If
this is true, I'm very disturbed.
When my family picked up the first DVD of
Star Trek: Enterprise (which we quickly stopped watching, because it sucked, but I digress) we played a guessing game. I held the DVD box where nobody could see it, and asked a series of questions: How many women are there on the DVD box? How many people of Asian ancestry? Are those people male or female? How many of African ancestry? (Please, no pedantry about how we're all of African ancestry ultimately, thank you very much sis.) Are those male or female? How many aliens? Male or female? How many men of European ancestry?
The answers were pretty uniform. Everyone correctly guessed that there were two women and one African-something character. 67% correctly determined that there was one Asian-something character (the remaining one person polled believed that there were none.) Everyone guessed that one of the women was of Asian ancestry and that the African-something character was male. Most people guessed wrong about the aliens: there were two, and one was female. The number of European-something male characters was sometimes one off (two instead of three.) Yet the basic understanding was the same: women and ethnic minorities would be represented, as per the standards of an inclusive society, but would be comfortably outnumbered by European-something men. Further, the roles of those minorities were easily understood: the Asian-something woman fit better than an Asian-something man, and the idea of an African-something woman was just
weird.
Looking at all my favorite shows, movies, even books, I can't help seeing an overwhelming trend. Even shows that really try to care about the ideal of an equal and inclusive society, like the original
Star Trek, or
Babylon 5, or
Heroes, are overwhelmingly male. I mean, two out of three of those shows I just mentioned are military setting, but if anything someone pushing an inclusive agenda should view that as a challenge. The only movies I can come up with where men aren't the majority are
Bend It Like Beckham, where instead the sympathetic characters are all male, and adaptations of Austen. And even authors like Tamora Pierce write about male-dominated areas, where the one or two women may kick butt but are vastly outnumbered.
If it's true that female leads are going to be reduced -- well, Jesus Christ, people. I may have to invent a new word for this, because my vocabulary is inadequate.
ETA next day:
Apparently, it isn't true. There's a relief, eh?
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okay
pissed off![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}