Hollywood Producer Exposes Sexist Scripts On Twitter
A Hollywood producer is exposing the sexism in the scripts he’s sent by publishing their descriptions of women on a Twitter account.
Ross Putman has set up @femscriptintros, on which he swaps the name of all the female protagonists to ‘JANE’ but keeps the remaining descriptions unchanged.
And it’s a pretty ugly indictment of the kind of lazy sexism that appears to be rife in the industry.
Putman says that most of the scripts he has read or been sent contain at least 'some element… of latent objectification’.
In an interview with Jezebel, he said: “I found myself posting to Facebook far too often ‘here comes another script with our 45 year-old male lead dating a 25 year-old woman,’ and decided I was going to keep track of the female character introductions in scripts I read for a few weeks.
“I went back and combed through past scripts too, and the patterns were pretty disconcerting.
“I plan on posting every one that I read, and there are plenty that aren’t offensive, but honestly, most of them have some element - subtle or overt - that plays into latent objectification.”
Here are a few of the examples, and they make for pretty depressing reading:
A gorgeous woman, JANE, 23, is a little tipsy, dancing naked on her big bed, as adorable as she is sexy. *BONUS PTS FOR BEING THE 1ST LINE
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
JANE, 28, athletic but sexy. A natural beauty. Most days she wears jeans, and she makes them look good.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
JANE, with lengthy blonde hair, enters. Attractive in an effortless way, she carries an alluring and yet forward charm behind a bold smile.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 11, 2016
The ribbon leads him to the master bedroom where he finds his young wife, JANE, lying on the bed with the end of the ribbon tied to her toe.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
JANE, 30s, attractive, intelligent, stands in the kitchen and turns to their housekeeper.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
Though drop-dead beautiful, JANE (40) has the appearance of someone whose confidence has been shaken. She is a raw, sexual force, impeded.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
JANE (late 20s) sits hunched over a microscope. She’s attractive, but too much of a professional to care about her appearance.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
His wife JANE is making dinner and watching CNN on a small TV. She was model pretty once, but living an actual life has taken its toll.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
This is JANE. She’s lithe, leggy, spirited, outgoing, not afraid to speak her mind, with a sense of humor as dry as the Sonoran Desert.
— Ross Putman (@femscriptintros) February 10, 2016
He reckons that as a producer and script reader, he’s read more than 4000 scripts over the past eight years, and found this to be a disheartening trend.
The theme chimes with remarks made by 'Game of Thrones’ star Maisie Williams, who decried the way women are presented in scripts last summer.
“There are a lot of roles that come in that are ‘the girlfriend’ or ‘the hot piece’ in a movie or TV series,” she told the Evening Standard.
“That’s something I’ve seen first-hand and read all the time. It will say ‘Derek: intelligent, good with kids, funny, really good at this’ and then it will say ‘Sandra: hot in a sort of cute way’ — and that’s all you get. That’s the way your character is described, so going into an audition you are channelling ‘hot’, which isn’t like a person, that’s not who a person is.
“That’s what I see and that’s what needs to change… I just hope that if we stop playing those characters, they’ll stop being written. It’s a very big thing to say for me, on behalf of all the women in this industry.”
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Image credit: Rex Features
