Director Sarah Gertrude Shapiro
on Male Privilege in Hollywood.
Statistics that overwhelming exhibit the gender gap in the industry
The opening joke of what it takes to survive this industry.
Shapiro with her friend Brandon before her meeting with her lawyer.
Here, near the end of the talk, where Shapiro describes how to change the industry, she explains the connotations of complaints about males and females in the industry.
(All images taken from the Ted Talk) Sarah's full Ted Talk: |
Director Sarah Gertrude Shapiro has recently found success through her tv series, "UnREAL" based on a short film she wrote and directed,"Sequin Raze", based on her real - life experience from working on the Bachelor for three years. She has had quite a wide range of experience in Hollywood over the past several years, and her career is only beginning. On July 28th, 2015, Shapiro presented her Ted Talk "How to Borrow Male Privilege" in which she discusses how she's "made it" and more importantly, what she has learned in the industry from the past few years... and how to change it. The reality of the industry is truly rough. Shapiro jokes that she has a better shot of becoming an underwater welder than a female director. She then answers the question at hand: "What does it take to make it in Hollywood?" The answer? To be: A Rabid Pitbull + A Nuclear Bomb + George Clooney. She says you have to be "A Rabid Pitbull with a Nuclear Bomb in its Chest and [have] the political grace of George Clooney" In other words, for the rabid pitbull, you have to have tenacity and commitment. She discovered she wanted to be a director at 16, and never let go. No matter how many times she was told no. I was told ‘no’ more times than I can even count. ‘No’ is a total healthy and normal part of life. But the part that has been almost unmanageably heartbreaking is that I am constantly passed over for guys who have way less experience and less vision for the project than I do. The nuclear bomb component was that she felt like she has all of these stories inside of her, and if she didn't get to create and to communicate them, she would die. For her, there was no other option but to pursue this field of work. That urgency, that life or death feeling right there? That feeling, is what has propelled me through the hardest parts of this journey. And lastly, just to ooze charm like George Clooney I thought about it more and I thought about - what is the most extravagant accessory that any woman can have, right? That no one does. A straight, white, educated male, in his prime, with nothing better to do than be my assistant. So I called my friend Brandon from the band "Mean Streak" and I said, "Can I borrow your male privilege for a day?" Shapiro then goes into the real meat of the issue: About the differences of men and women in Hollywood. How they present themselves. The real power "male creative geniuses" will sit back in sweatpants and act like they own the space, whereas women will act prim and proper and "volunteer to do the crap work". To make the phone calls, stay late, and do the extra work. And in general, they are the multi-tasking, helper people that enable these creative geniuses to bring their vision to life. And what's really hard and sad... you sometimes wear your exhaustion as a badge of honor. You compete with each other for who is working harder and who stayed later. And this is where she comes back to using her friend Brandon. She decides to go to this important meeting with a lawyer, which she lied to get, as a completely disheveled, drunk "Creative genius", and have her white male educated friend be her supserviant note taker. She also told him that they were going to try and make eye contact with him. "He was to refuse all eye contact. He was to speak when spoken to, and answer logistical questions only." Then she goes on to explain the hilarious situation of that meeting that has to be viewed for best delivery. All jokes aside, she gets into the truth of the matter. Hollywood is not a charity...and it's not a public university - they don't owe us anything. It's actually a very privileged, mostly white, club... And I really had to think about that before I agreed to give this talk because I wasn't really sure this was a problem that mattered, is this an idea worth sharing? Shapiro realized then that we've already tried to have white men tell our stories. And this really does matters. Women can hang in the big leagues, and provide a product that they can't get anywhere else. There is a demand for these nuisance, complex characters and storylines that women can provide, but for some reason it's still practically impossible for women to break in. I really thought about why that it is and the only thing that I came to is that it's prejudice plain and simple. The industry claims that they just hire based on talent alone, but it is not what they're doing. We're not hiring the right person for the job regardless of gender, we're hiring a guy for the job because he looks like the last guy we hired. Shapiro insists she knows because she has been in and through these meetings where this is happening time and time again. We are ignoring 50% of our resources as a business, and that's really, really bad business. Shapiro then goes on to explain how to reverse this process. How women should fight and how the industry needs to change and give in to the reality of the necessity for women to work in this world. Make female directors make business sense... set your female hires up for success. She's worked so hard and so long to get here, chances are she's gonna kill it for you. I also hope that every single thing I've said today is irrelevant in five years. That there are so many working directors that we don't even have to talk about this crap : allies, glossaries, language game- that we just get to work. But for now, all I can think of to do is to storm the castle, hire each other, protect each other, lean on your allies, work very, very hard, be excellent - be better. Be the absolute best. Be nuclear, never give up. |
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