Gender roles continue
Apr. 1st, 2008 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
secondlinaIn the Oz books, at some point, Ozma's emerald city is attacked by an army of girls lead by their fearless leader, the powerful Jinjur, also a girl. Oz is all about women in power facing other women in power.
The reality is still not at that point. Continuing on the idea I wrote last time that men seemed more freed by gender role changes then women, I saw an article today with this in it:
It's a 1938 disney rejection letter saying that :
"Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school.
The only work open to women consists of tracing the characters on clear celluloid sheets with India ink and filling in the tracings on the reverse side with paint according to the directions."
Wow, good thing today is different! Well, according to an article about this letter, In Ratatouille, among the 26 head animators there is no women. Now you wonder, is it because women are not interested in animation, or because those who are perform less well then men or simply because those who are interest get disapointed by the boys club that seem to be living in animation studios. I remember visiting Funbag animation when I was 17, in the context of an internship. The guy that had brought me into Funbag told me later "Wow, their boss told me you distracted them a lot and a lot of employees complained they could not work."
Could not work because of an (underage to boot!) one-day-only female coworker? Sheesh.
I guess I understand that, if woman are rare in the animation world, it's normal that they may be distracting, but that made me feel like a zoo animal. So I really wonder about the animation world, and the comic book world and the commercial art world in general, who's greater members (sic) are still men. This brings us back to Linda Nochlin's text "why is there no great woman artist?" who says that their is no woman artists (at least back in the 1970s) because most of the art world did not always reject openly women, but rather made it difficult for them and opened easier "girlier" jobs for them instead. Boy, that reminds me of the whole disney inker versus animator right?
I know the world today is a lot less like that, and that one of the reasons women aren't in animation is because of a lack of interest. But that lack of interest is caused by something, and it might not be the competitive atmosphere or the horrible hours because women choose jobs that have those too. Maybe it's because there has always been so little woman that woman are discouraged. When your class teacher must warn the class to leave women alone or your internship boss tells your mentor you're distracting his employees... Is that really all that encouraging?
Yeah, this text is feminist and borderline sexist towards men. Too bad. I'm feeling female fury today.
-Secondlina
EDIT: Check out http://ichiban-victory.livejournal.com/447109.html?view=3085957#t3085957
Ichiban Victory does an awesome little post that sheds a bit of light on the stuff said in this one. It complements my super feminist rant with a more moderate point of view! Plz read :)
(I love her post!)
The reality is still not at that point. Continuing on the idea I wrote last time that men seemed more freed by gender role changes then women, I saw an article today with this in it:
It's a 1938 disney rejection letter saying that :
"Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school.
The only work open to women consists of tracing the characters on clear celluloid sheets with India ink and filling in the tracings on the reverse side with paint according to the directions."
Wow, good thing today is different! Well, according to an article about this letter, In Ratatouille, among the 26 head animators there is no women. Now you wonder, is it because women are not interested in animation, or because those who are perform less well then men or simply because those who are interest get disapointed by the boys club that seem to be living in animation studios. I remember visiting Funbag animation when I was 17, in the context of an internship. The guy that had brought me into Funbag told me later "Wow, their boss told me you distracted them a lot and a lot of employees complained they could not work."
Could not work because of an (underage to boot!) one-day-only female coworker? Sheesh.
I guess I understand that, if woman are rare in the animation world, it's normal that they may be distracting, but that made me feel like a zoo animal. So I really wonder about the animation world, and the comic book world and the commercial art world in general, who's greater members (sic) are still men. This brings us back to Linda Nochlin's text "why is there no great woman artist?" who says that their is no woman artists (at least back in the 1970s) because most of the art world did not always reject openly women, but rather made it difficult for them and opened easier "girlier" jobs for them instead. Boy, that reminds me of the whole disney inker versus animator right?
I know the world today is a lot less like that, and that one of the reasons women aren't in animation is because of a lack of interest. But that lack of interest is caused by something, and it might not be the competitive atmosphere or the horrible hours because women choose jobs that have those too. Maybe it's because there has always been so little woman that woman are discouraged. When your class teacher must warn the class to leave women alone or your internship boss tells your mentor you're distracting his employees... Is that really all that encouraging?
Yeah, this text is feminist and borderline sexist towards men. Too bad. I'm feeling female fury today.
-Secondlina
EDIT: Check out http://ichiban-victory.livejournal.com/447109.html?view=3085957#t3085957
Ichiban Victory does an awesome little post that sheds a bit of light on the stuff said in this one. It complements my super feminist rant with a more moderate point of view! Plz read :)
(I love her post!)
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-02 01:18 pm (UTC)Manga and Anime have a lot of positive female characters, even in shonen now , and there are a lot of female artists, yet the japanese society is awful to women.
On the contrary, american society is really good for women, much better than my country (sadly for me) yet america's comics are still victim of the Smurfette Principle (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSmurfettePrinciple). And most action movies are unwatchable, because the girl is either the damsel in distress or an uber-extra-special kickass girl that doesn't do anything important in the end.
I hope the trend will change. I think that all it takes is a couple of events that upset the balance.
For example, in 1995 Sailor Moon came out in Italy in national channels, and it wasn't only a great success. People started to realize that programs for girls actually make money (tons of money! They sold anything but Sailor Moon toilet paper XD) so a lot of people "copied" the idea.
Maybe if Anime was shown more in usa national television, it could help the cause a lot.