Let me list a few thoughts that popped into my head while watching the video clip of her speech.
-1st of all, what gives Geena Davis and the SeeJane foundation the authority to condemn an art form? It is an atrocity that a group of non-animators, non-artists, and non-writers are trying to tell our community how to operate and create content that we love creating. When viewing her speech all I could see was an angry feminist using her clout as an actress to try and influence a medium that she needs to keep her nose out of. And for that reason I feel that anything she has to say about animation should be taken as a grain of salt.
2ndly ,Where did she get her information, does she not know how to use Google? It is apparent to me that based on her lack of knowledge, that all of this "research" was all done by her assistants. I would like to just add here, if you wish to be taken seriously, REALLY get to know what you are talking about. The fact that we are dealing with an organization with a feminist agenda, any information which would conflict with their interests is going to be pushed aside like anything that might slow the process of attaining their goals.
3rd , The Animation industry is an industry in where most viewers are male, likely due to the high number of male and androgynous characters. However a study conducted in 1981 by the Society for Research in Child Development found that boys developed a lack of interest for characters of the opposite sex. Therefore, to say we need more female leads in cartoons is a bad marketing strategy. For decades males have been the subjected targets to these marketing strategies when the female population outnumbered that of males. NOW though is a different ball game, the male population is beginning to outnumber that of females, so to suddenly switch strategies and almost force animators, artists and writers to focus on creating solely female roles is just asking to decimate an industry which is already in a state of distress. The radical change that Davis chooses to pursue is a form artistic genocide which should be prevented.
4th SHE HAS ALREADY HAD MEETINGS WITH PRODUCERS AND HEAD EXCUTIVES! GREAT, THIS IS JUST WHAT WE NEED RIGHT NOW.
5th Are you joking!?, of all the things in this depraved world she calls for cartoons to “CHANGE”? For the 4 years her daughter will watch animation, male cartoon characters fighting monsters are somehow going to directly impact her daughters’ well-being because the lead character isn’t female? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? I guess "The Powerpuff Girls" being a televised show is simply myth and it's existence hearsay...
Her actions, if you agree with her or not will most definitely have a NEGATIVE effect on cartoons. Now that the clueless animation executives have a celebrity to hold their hand and show them the light of how cartoons should be, it’s all over.
I’m not going to bother to name the countless female leads in animation. You can find them for yourself, and we all know that beefing up the number or female leads will not do anything other than oppress artists to feel as though it is necessary to censor themselves further because only female roles are on demand.
It’s obvious that male characters are a lot easier to create; a male character can be thrown into a fight and be brutalized, then brought back with no problems at all. If this were done with a female character, feminists groups would have a field day and say the show advocates domestic abuse against women. So to say female's need equal leads in animation, it's a double standard because to put female characters through the same scenarios as male characters would only cause more controversy.
When you create a female character there is unspoken check list you have to go through, a check list that end ups making your female character FLAT and boring. A check list that has to be followed in order to appease organizations like See Jane and every other woman’s lib group from condemning your character and cartoon. Let’s list some dos and don’ts when creating a female character.
DO's
Smart
Witty (not too much)
Strong willed
Independent
Not to drastic of a character design
DONT's
Clumsy
Dumb
Inadvertently funny
Dependent on any other characters
Too skinny
Keep in mind when creating a female character you are required to use all the said ‘DO’s” not just some of them. If you don’t believe me turn on Cartoon network or Nickelodeon every female character is almost identical in their look and character.
So it seems to me that what Geena and the See Jane crew are calling for is a stacked deck. It's no longer OK to create a series with a male lead, let alone a female lead that might fit the bill as a "goof" or attractive. Because I am sure the only kinds of women that were born into this world since 1970 are all seeds of Einstein who are destined to rule the world. No longer is alright to create a female character and accentuate the characteristics that innately read to any viewer as being female. We are on the verge from drawing an occasional large breast or two to having our arms twisted and forced to drawing androgynous women with an occasional beer gut. Maybe it would benefit all men working in the industry to have sex change operations now...What do you think?
48 comments:
Wow! Excellent! Now THIS reminds me of the old 'AF' board!
I'm sick of ANYONE who throws shitfits over stuff like this... "We need more (women, minorities, handicapped, culturally diverse) characters in cartoons!"
The result of these people crowing is a bunch of utterly token characters crowbarred into what may otherwise be decent shows.
The trouble with all "minority" and "female" characters is that they're not allowed to have ANY character whatsoever. If you show a woman get hit with a pie in her face, it's violence against women. If you show a black person who is anything less than a genius, you're a racist.
Here's a clue to some of those overly sensitive PC assholes: what makes a character INTERESTING is their FLAWS. So when you are forced to create characters with no flaws, they're completely uninteresting.
Much like Geena Davis herself.
You have spoken my mind and brought up a few things I did not even think of. Thank you.
Thank God this blog is back.
Y'know, this never would have happened if "Commander in Chief" hadn't been canceled; now Geena Davis has to find some other way for people to pay attention to her.
I'm stil scratching my head over this. Miss Davis must have a lot of time on her hands! How about she sticks to her own field and champions the cause of female live-action actresses and their own lack of interesting roles.
Of course that would mean alienating the very producers/directors and studio heads she so depends on. Seems like we animators are an easy target.
I think I may start a activist group whose sole purpose is to protest Geena Davis and her blind feminism....
Oddly, I've found the only time I can get away(The fact that I have to say "get away with" is truly disheartening) having an attractive woman character, is when she is framed with her head off screen. (How sick is that?) Otherwise I get notes from S&P to make them less shapely. Men can be any shape from steroid pulsing meat heads, to to Roley poley midgets no one cares, as long as you don't show them eating too much at one sitting.
But women can't be attractive or ugly. They have to be strictly middle of the the road. Heaven forbid the viewer should have any reaction at all to a woman character on screen.
It's stuff like this that really kills cartoons. How many fucking stories can we watch where the male character is a dumb idiot and the female character is a genius?
The only exception I can think of is 'Dexter's Lab' - but even then they always had his sister get the upper hand.
Geena Davis and all 'crusaders' like her can kiss my balls. They ruin everything.
A strong female character isn't as much of a problem as how most shows tend to go about achieving such ends.
A common (and unfortunate) writing practice in animation when establishing a strong character is to weaken the supporting characters around it to create a sense of contrast; the result is with a strong female surrounded by ineffectual and stupid males.
To make matters worse, the idea of a strong female who still has flaws is seen as poison by producers. In their eyes, such a character has to be practically infallible in order to fulfill the idea of "strength". Sadly, what you end up with is an animation equivalent of a "Mary Sue" character (in case you're wondering what that term is referring to, it's explained here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue )
Anibator, I noticed the "sassy and spunky" crossed-arm pose in one of your cookie-cutter redhead examples. 85% of today's lead female cartoon characters have the same stock default 3/4, crossed-arm, head-cocked-up-or-down pose for posters, DVD covers, and publicity..and have for the last fifteen years. One finds the same pose on business magazine covers and PR articles featuring female CEOs. I'll never understand how this is appealing to men OR women, nor how it flatters our stengths as women. I don't even know any women who actually pose like that in real life...it's more the posture of a petulant five-year-old girl who hasn't had her way. The pose doesn't say, "I'm strong"; it says "Stay away", or "I've got a bone to pick with you", or "Try knocking the chip off my shoulder", or "I'm pouting".
Where the %&*#% is the old post ANGRY WOMEN ARE RUINING ANIMATION topic from the first Anibation Fantasy blog?? Bring it back! This blog rocks!
All female characters on cartoons these days are 'sassy' - which has gotten so boring I want to claw my own eyes out every time I see a cartoon with sassy girls.
If I see one more cartoon where a bunch of boys are playing some sort of sport and then a girl comes in and kicks their asses and then all the boys look in amazement at the girl who is giving that same old arms-crossed cocky expression I swear I'm going to jump off a bridge.
What's amazing about these cartoons that are trying so desperately to prove to us that they are progessive and pro-woman is that they wind up doing the exact opposite.
By saying "Wow! Isn't it amazing that a girl can do things just as well as a boy?!" you're implying that she is some sort of exception to the rule despite the obvious handicap of being a 'mere girl'.
I find it fascinating that at the opening of her speech, Davis talks about the male characters she would mimic from The Rifleman, and admitted that it didn't have a negative effect on her that they weren't female characters.
There are definitely more female characters in animation than there used to be. The redhead character lineup cracks me up...too bad their bland "sassiness" is nowhere near as interesting as real life girls.
I disagree that boys don't want to watch animated girls. Shows like Powerpuff Girls and Kim Possible must've had some boys watching them to make them popular, yes? Does that mean the only popular shows featuring females need to be superheroes? No.
Does it mean a few less focus groups need to be used to decide programming for everyone? IMO, yes.
Bland executives, PC pressure and the cost of putting on a show that might fail are really what keeps not only females, but other non-white male characters off of the animation radar. I'd love to draw funny, sexy women characters as my day job. I think most guys I know would, too.
"Shows like Powerpuff Girls and Kim Possible must've had some boys watching them to make them popular, yes?"
Powerpuff Girls I could understand, with it being entertaining and all... but Kim Possible? Aside from some appealing character designs, that show is a horrible bore-fest. Are people actually watching it or does Disney just keep ordering more episodes to accommodate some idiotic PC agenda?
I worked on the doomed new Looney Tunes shorts.
One reason they were doomed is that they were written--drawn from scripts.
At one point, a female entered the writing team, partially to add some diversity and a female voice. Hey, no problem.
In one cartoon, Bugs was supposed to get picked on by a bunch of "extreme sports bullies" while he was trying to relax at the beach. The team agreed on three bullies.
"Why not make one a girl?" asked the female.
Hey, no problem! The models were designed. Three flannel-wearing, gap-toothed, pierced, obnoxious kids. The girl had hair over her eyes and slouched, just like the guys.
When the female writer saw the designs, she made a face. The female looked too "dumb" and "ugly".
The girl was redesigned. Nope, the female writer made a face again. Redesigned again. Face again...
Eventually, the design was two lunky cro-magnon bullies and one spunky, cute pistol of a girl. No kidding. Her design sheet showed her winking, smiling and looking tough. There was even a pose of her laying on her tummy, kicking her feet up in the air, wearing her Doc Martens, her little nose piercing flashing. Red hair and freckles, of course.
Now remember, Bugs was supposed to turn the tables and beat the shit outta these kids.
So I watched it happen, before my eyes: I watched a female on a crew sand and sand and sand a girl design down to characterlessness, until she was completely unusable in the story.
Thank god that cartoon was never made.
Any time someone goes into a project with any agenda other than 'make it good' they fuck it up like that.
Everyone who tries to bring more females into a show or more ethnic diversity or more age diversity or any of that crap will ultimately destroy any semblance of fun it might have had otherwise.
All you assholes with an axe to grind need to stop trying to push your useless little psudo-political agendas into cartoons and put more FUN into them.
Of course, chances are, you wouldn't know fun if it crawled up your ass, so like the little teachers' pets that you are you choose to wrap yourself in some sort of ill-placed moral superiority and ruin playtime for the rest of us.
Fuck off and die, special-interest politically-correct assholes.
Yes, we all know that a cute-looking girl[design] couldn't POSSIBLY be a see-you-next-tuesday bully--'cause all purty gals are sweeties, right? Did you skip 7th grade or something? Ever hear of the film "Mean Girls"? All about evil, nasty bullies--and all of them were pretty....which was kind of the point. jesus.
But forget about, umm, CONTRAST: making a sexy/pretty/cute girl a biyotch in a show.
pretty=nice. ugly/fat=evil. SNORE.
If you couldn't make the cutie in her Doc Martens a convincing villain then maybe your drawings/poses/action of/for the "bland" model weren't good or imaginative enough. It's possible.
Yeah! You childless, sophomoric snotnosed ball swingin' REAL cartoon fans tell it like it is, baby! Fuck those stoopit assholes who DARE to criticize your playpen!
Aw, don't get your panties in a twist, friend: I'm sure your lousy TV cartoon kindgom is more than safe. Nothing ever changes anyway. Thank god, right?
I'll pray you never mate and breed, so no little child of yours will have to listen to dada yelling at some feminazi to "fuck off and die!" on the telly.
Well, naturally, the last two anonymous comments were by two easily offended folks who have missed the point entirely.
It's not about the 'playpen' or whether or not it's POSSIBLE for a female bully to be cute... it's about having it FORCED IN by virtue of someone's personal sociological agenda.
Art and entertainment should, ideally, be organic processes... crowbarring in elements that simply don't fit or don't add to the narrative gets in the way of good storytelling.
It's not up to cartoons to teach kids that bullies can be hot too (and is that really an important lesson???). Cartoons should be fun, and their only goal or agenda should be to entertain.
I'm entirely in favor of diversity in cartoons, but not to teach any lessons... rather, without diversity it loses its connection to reality. Cartoons that have some sort of connection to the real world SHOULD have diversity simply because that's what the real world is like.
But a Bugs Bunny cartoon? That's not reality. It's a talking rabbit at the beach and someone is worried about gender quoatas? Lame.
Why is it all pissy idiots ALWAYS go to the "I hope you never breed" and "You'll never have kids" or "You'll never get laid" defense... is that really the best you can do?
No, really, I dare you to defend the idea of ramming lame female characters into stories just to fulfill some sort of politically-correct ideal.
If live action TV shows and movies did that as badly and as often as cartoons do these days you'd be just as insulted as the rest of us are with this bullshit.
Pantywaist dipshits.
Looney Tunes guy here again.
I was not the designer in this case, but Ms. Cutie Doc Marten's couldn't be a convincing villain because the designs got reworked and reworked and reworked under the tutelage of the female writer until the design was appealing, not threatening or funny. I didn't say the girl was pretty--I said she was winking, smiling, and puffing out her lower lip in a pathetically "cute" kind of "toughness". The design --was-- good.....so good, that the designer was 100% able to get the writer's intents clearly onto the page...and those intents were to strip the female of any negative traits whatsoever. She looked absolutely 100% like the red-headed designs above.
More importantly, she didn't fit in--at all--with the other designs. The guys were true dunderheads, and visually funny. The original design of the girl as a dunderhead was great and fit in perfectly...
Remember, these were supposed to be 'extreme sports bullies', not the cast of Mean Girls hanging out at a mall.
Also, the equation that pretty=nice and ugly/fat=evil is quite inaccurate: kids TV is full of pretty/sexy/cute girls who are biyotches, so much so that THIS is almost a cliche. Sometimes it seems that every kids show with a female character as the lead that has ever been produced--animated or not--has had a female rival who's vain or sexy or cute-when-parents-are-around-and-bitchy-behind-their-back, from Angelica on Rugrats to Shego on Kimpossible or Mindy on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. You're way off mark there.
And to the other anonymous poster regarding yelling "fuck off and die" at the telly, well judging from our tones of voice doesn't that sound like something you'll be doing in front of your children instead of me?
I think we can finally assume that Anibator is a man. And that most of the posters are whiny, immasculated white boys.
It's funny how they need to blame some external target for animation "sucking". Their reaction is akin to blaming a downturn in the American economy on Affirmative Action or a few wetbacks taking minimum wage jobs.
Sure overreaching PCness, Feminism and other agendas result in alot of bad ideas and bad product. But, even without it animation would suck just as much. That's the business.
You're all imaging some imaginary "good ol' days" where you think animation (or society) was better than it actually was.
That's absolutely the dumbest thing ever written.
I don't know why you would assume that Anibator is a man since the original site always got very vocal support from women.
Haha!
Truly that is the worst, strangest retort of all! But I love it! Worth a lot of laughs...
Sure, one could label this blog as "whiny", but please, please tell us how it is "white"? Give examples.
...and please tell us how it is "emasculated" (note spelling)...
Last but not least, Mrs. Baiter is obsessed with race, thanks to her handle, her calling the majority of posters white, and comparing the discussion to Affirmative Action quotas and immigrant labor. What a perfect metaphor for the See Jane controversy!
Strangely, Mrs. Baiter acknowledges that overreaching PCness and feminism helps to ruin cartoons, hence what is her beef with this post? But then, cartoons would mysteriously suck anyway simply because "that's the business."
I guess this post is about that little corner of the business that is made bad by overreaching PCness and feminism, specifically. So Mrs. Baiter agrees with us.
I'll give Mrs. Baiter this: there's been lots of lousy cartoons in every era, and she's right that there is no imaginary time when most animators didn't have to work on junk, To that, I agree.
I'd also like to add that the animation business has plenty of great female artists who love the craft and its history.
And probably a lot of them, like a lot of the guys, feel Geena Davis is well-intentioned, but should keep her nose out of things.
Mrs. Niggerbaiter said..."I think we can finally assume that Anibator is a man. And that most of the posters are whiny, immasculated white boys."
Wow ! A racial slur and everything ! I'm totally impressed. Let me just stare at this a while. God, that is something. Woo ! Genius ! I mean the part where they figure out "whiny, immasculated white boys" wrote it all. Couldn't come up with that from 90% of the animation industry being white men now could you ?! No sir ! It's like a magic trick , rabbit out of the hat ! How did they do that ? Man ! Amazing ! God ! So fine. Well now I'm bored.
female character that walks defiantly over the face of feminism...deedee in dexter's lab. period.
yeah but she is never the butt of the joke. And always has an upper hand on dexter! so you're WRONG! period.
What makes all the female characters flat and unappealing? Why do women bitch about the lack of positive female characters?
Take a look at the characters Anibator pointed out as being the same tired cliche's - WHO created these characters? WHO writes for these characters? NOT women, I GUARANTEE you. I'm not asking the studios to get all P.C. about everything. But there IS a lack of variety and "Point-of-views" in this industry. This is why everything is so cliche'.
Anibator once argued that one of the reasons cartoons are terrible is that everyone is from the same gene pool of Cal Arts. There's my point! The problem isn't a lack of females or minorities. The studios need to stop focusing on these insignificant things, expand their horizons, and just look for good stories period.
To add to Hope's comment...
Another reason why female characters are so flat is; since the show creators are all males, they purposely create their females to be these cliched, flawless, bland, and unappealing characters. Why? Because it's SAFE. It won't offend anyone. But it's definitely TOO SAFE. It's exactly why minority characters are TOO SAFE. It's the nightmare of the PC world. But if there were more female writers and minority writers, there would be more FEARLESS interpretations of these types of characters. All men at one point or another have said, "I don't GET women". So why pretend that you do? NOW why do you think girls don't watch as many cartoons?
Hey, where's Katara from Avatar? She's possibly the most popular of the arch-type this entry is about.
And probably the most in-your-face about it.
Yeah, girls, we ruin everything, don't we? Geez, what a hissy fit. Look, of all the female characters on TV, how many are memorable or have real personality? Wanda on Fairly Oddparents is one (although lately she's been reduced to a "nagging wife" stereotype - not that she actually nags anyone, but what a handy cliche to build a "joke" around!) and Mandy on Billy and Mandy is the other (she kicks ass, BTW). Everyone else is male. Now I have no problem with that, but the dearth of memorable female characters in toons is a problem that needs to be addressed IMO. It's been going on for decades. There's no excuse for it when you see that many of the world's classic children's stories, enjoyed by both genders, have female leads (Alice, Pippi Longstocking, Dorothy). Frankly, I don't think the problem is that there are too many males in TV toons - it's worse. It's that it's the same GROUP of males who drag their questionable sensibilities from cartoon to cartoon, from network to network. And the network suits keep hiring them because they don't understand toons and probably hate them anyway. If someone in the TV toon industry would seriously try to seek out talent instead of hiring the same hacks over and over, if that someone could recognize that creating personality is at least as important as creating gags, then maybe we'd get writers who could create good characters of both genders. Otherwise we're going to see the same old tired plots, jokes, stereotypes and cliches. If Geena's diatribe (and I don't agree with all of it, BTW) at least gets the suits at networks to look a little harder at their talent pool, then maybe she's done some good. We can hope...
above anonymous:
you're wrong. man are you ever wrong. you couldn't be more wrong if you had a wronging machine set to "maximum wrong".
there is positively NO validity to geena "I want to be hillary clinton" davis and her absurd little group of bored soccer moms with nothing better to do than bitch about cartoons.
a lack of decent female cartoon characters is caused by one thing and one thing only: you broads have absolutely no goddamned sense of humor about yourselves.
guys can laugh at themselves... but poke fun of any female for ANY reason and suddenly its lawsuits, politics and moral outrage.
guys love to watch other guys get shit thrown on them... guys love to see other guys suffer... girls are so thin-skinned they throw a hissyfit at being called "girls"... it's gotta be "women" or "wymyn" or whatever the fuck.
yeah, sure, I know there are plenty of women in the industry who have a sense of humor, but unfortunately there are too many bored, angry, bitter, nasty, cuntish, dried-up hags out there with such an axe to grind that if you so much as depict a female getting hit in the face with a custard pie they organize a protest.
so don't blame men for the lack of decent female cartoon characters... every guy I know has tried to pitch a show ith a funny female lead and the humorless female execs always shoot it down.
my point is, you're wrong.
My reply to Mr. Anonymous - Ray, you've got issues with women. And by "issues with women" I'm not referring to issues of Playboy - although it wouldn't surprise me if that's your sole interaction with humans of the opposite gender. So tell me this, Mr. Alda: when gifted comediennes used physical comedy as part of their act - women such as Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball, Gilda Radner - how come nobody screamed bloody murder when they did? Could it be that the reason nobody accused them of promoting violence against women was because of the fact that what they were doing was FUNNY, as opposed to mean-spirited, misogynist and obnoxious? Don't tell me - you can't tell the difference between funny and mean-spirited, misogynist and obnoxious, right? Because it's obvious by your attitude that you're one of the writers at the center of this controversy. Your bile - and your poor grasp of elementary-school grammar - tipped me off.
Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball and Gilda Radner all did their best stuff before America became oppressively oversensitive like Ms. Anonymous up there.
Make no mistake, lady, the reason most female cartoon characters are so shitty is because there are
so many humorless, frigid women and gutless, ballbusted men calling the shots at animation studios.
Well, Ray, I think YOU'RE pretty funny. Does that mean I'm frigid? Or that your balls have imploded (sound of soap bubbles bursting)? All sexual reference aside, I think the real reason you and your cronies are pissed is because women are horning in on another male playground - and deep down you're afraid of the competition, especially competition that demands a higher standard than you're used to delivering. And don't give me that gas that Carol, Lucy and Gilda got away with their antics because they were performed during a less sensitive time in America. Let's see, the '50's, '60's and '70's - heck, trashing females was definitely tolerated then, with Mrs Cleaver and Gloria Steinem cheering it on. Get a grip, buddy.
man you really are stupid...
yeah, that's it. we're scared of talented women. that's what all defensive, untalented women screech whenever a man actually dares to stand up to bullying women.
your arguments are so lame they're not even worth addressing.
you're wasting your time with such reactionary bullshit.
LOL! I knew all that Gloria Steinem stuff that would probably set you off. Talk about reactionary!
And who are you calling "untalented"? Brother, if you only knew...
So ANYWAY - all this junk about female characters in cartoons reminds me of cartoonist Mort Walker, who once said that women have no sense of humor. Forget about the aforementioned Lucy, Gilda, Carol, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, et al - they were just freaks of nature, I guess. Walker is a perfect example of the rigid mindset some male cartoonists have towards female characters. He made history when he included a black character, Lt. Flap, in his comic "Beetle Bailey". (I remember Flap's first line well: "HOW COME THERE ARE NO BLACKS IN THIS HONKY OUTFIT?" LOL!) It was a very successful launch and a very successful character. Mort was very *sensitive* to blacks while writing for the character. He wrote "I learned that the Afro is sacred to blacks. You can't shoot holes or lose pencils in it." Ah, but when Mort finally tried to include a female character in his strip, what did he come up with? A loud, aggressive, overweight, unattractive (and therefore man-crazy) female sergeant. *snicker* You know, your typical woman with power. Then he topped himself by having that old geezer of a General start drooling over his attractive (and incompetent, thus non-threatening) secretary. And what a firestorm THAT caused! I remember reading newspaper articles about it. Caused no end of embarrassment for poor old Mort. So anyway, IMO, the Rays of this world ought to learn from people like Mort - learn as in "what not to do". Otherwise they WILL get burned by bad publicity and be forced to do unnatural things, like create actual personalities for their characters instead of lazily relying on moldy old stereotypes. 'Nuff said.
in comedy, NOTHING should be considered 'sacred'...
sensitive people should just stick their heads in the sand and let the rest of us have a good time poking fun at each other (note the use of the word "FUN").
fuck you, sensitive people. eat shit and die. you sensitive fucks are a bunch of cunts.
Wow, anonymous, that last line was boffo. I can't decide who you most remind me of - Michael Richards or Don Imus. Using such language certainly worked for their careers. Obviously you believe in the old adage "always leave 'em laughing" - and seriously, dude, I am laughing at you.
I think the earlier post was more on point to the real problem with Geena Davis's comments. There is an uneven representation of women in American entertainment, not just animation. It's easy for an attractive, successful, intelligent woman to critcize animation because it's made up of a bunch of faceless "dudes" who are just imposing their fantasies on our defenseless children, but the truth is Hollywood doesn't tolerate "ugly" women actors, there are exceptions of coarse but even most of them are stereotypes. Casting directors are most to blame for any imbalance there might be, and do you think that if she were auditioning for a part (I doubt someone of her stature would do) she would stop and say, "Don't hire me. You should pick that ugly girl over there." I could be wrong but I'm just guessing that wouldn't happen.
And as for her examples, she couldn't even show anything from the last decade. The Jetsons, are you kidding me? Even her Granny example is outdated wasn't she just redefined as some kind of superslueth?
Wow.
Um...ray, hate to break it to you, but there are quite a few young talented women animators who don't fit in with your stereotype of being "unfunny broads".
Lighten the fuck up, people. All this anonymous whining hasn't done a damned thing to make the industry better. What are you going to do to help the situation?
typically, everyone has missed my point and I've now been labelled as a woman-hater when, the fact is, I'm as pro-woman as they come.
i want women to be able to write and draw characters that don't fit into some ultra-idealized cookie-cutter mold of the "perfect female".
i want to see female cartoon characters with actual PERSONALITIES... vulnerabilities and strengths that manifest themselves in entertaining ways.
what i hate - as depicted by the examples in the post - are these female characters that follow the same trend over and over again. they're bland and insulting.
i know men and women in the industry who have pitched shows with truly interesting female characters, and it is always the female executives who force them to filter out any semblance of character until we're left with the same old "spunky grrl with attitude!" that we've seen a thousand times.
and the REASON the executives DO this is because they and - they assume - their female audience are so overly-sensitive and overly-obsessed with making sure that every female character on television be a shining example to all womanhood.
so don't blame people like me who actually decry blandness... blame the people who perpetuate it.
Yeah, right. And some people wonder why girls outgrow cartoons sooner than boys do. Because girls mature faster, that's why. The cartoons that are being written now are written by men whose tastes never matured, which is why their scripts are full of fart and booger jokes and female characters that are either insulting cliches or have no personality at all.
That's why the Disney channel is stealing girls away from networks like Nick. Because Disney has shown female viewers that Disney RESPECTS them and their preferences, whereas cartoon writers on other networks have shown otherwise. That's one reason Disney's live action shows for kids are thriving while every new cartoon Nick has aired lately has flopped, and incidentally its worst offenders when it comes to female viewers - cartoons like FOP, with its "Wanda is a nag" crap - are losing ratings and viewers like mad.
So go ahead and "bitch" - oh sorry, "rant", Ray. Put the blame for cartoons' failures on the wrong thing, and you'll see more failure to come. I guar-on-tee.
whatev... this is the type of humorless crank that's been put in charge of wb animation.
another angry, hateful female executive to ensure their downward spiral continues.
``How do you know myname. Eventually, nobody was left, except me.
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``How do you know myname. Eventually, nobody was left, except me.
What’s cartoon characters name left of kim impossible?
@Lylah Sanders:
What’s cartoon characters name left of Kim Possible?
Samantha (Totally Spies).
Looking back on this in 2018, sad to say, EVERYTHING mentioned in the article by the author has come true (and what's worse is that that he'd never be able to say anything like it now because people would be blasting him everywhere for contributing to sexism and the insulting of women.)
Case in point of his article: Steven Universe. The main character on this show is a short, fat 14-year old who although he's the hero, is sheltered and childlike for 14 (some would say he's childish), while the females who serve as his defenders and teachers, the Crystal Gems, are strong, assertive and beautiful (although Steven's mom was fat.) Greg Universe is a happy-go-lucky father who doesn't do much fathering of his child and is just as flighty-headed as Steven; both are what the author was decrying. And yet, the show's the most popular one on Cartoon Network despite its flaws (as shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaR8KO4VFPM)
Unfortunately, with people like Anita Sarkesian blabbering what they like to blabber about, all of the other blabbering about how girls are being shut out of media (which as the author says is erroneous), this situation's getting (is already)bad, with no seeming way of stopping it.
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