The film industry is not exactly known for representing a diverse group of people. The Academy Awards are an embarrassing representation of that. In the 84 years of the Oscars, only one woman of color has ever won for Best Actress and only one woman has been awarded Best Director. Strong, complicated and multidimensional roles are rarely written for women (unless their name happens to be Meryl Streep).
Though full-length films still struggle to offer worthy, expanding roles for female actresses, television has been able to break down these barriers in recent years. This encompasses all genres, from comedy to drama. Robin Wright completely stole the screen from a scarily-talented Kevin Spacey with her icy portrayal of Claire Underwood in “House of Cards.” She spoke on issues like rape and abortion. Though she is a maleficent, twisted character, she is everything but somebody placed on the back burner. In comedy, Amy Poehler’s lovable overachiever Leslie Knope has won the hearts of fans everywhere on “Parks and Recreation.”
This isn’t just about women expanding the characters and roles they play. As everyone has noted with ShondaLand’s monopoly of Thursday night, women of color are finally seeing screen time. “Scandal” practically won back TV from the claws of Netflix with the dramatic tale of Olivia Pope’s affair with the president. But Olivia Pope is more than a ridiculously beautiful African-American woman. She is smart and independent, representing a new kind of woman on TV (although I am personally so tired of the president). She is complicated, with strength and emotion, allowing for the audience to empathize with her and respect her.
Similarly, “The Mindy Project” writer, producer and actress Mindy Kaling has written a ridiculously-endearing character who jokes about her body size and portrays an overly girly grown-up woman.
In an interview with Glamour Magazine when “The Mindy Project” first started, Kaling said, “It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your ‘portrayal’ of women. Even when I started out on ‘The Office’ eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it’s completely different.”
Perhaps no conversation of women in television would be complete without the cult favorite “Orange is the New Black.” Never have more women been represented — women of all races, all ages and from all walks of life. “Orange is the New Black” is such a fantastic show for women for a plethora of reasons, but mostly because it’s honest. The show never writes one character as the moral guide. The show gives each character, from the ever-irritating Piper Chapman to the mentally unstable “Crazy Eyes,” a chance to tell their story. It is a show about women that isn’t focused on their love lives. It addresses real societal issues, like our prison system, but grounds those themes in goofy moments and deeply-rooted relationships.
Television still has a long way to go in terms of diversity. It would be amazing to see a continuation of the groundbreaking work that women like Shonda Rhimes, Mindy Kaling and Lena Dunham (of “Girls”) have done, with shows that encompass meaningful characters of all backgrounds, races, sizes, etc. But it’s really the film industry that has to catch up. If more films were written with roles that gave complicated and honest depictions of women, perhaps sexism in this country wouldn’t be as pervasive.
