Largest Script Analysis Ever Breaks Down Over 2,000 Scripts by Gender and Age

[DDS]

http://polygraph.cool/films/index.html

Lately, Hollywood has been taking so much **** for rampant sexism and racism. The prevailing theme: white men dominate movie roles.
But it’s all rhetoric and no data, which gets us nowhere in terms of having an informed discussion. How many movies are actually about men? What changes by genre, era, or box-office revenue? What circumstances generate more diversity?
To begin answering these questions, we Googled our way to 8,000 screenplays and matched each character’s lines to an actor. From there, we compiled the number of lines for male and female characters across roughly 2,000 films, arguably the largest undertaking of script analysis, ever.

I found all this to be really eye opening. What do you guys think?

 

[Wildcard]

Looking over this analysis shows that writers simply need to do better when it comes to these big movies and female roles. Really sad that in a lot of the ones that do star women, they still end up having lesser lines than their male counterparts. Absolute insanity & a real eyebrow raiser.

I'm incredibly curious in knowing the logic behind this all.

 

[DDS]

I think the lack of dialogue and roles for female characters isn't too hard to explain: there are way more screenplays by men that make it to screen. I don't think most of these men are horrible sexists, at least definitely not intentionally, they are just generally writing from their perspective and experiences, which means their work becomes male-centered. It is a symptom of a bigger issue, which is that women aren't nearly as represented behind the scenes. More female writers/filmmakers and scripts written by women would probably increase the representation of women onscreen. Why there are far less women involved in the industry is the more complex part of all of this, than simply why these scripts are so dude-centric.

 

[Mad Ones]

It's nice to have this data, though a trip to the theatres week to week tells us exactly this.

Even Frozen and Hunger Games give male characters more lines.

 

[Doctor Jones]

I don't see how this is surprising. Or even necessary. Good for numbers in an argument but one only needs to look at the history of film and it's pretty damn transparent. We all knew this. I mean we only had the word of thousands of people over the years.

 

[chamber-music]

I don't believe you need to be a woman or minority to write a woman or minority character.

Unless your writing something specifically addressing a certain issue relating to that group of people I think writers should be able to write about almost anyone.

A lot or characters could easily be gender and race neutral. Ripley from Alien was a man originally but a woman was cast in the role. Hogath in Jessica Jones was a man in the comics but a woman in the show. Events would play out just the same way regardless of gender.

Helen Mirren said there are plenty of roles written that could easily be played by men.

 

[Doctor Jones]

I think given there is a large disproportion of minority writers, in the meantime, there is a responsibility of other writers to write more minority roles. Because there's a greater chance of things actually happening. It's what helped Sicario. If that role wasn't written for a woman or if it wanted to be changed to a woman, it would have never happened.

 

[SuperT]

I don't believe you need to be a woman or minority to write a woman or minority character.

No, but I think people who try to write for women or minority characters tend to fall into overused tropes and trappings. Or they just completely ignore the fact that the character is a woman or minority.

I think if you're going to attempt to write stories for women or minorities and you're neither one of those, you probably better have some on your writing team to assist.

 

[DDS]

I don't believe you need to be a woman or minority to write a woman or minority character.

True, but a writer is a lot more likely to write characters that are the same gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. as they are more often than not, because that is their lived-in experience.

 

[chamber-music]

No, but I think people who try to write for women or minority characters tend to fall into overused tropes and trappings. Or they just completely ignore the fact that the character is a woman or minority.

I think if you're going to attempt to write stories for women or minorities and you're neither one of those, you probably better have some on your writing team to assist.

I agree.

I think writers try and think of what a woman or minority should be like and end up writing stereotypes.

Luther creator Neil Cross said he didn't create the character of DCI John Luther with race in mind, he didn’t write him as a black man, he just wrote him as a man.

I have no knowledge or expertise or right to try to tackle in some way the experience of being a black man in modern Britain… It would have been an act of tremendous arrogance for me to try to write — and you have to try to imagine the quote marks around the words — a black character because I don’t know what a black character is and we would have ended up with a slightly embarrassed, ignorant, middle-class, white writer’s idea of a black character, which would have been an embarrassment for everybody concerned.

There are universal characteristics and struggles everyone faces regardless or race or gender. Some of the reason themes and archetypes recur in literature throughout the years is because there are universal human characteristics.

Shakespeare's plays have been reworked a thousand different ways in many countries across many formats because they are universal. Akira Kurosawa’s “Macbeth”, 1957’s Throne of Blood is an example.

 

[Doctor Jones]

The key is, write everybody as human beings and do whatever the characters asks you to do.