Whereas sex
is biological, gender is how one is preserved socially. There are certain
characteristics and behaviours that have been linked with a certain sex, which
would identify a gender but would not necessarily identify a sex.
According
to the World Health Organisation defines
gender as follows ‘”Gender” refers to the socially constructed roles,
behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers
appropriate for men and women. To put it another way: “Male” and “Female” are
sex categories, while “masculine” and ‘feminine” are gender categories”. Sex
and gender are often confused but the World Health Organisation state that men
and women are defined by physiological and biological characteristics.
In this
essay I will be primarily focussing on gender, in particular how the female sex
is represented in animated movies. The types of films I will be talking about
will often be Disney films but I will also talk about smaller studio films such
as the films by Studio Ghibli.
Gender
representation has evolved in animation and there are a few examples where it
has been very successfully represented in animation. But in mainstream cinema
live action films have been far more successful in representation of gender and
otherness. Perhaps this is due to the fact that whereas live action films are
aimed at people of all ages, mainstream animated movies for example are pretty
much always aimed at a younger audience and therefore film producers think that
a character’s gender representation needs to be as obvious as possible; for
example, a female character is featured and she is one of the heroines, in a
Disney film especially she is likely to fit into a very narrow gender
specification; she would most likely be beautiful, thin, young, white, have
long hair and wear a dress.
What the
protagonists all have in common is they all break out of the margins of what is
typically classed as a male hero. In Atlantis the protagonist is not strong and
wears glasses, the hunchback protagonist in The Hunchback of Notre dame is not
a character typically thought of as handsome and in Up, the protagonist is in
his seventies, far older than the typical male hero.
There is a
complete imbalance with gender representation between the two sexes, Hollywood
loves an underdog protagonist, someone who is outside the margins of ‘a typical
hero’ yet most female heroines have stayed firmly in their margins and in
recent history not a lot has changed.
Studio
Ghibli in Japan are an example of an animation studio that in the past has been
very successful in its portrayal of female characters. For example, in the film
Spirited Away the main female
protagonist becomes a strong character and throughout the film is never sitting
around waiting for the male hero to rescue her.
‘I created
a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathise.
It's not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they
draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular
circumstances. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they,
too, have such a wish’.
— Hayao
Miyazaki
But that is
not to say Chirio is by any means perfect. What Miyazaki is able to do with his
female protagonists is make them strong characters but also represent them
honestly. She has flaws, at the start of the film she is winy, a bit spoilt and
sulky but then as the film goes on she harnesses not supernatural powers, but
powers she already has deep inside her to overcome the obstacles she faces.
Miyazaki wanted to represent an ordinary ten year old girl that is as realistic
as possible to give other ten year old girls who watch the movie a positive
role model.
Another
Studio Ghibli film with strong female protagonists is the film Princess
Mononoke. The film is set in a very exterior environment. A girl (San) is
raised by wolves in the forest does not trust humans. The reason for this
distrust becomes evident when the humans who are out for industrialisation
begin using the forest for their own economic gains. Not only is the
protagonist a strong female, but the entire cast is made up of strong females.
Plus they are all multilayered, even the character Lady Eboshi who could be
seen as the villain because she is the leader of the humans and fights for
industrialisation of which is harmful to the forest. But She is sympathetic
because she is fighting a cause she believes is best for the humans and the
entire city love and respect her, men and women alike, the fact that she is a
women is not even mentioned.
Then
there’s San who throughout the film is entirely self reliant, never needing a
man to come to her aid. There is a the male protagonist in Ashitaka, and even
though he is a central part of the film throughout, he is often sidelined due
to the film being primarily about the battle of two strong women who are honest
to their causes. One wants what’s best for her family, a pack of wolves and the
forest, and the other also wants what’s best for her people.
Strong
female protagonists are very common in Hayoa Miyazaki’s films and unlike Disney
films they are not primarily concerned with romance. Occasionally Disney films
break out of their narrow margins.
For
example, in the film Lilo and Stitch, the primary protagonists are not typical
Disney heroes. The elder sister who is in a relationship is not primarily
focussed on her boyfriend; instead she is focussed on looking after her sister
and playing the role of the responsible adult. In fact the boyfriend is simply
represented as that, the boyfriend, not the hero who comes to save the woman
from the baddy, conversely the boyfriend is frequently a side note in the
story. That is not to say that Lilo and her sister Nani are completely strong
and sensible. Lilo is rambunctious and enjoys photographing strangers, a hobby
that could be considered odd. This breaks out of the margins of which animation
falls into in which the female characters have to be sensible and boring to
counter balance the silly male character. Nani, although a strong female
character is also not perfect, she struggles with finding a job to support
herself and her sister leading to a social worker feeling like she might be
able to look after Lilo.
Not only
are the personalities and traits of these characters atypical for Disney
heroines, but so are their physical appearances.
Compared to
Belle from Beauty and the Beast, the Lilo and Nani definitely do not fit the
‘Disney Princess look’ that has become so common in Disney films. Yet, the
physical appearance of what has become the norm for female Disney heroines is
entirely unrealistic. Belle’s waistline is far narrower than any normal human
being and she is also unrealistically skinny. Lilo and Nani’s physical
appearances might look outside the norm compared to other typical Disney films
but in real life, their physical appearances are realistic.
It seems
Disney do now go against tradition to some extent. Frozen is a film where typical gender representation barriers are broken.
To what extent are these barriers broken is debatable because even though
elements of this film go against the norm of typical Disney films, many aspects
are very much traditional. For example towards the beginning of the film, the
main female protagonist Anna falls immediately in love with Hans, a prince. The
characteristics of Anna are often very similar to that of Snow White, a
character who poorly represents the female gender. Snow White is one of the
less successful examples of the female gender because she spends all her time
doing housework and is very happy about that, this is fine if some people are
generally like cleaning, but she is also taken in by the dwarves because she
does all the cooking and the cleaning. Furthermore she represents the damsel in
distress who instead of setting out to defeat the villain herself, waits around
to be rescued.
Back to
Anna, although she is like Snow White at the start and is very naïve. Towards
the end of the film, she sets out to rescue her sister herself instead of
waiting around for the male protagonists to do it for her.
Plus there
is also an interesting spin on the traditional man kisses girl, true love’s
kiss breaks the spell typical Disney ending, that was actually pioneered by
Disney. Instead true love is given a different meaning. Instead of the true
love between a man and a woman, which has become the typical norm in Disney
films, true love is represented through sisterly love. Anna sacrifices herself
to save her sister and this constitutes an act of true love, which then saves
her.
Alison
Bechdel is an American cartoonist who created the comic strip Dykes to Watch
Out For that ran from 1983 to 2008. In her strip a character comes up with the
idea that when you watch a film, does it pass three specifications...
1) Are there at least two women?
2) Do these women talk to each other?
3) About something other than a man?
This idea
went on to become a tool to measure the gender bias in any movie, mainstream or
independent. It is in no way a tool to measure how good a film is, but it does
show how evident the issue of sexism is in modern cinema. To prove this, around
round fifty percent of contemporary movies do not pass the test. One film
studio that is particularly guilty of failing this test is Pixar.
Female
gender representation is less successful in animated films than the male
gender. However the male gender has not been completely represented
successfully in animated features either.
|
Colin Stokes
|
TED
(Technology, Entertainment, Design) I set of global conferences ran by the
non-profit organisation Sapling Foundation. In each talk, a speaker is given a
maximum of eighteen minutes to discuss their ideas regarding anything from
science, philosophy to creativity to an audience. In his TED talk ‘How movies
teach manhood’, Colin Stokes states that a common trait in animated films such
as Shrek, Kung fu Panda and many of the Disney films are that the males are
dopy animals who have basic goals, fight the villain and collect the reward.
There are few opportunities for anything else such as other relationships and
journeys.
He goes on to
say that the Disney animated films do a terrific job of teaching young girls
how to defend against the patriarchy but they are basically telling young boys
that they are not the audience. Thus they are not being taught how to defend
against the patriarchy.
Furthermore
he said The New York Times published a study by the government that stated one
fifth of women in America have said they have been sexually assaulted at one
time in America. And while Stokes said he does not believe that has anything to
do with kid’s movies but he does believe something is going wrong. Of all these
men who are doing these acts of sexual violence, what lessons and are they
observing the lessons that are common in movies that it is the job of the male
hero to defeat the enemy with violence, collect a reward and win the girl who
does not speak to anyone and has no friends.
Gender
representation has often been poor in animated films. But also gender
representation has often been poor in animated television shows. In the last
fifty years, gender representation has not come far. In 1960 The Flintstones premiered on our screens
for the very first time. Fred Flintstone was represented as the husband with
the job, overweight, dumb and irresponsible, whereas Wilma was represented as
the attractive, thin, responsible, stay-at-home wife.
Then twenty
years later The Simpsons premiered in
1989 and again Homer was represented as the working husband, who is
over-weight, dumb and irresponsible, whereas Marge is represented as the thin,
attractive, responsible stay at home wife.
These
trends follow through into Family Guy
which premiered ten years later in 1999 with both genders represented the same.
And then again, another decade later, exactly the same trends occurred in the Family Guy spinoff The Cleveland Show. Very little has changed in the last fifty years,
especially in the most popular animated shows.
In the
gaming industry, animation has not been very successful in representing gender.
Firstly, there are very few characters that let alone are of the opposite sex,
but actually break the margins of the typical male hero. They are usually
white, young, very athletically fit and are straight. There are very few female
led video games. The most successful female led video game franchise is Tomb Raider. The franchises success with
gender representation has improved significantly over the years.
In the
early 1990’s, lead graphic designer Toby Gard was tired of female heroines in
video games fitting into a narrow margin where they were often designed to be
over sexualised. He wanted to fight this by creating a more realistic heroin
with realistic physical proportions. But due to studio pressure, Lara’s
physical proportions increased and the character’s physical appearance became
less realistic and more sexualised.
That has
now all changed with the long awaited reboot. In the new game the character was
completely mo-capped by the actress Camilla Luddington which meant the
character was modelled after the real person. Thus the character’s physical
appearance was not exaggerated. Not only is Lara’s physical appearance in the
game incredibly realistic but the character is also far more realistic than in
previous carnations. Lara Croft is a very rare case of a realistic female
heroin in a video game.
Sexuality
is more commonly and successfully represented in more adult targeted
animations. Cartoons aimed at children generally do not bring up the subject much
and if it is brought up the characters are usually straight. A show that breaks
this mould is SpongeBob SquarePants.
This TV
series is centred on an anthropomorphised sea sponge that lives in a pineapple
in the town of Bikini Bottom. In the book 'Queers in American popular culture,
Volume 2’ chapter 14 ‘“We’ll have a gay old time!” : Queer Representation in
American Prime-Time Animation from the Cartoon Short to the Family sitcom’ Jo
Johnson states that shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants go against the typical
ideals of male masculinity. He goes on to say that his popularity maybe
somewhat down to his asexuality; furthermore his wardrobe reflects that of a
bachelor/a schoolboy meaning he can switch ages any time, thus creating a
broader appeal. Additionally, he says that what best represents an
anthropomorphised character’s gender is the facial features and the character
of SpongeBob posses features of both sexes; long eyelashes and red cheeks
(features possessed by female characters) and a long nose and a wide toothed
smile (typical features of a male character).
In
conclusion I have found that representation of gender, particularly the female
gender has not come as far as it should have. Whereas women roles in society
have improved significantly in the last hundred years, female representation
has not come that far. There are exceptions in animated movies. For example the
female gender has been represented very successfully in studio Ghibli films and
has been represented successfully for decades with Kiki’s Delivery Service,
Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away to name a few. It seems like gender
representation is represented the least successfully in the biggest mainstream
animations such as the films by Walt Disney Animation Studios.
But, what’s
interesting is that the female gender has often been poorly represented, but
what’s often gone under the radar is how the male gender is represented. In the
last fifty years, the male gender on television I animation has gone from being
the ideal, loving, respected husband to being the dopy idiot. You could say the
male gender has been getting slowly more poorly represented in shows such as
The Simpsons and Family Guy where the male protagonist is hopelessly
incompetent. It’s interesting to now realise that even though gender
representation of women is often poor, giving you girls poor role models, many
female characters that have come out of mainstream animated movies have often
been portrayed as characters who set out to go against the patriarchy.
Characters such as Mulan in animated Disney films go against what society deems
is expected of them giving young girls a good, positive ideal to strive for.
Conversely male characters, especially in Disney films are often portrayed as
far less complicated. Often these male characters are given no patriarchy to
fight against. These male characters often just have the simple role of fight
the bad guy through violence and win the film and the girl. In these mainstream
movies the male protagonist often just has this one simple journey and there is
no time for the male protagonist to form other relationships, thus male
representation is also often just as poor as female representation.
Bibliography
Who.int
2015, available at http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/ (accessed March
10th 2015)
Miyazaki, H
(2001) An interview with Hayoa Miyazaki, Animage, May 2001, Available at http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/sen.html
(Accessed 10th March 2015)
Spirited Away (2001) Directed by Hayoa Miyazaki, Japan,
Animation, Studio Ghibli
Frozen (2013) Directed by Chris Buck & Jennifer
Lee, United States, Animation, Walt Disney Animated Studios
Princess Mononoke (1997) Directed by Hayoa Miyazaki, Japan,
animation, Studio Ghibli
Lilo and Stitch (2002) Directed by Chris Sanders & Dean
DeBlois, United States, Animation, Walt Disney Animated Studios
Beauty and the Beast (1991) Directed by Gary Trousdale
& Kirk Wise, United States, Animation, Walt Disney Animated Studios
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) Directed by David Hand,
William Cottrell, Wilfred Jackson, Larry Morey, Perce Pearce, Ben Sharpsteen,
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available at http://www.ted.com/talks/colin_stokes_how_movies_teach_manhood#t-2102, Colin Stokes, accessed February
2015-03-10
The Flintstones (1960 to 1966) Created by William Hanna &
Joseph Barbera, Hanna-Barbera Productions
The Simpsons (1989 to present) Created by Matt Groening, ,
20th Century Fox Television & Film Roman
Family Guy (1999 to present) Created by Seth MacFarlane,
Fuzzy Door Productions, Fox Television Animation, 20th Century Fox
Television
The Cleveland Show (2009) Created by Seth MacFarlane, Richard
Appel, Mike Henry, Person Unknown Productions, Happy Jack Productions, Fuzzy
Door Productions, Fox Television Animation, 20th Century Fox
Television
Tomb Raider (1996), (2013) Created by Toby Gard, Crystal
Dynamics
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(2010) Queers in American Popular Culture, Santa Barbara, Volume 2, Greenwood
Pub Group,
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