Cameryn Lang

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Sarah Bay Cheng
April 2023

Finally Female Voices in Film: An Analysis of Greta Gerwig

Film has always been an extremely male dominated industry, especially behind the

camera. In a world where Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, Christopher Nolan and Quentin

Tarantino are the first names you think of when you hear the word director it is refreshing to see

that finally that is beginning to shift. Women are finally starting to breakthrough and create art

that depicts the female experience in a way that it never has been before. While there is still so

much more work that needs to be done and voices that need to be heard, the actor, director and

writer that made me realize this was Greta Gerwig. Greta Gerwig has become a trailblazer for

female directors and creatives due to her focus on the stories of women in her work and

consistent use of the feminist lens. This is evident in her films Lady Bird and Little Women.

While astill learning how to create an inclusive environment in a white male dominated industry.

Gerwigs work has connected to this generation through her ability to depict the female

experience in an empathetic, genuine and messy way. Her work has inspired many young women

to pursue their own directing careers when they thought it would never be possible.

Greta Gerwig was born and raised in a middle class family in Sacramento, California.

She found her love of performing through taking part in the theater at the all girls Catholic

school that she attended. While her original dream was to pursue musical theater she ended up

attending Barnard College in New York City majoring in English. Her move to New York is

what lit the spark for her love of film and creating art. While finishing up her degree she began

acting in low budget indie films. She became a familiar face within the indie sub genre of

“mumble-core” which was known for dialogue heavy films. According to the 2018 TIME
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magazine article Gerwig felt as if this time auditioning and working on low budget films served

as a substitute for film school. She continued to act in roles in films such as 2007’s Hannah

Takes the Stairs and later wrote and starred in 2008’s Nights and Weekends. But it wasn’t until

her collaboration with writer and director Noah Baumbach, that she would start to find her voice

in film. Starting with their first collaboration Greenberg (2010) and their hit Frances Ha (2012)

that would grant Gerwig her first Academy Award nomination. Then finally in 2017 Gerwig

made her directorial debut with her critically acclaimed and semi autobiographical film Lady

Bird. A coming of age story about a girl going through her final year of high school in

Sacramento, dealing with struggles with identity, relationship with her mother and experiencing

love and loss for the first time. Shortly after Gerwig released her highly anticipated retelling of

the Louisa May Alcott book Little Women in 2019. Gerwig’s Little Women (2019) would go on

to be nominated for a host of awards including Best Picture. Throughout this time she has

continued to act in 20th Century Woman (2016), Jackie (2016) and Isle of Dogs (2018). She is

now married to her longtime collaborator Noah Baumbach who she shares two children with.

Now audiences are waiting for her highly anticipated film Barbie (2023), which is set to release

this summer.

Gerwig does an incredible job of capturing the female experience through her film Lady

Bird and using the feminist lens to change a story like in her retelling of Little Women. Gerwig

has an ability to create a film that causes audiences to cry, laugh and discover things about their

own lives. The film that would catapult Gerwig into a household name was her debut Lady Bird

(2017). An extremely personal film to Gerwig due to the semi autobiographical nature, she

depicts the mother daughter relationship that so many experience but so few speak about. In the
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2018 Time article they state, “on movie screens from Sacramento to Brooklyn, women and girls

are seeing themselves reflected in all their warts and glory: Mothers whose love for their

daughters has at times filtered messily through envy and resentment.”, it was extremely

refreshing to see the true relationship that teen girls experience with their mothers and not the

polished and perfect depictions that we have seen so many times before. Gerwig has so much

compassion for her characters but never strays away from making them appear odd or unlikeable

which is extremely evident with her main character Lady Bird. Lady Bird is often rude and

annoying but she can also be wise and creative. She experiences so many things throughout the

film that so many women have experienced before her. Getting your heart broken, fighting with a

best friend, applying to college are all things that many experience alone. Lady Bird’s naive

feeling that no one understands her is just so relatable to those who have lived through it and

those who are currently living through their teen years. So many look back on their youth and

regret how selfish and resentful they were to their mothers and vice versa. This film showed

young women the perspective of women and the film's critical acclaim only proves that their

stories are worth telling even if they don’t fit in the box that generations of men have forced

upon them.

Gerwig’s second film Little Women (2019) is a retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s story

through a feminist lense. Gerwigs film brought life to characters that were beginning to feel a bit

old and tired and created a whole new generation of Little Women fans. What made Gerwig's

version so beloved was her choice to make a few artistic changes that strayed from the original

1868 novel. In past versions it was always focused on the love story between the second eldest

March sister, Jo and their wealthy neighbor Laurie. In Gerwig’s rendition she manages to keep
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the parts of the book that audiences know and love while writing a script that is compelling to

modern audiences and aware of modern issues. Gerwig wrote and directed a world where these

young women from a time so long ago feel like real sisters that as an audience we fall in love

with. Sisterhood and the various paths women take in the civil war era was the true focus in the

2019 film. While the main character Jo had always had feminist and radical views in earlier

adaptations of Little Women, it is in Gerwig's film that she shines the brightest. In the film the

character of Jo and Louisa May Alcott are intertwined into the same person and as narrator. This

makes the most difference in the end of the film when her book editor encourages her to

shoehorn a romantic interest for Jo. Gerwig leaves the storyline up to the audience’s

interpretation, in Ambidextrous Authorship: Greta Gerwig And The Politics Of Women’s Genres

Patricia White states, “While these images of closure are objectively part of the film we are

watching, the viewer can’t be entirely sure whether the writer Jo accepts the Professor or whether

they are visualizations of what happens to character Jo in the novel when her creator capitulates

to her publisher’s demand.” showing that it was not necessary for Jo to end up with a man. In

Gerwig's version the story is not a continuous narrative but flashes back and forth from the past

to the present giving a stark contrast to the joys of youth and harsh reality of adulthood as a

woman at that time. This is very evident through the character of Amy March, Gerwig’s writing

and direction made a once hated character into a fan favorite. In earlier adaptations Amy was

depicted as a spoiled brat who then steals the only man that Jo ever loved, while Gerwig creates

a real woman that we as an audience can empathize with. Amy is told that she is the only hope

for a bright future for her family and that is through becoming a proper lady and marrying a rich

man Ambidextrous Authorship: Greta Gerwig And The Politics Of Women’s Genres Patricia
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White states “Gerwig’s film accomplishes, for many reviewers, the redemption of little sister

Amy, who saw the contradictions of femininity plainly and wasn’t afraid to play the cards she’d

been dealt.” Amy saw marriage as her only path to freedom and security, she just was not

ashamed of it. Greta Gerwig’s filmography has consistently given audiences a new perspective

and gave voices to women that we all know and relate to. It is through these two very different

films that Gerwig is creating coming of age films that genuinely connect to women and not just

how men think women feel.

While Greta Gerwig has been vocal about the need to hear unrepresented voices she still

has work to do on her own. Her films are widely known to be interpretations of life through the

female gaze; she does leave out so many different perspectives in her work. In both Lady Bird

and Little Women the majority of the cast are white and Greta herself is a heterosexual white

woman. It is not only heterosexual white women who come of age, all women do and they

deserve to see their own stories come to life. As discussed in Broey Deschanell’s video essay

Greta Gerwig, Representation and, the Universal Girl, Greta receives systemic advantages that

other directors and filmmakers would not receive. It is those who have the advantage that should

be helping to project the intersectional voices. Being a part of any community that is not white

cis male, people are met with discrimination but not all discrimination is equal. In the film

industry specifically representation is a huge problem that people are slowly beginning to

address but BIPOC individuals who represent as female are at even more of a disadvantage. In

Can the Subaltern Speak, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak finishes their essay with, “Within the

effaced itinerary of the subaltern subject, the track of sexual difference is doubly effected. The

question is not of female participation in insurgency, or the ground rules of the sexual division of
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labor, for both of which there is ‘evidence.’ It is, rather, that, both as object of colonialist

historiography and as subject of insurgency, the ideological construction of gender keeps the

male dominant. If, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot

speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow. . . .” In order for women’s voices

to be heard it is important that the industry as a whole makes actual change to be more inclusive.

Greta Gerwig is directing the upcoming Barbie movie, which could easily be the most non

inclusive cast of all time considering Barbie has always been a white, blonde, cisgender woman.

Gerwig is seemingly going in a different direction and has casted people of various ethnicities,

genders and sexualities to be playing the characters of Barbie and Ken and the plot will be a

critique on the famous doll company itself. Hopefully as time passes all directors will actually

take the critiques they are being given and start making film a community that all are welcome

too. It appears that women are more prone to making systemic change to create more inclusive

environments, 2018 Time article states, “A 2015 report by the Center for the Study of Women in

Television and Film found that female directors and producers were more likely than men to hire

women to serve other key roles on set. Women comprised more than half of the writing staff on

female-directed films but only 8% on male-directed films. Editors and cinematographers fared

significantly better as well. Women in film, in other words, beget women in film.” This proves

that men really need to jump on board as women are already making change in this industry.

Greta Gerwig has become a trailblazer for female directors and creatives due to her focus

on the stories of women in her work and consistent use of the feminist lens which is evident in

her films Lady Bird and Little Women. While also still learning how to create an inclusive

environment in a white male dominated industry. After watching Greta Gerwig’s film Lady Bird
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April 2023

in 2017 I was immediately inspired. Before then I had always felt as though I was only ever

meant to be an actor, but when I had turned my tv off I couldn’t help but think that I was capable

of writing something like that. It wasn’t an adventure in a place I'd never been before, it wasn’t a

dramatic romance, it was just a young girl figuring life out. Which was exactly what I was doing

at the time. While I still went to theater school and pursued acting, this film was always in the

back of my head. When I finally watched Gerwig's film Little Women during the pandemic I fell

into a rabbit hole of her work. This is what finally pushed me to see that I could do so much

more than just act. I could write, direct, do whatever I wanted even if it made me uncomfortable

or I felt like I wasn’t ready. I knew that that was what I needed to do. Gerwig’s acting is so

incredibly likable but awkward and it was something that I resonated with and finally felt like I

saw a character on screen who felt like me. Since I fell down the rabbit hole of Greta Gerwig I

have taken so many more chances and pushed myself to write my first screenplay and I owe that

all to Lady Bird.

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Sarah Bay Cheng
April 2023

Works Cited

Berman, Eliza. “How Greta Gerwig and 'Lady Bird' Proved the Industry Wrong.” Time,

Time, 1 Mar. 2018, https://time.com/5180697/how-greta-gerwig-is-leading-by-example/.

By. “Can the Subaltern Speak? by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.” Reading the

Periphery.org, 18 Dec. 2017, https://readingtheperiphery.org/spivak/.

Gerwig, Greta, and Louisa May Alcott. “Little Women.” Netflix,

https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81140933.

Gerwig, Greta, et al. “Lady Bird.” Amazon, Universal Pictures Germany GmbH, 2017,

https://www.amazon.com/Lady-Bird-Saoirse-Ronan/dp/B07734STRN.

“Greta Gerwig, Representation and the Universal Girl .” YouTube, 28 June 2022,

https://youtu.be/0p-cBSqIDbQ. Accessed 8 Apr. 2023.

“Greta Gerwig.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.,

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Greta-Gerwig.

White, Patricia. “Ambidextrous Authorship: Greta Gerwig and the Politics of Women's

Genres.” Works, https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-film-media/68/.