Day 15 - Meta - Statistically Speaking: The Women of Babylon 5

[muccamukk]

[A/N: This was originally posted on my now-deleted tumblr in August 2013.]

Trekkiefeminist has been running a Behind the Camera week over on her Star Trek blog, and her mention of D.C. Fontana made me think of doing the same for Babylon 5.

I guess I should preface this by saying that Babylon 5 is, and probably always will be, my favourite TV show. I love it with all the passion of a fourteen year old, even with the insight of an adult. It also has two of my favourite female characters of all time: Susan Ivanova and Delenn, as well as several other women who I love very much (and wow, do I sten for Liz Lochley when provoked). I would wholeheartedly support the statement "Babylon 5 has the best women." Because, seriously, Delenn and Ivanova are the best. Also, ♥.♥

However, when people start saying that B5 did the best ever at representing women, I start to make frowny faces at said people. Because of that is the future, there’s been some kind of calamity that’s knocked the female population back to somewhere between a quarter and a third of the whole, just saying. And that’s humans. Aliens just don’t seem to need as many women as we do. Like three is totally fine.

Behind the camera, the situation is just as bad if not worse.


Behind the camera

Only 7% of directors, 13% of writers, and 20% of producers are female. With such a dearth of female representation in front of and behind the camera, it’s a struggle to champion female stories and voices. The [Geena Davis] Institute’s research proves that female involvement in the creative process is imperative for creating greater gender balance before production even begins. There is a causal relationship between positive female portrayals and female content creators involved in production. In fact, when even one woman writer works on a film, there is a 10.4% difference in screen time for female characters. Sadly, men outnumber women in key production roles by nearly 5 to 1.

Why we should care who’s behind the camera [x] [A/N: Somewhere on here, the page has changed since I posted it.]

Out of 110 Episodes (I’m not counting “The Gathering” or any of the movies):
98 episodes were written by J. Michael Straczynski (two of those co-written with Harlan Ellison)

18 episodes were written by other people (5 of those by women, 4.5 % of the the whole, but 27.8% of ones not by JMS)
Larry DiTillio wrote 7
D. C. Fontana wrote 3
Peter David wrote 2
Neil Gaiman, Scott Frost, Christy Marx, Kathryn M. Drennan, Marc Scott Zicree and David Gerrold each wrote 1
(personally, I could have lived with less DiTillio, and rather more Fontana and Drennan, but oh well).

14 episodes (12.7%) were directed by women:
Janet Greek directed 12 (tied for third most of any director working on the series)
Lorraine Senna Ferrara and Kim Friedman each directed 1

I… don’t really know much about production, but it looks like Susan Norkin was the only woman involved in more than a handful of episodes (she worked as associate producer on 44 episodes). There were seven other dudes.


In front of the camera

We had 18 actors show up in the opening credits, across five seasons; seven of those were women (38.9%).

7 out of 18 doesn’t look too bad, until you realise that most of these roles are replacing each other. Mira Furlan is the only actress on the entire series who did not leave for one reason or another. Patricia Tallman replaced Andrea Thompson; Tracy Scoggins replaced Claudia Christian; Mary Kay Adams replaced Caitlin Brown, and then also left. The only time the men did that was Bruce Boxleitner replacing Michael O’Hare. (And I guess you could argue that Jason Carter replaced Robert Rusler, as they were both meant to be something like pretty boys, but it seemed like they played characters with very different jobs: a secret agent/paramilitary and a fighter pilot, respectively. As opposed to two telepaths with special powers and conflicted relationships with PsyCorp, two space station command officers with angsty family issues, and two actors literally playing the same character. Though it did keep the numbers even, dude wise, or would have if Jeff Conaway hadn’t also joined the cast in season three).

There were only at best four women on the show at any given time, and usually it was three. It was not a show that spent a lot of time passing Bechdel, especially after Talia Winters left.

So it actually looked like, by opening credits:
Season One: 11 people, 4 of them women
Season Two: 12 people, 4 of them women (essentially 3, as Adams was barely there)
Season Three: 11 people, 2 of them women (essentially 3, as either Thompson or Tallman were there most of the time)
Season four: 12 people, 3 of them women
Season five: 11 people, 3 of them women

The show also suffered from Default Dude syndrome, where many of the secondary characters were men. Why? Because why would they be women?

Reoccurring female characters (as opposed to, say, David Corwin, Kosh, Mr. Morden, Bester, Lorien, Byron, Draal, Ta’Lon, Refa, Neroon, Brother Theo, Cartagia, Zathras (all of them), Morgan Clark, William Edgars, David Sheridan, Senator Hidosh, most of the League ambassadors, and several more-forgettable people):
C&C Tech: 20 episodes
Computer: 18 Episodes
Jane the ISN anchor: 10 episodes
Lise Hampton: 9 episodes
Number One/Tessa Holloran: 7 episodes
Kat the Bartender: 4 episodes
Anna Sheridan: 4 episodes
Catherine Sakai: 3 episodes
Alison Higgins: 3 episodes
Lilian Hobbs: 3 episodes
ISN reporter: 3 episodes
Adira Tyree: 2 episodes
Mary Ann Cramer: 2 episodes
ISN Anchor: 2 episodes
Elizabeth Durman: 2 episodes
Med Tech: 2 episodes
Psi Cop: 2 episodes
ISN Anchor: 2 episodes
Med Tech: 2 Episodes

Of the 19 of them, 9 didn’t get last names and one was a computer. Interestingly, only one was an alien, though a couple of actresses did play multiple alien characters and thus were in more than one episode.

Now of course they were many, many great female characters who appeared for one show only, and I did appreciate that in crowed scenes or meetings of officers, there tended to be some gender and racial diversity. Someone with more time than I currently have can run those numbers. I’d also love to see how many episodes pass Bechdel.

Comments

[sysann]

This is incredibly interesting and definitely food for more thought. (Although I guess it's mostly going to result in desperate sighs and "let's write more fanfic for the ladies".) --- I have a very, very bad feeling that we're going to have a hard time with the Bechdel test for a lot of episodes. At least if we expect a little more than a two-line conversation about work or two women being in the same room while having a conversation with a whole group. Also... "men as the topic" is a bad one for B5. But hey, Midnight on the Firing Range passes.

Susan and Talia are talking about Sofie. :) So that'd qualify as a significant conversation about something other then men, right?

[muccamukk]

More fanfic for the ladies seems like a solid solution to me.

I think people over at Mark Watches have been doing a running count of Bechdel passes. And about 20% pass? Something. Talia leaving definitely tanked the numbers, though there was that brief but glorious period at the start of season four where Delenn, Susan and Lyta were running the war.

[sysann]

Sadly most of what I've written for our ladies is in drabble form so far. I really need to try and write longer stories for them. --- But of course it would be much better if *you* were to write those stories. You know, well written stories would be a lot more fun? :) And we definitely need to enlist Avery, too... <3

I can imagine how Talia leaving was a drawback. (Although in my book, Susan/Delenn would've been a fantastic replacement. Whether they'd just got the screen time to explore their friendship or to see those two get romantically entangled...) --- The sad part about them being amazing is that they team up to save a guy, which fails, and it ends up with another guy needing to save them instead. I mean I love Lennier, but I was kinda miffed that he was the only one thinking clearly enough to avoid getting trapped on Z'Ha'Dum.

What's promising though is who we have as our President of the Interstellar Alliance & Anla'Shok'Na post Sleeping... just give them some time grieve for John and they can have a fantastic new life ahead of themselves. <3

[muccamukk]

I seem to wander in and out of this fandom, fic wise. I only reliably seem to write for it for this fest and fandom stocking, sometimes exchanges. It's really nice to have new people like you, because for a while there there were about four people in the femslash side of things, all writing fic for each other. Which got a BIT old, even though I liked their fic.

I definitely would have been fine with the AU where John stayed dead and Susan/Delenn was the endgame ship. Oh well. I would have liked the one where Talia stayed and ended up with the Byron plot, too.

[sysann]

Well that's very relatable. And perhaps that's how your writing stays so vibrant and awesome. So while I'd love to see you write more, I'm going to wait till you're done, not try and plead. (And hey, I'll be happy with the Jeff/Michael if that's what's currently your favorite path. I can very much relate to mixing things up. There are endless possibilities.) - I can see how the same four people writing something might not necessarily remain new and fresh for years. I've encountered that in other fandoms over the years. :)

I'm far too drawn to "what if..." scenarios of any kind. Both making things better for a character or making things worse. Just... different. Sheridan never arriving on B5 would be another option. Or him falling head over heels for someone else. -Of course Sheridan just passing when he does in Sleeping still leaves room for exploration. And then there's the version where Sheridan and Delenn simply have an open relationship... or they could work side by side without getting involved... so many possibilities. :D-

[shy_magpie]

Which is a darn shame because they did a decent job writing women when they bothered. As you pointed out, more women behind the camera would have helped with that as well as being a worthy goal in itself.

[muccamukk]

Yes, though I wish there had been more relationships between them. But on the whole, some of my favourite female characters ever, so it's not the most dire problem to have.

I wish Fontana and Drennan had written more though, especially in season five, when there were so many filler episodes anyway.

[hamsterwoman]

This is really interesting -- thank you very much for compiling/sharing this analysis!

As always with such things, it's kind of shocking to see how low the numbers look in an actual quantitative breakdown, since a lot of the women who *are* there are so vibrant and memorable (Delenn! Ivanova! Na'Toth! <3)

[muccamukk]

I think it's the background characters that made a difference. Often in one off war room scenes, there were women soldiers and pilots and stuff, but when it came to characters that got names and showed up and tertiary roles like Corwin, it was largely men.

I really wish Caitlin Brown hadn't been allergic to her make up. She was fab and would have added a lot to the show if she'd been able to stay.

[kanadka]

super interesting meta! Thanks for sharing :D

and I did appreciate that in crowed scenes or meetings of officers, there tended to be some gender and racial diversity.
a good point, someday I'd like more info on that too. Related, one thing I really appreciated was how many people were in full makeup (e.g. Minbari, Drazi, Narn) going around in the background. Two-ish hours of makeup just to walk by. It's easiest ofc to tell the female Centauri from the male Centauri (the hair) and it seems to me (note tho this is without having actually run the numbers) that there are more male Centauri extras floating around than there were female Centauri. Maybe easier wig, maybe chauvinistic Centauri society (tho I doubt they'd go that far in the analysis on the extras?). But extras maybe don't really .... count? in terms of the kind of analysis that you're going for here - which characters are named, have speaking lines, have speaking lines regarding material that is not men, etc.

In re: behind the camera, this was really interesting information! (I never used to pay attention to these kinds of metrics - who is director, who is the writer, etc - until recently)

It's maybe interesting (?) to note that Season 1 also had a lot of female editor work (Lisa M Citron and Suzanne Sternlicht who between the two of them edited 15/22 episodes). Their work in Season 2, 3, and 4 drops off (6/22, then 7/22, and 7/22 respectively, also only Sternlicht). Kathie Burr edits one ep in season 4 and 8/22 in season 5, so I guess that's another one down for role replacement. Apparently she was assistant editor for at least a third of the episodes in each season before that and all episodes in Season 4. Season 5 starts off with Janet Greek directing again after nearly two full seasons without a female director or writer (Kim Friedman's directed episode is in Season 3). Janet Greek's work is 5 eps in Season 1, 3 in Season 2, and 4 in Season 5, and Lorraine Senna Ferrara's episode was Season 1).

I don't know if any of this is worthwhile to bring up. I don't really know what the job of an editor or assistant editor entails, but I've read that editing is one of the most important yet least appreciated roles behind the scenes and that a lot of male directors routinely get women to edit their work, make it much better than it was, and then assume credit for the final polished product. Anyway, I just thought it might be interesting to see what the breakdown was per-season.

[muccamukk]

I forget if it was JMS or someone else, who said that in the crowd scenes like in the Zocalo they had ten extras, and would do quick changes on them and send them out to walk by the camera again. I think a lot of the Drazi etc were straight up rubber masks so not as long to do.

The editing thing was interesting. I think I was just copying TrekkieFeminist's format, and didn't think to include it.

[kore]

Oh wow, that's interesting -- and I think editing is really important! Look at Mad Max Fury Road and how the GUY director credited his editor wife.

[laurajv]

There’s the haha-only-serious “joke” about how the problem with the Star Wars prequels is that George Lucas divorced his editor.

[kanadka]

Mad Max: Fury Road was actually the exact film I had in mind! It was the reason I started paying attention to film/TV editors in the first place - there was a tumblr post when the movie came out that brought it up with additional cinematographic context of how Mad Max was composed (it's crazy the level of things that I never paid any attention to because this crew clearly went to town on the details, and once your attention is really drawn to these details it's like, you can't not see it, and everywhere else too).

Anyway, good on George Miller for acknowledging his wife's clearly vital and valued editing work (even though praising him for doing what should be reflexive and automatic is ridiculous) and I really hope more people come forward and add to that. Whatever an editor does exactly, it's clear that a good one helps a piece of media become significantly better than it was in its raw form - that's not always an easy skill given the source material sometimes.

[kore]

There were so many good Fury Road posts on Tumblr! I saw one on framing and the 'male gaze' which was pretty amazing -- I think a lot of them were on the yeahIsawthat blog.

this crew clearly went to town on the details, and once your attention is really drawn to these details it's like, you can't not see it, and everywhere else too

It's such a carefully made film, in addition to being a wild adventure. I love it.

[kore]

I missed this on Tumblr! (Sometimes it feels like I miss everything, damn.) This is really thoughtful and good.

[muccamukk]

I don't think it got a lot of play on tumblr at the time. I didn't have a lot of followers. It's one of the few things I saved when I nuked the account though.