I really liked this week’s reading. I never thought of the role of gender in representation but Paul Wells had some very good examples. Some I was more familiar with than others. There are a lot of powerful female characters in cartoons. Such as Aeon Flux, She-Ra, Wonder Woman, the Powerpuff girls, Raven in Teen Titans, and the women in X-Men. In anime it’s very noticeable. There are several examples but I’m only going to name a few. Lucy in Elfen Lied. Lucy has mental abilities and breaks out of a top secret laboratory killing everyone. In Higurashi, Shion goes insane and murders her friends. In Gunslinger Girl little girls are trained to be ruthless killers.
Here’s a trailer from Elfen Lied, although warnings since it’s very violent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RLN42dWLsY
Sometimes female characters don’t have the same roles as their male counterparts and are kept in the background. For instance Sakura in Naruto, Supergirl, Catwoman, Kagome in Inu-Yasha, ect.
I also see the role of gender bending and cross dressing a lot in anime. For instance in Ouran High School Host Club a girl dresses up as a boy to entertain other girls so she can pay off a debt. In Strawberry Eggs a man dresses up a woman so he can teach at a school that only hires female teachers. In Sailor Moon males can even change into females. The best example I can think of in American cartoons is Bugs and others cross dressing. Maureen draws some of the same ideas but he goes into a more cultural view point.
I think the role of cross species comes up best when live action is crossed with animation. Such as in Who Framed Rogger Rabbit with Jessica and Donald and the girl in Three Caballeros. I have to say I loved the Three Caballeros, it was very entertaining and I liked the animation style. The Disney lecture was really interesting. Disney has a market on so much. Although it seems like they haven’t been paying so much attention to animation. The Disney channel is mostly tween shows. I saw The Princess and the Frog. It was mainly a kid’s movie but it had a good storyline and I’m glad Disney got back to some traditional animation.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I also think it is very interesting how animators will play with gender in a very adult way. Some cartoons are addressed toward kids, but their gender-bending the character's sex in a very adult way. I remember watching some episodes of pokemon and Yugio, an anime shown, and I was sometimes baffled because i wasn't sure what the characters were in terms of gender. Now that I think about it, there was a lot of homoerotic sexual tension in those television shows.
ReplyDelete