Too Few Animated Women Break the Disney Mold

It is easy to dismiss animation as a secondary art form and cartoons as trifles made largely for children, little amuse-gueules for art festival devotees, or, in big cinemas, something to watch while you’re waiting for the popcorn.

But animated films – everything from feature length movies, to Saturday morning cartoons, to the National Film Board’s quirkier short pieces are as drenched ideology as any other art form and, especially with the commercial product, they are powerful vehicles for certain notions about our culture.

What messages do the immensely-popular Disney animations convey about women, for example? It depends on the film, to some extent, but there are a series of stock female characters that appear in most commercial, American-produced animated features: the (increasingly) curvaceous, slightly fretful, but essential innocuous heroine (Little Mermaid, Pocahontas); the touchingly-strong contemporary heroine, determined to fulfill her own destiny without ruining her hair (Belle in Beauty and the Beast); and the larger-than-life matron who is either menacing (Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians), or comic ( the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland), or both (The Ugly Stepsisters in Cinderella). Disney’s Tinkerbell, Peter Pan’s peevish, jealous and mean-spirited little friend, is a particularly vicious rendering of the woman scorned. But we’ve heard all this before, and so, finally, has Los Angeles, with the result that the latest Disney films have toned down the sexism somewhat (although they continue to exhibit insulting stereotypes of unpopular minorities, most recently Arabs and gays).

Even those violent, noisy Saturday morning cartoons now feature women warriors with formidable breastplates over their formidable breasts and more attitude than a New York City cabbie.

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Limiting Stereotypes

But this doesn’t look like progress to me, only an updating of essentially limiting stereotypes. In most animated films made today, the women characters are either old, or attractive, but never both.

There aren’t many heroines that are successful and unattractive, either; in animation or in live action movies. The modern cartoon heroine may aspire to a career; but if she doesn’t snag a handsome prince, too, she hasn’t really succeeded.

There are exceptions to the ditzy dames, bodacious babes and warty-nosed witches that populate toonland. The indomitable Lucy in the animated versions of Charlie Brown is no Minnie Mouse. And The Simpsons, subversive creation of Matt Groening, features female characters more nuanced and complex than Wilma and Betty of the Flintstones. But these remain exceptions.

According to Maureen Furniss, founding publisher and editor of Animation Journal and head of film studies at Chapman University in Orange, California, the animation industry “is still looking for physical comedy and animators have difficulty doing that kind of comedy with women.”

As for Disney, Furniss – in town for the Ottawa International Animation Festival that ended Sunday – says “there are people there who care” and there have been recent encouraging changes in the corporation’s management. But, on the whole, “a lot of what (Disney) produces is insensitive, not just of women and minority groups, but to the world.” Some animators are trying to circumvent these problems by creating animal characters of ambiguous gender, or by painting their characters blue or green, rather than black, brown or white. But, says Furniss, “neither practice, using animals or colours, provides a means for transcending stereotypes. Basically, they are avoidance techniques.”

Fortunately, there are alternatives to the Disney vision and some were exhibited Sunday at the National Arts Centre in a series entitled Women in Animation, organized by Furniss and her student, Lyne Herbots.

Furniss didn’t set out to provide a feminist alternative to the Little Mermaid, but to show how many different ways women can be portrayed outside of the constraints of a multi-million dollar industry.

The show included work by two bold, literate and wickedly witty British animators, Candy Guard and Joanna Quinn. Guard’s short piece features two women friends going to a party, fretting over what to wear, arriving too early, being ignored, and eating too much junk. It is a closely-observed, fond and self-deprecation look at our insecurities as women, hardly a feminist manifesto but revolutionary because it is so real.

Quinn’s short tells the story of Beryl, a Welsh factory worker goaded by her co-worker Vince, a hunk in his own mind, about her weight. In revenge, Beryl takes up body-building and bests Vince at his won game, turning the tables on him and on conventional cartoon portrayals of fat women.

More familiar, if less realistic, is a 1950′s Hollywood classic Little Red Hot Riding Hood, featuring a testosterone-charged wolf, Red Riding Hood recast as a torchy lounge singer and her grandma as a sex-crazed diva. It is dated, stupid in a brainless way, and occasionally funny.

Too bad the same conventions still animate so many of the cartoons made today. Too bad children, and their parents, don’t have more choice.