Hollywood reacts to change very slowly. Maybe it's foolish to expect any different from an industry whose unofficial motto, coined by screenwriter William Goldman, is: "Nobody knows anything." Because of this uncertainty, the big studios have little incentive to get out in front of their audience. Nevertheless, we persist in expecting them to. When it was announced last month that Joss Whedon would be directing an upcoming Batgirl film, it felt like a significant setback for the movement to increase representation of women behind the camera. After feminist fans and critics lobbied successfully for DC to hire a woman to direct the upcoming Wonder Woman, the very same studio regressed to the status quo for their next female-driven property.
Maybe the contours of our argument are part of the problem. Currently, we argue that women should direct stories about female superheroes. This is a severely limiting proposition, considering there has not been a solo female superhero movie since 2005 (Elektra). Even with the upcoming Wonder Woman and Batgirl, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which the studios dig up enough obscure female characters to rival the male ones that have already captured the public's imagination. This is not a path to equality. Maybe female directors shouldn't just make movies about women—maybe they be permitted to make more movies about men.
Scan the filmographies of your favorite female directors, and you'll have a hard time finding more than a handful about male protagonists. Creatively, this makes no sense. Men have been making movies about women for over a century, and they've made some great ones. Isn't it possible that women could bring a much-needed new angle to our stories of male mythology? Unfortunately, the overwhelmingly male group of producers and studio executives who make these decisions disagree. They still feel a feminine voice can only be used to depict women.
There are plenty of reasons giving the keys to an iconic male story to a female director would be beneficial to women, but I'm not going to mansplain here—I'm going to be selfish. Men should advocate for this change because we are also burdened by norms of masculinity. We shouldn't continue to bury our feelings underneath heavy suits of armor. We shouldn't learn to channel grief into fixing the injustices of the world. We shouldn't have to measure up to heroes who are somehow both physically dominant and intellectually unmatched. We deserve to have our mythologies busted, too.
The results have been fascinating when female directors have had the opportunity to make films about men. For many years, the only place this would happen was in comedies. From roughly 1985 to 1995, women got plum assignments directing funny films about men like Real Genius (Martha Coolidge), Wayne's World (Penelope Spheeris), Big (Penny Marshall), and Private Parts (Betty Thomas). The heroes of these films aren't macho and domineering, clearly a world apart from typical male heroes of the silver screen. The trend followed the era when women entered the professional workforce in large numbers; it's worth wondering if the female auteurs that brought these sensitive heroes to the screen also prevented them from exhibiting bitterness or anger toward the changing gender dynamics in American culture.
Women have made the most of their opportunities when they've received the green light to tell more substantial male stories. Sofia Coppola undercut the myth of the male movie star in Somewhere (and to a lesser extent in Lost in Translation). When men fantasize about stardom, the opportunities for casual sex are usually high on the list of priorities, but Coppola subverts her lead character's horndoggery at every turn. His lifestyle is so unfulfilling that he falls asleep twice during sexual acts, once during a private strip show and again while performing oral sex on a stranger.
When a director was needed for the adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, the producers went to Mary Harron, who had only a single feature to her name (I Shot Andy Warhol). Why did they choose a woman? Were the producers simply looking to shield themselves from the accusations of misogyny that plagued Ellis? Perhaps, but the results were spectacular, with Harron providing an incisive take on the master-of-the-universe fantasy. It's hard to imagine a man directing the scene in which Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) primps and poses in a mirror while simultaneously having sex with two prostitutes with such little regard for male mythmaking.
And there is Kathryn Bigelow, whose The Hurt Locker subverted one of man's most precious myths: the war hero. War is a place where men become men. It's an ethos fundamental to the American patriarchy, but Bigelow managed to subtly undercut this myth while simultaneously paying homage to it. Her film, which won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director in 2009, features plenty of heart-pounding warfare and reverential depictions of battlefield courage. But it also looks at the bravery of her main character, a bomb defuser played by Jeremy Renner, through a more critical lens, depicting him as an adrenaline-junkie who puts other soldiers in harm's way to get his fix.
Notably, each of these three films reaches an emotional climax when the male protagonist breaks down in tears. Marco cries when his daughter goes off to camp, and it's the first time any emotion has broken through his disaffected haze. Bateman has a breakdown while leaving a voicemail for his lawyer, showing regret over the mayhem he has caused. Most poignantly, Sgt. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) breaks down on the way back to base after a tragic standoff with a suicide bomber. "I want a little boy," he cries. "I want a son." Although The Hurt Locker was written by a man, Bigelow's hand guided it to the scene, and it's hard to imagine such a vulnerable scene in any male-directed war film.
These films are uninterested in the alpha-male nonsense that comprises the bulk of Hollywood's output these days—or rather, they are interested in it only to the degree that they can break it down. Letting female directors make male stories symbolically gives them the chance to deconstruct the walls of power that men have spent centuries building. That's exactly why it should be done. Batgirl should have a female director, but so should Batman. Wonder Woman needed one, but, right now, so does Superman. While making more movies about female superheroes may feel like progress, giving the female heroes behind the camera access to the male mythological canon would be truly revolutionary.
