Almost a year into the #MeToo era, Rachel Griffiths believes the likes of Mystery Road, Wentworth, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Top of the Lake show that female characters are finally coming of age on Australian screens.
In a spirited speech at the launch of a new state government scheme to support more women directors in television, the actor-turned-director said it was exciting to see female characters move beyond "the typical tropes of 'likable, f—able, adorable'" to "more complex depictions of female experience" recently.
Happy to see "more complex depictions of female experience": Rachel Griffiths (left) with Leah Purcell at the launch of #SheDirects.
Photo: Louie Douvis
While she acknowledged there were male directors who created fresh and compelling women characters, Griffiths said the "male gaze" often reduced them to colouring the characters of their male counterparts.
"[They are created to] make him hot, make him authentic, make him empathetic, make him fatherly, make him conflicted, make him grieve," she said. "In the male gaze, we are so often not the gatekeepers; we're not the ferryman. Sometimes the mentor but usually only ironically, like Judi Dench's M…
"Under-written and under-observed, brought into our sexual awareness precociously and prepubescent in order to accommodate the male libido.
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"Often in television we're used by lazy writers and producers who can think of nothing more interesting this week than 'let's have her have sex with X' or 'discover she's a lesbian – for an episode'."
Griffiths, who is about to begin editing the Melbourne Cup drama Ride Like A Girl after finishing the shoot, endorsed Hollywood star Sandra Bullock's recent comment that it was time for women to "stop being polite" about gender equality.
"If our generation played the patience game, I think the generation after us are like, 'Why? It's been too long'," she said. "I don't know if I'm personally angry but I'm extremely heartened that the conversation is different… around power, around consent, around input to stories, around safe work practices. It's quite extraordinary the change in the last two years."
Griffiths stressed the need for equality was much wider than just film and television, affecting women working in journalism, waitressing, driving buses and in other industries.
"Women are having conversations with each other and what we've realised is that… respect for women [has to be a given] for women to feel safe and participating."
NSW Arts Minister Don Harwin said the new government scheme, called #SheDirects, provided $100,000 to develop up to four one-hour television dramas led by female directors in a NSW-based creative team.
It would "open up new opportunities and reduce the barriers for female directors in NSW and indeed across the country," he said.
Rachel Griffiths, NSW Arts Minister Don Harwin and Leah Purcell at the launch of the scheme to encourage more women directors in television.
Photo: Louie Douvis .
The scheme is part of an initiative by arts agency Create NSW to have a 50:50 gender equity for screen funding by 2020.
Griffiths urged the corporate sector to adopt a similar goal.
"I hope that the 50:50 by 2020 might flow upstairs to some boardrooms where both the opportunities for deep change and the foundations of deep resistance can be found," she said.
Leah Purcell, the actor-writer-director who is preparing to turn her award-winning play The Drover's Wife into a feature film, said she had benefited from government support for indigenous short films which led to directing the television series Redfern Now, Cleverman and The Secret Daughter.
"I'm a result of initiatives, targets and quotas, especially give the fact that I didn't go to any sort of film school, writing school or acting school so I needed all the bloody help I could get," she said. "I was a young black girl from the bush who had dreams and aspirations to be in the entertainment industry. #SheDirects will do the same for others."
Garry Maddox is a Senior Writer for The Sydney Morning Herald.
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