What are you looking for when you head to the movies? Some of us want explosions; others desire great love stories. A lot of people want comedy; fewer need to cry at the end. Whatever it is that drives people to the theater — and it’s got to be good with ticket prices at $10 or higher — it has something to do with marketing.
Either a loud, 20-second commercial splashed across your television screen long enough for you to take notice, or you read an online article dripping with praise. If you’re lucky, maybe you came along late enough in the game to get a respected friend’s honest recommendation. What most people don’t know is that the marketing mentality for movies is almost completely split down the middle: films for men and films for women.
Now, of course, it’s more complicated than that. Experts divide by age, ethnicity, geographic location, etc… But, let’s face it. We can tell which movie is for which gender. Car chases? Hello boys. Loads of kissing and romantic happily-ever-after-despite-the-odds endings? Come right on in, ladies. And what you’ll begin to notice is that there are a lot more movies geared towards men than there are towards women, because at some point long ago, movie executives decided that women don’t go to the movies.
This myth has slowly begun to erode over the past few years, starting with the massive financial success of the film continuation of Sex and the City. And no movie better exemplifies the idea that women love going to the theater (when there is something worthwhile to see) than this year’s summer hit Bridesmaids. Nobody expected it to do all that well, despite the fact that it had comedy heavyweight Judd Apatow’s name on it. The actresses weren’t terribly well-known, maybe with the exception of those who knew Kristen Wiig from Saturday Night Live. The story focused on a wedding; that cuts out any men right there. It was a raunchy comedy, so older people wouldn’t go, right?
Wrong. It outdid its opening weekend estimates, making almost $25 million when it was slated to make $17 million, tops. It’s already made back almost ten times its budget with a box office gross of a little over $234 million (and still counting in some theaters). Some credit women viewers, and Rebecca Traister at Salon even went so far to insinuate that the fate of Bridesmaids would indicate the fate for numerous female-driven films to come. She called for a “social revolution,” in which women support the movie, simply because it was made for them.
But was this movie simply successful because women went to see it? I don’t think that’s entirely possible. I believe it’s because positive word-of-mouth reviews indicated that this was the must-see film for everyone. Who cares that it’s about a bunch of women? Men all of a sudden needed to see this too because there were (true) rumors about gross gags like the entire bridal party getting food poisoning in the middle of a wedding dress shopping trip — gags that usually belong in Apatow movies pitched to men.
This “chick flick” has been getting a lot of attention ever since the realization it was a hit. Writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo and director Paul Feig have all moved on to even more prestigious projects, as have a number of the supporting cast including Melissa McCarthy, the gold star atop the “Bridesmaids” Christmas tree. That’s all great — everyone can agree that there should be more programming for women outside the drama/romantic-comedy monopoly — but there’s one problem. It seems as if marketing executives, supported by the media, are slapping their heads and saying, “Duh, women want to see comedies! Let’s make more of these.” Both The New York Times and The LA Times have focused solely on making comedies for women instead of on expanding the types movies targeted toward women, and these are two of the leading entertainment publications in the country.
Yes, women want to see comedies. Pretending that this is a modern realization, however, is incredibly silly. “Bridesmaids” didn’t over-perform because women like to laugh. It did extremely well because, without realizing it, the studio made a film that appeals to every person, regardless of gender. It seems so elementary — of course, you want as many people as possible to come to your movie — yet we still see studios churning out movies that play for a specific “audience.” All we see this summer are comic book movies and sequels to previous action movies. Any film with a female lead shows off how they’re using sex to get what they want. “Bad Teacher” comes to mind, and that’s a film that, despite having a female lead, was marketed heavily towards men (and didn’t do so well critically or financially).
Studios will probably never completely depart from the gender-segregated way of making films. At the end of the day, more men will go see an action movie than women, while more women will see a romance before men do. That’s fine. What studios should be focusing on is merging the two as they inadvertently did this summer with Bridesmaids.
Why hasn’t there been a Wonder Woman or Red Sonja movie? Answer: because executives fear that men don’t want to see a movie with a female protagonist and women just don’t want to see comic book movies. Same answer goes for why there aren’t more movies about men falling in love, even though (500) Days of Summer, featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt falling in love with Zooey Deschanel, blew projected box-office expectations. The idea that there is art for men and art for women are not universal truths. If the movie is good enough, it will transcend gender, no matter what the producers’ original intentions may have been.
Cat Scott is an entertainment/lifestyle blogger and first-year law student at Northeastern University. She works out of her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, where she loves living with her two perfect cats and good, but not as perfect, boyfriend. She loves reading, going to the theater, catching up on missed television, and has recently taken up running. She blogs at Cinnajoon, contributes weekly to film blog The Playlist, and tweets from @CatMarieScott.
Photo credit gavinj1984/Flickr.