For my project, I will attempt to create a video in the style that many popular web critics present their own analyses and opinions, which entails satire and straight-up entertaining dissatisfaction that can bring to light the types of things people should be looking for when viewing anything entertainment, although I will focus entirely on animations. Once this is done, I hope to post the video to YouTube and Vimeo, as well as connect it to my own blogger account.
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| This is an image of many different Cartoon Network characters from many different shows |
My video will consist of examples I find from my own viewing time, and discuss how representations of gender are produced from these examples. I'm also considering looking at one work in particular to do this. I want to look at specific clips of works, and talk about how each gender is portrayed, and I also want to discuss how this would affect the way a child would see the world. My research so far looks at examples of Disney movies and some of the most popular cartoons on Cartoon Network. I will likely look at examples that do use gender roles, and compare them to other examples where gender roles aren't quite as definitive.
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| The flawless Disney princesses |
Part of my goal is to point out gender stereotypes, how they're portrayed, and why they are a bad part of society, but the other part is that I hope to be able to reach out to people in the older teens to the young adults (16-26) because they're the age group who either will likely just have a kid or has not yet, and this means it is a great point in a person's life to start understanding what not to do when they finally do have the kid (or what to stop doing if they already have the kid). The internet is a huge place after all, so for all I know, I could have the chance to have a lot of say on these kinds of things.
Hey Scott, take a look into researching Miyazaki films (ironically distributed in the USA by Disney) which generally feature strong female children as their protagonists. The protagonists in his stories are not perfect, nor are they expected to be. Usually, they have one obvious characteristic that actually sets themselves apart and alienates them from the other characters. The film Kiki's delivery service especially exemplifies this with its core cast made of very different strong female characters which navigate a gamut of personalities and character traits. Hope this helps!
ReplyDeleteMiyazaki films are great! My parents rented those films from Blockbuster when I was a kid more than they would get Disney films. Here is a post of great Miyazaki quotes that you might want to use for your piece, Scott: http://www.buzzfeed.com/juliapugachevsky/amazingly-profound-quotes-from-hayao-miyazaki#.myyBzQ4mn8
DeleteYou can even do a comparison with Miyazaki films and Disney films and see if there is research out there seeing their effects on youth who watch these films. That can help you hone in your topic of gender because it is a huge one (I'm also looking at gender and have seen how difficult it is to focus on one topic of this large issue). Good luck!!
If you do some digging, you will find some quotes from one of the creators of a cancelled Cartoon Network show called Young Justice. From personal experience, I think the show was excellent and it was evident with many other fans online. But according to one of the creators, the show was cancelled after 2 seasons because the network thought too many girls liked the show. You could use this as an example about how cartoons are supposedly tailored to just boys or just girls.
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