Geena Davis was inspired to study female representation in media after she noticed a lack of female characters in children's shows she watched with her young daughter. Photo / Getty
She played one half of the famous Thelma and Louise on a road trip which sees the women shooting dead a man trying to rape Thelma, robbing a convenience store and firing a fuel tanker at a rude truckie.
It was 1991 and signaled a change, a far cry from the Hollywood boys club in which women just played the supportive wife, girlfriend or best friend.
But how far did the film industry come in the following years? Not far enough. In 2004, Geena Davis was inspired to launch the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and study female representation in media after she noticed a lack of female characters in children's shows she watched with her young daughter.
The 66-year-old Oscar winner is leading a host of stars at Auckland's Power of Inclusion summit next week which focuses on the importance of inclusivity, including ethnic minorities and LGBT people. Joanna Mathers reports.
There's a saying in the entertainment world that goes: "If you can see it, you can be it." You can be a Polynesian princess who saves the world. A female freedom fighter, a programmer or an engineer. A transgender superstar; or part of a happy, homosexual family.
It's an aphorism based on quantifiable fact. When CSI premiered in 2000, within five years there was a 50 per cent increase in forensic science graduates in the United States. A disproportionately large percentage of these grads were women.
Why? Because of the increased visibility of females on screen, engaged in the dirty, challenging, and sometimes gut-wrenching work of forensic investigation.
Julie Ann Crommett delivered this fact at a TED talk entitled How a TV show could help us solve our most pressing problems. As the vice-president of multicultural audience engagement at Disney, she's on the coalface of change and inclusion. And she believes that screen visibility can changes lives.
Shows that star women, ethnic minorities or LGBT people change the perceptions of young people. And they open up worlds for young people who identify with these characters: a glimpse into their own potential.
Crommett (alongside local and international film and television luminaries including Geena Davis, Niki Caro, and Oscar Kightley) will be presenting her insights around the importance of inclusivity at The Power of Inclusion summit.
Held on October 3-4 at Auckland's Aotea Centre, it will focus industry attention on how vital representation, belonging and inclusion are for industry sustainability.
The structures (and strictures) of power are starting to tumble within the entertainment world. The "white, male" entertainment industry paradigm has been rocked by the Harvey Weinstein revelations and #MeToo, but even prior to this the old order was being challenged.
Speaking on the phone from Los Angeles, Crommett says that change is palpable.
"The movement is real," she says, words tumbling out with delighted surety.
Disney, that old peddler of dolly blondes and chisel-jawed heroes, is at the forefront of the change. It created the Pasifika female heroine Moana and Coco, a Mexican Day of the Dead celebration of Latino culture.
Next up is Aladdin. Crommett and her team are involved in every aspect of the production to ensure the authenticity of its vision.
"We want to ensure we are true to the original text. We have developed partnerships with community consultants and experts [in Middle Eastern history] to ensure the film is truly authentic."
Crommett's Disney journey started in 2017 when she took on her role after a three-year tenure at Google as entertainment industry educator-in-chief. Her work involves crafting strategies and delivering outcomes around multicultural engagement across all aspects of Disney's business structure.
"My team looks at what stories we are telling, how we are telling them, and who we are telling them to. We also ensure there is equality of employment opportunities and advancement throughout the company, and that we are building a culture of inclusion."
As reflected by Crommett's role, on-screen visibility is just one component of the inclusion story. Diversity within organisations, and in the board room, is integral to widespread industry change.
Osnat Shurer is the producer of Moana and upcoming feature film Raya and the Last Dragon (which features a fearless and passionate female protagonist). She believes that while change in the ranks of the decision-makers may take time, it will come.
"I was just in a meeting with a woman at Disney who holds a very senior role It is such a joy to see the conversation shift. I've been in meetings in which I've had to battle for female characters to have anything different about their characters, other than not being male. The dialogue is starting to change."
Shurer, who will be speaking about the Moana journey at The Power of Inclusion, says that she was aware from an early age that women were underrepresented on screen.
"For me, the characters that always resonated were strong and independent . . . and therefore male."
She remembers being impressed with Thelma and Louise: the 1991 film in which Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon embark of a road trip that would end with a dramatic off-the-cliff dive to death.
"But because they were strong women, they had to die," she says, wryly.
The Moana journey began for her when she met with Ron Clements and John Musker ("They are the elders in the world of animation") and was presented with a concept based around Pacific Island mythology.
"Ron and John had been reading a lot of the myths and stories from the Pacific Islands," she says. "There were a lot of great ideas being floated around the time they had come up with the concept for such a movie, but this really resonated with me."
Clements and Musker embarked on their own journey around the Pacific: sitting under the stars, by the sea, as orators wove their stories and hymns were sung: "They came back transformed," says Shurer.
Through word-of-mouth connections made while travelling, Māori actor and film-maker Taika Waititi was brought on board to draft the first script.
"We had seen Boy and it was something that we really connected with. Taiki did the first part of the script, but he wasn't able to continue due to other commitments. But from there the story really took off in a completely different direction."
During the five years it took to produce Moana, Shurer also travelled around the Pacific. She has made a few trips to New Zealand during this time ("It's a remarkable country") and also visited Tahiti and Samoa.
"The opportunity to dive deeply into a culture I wasn't familiar with was just incredible for me," she says.
It was throughout this time that she "organically" set up the Oceanic Story Trust, a group of Polynesian musicians, anthropologists, experts in ritual and tradition, orators, weavers and biologists. This group was integral to the production, providing ongoing feedback (and criticism when necessary) and ensuring the authenticity of voices, storytelling, sound and visuals within Moana.
She believes the success of Moana - which took in US$643.3 million (NZ$1.02 billion) - is because the specificity of the story and the culture struck a universal note.
"Who hasn't been that person, trying to balance their duty with their dreams?" she says. "The fact that it is presented from a different cultural perspective than people are used to makes it even more powerful."
Specificity that speaks of the universal is the marker of any good story. And in order for the specificity to transcend its time and place, it needs to transcend the mono-cultural experience that Western cinema has so long peddled.
The Power of Inclusion is underpinned by this truth. The creators and tellers of the tales we see on screen must be drawn every colour, gender and ability. Not only does it more fully reflect the world we inhabit, it also makes financial sense.
As Annabelle Sheehan, chief executive of the New Zealand Film Commission, explains: "Diversity and inclusion are good business."
(A quick aside. A survey conducted in 2015 by worldwide management consulting firm McKinsey and Company revealed that companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity were 35 per cent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians. Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 per cent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.)
Sheehan is keen to point out that The Power of Inclusion is a business conference, as much as anything else.
"In attendance will be executives, with strong and impressive careers, from many different backgrounds. There will be big opportunities for connections to be made."
The New Zealand film industry is held in high esteem internationally, and having such a high-profile conference on our shores is a major coup. The Power of Inclusion is a joint venture between Disney and New Zealand Film Commission, with the concept mooted well over a year ago.
"There have long been discussions between ourselves and Disney around the importance of having such a conversation," says Sheehan.
She says that the summit presents an opportunity for New Zealand to lead the debate around inclusion and diversity and for our industry to be a strong driver for change.
"Different speakers will be talking about what it means to be a woman/a man/Asian/African/European/straight/gay/trans. It will look at how we expand on these discussions, to make a tangible difference in the industry."
Māori film-makers are at the forefront of our international film presence. Taika Waititi and Temuera Morrison, for example, have forged a path for young Māori actors and film-makers who want to break into Hollywood.
But it was Merata Mita that led the way. With work including Patu! a documentary on the 1981 Springbok tour, and Mauri (1988) only the second feature film to have a Māori woman director, her aim was to "decolonise the screen".
Her son Heperi Mita took these words for the title of his beautiful tribute Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen (2018), which has been released on Netflix. Featuring archival footage of Merata, he also travelled the world to gather stories about his mother, who died in 2010.
He will be one of the opening speakers for The Power of Inclusion and will be discussing the power of his mother's contribution to New Zealand film-making.
He believes that the summit is an interesting juxtaposition of past, present and future.
"The past is represented by my mum's struggle as a Māori woman forging a path in the film industry in the early 80s. The present [is] the journey following her footsteps 40 years later, culminating in the release of my film through Netflix.
"And the future, represented by the summit itself: A gathering of storytellers who have broken through the boundaries of prejudice and offer inspirational models from which we can build from."
Speaking of the future, New Zealand actor Rachel House believes the next generation has it sussed.
"The boldness of the younger generation coming through is particularly inspiring, they get on and make the material pertinent to them and put it out into the world without going through the usual red tape."
She believes that a commitment to diversity of colour, sexuality, and gender is gathering momentum in the New Zealand industry.
"There is, I think, a more focussed commitment to multicultural voices and women by the funding bodies ensuring the content we see now is very different (and more relevant) to the content produced in the past."
But, sadly, there are still those who want to appropriate the stories of others.
"There are still gatekeepers who feel they have the right to tell indigenous stories with writers or directors who have little understanding of our culture, but there is finally a willingness or at the very least a conversation by some non-indigenous producers to ensure this is changing."
House believes that the key to the changing dynamics of the industry has been the advent of the internet: "Geez, I'm old," she laughs.
"The internet wasn't there when I started out. [Today] we're all reaching out to each other and gathering together to make change or question systems, governance and lack of visibility."
She says it's been a slow rise, and "a hell of an important one". After all, the stories made in our industry should reflect who and what is out there."
Words are important. Summits such as The Power of Inclusion are important. But after the wash-up, what will we be left with?
Sheehan hopes that words will influence action. "By providing such inspirational role models, I really hope that people will leave with a new vision."
She also hopes for changes at a structural level. At the level of decision-making, in the boardrooms of the giant film companies worldwide.
Jacinda Ardern will be speaking at the summit. A young woman with a massive job, a baby, and a partner who is the primary caregiver.
She's the sort of role model we need to see on our screens.
"She is an inspiring woman, and having her as Prime Minister points to the fact that leadership is changing," says Sheehan. "There are different ways of doing things. Difference is important."
• The Power of Inclusion, October 3-4, Aotea Centre, Auckland
