
Film Dialogue from 2,000 screenplays, broken down by gender and age - traviskuhl
http://polygraph.cool/films/index.html
======
cperciva
I love it when people actually provide data rather than merely working based
on "gut feelings"! I have a few questions jump out at me as potentially
affecting the reliability of the analysis and conclusions, though:

1\. Since the mapping from lines to gender goes through the actor/actress
involved, it seems that "trouser roles" (particularly in animated features)
may skew the statistics. I don't know if the effect is large enough to matter,
though.

2\. The analysis seems to be conducted on the basis of "lines" rather than
"words". Does this skew the results? I wouldn't be surprised if predominantly-
male "action" scenes had fewer words per line (or, put another way, more lines
per word) than other scenes.

3\. The analysis of actor/actress ages aggregates screenplays over all years
of publication. This makes it impossible to distinguish between a bias towards
_young_ actresses and a bias towards _actresses born after a particular date_.
This is a very important distinction in terms of policy response, since there
is little gap between genders up to age 31: If the problem is "older actresses
don't get many roles" then it needs a response, but if the problem was
"actresses born before 1985 don't get many roles" then the problem will self-
correct as the older generations are replaced by more egalitarian ones.

------
facepalm
Looking at the movies with > 60% male lines, a lot of them seem to be action
or war movies. I don't think it is unfair if not 50% of war and action movies
have a female heroine, because there are reasons men are more likely to go to
war or do dangerous jobs (and no, that reason is not lack of role models in
popular entertainment).

I don't think an analysis like this is very useful at all. What matters is
that all demographics get to see the films they like. It doesn't hurt one
demographic if another demographic has more films made for.

Take women's magazines for example - while I haven't counted, it seems there
seem to be an awful lot of them. Would it hurt men if there were more women's
magazines than men's magazines? I'd argue it wouldn't hurt men at all.

So if you can show that there is a significant population that doesn't get to
see the movies they want, I think you could get a better response.

~~~
tomlock
The idea that you trust your judgement on the magazine ratio is probably one
of the reasons that this analysis is useful. Are you sure that you aren't just
biased against noticing men's magazines? Or perhaps there are a lot of
magazines with language specifically gendering the reader as male that you
consider neutral...

~~~
facepalm
I am sure there are certain media that cater primarily to women. For example,
at least in my country, there is a whole genre of romantic novels about
physicians.

The main point is that it is not a problem if some product category caters
primarily to a specific demographic. What would be an issue would be a
significant part of the population being neglected. However, there is no
reason why that shouldn't be fixable by the market alone.

I can think of several TV series that cater specifically to women, with lots
of women talking.

How can we be sure that the 2000 movies the article talks about randomly
selected movies, not movies cherry picked to show the desired result?

Even if we pick random scripts that are available online, there might be an
inherent bias? For example, maybe older scripts (from the 50ies) are more
likely to be online?

~~~
tomlock
I encourage you to do some quantifiable analysis that you judge to be free
from bias and see if you get a different result.

You seem to be immediately dismissing this analysis as not useful, while only
providing anecdotal evidence and questions. Do you feel like your points are
more/less useful than the quantified analysis in the article?

~~~
facepalm
In what way do you think my comment is biased (given that I explicitly marked
the women's magazine as a guess and an example)? In what way do you think the
analysis is useful?

I think an analysis like that can be amusing. I am not convinced that it is
useful, as I explained in my previous comments.

As for doing the research myself, I may, but it is expensive. I don't have a
gender studies grant or anything to pay for it.

~~~
tomlock
I think you're biased because you're dismissing this article without any
evidence. I encourage you to post some research about the topic. As for the
gender studies grant comment, do you have any evidence to suggest that the
authors had such a grant?

~~~
facepalm
I didn't dismiss it, I question it's usefulness. The article itself doesn't
provide any evidence for it's usefulness.

~~~
tomlock
I'm confused because I think typically a person would consider implying an
article or perhaps a piece of code is useless would be an extremely dismissive
move. Do you think it is unreasonable for me to imply you are being dismissive
when, faced with a quantified piece of research, you suggest it is useless
without providing a quantified counterpoint?

~~~
facepalm
You might enjoy this paper about gendered glacier science:
[http://phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/01/08/030913251562...](http://phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/01/08/0309132515623368.abstract)

I have provided an explanation of why I don't consider it very useful. From
the article itself you can gather that there are many movies with more female
than male lines. Therefore I question that women are disadvantaged by the
available movie offerings.

So what exactly are you talking about? What, in your view, is the usefulness
of the article?

~~~
tomlock
I find it kind of confusing that you seem to be posting articles, claims and
references to funding that can’t be found in the article, or don’t seem
related to the article.

For instance, you’ve just now made the claim that there are “many” movies with
more female than male lines. The article clearly states that in their
analysis, they found that 1505 films had 60% or more male lines, while only
173 had 60% or more female lines. That’s a ratio of nearly 10:1. Where are you
getting your figures from?

Additionally my initial criticism of you was that you seemed happy to trust
your intuition about magazines without any quantifiable evidence. I implied
that perhaps without this article, you’d be making a similar claim about the
prevalence of movies with women as the predominant speakers in them. This
analysis is useful because it can be used to demonstrate that there truly is
evidence of a gap between the amount of talking time men and women get in
movies.

Perhaps you should examine your behaviour and ask yourself if you’re truly
free from bias, when instead of quantifying your objections to a quantified
claim, you’ve implied that somehow this is the work of biased academics.

~~~
facepalm
I find it confusing that you don't even seem to read my comments, and instead
claim I said things I didn't. Perhaps instead of accusing me of bias, you
should work on your reading skills?

I never made a claim about the authors funding. I also didn't claim that they
are biased (although I find it curious that they only use 2000 of the 8000
scripts they found). I DO think they have an agenda, but I wasn't talking
about that in this comment thread yet. Nor did I claim that their numbers are
wrong.

So if it is important to you that a film you watch has more female than male
lines, you have more than 150 to choose from. If you are generous and include
movies with an even number of male and female lines, you are up to 490 movies
(out of the 2000 they analyzed), or roughly 25% of all movies. Maybe that is
plenty enough?

I never doubted their result that there is a "gap" between talking time,
averaged across all movies (or at least the movies they looked at). However,
why should you care about talking times of movies you don't watch? What
matters is the movies you watch. That is all I am saying.

Personally I also think it is stupid to judge a movie by that criterion
(likewise for the Bechdel Test), but if it is important to you, why not. But
unless you run out of films to watch, there isn't really a problem.

~~~
tomlock
> How can we be sure that the 2000 movies the article talks about randomly
> selected movies, not movies cherry picked to show the desired result?

Could you let me know how this doesn’t read as implying the author has bias?
Am I perhaps misreading this?

> I don't have a gender studies grant or anything to pay for it.

Am I perhaps misreading that you think research like this is funded by gender
studies grants?

Also I’d consider “having an agenda” to be a subset of “being biased”. Perhaps
you could state what you see the differences as, and perhaps the evidence you
have that suggests the author had an agenda before embarking on this analysis?

From the article as a counterpoint to your claim of an agenda:

“Lately, Hollywood has been taking so much shit 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.”

And here’s a screenshot from the reddit discussion:
[http://imgur.com/XvaZbFy](http://imgur.com/XvaZbFy)

You also have provided no quantifiable evidence that there is a bias in favour
of women in any area of media, let alone in an area as broad as “movies”. Do
you have such evidence?

Also at what point did anyone mention they were afraid of running out of
movies to watch?

~~~
facepalm
"(2000 movies cherry picked?) Could you let me know how this doesn’t read as
implying the author has bias? Am I perhaps misreading this?"

That was a question I posed, not a claim. They mention they only used 2000 of
the 8000 movies and never explain why. And yes, I don't necessarily trust
those authors (the way you seem to do), because they have an agenda. Doesn't
mean I believe they are lying, but it must be allowed to poke at the article
with a stick.

"Am I perhaps misreading that you think research like this is funded by gender
studies grants?"

I have no doubt that studies like this is sometimes funded by gender studies
grants. I didn't make that claim about the article here. Still, somebody needs
to pay for it. So you can not just dismiss anybody else's response with "why
don't you do your own study".

"perhaps the evidence you have that suggests the author had an agenda before
embarking on this analysis?"

They say so themselves in their article, right at the top. They set out to
demonstrate that white men dominate movie roles.

"You also have provided no quantifiable evidence that there is a bias in
favour of women in any area of media, let alone in an area as broad as
“movies”. Do you have such evidence?"

I never made a claim of bias in media, just that there is plenty of stuff for
women to consume (not saying there isn't bias, just that I didn't talk about
it). A quick Google search or visit to your nearest news agent could confirm
that for you, I don't think I should have to invest time to provide you with a
dossier for that.

"Also at what point did anyone mention they were afraid of running out of
movies to watch?"

Well what are the authors afraid of? They say "white men dominate movie roles"
and assume that is self-evidently a problem. Well, it is not, so I tried to
guess why it could be a problem. The only time I would consider it a problem
would be if it would lead to some demographic (say, women) running out of
movies to watch. However, if there was so much unfulfilled desire, it would be
a market opportunity and I can't see why the industry wouldn't react. In fact,
if feminists are so convinced that many, many women are longing for different
movies, they should raise money to make those movies. (Anita Sarkeezian
already raised amore than a million $ for some lousy YouTube videos, so it
certainly isn't impossible to raise money for feminist movies).

Let's take another occupation, modeling - it seems as if women dominate the
modeling industry. Is that a problem? Do we need a campaign for more male
models, and higher pay of male models? I personally don't care, because I am
not interested in seeing more male models. If a lot of people were interested,
the industry would most likely react.

In the same way, if a lot of people want to see movies with male actors (say
they are into war movies, or action flicks), why would it have to be
considered a problem?

~~~
tomlock
> They set out to demonstrate that white men dominate movie roles.

They don't write this in the article so why do you say this?

> In fact, if feminists are so convinced that many, many women are longing for
> different movies, they should raise money to make those movies. (Anita
> Sarkeezian already raised amore than a million $ for some lousy YouTube
> videos, so it certainly isn't impossible to raise money for feminist
> movies).

You're ranting about something not related to the article, again.

> it seems as if women dominate the modeling industry.

Another claim with no evidence. Another perfect demonstration of why the
quantification in the article is _useful_.

~~~
facepalm
"They don't write this in the article so why do you say this?"

They write it literally in the first paragraph: "white men dominate movie
roles... But it’s all rhetoric and no data...To begin answering these
questions"

"You're ranting about something not related to the article, again."

You don't seem to understand or not want to understand the point I am trying
to make. Nor have you ever answered my question what, in your opinion, is the
actual problem the article uncovers?

"Another claim with no evidence. Another perfect demonstration of why the
quantification in the article is useful."

That is just ridiculous. First, just because you throw some numbers or data
around, you don't have evidence. In this case, you have data about lines in
movies, but not about customer demand for movies of various properties (for
example). Second, it is still possible to have a conversation without an Excel
sheet in the background. You also don't seem to be interested enough in my
argument to do your own research.

I actually did google a bit on the model thing, but the first hits were about
male models earning less than female models. Finding actual numbers of
employed models and the exposure they get would have taken longer. It simply
didn't seem worth it for an example, given that I am not campaigning for model
rights or anything.

Maybe I would have even made that effort, but the model, as well as the
women's magazines, are actually just an example. I clearly stated that. They
are meant as a thought experiment. Unless you are convinced that there is no
industry on earth dominated by women (are you?), it doesn't matter if in one
particular example the numbers add up, because by magic of armchair thinking,
you could just pick another example to clarify the concept. Or let's assume no
industry on earth is dominated by women. You could STILL make a thought
experiment and think of some theoretical industry where women dominate, to try
to understand the point. If you have at least a shred of imagination, that is.

I am not going to repeat the point I was trying to make, as you seem to be not
interested in understanding it (not even accepting it, just understanding it).

Should my estimate of your motivation be wrong, ask away and I'll try to
clarify. Otherwise, why not end the discussion here.

~~~
tomlock
Without your ellipses it doesn't come across as a literal statement:

"The prevailing theme: white men dominate movie roles."

That is not equivalent to "White men dominate movie roles." The _prevailing
theme_ of the shit Hollywood is getting is that white men dominate movie
roles. How can you look at yourself as a reliable source when you need to chop
up quotes so needlessly?

Interestingly, even given your massacring of quotes, you seem totally willing
to conduct thought experiments, and use the results (lol) of your thought
experiments to accuse articles of being useless. Without quantification, in
the words of the article "it’s all rhetoric and no data, which gets us nowhere
in terms of having an informed discussion."

Unfortunately, you seem absolutely convinced that the burden lies on me to
provide proof, that meets your standards, for claims you make from thought
experiments, that aren't addressed or even mentioned in the article.

As I said very early on, I encourage you to do some quantifiable analysis.

~~~
facepalm
Huh, you blame me for not providing data, but you don't want to provide data
yourself?

I don't understand your comment on my quotes of the article. They clearly set
out to show in what ways white men dominate movie roles. My quote didn't
distort that statement at all - I only chopped it up to make the quote
shorter.

You still haven't answered what you consider to be the use of the article?
What are we even talking about?

What data ("quantifiable analysis") do you want me to provide? I don't
understand you.

Thought experiments aren't useless, and data isn't automatically useful. You
seem to be blinded by the presentation of the article (has charts and data,
seems legit). It's like trusting a person because they dress like a physician
- understandable human flaw, but misguided.

~~~
tomlock
I'm not dismissing a quantified claim without evidence, so why would I provide
data?

Interestingly, after the phrase you quoted out of context, they don't mention
race again. Also they clearly aimed to discuss the claims made against
Hollywood in a quantified manner. You are clearly just assuming that they had
an agenda.

Could you provide any quantifiable analysis for your claim: "What matters is
that all demographics get to see the films they like. It doesn't hurt one
demographic if another demographic has more films made for."

Unfortunately you seem blinded by a high opinion of your own opinions. I trust
the article more than I trust your armchair assumptions.

~~~
facepalm
It's pure logic: if people have enough films to watch, how would it hurt them
if there exist other movies they don't watch? What kind of data would you like
to see to quantify that?

Let's take data from the article. Does it hurt you that the movie "3 women"
exists, which according to the article has over 90% female lines? (I assume
you are male)

Does it hurt you that the movie "Agnes of God" exists, which according to the
article has over 90% female lines?

And so on - you never said what your problem is...

Does it hurt you that there exists aisles and aisles of nail polish for women
in most drug stores, and only few nail polish aisles for men? Do you need me
to quantify that? What would be the benefit of demanding an equal number of
nail polish aisles for men and women?

And if you say "you trust the article", what exactly do you mean? I don't
dispute their numbers (which doesn't necessarily mean I believe them, but as a
working assumption, let's assume their analysis is correct). I dispute that
they have uncovered a relevant problem. How would you quantify relevance here?
What makes the paper relevant to you? What consequences should be drawn (if it
is relevant, it means there should be a reaction to it)?

As for agendas, believe whatever you want.

~~~
tomlock
Could you provide data that clearly indicates that the imbalance in film
representations of women causes no harm?

My position has always been that you've assumed this article is useless
without providing any evidence. I trust the article's claims more than your
armchair pontification about whether it is useful or not. I have very little
doubt that you'll continue to believe that magazine ratios are in favor of
women without any evidence, with or without a quantified study on the subject.
If that study came out in favor of men's magazines, it sounds like you'd
accuse the authors of an agenda, as well.

Fortunately, more logical people have probably read this useful article and
realized their assumptions about the representation of women in film were
flawed.

~~~
facepalm
You still didn't say what you consider useful about the article. The article
also doesn't explain why imbalance in film representations is bad, it just
assumes it. But because it has some numbers and charts, you seem to believe it
proves everything you want to believe.

And your quote about the number of logical people reading the article comes
across as really silly, after you have asked for evidence so many times. Have
you quantified the number of "logical people" who found it useful vs the
number of "logical people" who found it useless? Do you have evidence that the
people you consider logical and who found the article useful are really
logical?

You going on about the magazines just proves that you don't understand my
point. I think it is enough now - you could just reread my previous comments
if you are still interested...

~~~
tomlock
The irony is delicious when you demand data to back up the negative
assumptions I make about your motives and mental faculties. I’d provide more
evidence, but it is expensive. I don't have a gender studies grant or anything
to pay for it.

------
nhebb
Related Reddit post, with one of the authors answering questions:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/4e15fa/the_largest_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/4e15fa/the_largest_analysis_of_film_dialogue_by_gender/)

Also, from that thread, someone posted that USC does an annual film gender
study. The latest is here [pdf]:

[http://annenberg.usc.edu/sitecore/shell/Applications/Content...](http://annenberg.usc.edu/sitecore/shell/Applications/Content%20Manager/%7E/media/3E7C3476F61349A8A6246F95332F9256.ashx)

------
cm2187
A disproportionate amount of movies are about crime stories. Most policemen
and criminals are young and men (today, and even more in the past). For the
same reason most war movies will also be dominated by young men. Same thing
for western movies, the role of women at the XIX wasn't to hold the gun, and
guns is what keeps the audience entertained. Why would it be surprising to
have a disproportionate amount of young males on screen given the sort of
stuff the audience watches?

For the same reason I would expect to see a disproportionate amount of
policemen, soldiers and criminals.

They should do that by genre. I would be surprised if comedies, romance, or
drama would be much imbalanced.

~~~
AlecSchueler
There is a by-genre section in the article which shows little deviation in the
trend across the board.

------
facepalm
Why did they google 8000 screenplays and matched their lines, then used only
2000 for the analysis?

~~~
danielsf
Author here: we scraped every script website on the Internet. First we tried
to normalize the dataset but only doing stats on the top 1,000 box office, but
we were missing too many scripts. So we decided to go big and then display a
cut of the data that's only films in the top 2,500 box office (we had about
half of those).

We're aware of sampling error and the potential for cherry-picking, but also
struggled to figure out what was a representative sample.

~~~
facepalm
How do scripts end up on such script websites? Is it a fair assumption that it
is random if a movie's script is online or not?

If you go by box office success it seems to me you already introduce the bias
of consumer preferences, not choices of the movie industry. Wouldn't it be
better to go by production costs (and marketing budget, if that is not
included in production costs)? Although over time one would hope the industry
choices would reflect consumer preferences.

------
ps4fanboy
What I would much prefer to see is what effect the % of dialog has on
profitability. Audiences buying behavior is what is responsible for what kinds
of movies, actors and characters are made because movies are profit driven
endeavor.

Looking at their data, I took the "top 20" male and female movies and compared
their world wide gross, male movies averaged 50% more than female.

[http://i.imgur.com/24dUzBD.png](http://i.imgur.com/24dUzBD.png)

~~~
knucklesandwich
How would this show the effect of male/female dialog on profitability? All it
shows is that the most profitable films feature heavy male dialog, not that
audiences select for more male dialog when seeing a film. And what is your
thesis here anyways? That the film industry features men more heavily because
society is misogynistic (just not the film industry itself)?

~~~
ps4fanboy
It would just show the bias of the consumer, which would explain the bias in
the product? Action movies for example are incredibly male dominated and also
very popular, until the general public is OK with seeing women getting beaten,
killed and abused I dont see this ever changing.

The majority of the films in this list that have predominately female
characters all fit into a specific mold of story telling with very little
overlap with the types of movies that feature predominately male characters. I
very much doubt that either group who consumes these types of movies is
interested in the same sort of stories about the opposite sex. That of course
is my opinion.

I dont see how any of that is misogynistic? That would be like saying teenage
girls are misogynistic for favoring boy bands over girl bands.

~~~
Animats
_" Action movies for example are incredibly male dominated and also very
popular, until the general public is OK with seeing women getting beaten,
killed and abused I don't see this ever changing."_

Angelina Jolie has made several action movies where she gets banged up quite a
bit. ( _Salt_ was originally designed for Tom Cruise; Jolie was a big
improvement.) So has Scarlett Johansson (who, as Black Widow, ought to have an
origin movie but isn't getting one.) Sigourney Weaver also had some tough
times in her action movies. All of those were successful films.

~~~
ps4fanboy
Dominated - Have a commanding position over.

No one said they do not exist.

Salt is rated PG-13 Aliens while rated R is 37 years old.

I dont understand the point you are trying to make?

How many movies have you seen, where men beat up women? How many movie shave
you seen, where women beat up men?

As long as society has asymmetric views on gender you will never have equality
of roles in movies.

~~~
knucklesandwich
This is an almost tautological position though. Films have a gender bias
because society has a gender bias because, among other things, films have a
gender bias. The reality is human beings have agency to make new things,
dismantle previous stereotypes, and create an equal footing. Female action
stars are not a concept that puts us at an impasse for creating gender
equality (in fact, I'd argue with things like the Hunger Games, some of the
marvel films, etc. the trend is to begin featuring women incrementally more in
action films). I still haven't seen any evidence that gender stereotypes or
prevalence of women are a causal factor in profitability, but even if that
were the case I think we need to ask ourselves if that's a just position to
take for defensibility.

~~~
ps4fanboy
I haven't seen any evidence that gender equality in film dialog is a good
thing.

------
Animats
Is the layout of that page just broken, with text on top of text, or is it at
my end?

------
WalterBright
What about the old trope that the hero uses a Mac and the bad guys use
Windows? :-)

------
Syrup-tan
How to mislead with bar graphs; the tutorial

[https://denpa.moe/~indy/e75d18.png](https://denpa.moe/~indy/e75d18.png)

~~~
vulpino
The bar graphs were not designed to compare total amount of lines for each
gender/age-range combination. Rather, they're meant to indicate how the
percentage of lines for each gender is skewed older for male actors vs younger
for female actors.

If they were to determine the length of each bar using amount of lines instead
of percentage of lines, all that would be immediately clear is that females
have less lines, a fact well established in the rest of the article, and the
point would be lost.

~~~
danielsf
author here. YESSSSS

------
maxlambert
Well, that's not very surprising. People write what they know, and most of the
screenplays are written by 30+ male writers.

If 20-30 year old women would write more great scripts the situation would be
different.

I don't think that screenwriters owe us any social justice. All they need to
do is to write the best story they can, and it's much easier to do if you can
more easily relate to the main characters.

~~~
schmichael
> If 20-30 year old women would write more great scripts the situation would
> be different.

How do you know they don't?

~~~
coldtea
You presume Hollywood is more misogynist than profit driven, and would pass
great scripts if delivered by women?

Maybe women are discouraged from becoming writers at an earlier age, but the
above sounds BS.

