31 Women in Animation Films

Paper-10 Module - 31 Women in Animation Films I. (A) Personal Details Role Name Affiliation Principal Investigator Prof. Sumita Parmar Allahabad University, Allahabad Paper Coordinator Prof. Sisir Basu Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi Content Writer/Author (CW) Ajay Kumar Research Scholar, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi Content Reviewer (CR) Samarth Shukla St Xavier’s College, Mumbai Prof. Sisir Basu BHU, Varanasi Language Editor (LE) Prof. Sumita Parmar Allahabad University (B) Description of Module Items Description of Module Subject Name Women’s Studies Paper Name Women, Media, and Films Module Name/ Title Women in Animation Films Module ID Paper-10 Module - 31 Pre-requisites Conceptual knowledge about stereotyping Objectives To help the students to critically analyse animation films and identify various gender issues inherent in them Keywords Animation, gender roles, stereotyping, Introduction We see animation everywhere around us – on the television, on internet web pages, in smartphones, in video games, and in films. Over the years, animation has evolved as a powerful tool of visual communication aided by advancement of technologies that help make them ever more realistic and immersive. Starting primarily from Europe and the USA, animation is now a global phenomenon with almost all film producing countries contributing to the wealth of animated films. However, like the live action movies, animated films from the USA, especially Disney, dominate the scene. From trivial entertainment meant for children, animation has come to be recognised as an influential art form having significant cultural implications. We now know that it is capable of affecting the thinking and behaviour of children and adults alike. Figure 1: Creating global childhool culture (screenshot from documentary Mickey Mouse Monopoly) In this module we take a look at the world of animation films and the kind of image it portrays of women through female characters. We start with a historical background of the development of animation as an entertainment medium. Like in other media we find a dearth of female professionals involved in the creation of animated characters. It is followed by a section that discusses the influence and wide scope of animation. We cite the views of some of the most influential persons in film and cultural studies and give examples of recent innovations in the use of animation. There onwards, we look at the issues related to representation of women in animated films. We take examples from some of the most popular animated movies with female characters in a lead role. Incidentally, most of these features are from Disney. We also take into account some critically acclaimed positive representations of female characters, with special reference to admired Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. A brief history of Animation The word 'animation' is derived from anima, the Latin word for soul or spirit. The verb 'to animate' is derived from Latin animare "give breath or life to". In its earliest and simplest form, Animation as a technical process was an attempt to imitate life by simulating an effect of motion from a series of static images. This effect of motion is made possible due to persistence of vision - the property of the human eye to maintain an image on the retina for a moment after the image has disappeared. By photographing drawings, puppets, or inanimate objects with slight changes in position and shape in subsequent frames, animators are able to create an illusion of motion. In this form, animation predated the invention of cinematograph by several decades. Several devices like the Thaumatrope, Phenakistiscope, Stroboscope and several similar ones that were based on the phenomenon of persistence of vision were created in the early 1800s. These devices or toys allowed viewers to see through small slits sequences of images painted on rotating disks or strips of paper that created an impression of motion. By the late 1870s, Frenchman Charles Émile Reynaud perfected the earlier devices by overcoming the shortcomings like blurring of images. He continued to work on combining the existing magic lantern (ancestors of the modern slide projectors) with the new optical toys in order to be able to project the ‘moving’ pictures to large audience. In the last decade of the 19th century, film made entry into the scene with the inventions of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope in America and French engineers Auguste and Louis Lumière’s cinematograph. On December 28, 1895 the Lumière brothers made the first public screening of a motion picture in Paris, marking the birth of film. French motion-picture director and special effects pioneer Georges Méliès, in 1902, inserted a sequence of animation of the moon into his masterpiece live-action film Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon). This ‘animated’ sequence became one of the most indelible images in cinema history. Méliès went on to use stop-motion and trick photography techniques in many of the around 500 films he made. With the onset of the 20th century, filmmakers and cartoonists like J. Stuart Blackton in America and Emile Cohl in France continued to produce films utilising various techniques like blackboard drawings and paper cut-outs that would pave the way for animation as we know it today. Realising the potential of this new medium of entertainment, a number of studios came up around New York within a course of few years. Some Early Animation Films Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) J. Stuart Blackton Fantasmagorie (1908) Emile Cohl Little Nemo in Slumberland (1911) Winsor McCay How a Mosquito Operates (1912) Winsor McCay Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) Winsor McCay In 1923, Walt and Roy Disney founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio that was to become the most influential of all animation studios. They premiered Steamboat Willy, the first cartoon with synchronized sound in 1928. It featured for the first time Mickey Mouse, the most iconic of the cartoon characters. By 1932, Disney had brought colour to cartoons. Several other studios including Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Van Buren Studio, Walter Lantz Productions and Terrytoons joined the scene. However, it was Walt Disney and his team of artists who took the medium to new levels with artistic rigour and innovations in designing memorable characters. Meanwhile, given the flexible nature of animation, a number of technological pioneers were able to devise various methods of animation. Besides creating memorable characters like Betty Boop and Popeye, animators and inventors Fleischer brothers (Dave and Max) invented the rotoscope process in 1920. It involved the projection of individual frames of filmed action of live figures on a glass screen. Tracings of the projected image were rephotographed, thus making the movements of the characters more realistic and human like. Disney evolved a distinct, realistic look by incorporating modified versions of different innovative processes. Their style of animation has continued to dominate the Western Cartoon tradition. In the second half of the 20th century, animation entered the televisions with animated series. In the 1960s and 1970s scientists and researchers at educational institutes worked on computer graphics that would lead to the birth of computer animation later. 3D animation entered the scene in the 1980s. Early versions of live action films incorporating computer graphics (CG) and animation, like Star Wars (Twentieth Century Fox) and Indiana Jones series earned wide popularity in these years leading to path breaking integration of both in subsequent films. But it was not before 1995 that Toy Story, the first feature-length animated movie created entirely with Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), instead of hand-drawn pictures, was released by Pixar. Women in the animation industry Books and articles (e.g. Furniss (2000) and John (2010)) based on testimonies of workers reveal that work at the animation industry had been divided on gender lines since the early days. The creative departments in most of the studios were handled by males. Women on the other hand were restricted to the inking and painting department where the work was largely noncreative and repetitive. Kirsten Thompson in the introductory paragraph of her 2014 article sums up the process followed at the studio as follows1: One of the final steps in a Taylorized labor intensive industrial machine of specialized labor, the Ink and Paint Dept. usually consisted of several hundred female workers in each animated studio, wearing white gloves (with thumb and two fingers cut off) and pongee smocks (to keep cels free from dust). After cleaned up pencil drawings were received from animators, inkers used the finest Gillott 290 nibs to make precise small, medium or large black (and sometimes color) lines around those drawings. Painters would then flip the nitrate cels and color in the inked outlines, following numbered specifications from a model sheet created by the Color Key Artist who selected colors for characters and props. They worked on raked boards (as inkers) or flat boards (as painters) producing 8-10 cels an hour, enduring the lowest pay in the industry, while supervisors like Dot Smith would walk up and down the aisles at Disney urging them to work faster and faster with phrases like “Come on now, quick– like a bunny!” Despite the male domination in the creative works of the industry, few female artists were able to make a mark. Notable among them are Sylvia Holland and Mary Blair who profoundly influenced the look of Disney animation2. Retta Scott, who is recognised by Disney3 as their first woman animator and LaVerne Harding were two of the few women who actually worked as animators during the ‘Golden Age’ of animation in the 1930s and 1940s. 1 Thompson, K. M. (2014). ‘Quick—Like a Bunny!’: The Ink and Paint Machine, Female Labor and Color Production. Journal of Animation Studies, 9. 2 Furniss, Maureen. "Animation." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD].

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