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This weekend my 16-year-old son and I went to see the newest iteration of Little Women based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott. We were among only a handful of men in the theater and the only duo of dudes who weren’t surrounded by wives, mothers or female friends. Indeed, although achieving considerable critical success, supporters of the film have been lamenting the film’s dearth of awards nominations, claiming men are not giving the film a chance or may have unconscious biases toward women’s film and literature.
Does the film deserve some kind of best picture award? I dunno. I tend to find most films that get awards attention to be dull dreck, whether male- or female-focused, so I’m hardly one to judge. My own impression of the film was this: overall, I liked it, but it was hardly my favorite film of all time (or the year). Personally, I prefer the beautiful elegance of something like Blade Runner 2049. I’d say the film had some pacing problems in the first act that made the narrative difficult to follow. The second half of the film was truly inspiring, with standout performances by Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, and Emma Watson. I’d give it 4 stars out of 5. My son was less blown away, said it was “fine” and gave it 2.5 stars, acknowledging it really wasn’t his genre. He did like the humor in it (particularly when people were a bit too honest with each other.)
My son’s reaction is probably characteristic of the film’s “problems” if they can even be called that. There’s nothing wrong with the movie, it just doesn’t have the kind of story that typically appeals to men, young men in particular. This shouldn’t come as a surprise and I doubt even the film’s marketers were amazed by this (among the trailers, there wasn’t a single trailer for an action or horror film). Movie marketers have always known films tend to appeal to quadrants of viewers. There are four basic demographic quadrants: female under 25, female over 25, male under 25, male over 25. Some films manage to nail all four quadrants, but most do not.
That gender influences the appeal of certain narratives isn’t remotely controversial. Some movies are marketed toward men more than women (think movies where stuff blows up a lot), whereas others are marketed more toward women (which can be a whole range of stuff, though one imagines things blow up less). There are likely long-standing evolutionary reasons for this. Males, as hunters and warriors, evolved, on average, to find stories with adventure, violence, and good versus evil to resonate. Women evolutionarily were less involved in hunting or warfare, and, on average, may gravitate more toward narratives with deeper social connections such as Little Women.
Defenders of Little Women who lament poor male attendance are wrong to suggest men are disinclined toward women’s stories. Men just like narratives about women who blow stuff up. Examine, for instance, the phenomenal success of the 2017 Wonder Woman movie (despite it’s being tied to the otherwise dismal DC franchise.) Men and women both lined up to see it and, though I don’t follow screen awards closely, my impression is that the film was mostly ignored by the big-screen awards despite all the teeth-gnashing over “women’s films.” There are other excellent examples of women characters leading “men’s” films—from Captain Marvel to Rey in Star Wars or even slashers like Happy Death Day. I’m skeptical of the idea that men don’t want to watch women in film; it's that more men, on average, are reluctant to watch anybody, men or women, talk a lot without things blowing up.
I’m obviously painting with some broad strokes regarding the impact of gender on film viewership. But my point is that none of this should come as a surprise, particularly given this is about the billionth iteration of Little Women and, more importantly, there’s nothing wrong with this.
What is a legitimate concern is if, among the voters for film awards, men are overrepresented. This could obviously give undue weight to men’s films and doesn’t require anything like unconscious bias, an increasingly pseudo-scientific idea that’s in trouble as a serious research-based concept. But shaming people into seeing a film that doesn’t appeal to them seems counterproductive to me.
By all means see Little Women, or don’t.
