Women make up roughly half of all executives in animation, but a study released Monday says the numbers fall significantly when it comes to female directors and other leadership roles in the industry.
The study by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and the nonprofit advocacy group Women in Animation said that in the past 12 years, only 3% of animated film directors were women and only one, "Kung Fu Panda 2" director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, was a woman of color.
In some areas, like producing, animation has better female representation than live-action films. The study found that women made up 37% of producers on the 120 animated films surveyed going back to 2007. On live-action features, women make up about 15% of producers.
"The proportion of women in this leadership role in animation, and the progress made in the last decade indicates that there are spaces where the industry is taking inclusion seriously and affecting change," said initiative director Stacy L. Smith in a statement.
Women also made up 13% of directors of popular animated television shows from 2018, the only year covered by the study. But women of color were underrepresented in all areas.
Women are also outnumbered in below-the-line roles like head of story, lead animators and art directors, the study found.
And in front of the camera, only 20 of the top 120 animated features across the past 12 years had a female lead or co-lead. Of those, three, "Moana," ''The Princess and the Frog," and "Smurfs: The Lost Village," had a woman of color as the protagonist
Marge Dean, the president of Women in Animation, says a better understanding of the numbers will help push the industry toward achieving 50-50 gender representation by 2025.
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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