Still No Jetpacks Or Gender Parity: Animated Film from 1980 Through 2016
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Journal of the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences Volume 20 Issue 1 Article 7 2017 Still No Jetpacks or Gender Parity: Animated Film from 1980 through 2016 Sara C. Hare Indiana University Southeast Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jiass Recommended Citation Hare, Sara C. (2017) "Still No Jetpacks or Gender Parity: Animated Film from 1980 through 2016," Journal of the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences: Vol. 20 : Iss. 1 , Article 7. Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jiass/vol20/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Butler University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Butler University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Still No Jetpacks or Gender Parity: Animated Film from 1980 through 2016* SARA C. HARE Indiana University Southeast ABSTRACT This study examines the gender ratio of characters in the 150 top-grossing full-length animated films from 1980 through 2016. Results show that males hold an overwhelming majority of both central and auxiliary roles. Male characters fill significantly more of the lead or protagonist roles, the speaking roles, the members of the protagonist’s main gang, and the film’s titles. No significant change has occurred over the years (1980–2016) to alter the gender balance; however, an increase in female authors and screenwriters corresponds with an increase in female characters in all of these roles. The underrepresentation of female characters in animated films exemplifies the ways in which popular media reflects and reproduces social inequality. KEY WORDS Content Analysis; Gender Roles; Children’s Media; Stereotypes Films from Hollywood’s Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, and other studios are among the current-day storytellers for children. Whereas children in the past listened to family stories or books read by adults, children today are increasingly spending time watching stories produced by large film and television studios (Kaiser Family Foundation 2010). In fact, television viewing is displacing one-on-one communication between children and adults in the United States (Christakis et al. 2009). Now with DVD players, computers, and handheld devices, the time that US children spend with entertainment media has increased to an average of 7.5 hours daily for youth 8–18 years old, and with “media multitasking,” they consume almost 11 hours of content daily (Kaiser Family Foundation 2010). The purpose of this content analysis study is to assess the number of male and female characters in a medium that is very popular with children: animated film. In animated film, there should be no limits to the abilities of characters; female swashbucklers can be drawn as easily as male swashbucklers. In a medium in which insects can talk and tasty food can drop from the sky, our imaginations need not be * Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sara C. Hare, Associate Professor of Sociology, Indiana University Southeast, 4201 Grant Line Road, New Albany, IN 47150; [email protected]; (812) 941-2161. 50 Hare Still No Jetpacks or Gender Parity 51 confined to traditional and tired gender stereotypes. Animals and inanimate objects brought to life in animated film are not inherently male. This study is not limited to one particular film studio (such as Disney) but includes all major studios producing popular animated movies. Although most of these films are developed by US companies, their influence and distribution are worldwide (MPAA 2015). The current study uses the 150 top-grossing animated films (based on US and Canadian box office receipts) from 1980 through 2016, assessing the sex of characters in the lead roles, film-title roles, main entourage, and speaking roles. It asks whether the sex ratio has changed with more recent films or when more of the screenwriters and authors are female. This study contributes to the existing literature by incorporating a large sample of the most popular animated films released since 1980. By exposing the distorted proportion of male to female characters in these films, this study raises awareness about the marginalization of females in stories predominantly consumed by children. Most stories for children teach important moral lessons while they entertain. Moskalenko (2008) states that children are socialized through interactions with adults, other children, and material such as fairy tales. Mass media influences the cultivation of values, beliefs, dreams, and expectations (Swindler 1986). Gender development is one of the key aspects of socialization (Gooden and Gooden 2001). Children learn about gender through observation of others, personal experiences, and stories. As social cognitive theorists contend, people learn about the world through interactions and personal experiences, and media functions as a form of interaction (Bandura 1986). Children learn from media just as they learn from real-world models of behavior. For example, girls’ participation in archery has doubled since 2012, and 70 percent of those girls have said that the female protagonists in The Hunger Games and Brave influenced their decision to take up the sport (Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media 2016a). Children learn conceptions of masculinity and femininity and the expected characteristics that are appropriate for each gender. Bian, Leslie, and Cimpian (2017) find changes in girls between ages five and seven. At five years old, both boys and girls think that their own gender can be “really, really smart.” By the next year or two, girls (but not boys) are significantly less likely to associate brilliance with their own gender. Social learning is increased by the repetition of the message that occurs when children watch videos repeatedly. These stereotypes that children absorb have lasting effects on how they see and process social information and, as Bandura (1986) notes, how they use their capabilities. Studies have found that children (as well as adults [Signorielli 1989]) who spend more time watching television exhibit greater gender-role stereotyping than do children who spend less time (Frueh and McGhee 1975). They pick up on the media differences at an early age; US children as young as four years notice that boys appear more often than girls in television cartoons (Thompson and Zerbinos 1997). Preschool boys who watch more superhero programs play in more male-stereotyped ways, and the impact is still evident a year later (Coyne et al. 2014). A longitudinal panel survey of 396 children found that increased television exposure correlated with decreased self-esteem for African American children and for white girls. White boys’ self-esteem, however, increased with television viewing (Martins and Harrison 2011). Other studies (Tognoli, 52 Journal of the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences Vol. 20 (2017) Pullen, and Lieber 1994) contend that gender bias in children’s media gives boys a sense of entitlement and lowers girls’ self-esteem. Furthermore, Thorne (1993) notes that children’s understandings of gender are constructed as social processes involving groups of kids. Children police each other in delineating the boundaries of what is acceptable behavior for girls and boys. Thus, the children who do absorb greater quantities of children’s media and the subsequent stereotypes spread their understanding of gender roles to other children. Signorielli (1989) argues that children, in perceiving these differences, learn that females are less important than males. LITERATURE REVIEW Because media are a primary source of gender socialization (Bandura 1986), it is important to know how (and how often) males and females are portrayed in these works for children. Research on this topic began in earnest in the 1970s, focusing initially on children’s books. Weitzman et al. (1972) analyzed Caldecott (1938–1972) and Newbery (1922–1972) award-winning children’s books as well as the best selling of the inexpensive Little Golden Books and found that male characters outnumbered females three to one. Other studies mirrored these findings (Czaplinski 1972; Davis and McDaniel 1999; LaDow 1976). The Notable Children’s Books list of picture books (selected by the American Library Association) have more equal representation, as Gooden and Gooden (2001) found with books from 1995 through 1999, as do Coretta Scott King Awards books (illustrated by African Americans) and Pura Belpré books (illustrated by Latinos and Latinas), according to a study by Clark et al. (2007). Nonetheless, in a comprehensive study of several thousand children’s books published throughout the twentieth century, McCabe et al. (2011) found that males were represented in the titles nearly twice as often as females. Studies of the male-to-female ratio in US children’s television shows produce similar findings. Male characters are used two to three times more often than are female characters, as Baker and Raney (2004) found in 44 animated Saturday-morning children’s programs. Smith and Cook (2008) had similar findings with 1,034 television shows for children broadcast in the United States in 2005, in that roughly twice as many male as female characters were represented. Furthermore, they found that animated programs in particular were more likely to have higher rates of male characters. Findings by Thompson and Zerbinos (1995) concurred: Males had three times as many leads as females in 41 different children’s cartoons broadcast in the United States in 1993. Educational television for children provides the best balance of characters (based on 23 educational programs aired on PBS in 1997), but even here, males outnumber females 59 percent to 41 percent (Barner 1999). Studies of children’s films are similar to those of films for adults. Smith et al. (2010) examined the top-grossing 1990–2005 G-rated films released theatrically in North America and found that 72 percent of the characters were male. Other studies by Smith (Smith and Cook 2008) show that films for children use slightly more female characters than do films for older audiences.