This guest post by Celey Schumer appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.
Sexism in Hollywood is not a new phenomenon. At this point, girl power, famous women starting their own production companies, and the call for more (and more three-dimensional) female characters, are all reaching fever pitch. Whether this cultural spotlight will result in an improved landscape for women in film and TV remains to be seen, but the optimist in me believes the needle is pointing generally upward.
Ageism is a natural part of this sexism conversation, yet it often gets added as one sentence of a larger “viral video.” The average age of leading women is 33 years old whereas the average age of leading men is 42 years old. In Dr. Martha Lauzen’s Celluloid Ceiling report looking at the top 100 grossing films of 2015, “the majority of female characters were in their 20s and 30s,” while “the majority of male characters were in their 30s and 40s.” Men 40 and over were “54% of all male characters” while women 40 and over were “34% of all female characters.” Looking at dialogue in film by gender and age, dialogue “decreases substantially” for women as they get older. The problem with this is that when we limit the ages (not to mention race, sexual orientation, and size) of characters that women can play, we severely limit our talent pool of badass female actors, and the longevity of their careers. It also erases the visibility of older women, underscoring the notion that only younger women matter.
Superhero films, the beast that keeps on beasting, are among the worst perpetrators of this double-standard. Here is one category for which the argument, “Well, what about Meryl Streep?” does not apply. Even in the rare superhero films with more gender-balanced casts, the age gap between male and female performers can be seen time and time again. Men are allowed to age, to become grizzled, world-weary with experience, or stew for years on a plot of vengeance. Lookin’ at you Ian McKellen, Robert Downey Jr., and Alfred Molina. Their women counterparts, however, must remain lithe, “hot,” and never over the age of 40. Seriously. Go ahead, try and find a superheroine or female supervillain over 40. I’ll wait. Great. Now that we’re all done pointing at Halle Berry as Storm — who was 46 at the release of X-Men: Days of Future Past — and Famke Janssen as Jean Grey/Phoenix — who was 41 at the release of X-Men: The Last Stand — let’s look at the bigger picture.
The most recent superhero behemoth, Captain America: Civil War features a leading cast of 11 men and 3 women. Don Cheadle/War Machine and Robert Downey Jr./Iron Man are the oldest male heroes at 51, with the youngest being 33-year-old Sebastian Stan/Winter Soldier and 19-year-old Tom Holland/Spider-Man. Scarlett Johansson/Black Widow is our oldest female hero, just edging out the TEENAGER Holland, at a ripe old 31 years of life. Elizabeth Olsen/Scarlet Witch is 27, and Emily VanCamp/Sharon Carter (not a superhero, but an important character who will seemingly get to kick ass later on) clocks in at 30. While Batman v. Superman features more women over 40 (Amy Adams/Lois Lane, Diane Lane/Martha Kent, and Holly Hunter/Senator June Finch), the only woman superhero is Gal Gadot/Wonder Woman, who is 30 years old.
We could run down the list of all major superhero releases of the past 15 years, but the script stays shockingly stable. Men play villains and heroes. Do-gooders and power-hungry scientists. Spry teens and grizzled vets. The women play heroes (sometimes), girlfriends (mostly), mothers (occasionally), and villains (rarely), usually between the ages of 23 and 37, and always before their mid-life crises. This is true for Guardians of the Galaxy where Glenn Close/Nova Prime’s 4 minutes of screen-time is almost single-handedly holding down the fort for women over 60, and isn’t even a “hero” per se; Sally Field/Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man films is the only other woman over 60. It is true for Ant-Man, where Evangeline Lilly — noted 36-year-old land-mermaid and future superhero Wasp — plays the ONLY female character that is not a 5-year-old child or nagging ex-wife. It is true in The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, every Thor film, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, Man of Steel, and The Amazing Spider-Man reboots. Even the X-Men film series, the ensembliest of all ensembles, features male characters with a huge age range — from venerable older men Patrick Stewart/Professor X and McKellen/Magneto in their 70s, to bright-eyed teen Tye Sheridan/Cyclops — and female characters with a range from… uh… Halle Berry/Storm, Famke Janssen/Jean Grey, Rebecca Romijn/Mystique (under 40 for all films she was in) to 20-year-old Sophie Turner/Jean Grey. Wow, such range, very diverse. Ten points to Slytherin!
Now, I’m not saying these young, gorgeous, badass women should not get to play superheroines and supervillains, and that we need to recast every role with older women for the sake of age-diversity. Like much of Hollywood, and perhaps more than most, the superhero genre is built on pleasing aesthetics, tight costumes, and muscles, muscles, muscles. I get it. It’s why you bought the ticket. And I swooned as much as anyone during the Civil War helicopter scene.
The lack of diversity (gender, racial, LGBTQ, and disability) in Hollywood sci-fi and fantasy blockbusters is “staggering.” But why oh WHY can films manage to fit in a wider range of roles on only the male side of the script?! And shit, it’s not as if the male side of superhero movies are beacons of tactfully executed diversity, but they’re certainly “better” than the ladies, with more ages, body types, and races/ethnicities represented in men’s roles. Could it be because there are just MORE roles for men? That certainly helps. Or, is it because we can make our peace with a graying gentleman kicking ass, yet cannot fathom a “cool,” dangerously competent woman who is not also inconceivably fit, young, and gorgeous? If the absurdly tight leather costume fits…
There are fewer film roles for women, even fewer for women over 40, and EVEN FEWER for women over 40 in what is arguably the entertainment industry’s most profitable genre. With that in mind, is it any wonder so many actresses are willing to inject a little extra collagen or shave a few years off their high-school graduation date? We can do better. It’s about damn time we did.
Celey Schumer is an actress, comedian, and writer. She is embarrassingly good at Harry Potter and Friends trivia. Her degrees in physics (Middlebury College) and structural engineering (University of Washington) look very impressive while they collect dust. She was definitely not eating chocolate as she wrote this. You can follow her on Twitter @CeleySchumer.
I like this piece a great deal and I’m so glad that you are calling attention to this issue. It’s long overdue. However, I bristled a lot with the way you casually dismissed Amy Adams playing Lois Lane. It was even stranger because, up above, you acknowledge that Sharon Carter is an “important character” but then you lump Adams in with the woman who played Superman’s mother.
The fact that Amy Adams, an actress over 40, is playing LOIS LANE, is a really big deal and deserves a lot more attention than you are giving it here. Lois Lane is not and never has been “just a girlfriend.” She’s one of the most famous characters in the genre’s history—has had her own TV show. She has her own YA novels, has her own comic and has her own fanbase. We can debate until the cows come home how well the newest film franchise TREATS the character (and it’s not a debate I’m super interested in having) but the reality is that the character is really important. She’s the oldest heroine WB owns and the fact that she doesn’t have superpowers or wear a costume (though she has often taken on the mantle as Superwoman over the years) does not negate how important she is. She’s also, in addition to her own heroism, one half of, arguably, the most famous romance in comics. Seeing a woman over 40 treated as desirable, loved and wanted by the most beautiful man in the world (an actor 8 years her junior btw) IS A BIG DEAL. That is progress. That is important. Because the ageism between men and their love interests is just another piece to this sexism puzzle.
From the moment Adams was cast, she’s been hit with ridiculous amounts of misogyny and ageism because she was deemed “too old” to play Lois. She still gets abused to this day and it’s been going on for years now. She deserves to have that acknowledged in a piece like this. She’s playing a very important, iconic character over 40. Like I said, I love this piece but when I got to that line…I actually physically recoiled.
As a woman over 40 who has been practicing stunt fighting all her life, I’m wondering where are the old *women* at the top of the mountain that the young hero (male or female) goes to, in order to learn the ancient mastery they need…