Study Task 5 - Writing an Introduction

This lesson aided us in writing an introduction to our essay. I started by writing a list of bullet points of things I wanted to talk about and then, moving away from the first person, I began writing my introduction, crossing the points off as I went.

Overview:

- women (female characters)
- character design (blonde, tall, skinny, white, etc. vs varied designs)
- sexism/ feminism (strong independent women characters vs real feminism)
- representation/ diversity (breaking the mould)
- society (standards and opinions)
- body image (important issue to raise or purely aesthetics?)
- evolution (80s - now)
- character turn arounds (practical outcome)
- body or narrative? what is more important (empowering)


'How has the portrayal of women, in animation, evolved within this generation circa 1980 - 2019?'


Over the last several decades, the depiction of women in media, particularly animation, has continued to evolve as the standards of society have transformed. While most forms are a reflection of the times, there are still some films being released in this decade which aren't as diverse or inclusive as its competitors. Likewise, not all films that were released thirty years ago had characters that fit into the same, arguably sexist mould that was often present in that time.

This generation of animation has introduced various designs for male characters that have consistently been diverse and unique. However, when considering the female roles from the same era, more often than not, the only time the designs deviated from the norm (roles such as the mother figure or the love interest) was when the woman was the villain. Characters such as Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" (1989) or Yzma from "The Emperor's New Groove" (2000) were given unique designs that didn't restrict them to the same skinny, young, model. These double standards are also visible when analysing the face shapes alone. Kat Brown, a writer for The Telegraph, expressed concern in her article "Disney and Pixar's female characters all have the same face" (2015) after Tumblr user Every-Flavored-Bean noticed a pattern emerging from recent Disney and Pixar films. While the male counterparts had expressive, diverse and unique designs, the women all seemed to have the same round face with large, doll-like eyes and a small button nose. The blogger calls the lack of diversity "lazy sexism" and argues that something needs to change

In 2013 Lino DiSalvo, the head animator for "Frozen"(2013) was heavily criticised after claiming it was "really, really difficult" to animate female characters as "they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty". A year later in an interview he claimed he was misquoted and never meant to imply that only the women were difficult to animate, "It's not difficult because they're girls. It's difficult because when you're exploring animation and getting characters to look unique like Olaf, doing that range of emotion test and trying to identify what that emotion is is very very difficult" (2014).


Bibliography:

Amidi, A. (2013) "Frozen" Head of Animation Says Animating Women is "Really, Really Difficult". Available at: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/frozen-head-of-animation-says-animating-women-is-really-really-difficult-89467.html (Accessed: 4 November 2019).

Bailey, I. (2014) Q&A: For this animator, working on Frozen created a tricky career legacy. Available at: https://www.globeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/qa-vancouver-film-school-alum-ready-to-move-on-from-frozen/article20072363/ (Accessed: 4 November 2019).

Brown, K. (2015) Disney and Pixar's female characters all have the same face. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/inside-out/disney-pixar-characters-same-face/ (Accessed: 3 November 2019).

The Emperor's New Groove (2000) Directed by M. Dindal [Film]. California: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc.

The Little Mermaid (1989) Directed by R. Clements and J. Musker [Film]. California: Buena Vista Distribution Company, Inc.

Tumblr. (2015) Every woman in every Disney/Pixar movie in the past decade has the exact same face. Available at: https://every-flavored-bean.tumblr.com/post/112569173199/every-woman-in-every-diseypixar-movie-in-the (Accessed: 4 November 2019).

Tumblr. (2014) Sameface Syndrome and Other Stories. Available at: https://turbomun.tumblr.com/post/80012362197/sameface-syndrome-and-other-stories (Accessed: 4 November 2019).

Women and Hollywood. (no date) Statistics. Available at: https://womenandhollywood.com/resources/statistics/ (Accessed: 4 November 2019).