Jump to content
Roderick

Feminism

Recommended Posts

Oh, God, CEO Barbie. Just a little bit. In my mouth.

 

This does remind me a little of this blog post by Max Shireson, the former CEO of MongoDB, explaining how nobody has ever, ever asked him how he balances being a CEO and having children, whereas it turns up in every interview with a female CEO, and yet that he was quitting because he wanted to spend more time with his children.

 

The future is bright and MongoDB deserves a leader who can be “all-in” and make the most of the opportunity.

Unfortunately, I cannot be that leader given the geography of the majority of the company in New York and my family in California.

I recognize that by writing this I may be disqualifying myself from some future CEO role. Will that cost me tens of millions of dollars someday? Maybe. Life is about choices. Right now, I choose to spend more time with my family and am confident that I can continue to have an meaningful and rewarding work life while doing so. At first, it seemed like a hard choice, but the more I have sat with the choice the more certain I am that it is the right choice.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This is an hour-long documentary showing the military-training of some Kurdish girls who have volunteered to leave their families to fight terrorists that threaten them.
It's pretty intense, but not in a trigger-warning kinda way. It's just really intense.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So in other DC Comics news, DC was going to release a wildly inappropriate "Killing Joke"-inspired variant cover for their ongoing Batgirl series, which has been bringing in new crowds by trying to be more fun and aimed at younger female audiences instead of older male ones.

 

Following our Killing Joke discussion a while back (starting with the post quoted above), Bruce Timm has announced he's making an animated adaptation of it. Let's hope it's as classy as this clip from his upcoming webseries!

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Following our Killing Joke discussion a while back (starting with the post quoted above), Bruce Timm has announced he's making an animated adaptation of it. Let's hope it's as classy as this clip from his upcoming webseries!

 

:/ That was not an enjoyable clip. This makes me sad, because I'm usually very hopeful when a DC animated thing shows up.

 

Bring back Young Justice!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Really great look at something that's bugged me for a while: the "sameface syndrome" that every female animated character in the past decade or so seems to suffer from. Also briefly touches on the weird initialization inherent to the de facto "female" design.

 

ew4doqH.jpg

 

I was thinking about this again recently what with the release of Inside Out (which I haven't actually seen yet, so some of this may be off base). While they're somewhat more varied, it occurs to me that the character designs for the emotions that present as female (and have female voice actors) are significantly more "same-face"-y than the ones who present as male. i.e. Anger and Fear are a square monster and a muppet-thing, while the Joy, Sadness, and Disgust are...basically just different colored women.

 

Also, the idea that different emotions are gendered is itself a little problematic (from the credits, it appears that the mother has female actresses playing her Anger and Fear?). And the comically stereotypical sit-com gender representation from the trailer left a really bad taste in my mouth.

 

It seems there's a lot to like about the film, but it seems like there's some pretty tone-deaf stuff in there too?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I was thinking about this again recently what with the release of Inside Out (which I haven't actually seen yet, so some of this may be off base). While they're somewhat more varied, it occurs to me that the character designs for the emotions that present as female (and have female voice actors) are significantly more "same-face"-y than the ones who present as male. i.e. Anger and Fear are a square monster and a muppet-thing, while the Joy, Sadness, and Disgust are...basically just different colored women.

 

Also, the idea that different emotions are gendered is itself a little problematic (from the credits, it appears that the mother has female actresses playing her Anger and Fear?). And the comically stereotypical sit-com gender representation from the trailer left a really bad taste in my mouth.

 

It seems there's a lot to like about the film, but it seems like there's some pretty tone-deaf stuff in there too?

 

Yeah, I just saw it this morning and it certainly has issues. They got stuck with similar gender representation problems when designing the female volcano in the opening short. There's nothing new in it to be honest, by which I mean they've made no significant progress. If you're optimistic you could point out that there's a good gender balance in the cast, but that doesn't mean they're doing a good job with the designs of the characters they do have. Both in the sameface and samebody problem.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, I just saw it this morning and it certainly has issues. They got stuck with similar gender representation problems when designing the female volcano in the opening short. There's nothing new in it to be honest, by which I mean they've made no significant progress. If you're optimistic you could point out that there's a good gender balance in the cast, but that doesn't mean they're doing a good job with the designs of the characters they do have. Both in the sameface and samebody problem.

 

Regarding Inside Out, I've kind of gone back and forth on how I feel about the gender representation and what their intentions were and I've thought quite a bit about it. I think I generally feel like they did a good job with gender representation and their only major misstep was with the whole "sameface/samebody" thing.

 

It immediately jumped out to me that her mom had all female emotions and her dad had all male emotions whereas she had a mix of male and female. At first glance, I assumed they did that in an attempt to make it less "girly" so the movie would have a more broad appeal. But the more I've thought about it, I kind of wonder if it was done intentionally to illustrate that she doesn't conform as much to traditional gender roles as her parents do. The mom and dad were both kind of represented as traditional parents fulfilling their traditional gender roles (as is pretty clearly evidenced by the dinner table scene) whereas Riley seemed to have a mix of characteristics that one might consider to be more "male" or "female". For instance, she's really into hockey and competing (which a lot of people might see as a more "male" activity) but at the same time she still has the whole "imaginary perfect boyfriend" fantasy.

 

I'd be really curious to know what the creator's intentions were behind some of those decisions because it could either be a pretty positive representation of Riley as far as gender goes or it could just be a tone deaf thing they did so that the movie would be more appealing to boys.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I haven't seen the film yet, as it hasn't started showing in the UK. But my thought after watching the trailer was that the mix of genders in the child might be due to incomplete social programming. As adults her parents have already been taught and internalised their gender roles, whereas as a child she still has the freedom to express attributes from multiple segments of the gender spectrum.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It immediately jumped out to me that her mom had all female emotions and her dad had all male emotions whereas she had a mix of male and female. At first glance, I assumed they did that in an attempt to make it less "girly" so the movie would have a more broad appeal. But the more I've thought about it, I kind of wonder if it was done intentionally to illustrate that she doesn't conform as much to traditional gender roles as her parents do.

 

My read on the situation was that the emotions all reflected the parents' genders for exactly the same reason they all reflected their hair (unlike Riley's). What that reason is is somewhat less clear, but I doubt it has anything to do with gender roles (except insofar as you can argue that any decision about gender is influenced by the decider being influenced by gender roles). The hair and gender reflections seem like choices made by the same logic. Maybe it's an art direction choice "And these are the dad emotions, so they all look like dad", or to go with a slightly more diegetic interpretation, it's because Riley's parents are somewhat two-dimensional (more due to lack of screentime than failure to develop them) so there's less depth depicted in their emotions as well.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think it's worth pointing out that during the credits the movie shows the emotions for various minor characters, and they match the gender (and the hair) of the character they're part of. It does seem like Riley is different mostly because she's the protagonist.

 

Also, was that volcano thing the worst short Pixar's ever done? Even aside from the character designs, it was dull. It's like the script was "volcano romance" and "I guess put a song in it" and they forgot do actually write the rest.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also, was that volcano thing the worst short Pixar's ever done? Even aside from the character designs, it was dull. It's like the script was "volcano romance" and "I guess put a song in it" and they forgot do actually write the rest.

 

I can't think of a worse one, and I'm a heartless monster who didn't like the short about the dog and the food. It felt like they came up with the lava=love pun and then worked to build a scene to support it, neglecting the fact that as good as the pun was, it wasn't worth multiple minutes.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think it's worth pointing out that during the credits the movie shows the emotions for various minor characters, and they match the gender (and the hair) of the character they're part of. It does seem like Riley is different mostly because she's the protagonist.

 

That's a pretty good observation and maybe there wasn't as much thought put into it as I had hoped. It's kind of a glaring inconsistency if she is literally the only character with any variability between her emotion characters.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's a pretty good observation and maybe there wasn't as much thought put into it as I had hoped. It's kind of a glaring inconsistency if she is literally the only character with any variability between her emotion characters.

 

Most of the minor characters have emotions with the same body types as Riley's emotions, but then we see an angry bus-driver where all of his emotions have the Anger body. Assuming I read that correctly as a joke about how he's a very angry person, that indicates that they thought about it at least once. However, I'm still pretty inclined to agree with Cleinhunn, who got to my point more directly.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also IIRC the bakery lady had emotions of different genders like Riley did. It does seem like a choice made with some intent behind it.

 

I think the volcano thing is generally accepted to be their worst short at this point. I'm pretty tired of this whole inanimate objects getting laid or working to get humans laid genre of cartoon. I didn't like the dog thing much either but that was a Disney short not a Pixar one.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also IIRC the bakery lady had emotions of different genders like Riley did. 

xmFnTDZ.png?1

It doesn't look that way to me, but it's hard to tell from an image this size

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hm. Maybe I didn't see well. Disappointing if so. I certainly prefer the interpretation that Riley either hasn't fully constructed a gender identity or is somewhat gender-queer.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I can't think of a worse one, and I'm a heartless monster who didn't like the short about the dog and the food. It felt like they came up with the lava=love pun and then worked to build a scene to support it, neglecting the fact that as good as the pun was, it wasn't worth multiple minutes.

I also felt like it might've ribbed its "volcanos facing the wrong way" gag from adventure time, memories of boom boom mountain.

I really dug how Sadness had a different body type and giant glasses! but I guess they still all had the round head, doe eyes, tiny nose thing going on.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I really dug how Sadness had a different body type and giant glasses! but I guess they still all had the round head, doe eyes, tiny nose thing going on.

 

Yeah, I liked a lot about Sadness' design, although not very much about how she interacted with other characters. The other characters were so mean and dismissive of her (but not, say, Anger) it seemed obvious that it would figure into the plot, which I found a little predictable and dull. I liked the movie overall, though!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, I liked a lot about Sadness' design, although not very much about how she interacted with other characters. The other characters were so mean and dismissive of her (but not, say, Anger) it seemed obvious that it would figure into the plot, which I found a little predictable and dull. I liked the movie overall, though!

 

What I found more interesting than Sadness being the hero is the fact that Joy is the villain. She tries to maroon the hero outside Headquarters (I love that pun), and absolutely everything is the fault of her "must be happy all the time" attitude. Even in the very beginning when they arrive in the new house, Joy's optimism leads to nothing but repeated disappointment. The idea to run away comes from the other emotions trying to make Riley happy because they're imitating Joy rather than doing their own jobs.

 

Regarding the body types, the director said that each of the emotions is based on a shape: Joy is a star (note how she looks when she throws her arms out, which she does a lot, including on the poster), Sadness is a teardrop, Fright is a raw nerve, Anger is a fire brick and Disgust is broccoli.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hm. Maybe I didn't see well. Disappointing if so. I certainly prefer the interpretation that Riley either hasn't fully constructed a gender identity or is somewhat gender-queer.

 

I would prefer that but Pixar tends to try being pretty inoffensive so I would be surprised if it was at all the intention.

 

Disgust is broccoli.

I question that, or at least criticise how little they committed to it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've realized that the "Disgust is broccoli" thing is a pretty strong argument for the idea that the other characters haven't had their emotions thought through. Riley's Disgust has a personal reason to look like broccoli, but everyone's Disgust looks that way. Surely not everyone hates broccoli, especially the girl at the broccoli pizza place. Given that, it seems pretty clear to me that they designed Riley's emotions, then for the other characters said "Now here's the dad version of the emotions, they all look like dad" "Here's the emo pizza girl version of the emotions", etc.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×