: “none of them.”
But sure, it would be all kinds of entertaining to watch this one go down. Then we can demand that all CEOs be at least 50% women, all sports teams, every legislative body, every single place where anyone has a job will have to be rigorously 50% female or boy howdy, they’re discriminatory. I’m sure that would cause no furor whatsoever.
“Hollywood” isn’t going to sue her. Some discriminated-against male producer is, and I think he’s got a decent chance of winning given her public statements.
ETA: It would seem a far easier lawsuit to win where the defendant made clear, public statements about their overtly-sexist hiring practices than one where the defendant made no such statements.
IANAL, but I feel like employment discrimination is very hard to prove. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to prove, unless there’s a public quote from one of the showrunners saying “we deliberately hired only directors from racial/gender category X”. Except that of course in this day and age no one would say that out loud. Except that that’s precisely what Ava DuV did.
So, ironically, we might be in a situation in which the most benign and utterly understandable instance of “discrimination” in the history of Hollywood is the only one that could be successfully prosecuted in a court of law.
In any case, IF lawsuits could be successfully brought against one or more Hollywood studios for their hiring practices in the present or recent past (I assume there’s some statute-of-limitations-esque principle of some sort, it seems fairly pointless to sue a studio now for its hiring practices in the 1970s), well, then they should be brought, and there’s no reason for that to be in any way contingent upon someone suing or not suing Ava DuV.
I’m not sure if you’re maybe not American, but here in this country our laws don’t work like this. One is considered “innocent until proven guilty”. The production companies that might get sued in your hypothetical won’t need to “prove [they] don’t discriminate against one sex or the other”. The burden of proof falls on the plaintiff. It’s up to them to prove any claims of discrimination, not on the defendant to prove the absence of the same.
Oh, I’m definitely American and I know how the laws are written AND how they work out in practice, and I’m saying that it would be fucking awesome IF some disaffected penis person sued to direct Queen Sugar and won. Because I’d bet a nickel that Oprah would be totes down to fund a HUGE legal team to sue likewise to benefit every single woman who was turned down for a directing job in favor of a man. Suit after suit after suit after suit after suit. Strikes me as just the kind of thing a black female billionaire might find amusing to spend a few million on. So hey, bring it. Because if you think there aren’t ANY men in power in Hollywood who have NEVER made denigrating comments about the general ability of women to write and direct movies and tv I have a spiffy bridge for sale.
A male producer would have an extremely difficult time proving that this production had discriminated against him. Queen Sugar doesn’t need any more producers, producers make very poor directors. It would be the height of male privilege for a male producer to bring a lawsuit about being discriminated against for not getting a job as a director.
As Ava herself says:
I really think that people are underestimating what is going on here. In the grand-scheme of things a lawsuit is insignificant. The “system” doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked, and if things keep going the way that they are they will never work. Hollywood is broken. If #metoo didn’t make that abundantly clear then I’m not entirely sure what will. Hollywood isn’t going to change unless people make a stand. And what is happening here is that people have chosen to make a stand.
Ava DuVernay saw Obama do the “Proceed, governor” thing. Some people, you just leave a big ol coil of rope laying around and sure as shit they’re gonna be hanging from a rafter pretty soon. They can’t help themselves, it’s in their nature. Entitled people get hung up on what’s “owed” to them and never stop to see the wider implications of their tantrums.
…once again: discrimination isn’t the correct word to be using here. There is no “unjustness” or “prejudice” at play. Every woman hired for this production will be qualified, will have experience, will have the appropriate credentials, will understand the creative vision of the project.
In your humble opinion: what would be the correct way to “make a stand?”
Lawsuits are really expensive. And taking Hollywood studios to court would be a really really expensive and painful thing to do.
The ACLU have been working on this for a long while now. They were working with the EEOC, but with the change in administration I don’t think anyone has a clue as to how that is progressing now. But a lot of the legwork is already done. If someone did decide to sue DuVernay, then the defense will open up a Pandora’s box of information that, to be quite frank, I’m pretty sure Hollywood doesn’t want to have going through the courts.
