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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The gendered contexts of screenwriting work Socialized recruitment and judgments of taste and talent in the UK film industry Wreyford, Natalie Louise Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 The gendered contexts of screenwriting work: socialized recruitment and judgments of taste and talent in the UK film industry. Natalie Wreyford A thesis submitted to the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London for the Degree of Doctor in Philosophy, London, September 2015 1 Declaration I certify that the work presented in this thesis is my own with all references cited accordingly, and that the word limit does not exceed that prescribed in the College regulations. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. This thesis may not be reproduced without prior written consent, but will be made available for public reference in the library of King’s College London. 2 Acknowledgments I am extremely grateful to everyone who participated in my research and gave their time and thoughts so generously. I would like to say a huge thank you to my supervisors, Dr Christina Scharff, whose wisdom and insight guided me through the majority of my research and Dr Bridget Conor, who gallantly took the reigns with much needed expertise and encouragement in my final stages. Both of them have shown me such generosity and support and truly exemplify how incredibly rewarding it can be to work with feminist academics. I am so grateful to you both for your advice and friendship and sincerely hope we can find ways to work together in the future. My thanks also to Professor Ros Gill for her early encouragement and continued support and interest in my work. Finally, thanks to King’s College London and in particular the department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries for providing the context and perfect home for my research. Writing this thesis would not have been possible without the support of my family. In particular I want to thank my mum, who put me up to it in the first place and who has been inexhaustibly supportive and inspirational my whole life, and my dad, who brought me up to question authority and fight for the underdog. Special thanks to my husband, Nathan, for his love and for going out to work every day and taking the children away from me on Sundays. He has been on every step of this journey with me and reminded me of the importance of my work when I have doubted it. And to my wonderful children, Honor, Seth and Ellie, all of whom have shown me first hand the ridiculousness of gender stereotypes as well as the dangers, who make me smile every day and who inspire me to make the world a better place. I dedicate this thesis to female screenwriters everywhere, especially those who have never written a word. 3 Abstract A substantial amount of data is available to illustrate just how few films have women in key creative positions, and how little the situation is changing. Critical sociological studies of work in creative industries have revealed a reestablishment of inequality along traditional lines such as gender but reasons for this continued inequality has only recently become a focus of creative labour studies. This thesis examines the dynamics of socialized recruitment processes that rely on subjective judgments of creative talent and ability. I identify the rhetorical work done in the UK film industry whereby these practices have become accepted as natural and unproblematic even by those they seemingly disadvantage. It is informed by key thinking from the fields of creative industries, cultural studies and gender and work, and introduces new empirical data from interviews with screenwriters and their employers, to examine how inequality of opportunity is sustained through structural and subjective mechanisms that are not held accountable through equal opportunities policies. Using a Bourdieusian framework I will consider how success in creative work is less attributable to qualifications and experience than to social, economic and particularly cultural capital and the right habitus. I contend that symbolic violence is used to suppress the very discourse of the experience of women by disallowing their voices to be heard in sufficient variety as authors of feature film screenplays. My study of screenwriting labour offers a more complex explanation than is provided by the usual justifications for the lack of women in key creative roles. In this way I contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms that perpetuate gender inequality in creative professions. 4 CONTENTS Declaration ................................................................................................................. 2 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ...................................................................................................................... 4 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 7 1. SCREENWRITERS: THE INVISIBLE LABOURERS .......................................... 14 1.1. Creative careers in a project-based labour market. ........................................... 16 1.2. Careers in the film industry. ............................................................................. 19 1.3. Film labour supply and demand. ...................................................................... 26 1.4. Who writes films? ............................................................................................. 31 1.5. Who employs screenwriters? ............................................................................ 37 1.6. Conclusion. ....................................................................................................... 40 2. GENDER AND THE CREATIVE WORKPLACE ................................................. 42 2.1. What is a woman? ............................................................................................. 45 2.2. Thinking about gender with Bourdieu. ............................................................. 49 2.3. Post-feminism and beyond. .............................................................................. 53 2.4. Creating difference, creating creatives. ............................................................ 56 2.5. Conclusion. ....................................................................................................... 64 3. RESEARCH METHODS: SEARCHING FOR TRUTH AND THE WOMEN WHO AREN’T THERE. ..................................................................................................... 67 3.1. Truth, validity and developing a feminist approach. ........................................ 69 3.2. The messy business of interviewing. ................................................................ 74 3.3. Methodological challenges. .............................................................................. 84 3.3.1. Including the missing women. .............................................................. 84 3.3.2. Articulating discriminatory behaviours. ............................................... 88 3.4. Discourse Analysis. .......................................................................................... 91 3.5. Conclusion. ....................................................................................................... 94 4. “IT’S JUST SOME SORT OF MAGIC THAT YOU GO AND DO”: DISCURSIVE WORK IN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT SCREENWRITERS AND THEIR EMPLOYMENT. ...................................................................................................... 95 4.1. Discourses of creativity and meritocracy in talk of screenwriting work. ......... 97 4.1.1. The screenwriter as special creative individual. ................................... 97 4.1.2. The myth of meritocracy. .................................................................... 102 4.2. Alternative discourses in the talk of screenwriters and their employers. ....... 105 4.2.1. Creativity and collaboration. ..............................................................