Article
Effect of cartoon movies on kids
What are the key points of the papers?
Most of this article is very old fashion thinking, saying that parent decide for what colour and toys are best for male and female babies. When I was younger my mum didn’t decide to put me in blue because I was a boy, she dressed me in gender neutral colours like green, yellow, cream, for instance. In my childhood years, I wasn’t forced to play with “BOYS TOYS”, tanks, soldiers, war toys, cars, etc. I could play with dolls, prams (boys can play with prams because when they get older and have kids of their own they will have to push their child around in one). But nowadays, parents are more modern way of thinking, and many animated companies knew that there was barely any females in cartoons, they hired more female to represent the female gender in animations. Gender is a construct, these days gender is a spectrum, but people still fall back on the 2 genders male & female.
What examples of animation / artwork did they use or comment on?
An animation that this article referred to was the original 2D animated Smurfs where the characters had 90 males while there was only one female character called Smurfette. (But that’s only because of the story plot was written like that. The movie focused heavier on male character because the Smurfs had never seen a woman Smurf before, Gargamel created Smurfette then in the second GCI movie they looked at this point to create another female Smurf that the wizard could lore Smurfette out of the town to get her assents when Papa Smurf used a spell to make Smurfette a true-blue Smurf. Gargamel wanted this spell to make more, grey Smurfs and transform them into real true blue Smurfs for their magical properties).
Pok’emon, first a game then transformed into an anime series in 1995. The article says that the TV show states that non-traditional gender roles are bad when teaching children. It says that the male and good character is the distinctive and most important one.
Also, this article refers to Ranma ½, a Japanese anime show.
What were their conclusions?
Their conclusion was that they understood where animation was lacking in the respect of gender representation and were dealing with it. Reading between the lines was that animation was primarily created by men for men initially and that was probably the reason for the lack of suitable animation for girls or gender-neutral storylines. As such there were probably no women animators to begin with however once women were animating they could introduce a women’s perspective.
The introduction of animation programs such as Fifi and the flowertots aired in 2005 had twice as many women characters as there were men. Dora the explorer aired in 2000, was shown to teach children Spanish and English whilst themed in the tropical rainforests of Mexico. There was an animation called Fairly Odd Parents aired 2001, which flipped the gender bias, whilst having a 1950’s style parent (styled similar to the Jetson family), and at the same time had modern children called Timmy Turner, Trixie Tang and Veronica Star whom where wiser than their parents.
Do you agree with any of the points raised?
As most these points raised are old fashion way of thinking I don’t agree with any of these points:
- Girls take their mothers and boys take their fathers as models (this is definitely wrong as it’s the parents who decide what gender baby they want to attach to. In my instants, (Me as a boy doesn’t respond to my father as a role model, I adore my mother to be my role model as my father was awful and barely around. My sister doesn’t think my mother as a role model as she wants to be her own independent person but barely thinks of her in the role model scents).
- Girls are shown doing activities like cheer leaders (men can be cheerleaders, straight or gay. Also some men like to participate in ballet; it’s not just for females).
- Male characters are shown as being more skilled, leading, able to express ideas, threatening and furious (This isn’t true anymore as we have got movies like Mulan (where she can be powerful and a warrior, Powerpuff Girl who were superheroes, and Totally spies where three girls were secrets agents using gadgets and their skilled brains). DON’T UNDERESTIMATE FEMALES THESES DAYS!!! GIRL POWER!!!
- Female characters are shown as being more compassionate, in need of protection and busy with ordinary things than male characters (it was true on the original Rapunzel storyline, where she needed a big strong man to come and rescue her from the tall tower but in the Disney remake Tangled they got rid of these aspects, and she protected herself from anything with a large steel frying pan and got decided to get herself out of the tower).
- Female characters in cartoon movies are reflected either as sexual objects or as being unemployed (this is true in some instance like Jessica Rabbit, Betty Boop, etc. But in Moana, Princess and the Frog (Tiana), etc. these women work hard and doesn’t take sass. Tiana had to workday and night jobs to raise the money to buy a building to open up her own restaurant, isn’t looking for no man in her life. Moana is the chef’s daughter then makes a journey through torturous waters to get the eye of Tafiti that was stolen by Maui. Moana had to fight Tafiti’s evil self ‘Te Ka’ to restore Tafiti back to hear Mother Nature looking self.
- Besides, "female characters are reflected as less sophisticated (Because Mary Poppins starring Julie Andrews very sophisticated and another strong female role she played in the animated movie Shrek 3 was Queen Lillian (Fiona’s Mother) where she knocked down two stone wall with her forehead to escape from a jail that Prince charming put them in.
Did it make you question your own assumptions or beliefs?
This article did question my beliefs and assumptions because things have obviously changed over
time. As gender representation in films had got better with having female protagonists and making
them strong / fearless. The words in this article represent more of my grandma’s time when females were thought of more as domesticated housewives and needing to look after their husbands when
they got back in from work. Mid World War Two, there was no men to do the men’s jobs, so women
had to step up as all the men were at war. The future queen also was taught how to maintain a
vehicle to how women are more than capable, fixing a car would have been a man’s job to do.
