How We Get More Representation in Art

Which stories get told and who makes them

I recently saw this meme and it sparked some thoughts:

For those who can’t see the image it shows Christopher Nolan, Director of Oppenheimer, saying something to Justine Triet, Director of Anatomy of a Fall. It is captioned as if Nolan was saying to her, “I don’t have strong female characters how do you do it?”. This joke is funny because Nolan, whose movie Oppenheimer just won best picture, who just won Best Director himself, and is one of the most critically and commercially acclaimed directors of the last twenty years, hardly features strong women characters in his films. His subjects are mostly men obsessed with their work, with the women in his films mostly being side characters. Justine Triet on the other hand just broke out into the mainstream with her film Anatomy of a Fall whose lead character is a captivating strong woman. 

Now this is not meant to be a massive critique of Nolan. I’m not aware of any serious amount of criticism leveled toward him for his general lack of strong women characters. At least two of his films, Inception and Interstellar, feature women as prominent supporting characters. But I thought the joke was funny and could be a good jumping off point for discussing representation in art. 

Representation in Art

Over the last few decades as women and minority identities have gained greater freedom in society there has been increased discussion about representation in art. These discussions arise due to the conflict between those groups wanting more art that they can relate with and the commercial art that is widely produced. 

I believe that everyone appreciates art they feel represents themselves, whether it's their stories, ambitions, points of views, struggles, or whatever other facets of their identities they hold dear. While I don’t think anyone has a right to art, everyone certainly has the desire for art that sees them.

Not all art we consume has to be about our individual worlds and identities. Art can be a portal to seeing the world in a new way and connecting with it.  Art can be a great place to challenge us, can move the conversation, or show us worlds that we never knew existed. Art both has its expression by the artist(s) but also at its core is parts entertainment and intrigue. But regardless of all that, we all enjoy knowing the presence of art that connects with the deeper parts of us. 

This is a desire I feel sometimes too. I am a cis straight white man so most of all movies and art are made by people who have similar identities to mine. But I definitely feel a desire to see representation of other smaller parts of my identity celebrated in art. Like I’d love more representation of small town life in the Midwest that isn’t some form of the standard stories like the folksy “isn’t the simple life better”, “the town is dying this sucks”, or the Hallmark “I was a woman working in the big city and I’m in love with this man from my small hometown”. It’s not that I’m horribly lacking in art catering to most of my identities, but there are still some that I don’t see satisfied. That feeling is much greater for people who have more minority and underserved identities.

People desire art that takes their perspectives seriously. People like to be seen, they want to know that they aren’t alone. They also like when that art is widely acclaimed as good, it’s another level of affirmation for their lives. So how do we get art and movies from more perspectives? And from there, how do we more specifically get more great art and movies from more diverse perspectives?

What Kinds of Stories Get Told

I’m now going to shift from art in general to movies. In movies there is a story that gets told. Whether it’s conveyed through dialogue, visuals, sound, or a combination of all three, almost all movies are an attempt to tell a story. A lot rides on the story for how the movie is appreciated and looked upon. To take an example from TV, the show Game of Thrones was widely heralded as the best show on television for years with great artistry and craft going into it. But when it ended with an ending that most fans disliked, the entire show felt ruined and has disappeared from the cultural zeitgeist compared to where it once was. You can only do so much if the story doesn’t work. Even if the story is good for most of the project, if it ends badly then all that good work leading up to it will generally be disregarded.

Due to the importance story has on a project, there is much selectivity around what stories get told. Studios and filmmakers will often try to tell stories that they know people like so this limits the amount of stories that get told. Movies cost money to make so it’s hard to spend millions of dollars to make something that may not resonate with people.

At least from what I’ve seen this has had a dampening effect on what stories get told about women and minority identities. While there may be some willingness to take risks on different men’s stories, there’s less willingness to go off the beaten path for women. There are only so many stories about these groups that generally get to be told. For women those stories tend to be of the romance type or having to stand up to a man. For minorities and LGBT folks it seems to tend to be “important” films that recognize their struggles but doesn’t leave much room for much else.

This leads to a reinforcing loop. Only certain stories will be told about these groups because there are only so many that are known to be successful. This leads to people believing that movies focused on women or minority identities are only those stories and if they aren’t interested will stay away from those movies. Leaving the studios to double down making films telling those stories because they’re the only ones that are successful and around the loop it goes. The same stories get told despite there being a whole world of possibilities for stories about women and minority identities.

My more intense interest in movies is rather recent. It started with me discovering director Greta Gerwig who made Barbie. After watching the film and some interviews with Greta I started to feel a stronger desire to experience and connect with film. I was so moved by her other two films as well, Lady Bird and Little Women. All three films showcased a craft in filmmaking that I found inspiring, where everything appearing on screen felt like a deliberate choice and all those choices came together to be more than the sum of their parts. I really enjoy her movies.

As part of going down the rabbit hole of researching Greta I watched a lot of interviews with her. All three of her movies are about women and their stories. After all three films she has gotten questions along the lines of “what’s it like to make movies for women?” or “do you like making women’s movies?”. Her answer always comes out in some form of “well I didn’t set out to make ‘women’s movies’, I just wanted to make movies I cared about and they happen to be about women.” (none of these are direct quotes but approximations)

All three of her films are stories about women that aren’t necessarily about romance or their relationship to men. Lady Bird is a coming of age story focusing on the dynamic of a mother/daughter relationship, finding oneself, and coming to love your family and hometown. Little Women is about the struggles of ambitious women who are torn between their dreams and ambitions and what society allows women to be. Barbie in the end is about choosing to be your own self, that our flaws and shortcomings are what makes us ourselves and that there’s a beauty in that. While in these films there are occasionally romantic elements and sometimes standing up to the men in their lives those aren’t the main story being told.

Greta has shown that there are other women's stories out there that can be told and can also be financially successful. Barbie was the highest grossing movie of 2023, so there is clearly an appetite for this. What’s the secret sauce here?

Who Makes the Art

A big determining factor in which stories are told, how accurately they are portrayed, and how they resonate with the viewers comes down to who makes the art. It is certainly possible that people outside of an identity can create art of that identity they don’t hold, but it’s less likely simply because that isn’t their lived life.

Take for instance two movies that have come out recently, Drive Away Dolls and Love Lies Bleeding. Both are movies about lesbians on road trips who get entangled in webs of criminal activity. (Funny how two movies with similar setups release around the same time isn’t it?) These films center women’s stories that aren’t the standard stories. I really enjoyed both movies but enjoyed Love Lies Bleeding a little more, and it seems I’m not alone. Drive Away Dolls received somewhat mixed reviews and was a flop in box office while Love Lies Bleeding is getting much stronger reviews but the box office is still to be decided since it just released this weekend. 

There is an interesting distinction between these two movies: Drive Away Dolls was directed by Ethan Coen, a man and one of the Coen Brothers, while Love Lies Bleeding was directed by Rose Glass, a woman. I’m not going to argue that the difference in quality is due to the gender of who directed the film because both movies go about their subject matter in WILDLY different ways. But when I watched Drive Away Dolls there was certainly more of a feeling that it was a film about lesbians as seen from a cis straight man’s perspective. As a cis straight man myself I was able to buy into that perspective a little more than most and enjoyed it. Love Lies Bleeding feels more grounded in a woman's perspective. The differences can be subtle but can add up.

The main character of Love Lies Bleeding is played by Kirsten Stewart. As part of doing press promoting the movie she appeared on Colbert. They talked a little about what projects she wants to work on and had this to say that’s in line with what I’m trying to express:

Colbert: What do you want to make?

Stewart: A bunch of movies, but not just ones about girls, it’s so funny man like we get all of these submissions and it’s just like purely like, I’m going to lean on in, every main character hates guys, hates them so much. Everything is like very overtly feminist and what we wanted to do is not that. What we would like to do is stop underlining the obvious and start sort of looking at adjacent perspectives and not hanging a lantern on that. Stop marginalizing ourselves, you know. Like let’s tell the same stories but from a skewed spot. Like well worn territory that actually hasn’t been trodden on. You know what I mean?

Colbert: Sure, women have just as many stories as men is what you’re saying.

Stewart: Yeah!

These two movies along with those of Greta’s show that there are plenty of stories out there to be told. There are many more out there too, not just limited to these few. There are clearly people trying to break from the mold and tell new stories. But how do we get even more?

What do we do?

The simple answer is that we need more people making art! The solution in movies specifically seems to be that we need more directors from diverse backgrounds. To get more films that speak to different perspectives we need more perspectives making films. This doesn’t need to come at the expense of making straight white male directors step down, but from more diverse folks taking the leap to becoming directors.

But that will be tricky, becoming a director isn’t like getting into most careers. To become a director you almost have to will yourself into the job. Almost nobody accidentally becomes a director. It’s not something you send your resume out for as you’re looking for any job and they’ll take you on. It’s something you have to bring into existence. The word for director in French is le réalisateur, the realizer, which feels much more apt for what the position is, the realizer of the film, realizer of a vision.

To become a director is hard for anyone. To have an idea, the know-how, the connections with both people who help make the movie and those who help finance it, and the fact that someone will follow your vision even if they don’t fully understand it? To become a director takes making a leap, even if you went to film school. The difficulties and risk involved is a central part of almost all director’s origin stories, both men and women. There is a level of risk taking and betting on yourself that it takes to just become a director, much less a good director.

I see this as one of the main reasons why more men are directors. It may not be the biggest reason, which was most likely the society-wide belief that directing is a men’s job, but in part it’s also because men are less risk averse. On the whole men are more likely to take risks, whether that’s driving a car fast or making big career moves. Women and minority identities on average tend to be a little more risk averse.

In my eyes, from very far away, this seems like a big reason for why there are fewer women directors and therefore fewer movies that cater to women’s perspectives. Fewer women are out there willing to take the risk to direct than men are. More men take the ambitious jump to realizing their role as director.

And it’s not like there are no women directing. There are women and minority identity directors out there, but most of their work is smaller scale and less mainstream. I see this as purely a numbers game for the most part. Because as I see it:

It’s tough just to make art in the first place.

It’s even tougher to make art that people like.

It’s even tougher to make art that is financially viable.

It’s even tougher still to make art that is widely enjoyed.

And it’s toughest and rarest of all to make truly great universally praised art.

It takes a level of ambition and self assuredness to get your idea made into a movie, no matter who you are. If we want other perspectives made into films, then people with other perspectives are going to have to push hard to make those films.

To circle back to the beginning, if we want more movies and art featuring strong women it’s not going to be the responsibility of Christopher Nolan to make that happen. Artists can only make their art, and I encourage them to make their art. The tide is changing and needs to continue changing. As we see with Justine Triet and Greta Gerwig it is possible for women to make great art. Along with Drive Away Dolls and Love Lies Bleeding we see that there are more stories out there that can be told about women and minority identities. There is still plenty of time for more great art from other perspectives to come out, but to get there it’ll take more people making their art. So I wholeheartedly encourage you to go make your art!