Streaming brings viewers quality stories and a cornucopia of great roles for women
I don’t watch a great deal of television, but when I do, more and more I find myself drawn to Netflix. I recently watched two excellent dramas, Jane Campion’s “Top of the Lake” and “The Fall” a BBC production starring Gillian Anderson. The migration for dramatic storytelling from cable TV and movie theaters to streaming services does not diminish the “film industry” but enhances it– demonstrating film’s enduring role in our creative culture and opening up new ways of cinematic storytelling in the process.
Last night I sat down to check out Netflix’s new series “Orange is the New Black.” I hadn’t read anything about it and had intended to watch only the first 55 minute episode….yeah, right. Five hours later I finally turned out the lights and went to bed. In fact, I was so drawn into the show that I had to really force myself to stop watching. I had succumbed to binge viewing in all its obsessive glory.
Jenji Kohan, the creator of Showtime’s “Weeds,” is behind the new comedy/drama that takes place in a women’s prison in upstate New York. Loosely based on a memoir of the same name by Piper Kerman, the series revels in rich multi-cultural characters and their compelling, often poignant, back stories. There is much humor amid the tears, and the show does have moments that are almost shocking in their un sanitized frankness, but it’s all done in service of the story.
Tatiana Maslany plays 6 roles in Orphan Black
I approach the joy of binge-viewing such quality programs with mixed feelings. On the one hand I love experiencing the unfolding narrative over the course of an evening, but at the same time dread when it comes to an end–an experience I recently had with the compelling BBC-America series “Orphan Black” (which I recorded and watched via DirecTV on-demand).
The added bonus of being able to watch these shows on Netflix is having the chance to watch so many talented women display their acting craft in such a variety of rich roles. Whether it be Tatiana Maslany playing multiple versions of her clone or Elisabeth Moss shedding her Mad Men persona for a Kiwi cop, rich female characters are sadly few and far between in most traditional Hollywood fare. In fact, according to a recent USC Annenberg study that reveals women receive less than one third of the speaking roles in 2012.
Across five years (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012), 500 top-grossing films at the U.S. box office, and over 21,000 speaking characters, a new study by USC Annenberg found that females represented less than one-third (28.4%) of all speaking characters in 2012 films. When they are on screen, 31% of women in 2012 were shown with at least some exposed skin, and 31.6% were depicted wearing sexually revealing clothing.
Even worse? “There has been no meaningful change in the prevalence of women on screen across the five years studied. In fact, 2012 features the lowest percentage of females in the five years covered in this report,” said Communication Professor Stacy L. Smith, the principal investigator. “The last few years have seen a wealth of great advocacy for more women on screen. Unfortunately, that investment has not yet paid off with an increase in female characters or a decrease in their hypersexualization.”
Streaming has made finding shows featuring diverse female characters a whole lot easier and the good news is that Netflix has already renewed “Orange is the New Black” for a second season. My 8 bucks a month is money well-spent.