This weekend Justin Timberlake performed on the popular late night series: "Saturday Night Live." His monolog was based on the fact that it was his fifth time hosting the show. He therefore made his introduction about being inducted into the "Five Times" club along with other "five time hosts" of SNL. Such hosts consisted of: Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin. As the skit continued, Candice Bergen appeared as a "Five Times" member and I began to think "Why is there only one woman on the set? Especially amongst at least five men?" It was apparent to me at that moment that women are a minority in Hollywood and I would like to know why that is. I did some research to see how many other women achieved the "Five Times" award, and found that out of twenty-five musical guests and hosts who have achieved such success, only two women have hosted SNL five times. The two women are Candice Bergen as mentioned above, and also Drew Barrymore. Now I am aware that SNL bases their hosts off of people who are promoting a movie, and this discrepancy between the number of men in women in the club may be due in part to the fact that males are more dominant in TV and film. It suggests that male actors get more jobs than female, especially in comedic roles and I am curious as to why that is. For credibility purposes, Los Angeles Times reported in 2011 that: "In a survey of the top 100-grossing movies of 2009 including "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" researchers found that 32.8% of the 4,342 speaking characters were female and 67.2% were male, a percentage identical to that of the top-grossing movies of 2008." So my posts ultimately asks: Why are women inferior in film and television? Don't women deserve more equality in this workforce after all the equality that has been made in other aspects of life?
Well depending on what the show/movie is about and what gender the writer(s) makes each character that is what ultimately determines who they will need to cast in terms of actors. I suppose you will have to look at the number of men vs women characters in books and screenplays at this point. For example, The Hobbit was a big cast of men. There was only one woman in the entire film and in the actual book there was only one woman written into it (it was not Galadriel btw).
So you believe it is put upon the stories as to why there are not as many women's roles? What does that say about the writers then? It may suggest that male characters have more to offer in the writers' eyes, however that brings another reason as to why women are a minority in film and television productions.
