faustus: (Default)
faustus ([personal profile] faustus) wrote2008-11-13 02:00 pm
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Next: The Pope's Toilet and the Religion of Bears

Is the books world short-changing its bright young women?

Do men have an unfair advantage in our literary prize shortlists?


A variation on why don't women write books with big ideas (to which the answer is, I suspect, if they do it doesn't get counted as a big idea) which also then takes in why don't women present big documentaries?

What was the last female fronted documentary - leaving aside Cash in the Attic, Car Boot Challenge and whatever the Channel 4 sex show was called? These clearly don't stand up there with Schama, Winston, Starkey, Ferguson etc. Those art programmes with a nun and Victoria Wood on empire is the best I can do. But authored documentaries? Even when Paglia and Greer are doing stuff, it tends to be one off.

On the short list issue, I confess to a certain amount of "Well Zadie Smith gets everywhere" - but there's the old line about swallows and summers, and I got there by thinking "That Brick Lane woman, whatsername", although I was thinking about Zadie Smith despite going via a book by Monica Ali (Ali Smith was the mental jump).

The writer suggests that we don't like pushy women so they don't get onto shortlists. Or to do documentaries.
ext_6283: Brush the wandering hedgehog by the fire (Default)

[identity profile] oursin.livejournal.com 2008-11-13 03:23 pm (UTC)(link)
While media commissioning editors are probably not looking for middle-aged, greyhaired, and not notably stylish* female historian/archivists to front their programmes, I suspect that they're also not looking for someone who is going to resist their tendency to tell things in nice neat sound-bitey stories and go 'It's All More Complicated' at every opportunity.

*I just don't see a woman with the general sartorial presence of the late great Roy Porter (bless 'im)** making it onto the small screen anytime in the near future.

**The 'been sleeping rough on the Embankment' look for which RP was famous.

[identity profile] drasecretcampus.livejournal.com 2008-11-13 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I'd let out a most considerable hoot if I heard that Channel 4 had given you a six part series on, say, Victorian sex and sexuality, or even on making bread rolls. But there's a definite double standard.

It struck me over the last couple of weeks in discussing female comedians in class that we were making comments on physical appearance (Jo Brand, Kathy Burke, Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman) than we wouldn't if we were talking about male comedians. (I hope it's something that I've been aware of for rather longer, but it foreably struck me this week)

[identity profile] buffysquirrel.livejournal.com 2008-11-13 07:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Oooh, yes, oursin on the telly! And I could jump up and down and go, "I know her! I know her!" in true fangirly fashion.