Oscar Best Picture Nominee: ‘Moneyball’

I didn’t know until the end credits that Aaron Sorkin had a writing credit on Moneyball. This is good, because I semi-irrationally hate Aaron Sorkin, and I wouldn’t want that bias to have influenced my take on the film. I’m frankly astonished I made it through the movie without recognizing Sorkin’s handiwork given his very specific, very stilted style. I’m not sure if that is a credit to the acting, the directing, the influence of also-credited writer Steve Zallian’s earlier draft, an uncharacteristic bout of restraint on the part of Mr. Sorkin, or a combination thereof. Sure, the dialogue is sharp and clever, not so aggressively sharp and clever that you feel like you’re being stabbed in the throat with wit. The snazzy dialogue is more there to entertain the viewer, instead of demonstrate the genius of the writer, which is pretty much the opposite of how I usually feel about Sorkin’s work.

While I didn’t know about Sorkin’s contribution to the script when I watched Moneyball, I did know I’d be reviewing it for Bitch Flicks. So I watched with my feminist glasses freshly cleaned and firmly planted on my nose. Which was tricky, because this is not a movie about women. Professional baseball is about as much of a man’s world as you could ask for, plus there’s the whole “based on a true story” business to validate keeping all the major characters men.

Which is fine! There are stories, stories worth telling, that are just about men. [Likewise, there are stories worth telling that only involve women, but its hard to get Hollywood to bankroll those.] Telling a story about men in a men’s world isn’t inherently sexist. But I think it is fair to subject whatever scraps of portrayal of women we get in these male-dominated films to a slightly higher scrutiny.

Moneyball becomes pretty cringeworthy when you do that. The film has a runtime of 133 minutes, and by my rough count women “characters” are featured in slightly less than 8 of those minutes. That’s 6%. [This whole “math” thing is kind of a double-edged sword, eh, Moneyball?] In those 8 minutes we see three wives/mothers, two daughters, three markedly cheerful and helpful secretaries, and one bitchy sports reporter. Yep, that’s right, the only woman in the movie who isn’t in a family or subservient relationship to the male characters is established as pushy and mean in a scant ten lines of dialogue.

The only even remotely well-rounded female character is Billy Beane’s twelve-year-old daughter, Casey (Kerris Dorsey), and the character is only as well-rounded as a dented egg. She’s your standard shy-yet-precocious pre-teen on the brink of womanhood, a favorite stock character of lazy male writers. [See also First Daughter Lucy in Sorkin’s The American President]. Casey feels a bit shoe-horned into the movie, to soften Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane and give him some scenes where he’s not flipping tables or arranging complicated player trade deals, all the better to bait that sweet, sweet Oscar honey. The other reason for Casey’s character to exist is to provide an explanation of Beane’s decision to reject a lucrative offer from the Boston Red Sox to become the best-paid GM in the game. I have no idea if Real Life Billy Beane stayed in Oakland to be near his children (although this Sports Illustrated piece from the time suggests as much), but I am sadly reminded of Aaron Sorkin’s “but you guys remember Rooney Mara, right!?” defense against the feminist criticism of women in The Social Network. When you’re only including women in your story because they motivate the men in the story, it’s not enough to win you any points with feminists.

The other women in the film (aside from an entirely wasted Robin Wright as Beane’s ex-wife) are all presented as service-providers to men. On top of the cheerful secretaries, we also see one of the player’s wives bring out coffee for Beane and his associate when they invite themselves into her living room to recruit spurned former catcher Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt) to play first base, and quickly scoop up her and Scott’s young daughter when she toddles her way through this important meeting between the menfolk. I was so distracted by the antiquated gender dynamic playing out in that scene I had to watch it a second time to pay attention to the plot advancement.

A later scene leads me to believe that the strange emphasis on women as helpmates was intentional, hopefully trying to say something about the old-fashioned hyper-masculine world of baseball. When Beane meets with Boston Red Sox owner John Henry (Arliss Howard), his cheerful and helpful secretary cheerfully and helpfully serves coffee, prompting this exchange.

After which Beane cuts him off with something like, “I have no time for such frivolous lady issues! Let’s talk about serious matters of vital importance, like BASEBALL!” I believe this exchange is in the movie to highlight the strangeness of the general absence of women in this universe and subservient roles the few present women are in. At least, I hope that is what is going on, because otherwise I get the sinking suspicion that Sorkin wrote all these helper women in the movie as a deliberate fuck you to those who criticized the portrayal of women in The Social Network. Or worse yet, he thought by making all these helper women so markedly cheerful and polite, and by not having anyone snort coke off their bodies, that he was course-correcting. But that’s all wild speculation, given I don’t know the content of Sorkin’s contributions to the script.

Regardless, its inarguable that Moneyball does no favors for women in cinema. Aside from that, it’s a perfectly fine movie, not something I’d generally consider in the echelon of Best Picture nominees, but well worth watching nonetheless. All the same, I wish there were more movies with virtually all-female casts to counterbalance all the Moneyballs I’ve seen over my lifetime.

Robin Hitchcock has previously reviewed The Descent and Michael Clayton for Bitch Flicks. You can read her movie reviews at her blog HitchDied and other feminist pop culture commentary at her blog The Double R Diner.