Project proposal: Women in Animation films

Women and Media: Final Project proposal

Tessie van Hintum

I would like to make a short documentary film that focuses on how the movies help cement the gender roles in our society. I will look at the animation films that are made for children and show how exactly we talk to kids; how we fill their heads with ideas what it means to be a boy or girl and how they should act. I want to show people that this happens in our day to day action and that we contribute to maintaining these gender roles by telling girls to act more like a lady or that her main task in life is to be a mother and caregiver. Inspiration for this project is the 2014 Verizon commercial, which is a perfect example of how we shape our children to fit traditional gender roles.

             I want to emphasize that these gender roles are limiting our potential as human beings. It limits your freedom to do and be what you want from an early age. Of course you can break free of these gender roles on a later ages, but as children I think there's not really a way to do this yet.  By saying that a girl can't play in the dirt or that a girl can't like science, you will shape their minds to think the same.  These small expressions are in my opinion as important as the big expressions like the fact that women don't have the same screen time or character development in films. Last years there have been more films with leading roles in animation films and they have more agency(for example the movies Brave, Tangled and Frozen), but I would like to show that the change isn't as big as you would think at first glance. The movies are still centered around the topic of marriage. Women are princesses and learn to behave, while the men can be warriors, kings, nights, monks etc. However, for every step that is made in the right direction, there are still a lot of traditional patriarchal values in place. Even though they have women in as the leading character, subjects like marriage and finding a man are still the most important in these films. Also there are still white females who meet the standards of traditional beauty standards in the leading characters. It is interesting that even though the studio announced to not make 'classic disney films' with the princesses anymore, there actually hasn't changed that much. I would like to bring this debate to the front in my documentary. You can't really have an eradication of gender roles if the patriarchal system is still in place. To change we also have to have a change in attitude and this begins by being conscious of what media products really say. I hope that I can bring this message to light with this film how it starts at what we learn as we are children and for many of them, animation films take a big part in this.

Project Timeline

First it is important to make a script/storyboard for the whole documentary. In this documentary I will combine the research for scholars and articles from blogs on the internet to give different point of views, including my own. I will illustrate this with excerpts from animation movies, mainly from the films Frozen, Tangled, Brave, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. These will illustrate the ways in which they empower women, but also to show how they don't.

       

 I would make this film with an audience of young females in mind and I like to try to get them to think about gender roles. Especially how almost everything that they perceive as normal is conditioned by society and the patriarchy. I would in no way want to force my opinion on them, but I would like to display different opinions and point of views that really makes them think. The next step is to assemble the video material with the storyboard as the guideline and after that is possible to start editing the film in After Effects. 

Bibliography

Brave. Dir. Mark Andrews. Walt Disney Animation Studios, 2012.

Colman, Dani. "The Problem with False Feminism(or why Frozen Left me Cold)." medium.com, 2014. https://medium.com/@directordanic/the-problem-with-false-feminism-7c0bbc7252ef

Decker, Jonathen Tye. "The Portrayal of Gender in the Feature-Length Films of Pixar Animation Studios:  A Content Analysis." auburn.edu, 2010. http://etd.auburn.edu/bitstream/handle/

10415/2100/Jonathan%20Decker%20Thesis%20Final.pdf?sequence=2

Frozen. Dir. Chris Buck. Walt Disney Animation Studios, 2013.

Morrison, Danielle. "Brave: A Feminist Perspective on the Disney Princess Movie." calpoly.edu

http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1178&context=comssp&seiredir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.nl%2Fscholar%3Fq%3Dfeminism%2Bpixar%2B%26btnG%3D%26hl%3Dnl%26as_sdt%3D0%252C33#search=%22feminism%20pixar%22

Pols, Mary. "Why Pixars Brave is a failure of female empowerment." time.com, 2012.http://ideas.

time.com/2012/06/22/why-pixars-brave-isa-failure-of-female-empowerment/

Ratatouille. Bird, Brad. Walt Disney Animation Studios, 2007.

               

Stover, Cassandra. "Damsels and Heroines: The Conundrum of the Post-Feminist Disney Princess." claremont.edu, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1028&context

=lux

Tangled. Dir. Nethan Greno. Walt Disney Animation Studios, 2010.

The Incredibles. Bird, Brad. Walt Disney Animation Studios, 2004.

Verizon commercial, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP3cyRRAfX0

Wilson, Natalie. "Pop goes feminism: Tangled shows no signs of cutting Disney's white, male roots." thesocietyages.org, 2010. http://thesocietypages.org/girlwpen/2010/11/28/pop-goes-feminism

tangled-shows-no-signs-of-cutting-disneys-white-male-roots/

White, Cindy. "Why the feminist controversy over Frozen totally misses the point." geekmom.com, 2013. http://geekmom.com/2013/11/feminist-controversy-frozen-misses-point/