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]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008 3 http://www.waltdisney.org/blog/worth-much-man-cracking-celluloid-ceiling

Figure 1 A painter at work on a scene from Pinocchio © Walt Disney Productions/Photofest. (Image Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/201 )

Alternative trends of animation

Though the Disney style of animation films pervaded and became popular across the globe propagating uniform icons, motifs, images, roles and messages, several alternative trends evolved and flourished in different parts of the world. The United Productions of America (better known as UPA), a rather small animation studio, was founded in the wake of strike by Disney employees in 1941. The studio pioneered the counter-realistic ‘limited animation’ process that had profound impact on the evolution of the cartoon style. Also departing from prevailing tradition, UPA productions depicted non-violent scenarios. They are best remembered for the Mr. Magoo series.

Elsewhere in the world, Czech artists Hermína Tyrlová, Karel Zeman and Jiří Trnka with their roots in the traditional art helped establish the Czech school of animation as an alternative to the Disney tradition. The school started with the unique and widely popular puppet and cartoon animations that have been critically acclaimed for their poetic imaginative strength, diversity, humanity, and experimentation. Exemplary of the Czech tradition of animation are Jiří Trnka’s The Hand (Ruka, 1965) and Jana Marglova’s Genesis (1966).

Figure 2 Jiří Trnka’s The Hand (Ruka, 1965) (image Source: http://www.themovingarts.com/jiri-trnka-animation- retrospective/) Another Eastern European country, Poland, also evolved its own tradition in animation with alternative stylistic approaches using cut-out graphics (e.g. in Jan Lenica’s Dom, 1957), painting on glass (e.g. in Witold Giersz’s Maly Western, 1960) and other styles.

In the east, Japan evolved as a major influence in the realm of animation. One of the earliest major production companies, Gakken (established in 1959) was led by Matsue Jimbo, one of the very few women to be directors of animation studios. The studio specialised in puppet animation. Studio Ghibli, established in 1985 is often referred to as the ‘Japanese Disney’ for its popularity and influence on the Japanese and world animation. However, in terms of style, content, treatment and representation of characters, the studio has been highly acclaimed for its departure from the Disney style. Under one of its founders and one of Japan’s greatest creators of animated films, Hayao Miyazaki, the studio produced successful and widely loved animated films like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Porco Rosso among many others. Most of the studio’s films feature female characters who are not over-sexualised or domesticated but are independent, in the leadership role, and do not need the support of a male character to take on adversities.

Influence and scope of Animation Legendry 20th century Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein deeply admired the medium of animation and Walt Disney, the man who helped make cartoons a part of the popular culture. Eisenstein described Disney’s work as ‘omni-appealing’. About the idea of animated cartoon, he said that it was “practically a direct manifestation of the method of animism”. He realised that animations in general and Disney’s works in particular were “connected with one of the deepest features of the human psyche”. Aware of the profound impact that animated images have on its viewers, he remarked:

“I’m sometimes frightened when I watch his [Walt Disney’s] films. Frightened because of some absolute perfection in what he does. This man seems to know not only the magic of all technical means, but also all the most secret strands of human thought, images, ideas,

feelings…. He creates somewhere in the realm of the very purest and most primal depths.” 4

Referring to the anarchic activities that Disney’s iconic cartoon character Mickey Mouse performed in the early animations in the 1930s, German philosopher and one of the most influential cultural critics of the early twentieth century, Walter Benjamin, pointed towards the subversive potential of animated films. According to him “the explanation for the huge popularity of these films is not mechanization, their form; nor is it a misunderstanding. It is simply the fact that the public recognizes its own life in them.”5

Due to these reasons, it is necessary to study the kind of images animated films provide the viewers to internalise or identify with.

In animation, multinational companies have found a promotional medium that cuts across political, cultural, gender, age and linguistic barriers. Using a mix of animation, video games and mobile technology, they are now able to launch stories that engage their target consumers more experientially than ever before. For example, in late 2014 Australian unit of multinational fast-food giant McDonald’s launched a predominantly animated ad campaign that invited viewers to download their new augmented reality app TrackMyMacca's through which they could track the source of the ingredient of the food they had ordered at McDonald’s. The campaign and the app combine 3D animation with technologies like image recognition and GPS to engage the customers.

In yet another innovative use of animation and digital technology, British department store John Lewis launched what they called Monty’s Magical Toy Machine. The machine allowed children to bring to life their favourite toys in the form of interactive 3-D animated character

4 Eisenstein on Disney, ed. Jay Leyda, trans. Alan Upchurch (Calcutta: Seagull, 1986), p. 2.

5 Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings, Brigid Doherty The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media; Harvard University Press, 2008

through the use of technology of photogrammetry – the process of creating 3D images from 2D photography. The company reported more than 50 per cent increase in their sales after that.

Making of animated characters

Earlier we have seen that the animation industry was dominated by males as the creators of animated characters. The trend continues to the present times with the number of female animators increasing only marginally. As such, it is not surprising that even the strong female characters in the animated features were and are found to be stereotyped with sexualised bodies and traditional roles. The fact that unlike live action film makers, animators have the luxury of being able to manipulate gender performances of their characters at will makes the question of female representation more pertinent.

In animated features, generally we come across two types of characters: human and non- human. As in literature, non-human characters including animals, objects and even phenomena like a storm are often anthropomorphised (attributed with human characteristics) in animation. This brings us to the classification of animated characters on the basis of gender: males, females and androgynous (characters without distinguishably masculine or feminine characteristics, as in dress, appearance, or behaviour).

In one interview, critically acclaimed Japanese animation film maker Hayao Miyazaki talks about the importance of making a believable character with whom girl children could identify with.

“What made me decide to make this film was the realisation that there are no films made for that age group of ten-year old girls. It was through observing the daughter of a friend that I realised there were no films out there for her; no films that directly spoke to her. Certainly, girls like her see films that contain characters their age, but they can't identify with them, because they are imaginary characters that don't resemble them at all.

With Spirited Away I wanted to say to them "don't worry, it will be all right in the end, there will be something for you", not just in cinema, but also in everyday life. For that it was necessary to have a heroine who was an ordinary girl, not someone who could fly or do something impossible. Just a girl you can encounter anywhere in Japan.”6

Stereotypical representation of women in animated films

Central women characters in most of the animated films since the origin of the medium have been portrayed in ways to reinforce gender stereotypes. Numerous analyses of the female

6 http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/hayao-miyazaki/ Published: 7 January 2002 Accessed: 11 July 2015

characters by scholars show that the number of films having authentic representation of women is negligible. As in other media, they are found to be stereotyped figures cast in passive and submissive roles.

Like in other sectors, women are underrepresented both in the animation industry as professionals and in the content they generate. The situation is found to be particularly dismal in action-adventure genre which is heavily male-dominated. A 2014 study by University of Southern California’s Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative found that animation films depict females in less than a third of all roles.

This and several previous studies have shown that female characters are much likelier to be sexualised than male ones. More than in live-action films, in animation, the sexualisation has been found to reach limits of absurdity and being unrealistic. More often than not, the female characters are portrayed in form-fitting or revealing clothes. As would be expected, this is more common for female characters than male characters.

Figure 3 Lead Female Disney Characters (Image Source: http://feministdisney.tumblr.com/post/67864549128/brave- the-movie-that-had-feminism-in-the-title) Studies also show that the top grossing animated movies with lead female characters often tend to reinforce the idea that the appearance of the looks of women was more valuable than their skills or intellect. Most of the times they are put in situations where they are helpless and wait for a male to protect or rescue them.

A look at animated features produced by Disney in the 1950s and 60s reveals that they showed and reinforced very traditional view of family values and sexual roles. While females were shown to be sensitive to other’s feelings, dealing with emotional needs and dependent, male characters were portrayed as competitive, goal oriented and independent. These portrayals corresponded with the much contested roles of family members identified by the American sociologist and one of the most influential structural functionalists, Talcott Parsons (1902-1979). Parsons held that in order for the society to function, women and men perform complementary roles of being expressive (caring, nurturing, supportive) and instrumental (the breadwinner, the leader) respectively. Though Parson’s description has been criticized for presenting a selective vision by taking into account only North American, white and middle

class family, it is still found to be the dominant outlook propagated by many of the popular animated films.

Disney, Fairy tales and Princesses Fairy tales exist in almost all cultures and allure children alike across the world. They are known to have significant social and cultural influence on their thoughts, lives, values and relationship to the society.

In the formative years Disney and other studios involved in the making of animation films borrowed from the fairy tales of the yester years. These stories and literary fairy tales, as we are told by Jack Zipes in his classical book Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, were written in the 17th and 18th century to provide models of behaviour for the rearing and schooling of upper-class children. He further states that the stories differed from those from the oral folk traditions and aimed at grooming boys and girls for their social functions.

Upon watching the large body of Disney’s animated films, we find that Zipes is right in pointing out that the production house had continued to carry out the “general civilizing process” of the west started by the seventeenth and eighteenth century fairy-tale writers, albeit with some alterations.

Ugly is evil

The way antagonists are portrayed in most of the mainstream animated movies helps encourage the association of physical unattractiveness with being evil. Evil female characters in almost every Disney movie are marked with traits which are linked with physical unattractiveness. They are shown to have one or a combination of such markers that predominantly include being fat, old, dark skinned or being ugly. So we find Ursula the main antagonist in The Little Mermaid to be fat. In Snow White it is the Old Women and in Cinderella her ugly stepsisters are ones who play the ‘bad’ ones.

Disney Princess

Following the worldwide success and popularity of female characters from its animated films, Disney launched a media franchisee called Disney Princess in 2000 originally consisting of nine ‘official’ princesses. These were Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan and Tinker Bell. Later, the list was expanded to include Tiana, Rapunzel and Merida. As of now, the list counts to 11 with Tinker Bell dropped.

Critics have frequently pointed out towards the ostensible similarities in the appearance and other traits of the characters, despite featuring in separate films. Seven of the eleven princesses are born in royal families while three are married into royal families. Mulan is the only princess who is neither born nor married in royal family.

The early princesses Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora have been portrayed predominantly as daydreamers and “damsels in distress” (refer to module 4.2: Video games and women

characters). Though subsequent princesses like Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Merida in Pixar’s Brave, princess sisters Elsa and Anna in Frozen, Fa Mulan in Mulan are portrayed as more adventurous seeking, determined and active than their predecessors, they continue to bear exaggerated stereotypical gender markers.

References

Aries, E. (1996). Men and women in interaction: Reconsidering the differences. Oxford University Press.

Eisenstein on Disney, ed. Jay Leyda, trans. Alan Upchurch, Calcutta: Seagull, 1986.

Furniss, Maureen, 2000. “Color and Line” in Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics. London: John Libbey. Rev. edition: 71-74.

Furniss, Maureen. "Animation." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008

Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2012). A dictionary of film studies. Oxford University Press.

Pallant, C. (2011). Demystifying Disney: a history of Disney feature animation. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Sergei Eisenstein, Disney, ed. Oksana Bulgakowa, Trans. Dustin Condren, Berlin: PotemkinPress, 2010

Thompson, K. M. (2014). ‘Quick—Like a Bunny!’: The Ink and Paint Machine, Female Labor and Color Production. Journal of Animation Studies, 9.

Thornham, Sue. Feminist Film Theory. A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.

Zohn, Patricia Coloring the Kingdom http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2010/03/disney- animation-girls-201003, date published: march 2010, date accessed: August 2, 2015