Male as the assumed default.

Logical Fallacy

Nicely timed piece from the Comment section of the Guardian on Studio Ghibli films. He kind of misses the point on adult characters within the films but other than that it's nicely written.

Think of the last Hollywood family animation you saw that had a female character in the lead role. Now try to think of one that wasn't about a Disney princess. See the problem? We're supposed to have just lived through a new golden age of animation, but clearly it has been one where boys are better than girls. You can't chuck a pair of 3D glasses across a multiplex without hitting a male hero: Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Rango, Ice Age, Despicable Me, the list goes on. Even with Pixar, the undisputed kings of computer animation, it's pretty much a guy's world: Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life, Up, Ratatouille, Wall-E – if anything, Pixar's product is even more male-dominated than its competitors. At best, Pixar's females are second billing (Finding Nemo's Dory, Mrs Incredible, Toy Story's Jessie); at worst they're token love-interests, stay-at-home mums and other stereotypes bent on spoiling the boys' party. Which brings us to Cars 2, its latest release and most brazenly boytastic movie. This merchandise-shifting adventure will also go down as the worst-received movie Pixar has ever made, and there's barely a female speaking part in it.

Arrietty
Production year: 2010
Country: Rest of the world
Runtime: 94 mins
Directors: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
More on this film
Since the very first feature animation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney has somehow cornered the girls' market virtually unchallenged, but – with few exceptions – its heroines have fitted the corporate mould like a dainty foot in a glass slipper. This year's Tangled brought in "Disney Princess" No 10, Rapunzel, but despite a bit of pop-culture attitude, her ultimate fate is to be ladylike, marry a prince and live happily ever after in her newfound patriarchal milieu, just like her predecessors. Girls with aspirations beyond being the next Kate Middleton or the next Jordan (whose daughter's name is Princess, by the way), will have to look far beyond the pink palace of Disney to find a decent role-model. In fact, they'll have to look all the way to Japan.

As well as Cars 2, July 29 also sees the release of Arrietty, the latest product of Studio Ghibli, Japan's leading animation studio. Best known for 2001's Oscar-winning Spirited Away, Ghibli is often lazily dubbed Japan's answer to Disney, but the comparison only holds true in terms of box-office sales (Spirited Away is still Japan's all-time top-grossing film – three other Ghibli films are in the top 10) and sales of cuddly toys. In terms of content, Studio Ghibli is a world apart. Since 1984, under the auspices of its founder and chief auteur, Hayao Miyazaki, the studio has rolled out a succession of dense, ambitious fantasy adventures, almost all of them led by strong, intelligent, independent-minded girls. Miyazaki's movies are exciting and fantastical, often involving flying machines, ecological disasters, clashing civilisations and precarious spiritual values – all rendered in clean, colourful, hand-drawn animation. His heroines also tend towards a certain type. They are adventurous and active, but also compassionate, communicative, pacifist and virtuous. Their "female" qualities and childish innocence are often what resolve the crisis at hand and bridge conflicting worlds. Miyazaki does princesses, too, but the first time we see his eponymous Princess Mononoke, she's sucking the gunshot wound of a giant wolf and spitting blood into a river.

As Miyazaki once explained: "If it's a story like, 'Everything will be fine once we defeat him,' it's better to have a male as a lead. But, if we try to make an adventure story with a male lead, we have no choice other than doing Indiana Jones. With a Nazi, or someone else who is a villain in anyone's eyes."

"He thought heroism was much more complicated than that black hat/white hat stuff," explains Helen McCarthy, a British author who has written extensively on Miyazaki and Japanese animation. "By making the hero a girl, he took all that macho stuff out of the equation and that gave him the freedom to examine heroism. His career has been a very beautiful building of an idea that the feminine doesn't preclude the heroic."

Arrietty fits right into this mould. It was adapted by Miyazaki from Mary Norton's Borrowers stories and directed by his protege, Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Arrietty herself is a miniature 14-year‑old girl, who lives with her parents in secrecy under the floorboards of a rural Japanese home, "borrowing" their possessions – a pin becomes her sword, for example. Like any little girl growing up, she's independent-minded and eager to explore the outside world. Just as Spirited Away's heroine bridged the world between the spirits and the living, so Arrietty bridges that between her little people and the full-sized humans, but she is also driven by her curiosity about boys.

Against a vibrant springtime backdrop and hints about "the nesting season", Arrietty's relationship with a sickly human boy unfolds like a courtship. In one particularly charged scene, when she finally allows the boy to see her for the first time, Arrietty's tiny figure is framed against feverishly blooming giant poppies in the garden. There are similarly subtle erotic and sexual subtexts throughout Ghibli's films. Kiki's Delivery Service, for example, centres on a 13-year-old witch who, like Arrietty, is just approaching adolescence. In her travels, Kiki encounters all ages of womanhood, each of whose sexualities is hinted at through metaphors involving fire and flames.

Children and sexuality are well off‑limits in western culture as a whole, but in these films, it's a fact of life, with no associated perversity. "It is really difficult for any of us in a western tradition to acknowledge how powerful the sexual feelings of children are," McCarthy says. "One of the wonderful things Studio Ghibli do is they recognise and accept that children are adults in miniature. That children have all these feelings encapsulated in themselves; it's just a case of them learning to organise and articulate them."

Death and violence, too, are never far away in Miyazaki's films. Even in his most innocent work, My Neighbour Totoro, a film in which there are no evil characters and no apparent conflict, the threat of a sick mother's death hangs over the bucolic idyll of its two young sisters. In Ghibli films, limbs get hacked off, mortal peril is never far away. It makes Bambi's mother dying look like a walk in the park.

With its open acknowledgment of sex and violence, you could say Studio Ghibli's work is closer to the fairy tales of European literature, which can be seen as similarly coded children's primers for the adult world that awaits them. Victorian society defanged fairy tales, then Disney finished the job, but in their original versions, they're full of horror. In early versions of Snow White, for example, the queen eats what she presumes to be her stepdaughter's heart, lungs and liver, tries to asphyxiate Snow White with corset laces, and is punished by being forced to wear red-hot iron shoes. In Disney's hands, it became a story about a nice girl who likes singing and housework.

None of this is to say that Studio Ghibli's films are entirely exemplary. Even Arrietty, despite her courage and self- determination, ends up with a partner much more appropriate to her standing – literally and metaphorically – than a boy 100 times her size. Beyond their "perfect" heroines, Ghibli's work has recurring female archetypes, possibly stereotypes: the wise old grandmother, the idealised home-making mother in her apron. "I do think there are some very strong reactionary elements to Miyazaki's work," McCarthy says. "Not anti-feminist but not in line with feminist thinking. In a lot of his work, he's saying that men and women have established functions in the social order. While you're a child, anything is possible but when grown-up women step outside their roles, they tend to have a tough time in his movies."

Nevertheless, it all makes Cars 2 look like very primitive fare. Hollywood has rarely matched Studio Ghibli's output in storytelling sophistication, but it is making progress on gender issues, at least. Last year's How to Train Your Dragon, for example, bravely centred on a wimpy geek – a feminised hero who relied on brain rather than brawn, thus winning the affections of a physically superior female. And for all its flaws, Rio centred on a neurotic male parrot who couldn't fly, shackled to a more competent female. Even Pixar is finally seeing the light. The studio's next big animation project, Brave, due for release in a year's time, has a mythological Scottish highland setting and the company's first female lead character, voiced by Kelly Macdonald. The bad news is, she's a princess.

metrovelvet

I appreciate that article.

Im completely unfamiliar with thoe Japanese movies. Would like to check them out.

However, based on reading the above, it would appear that the japanese genre, is still falling into the gender divide, male = brawn, female =brains.

This part makes me think that:

"As Miyazaki once explained: "If it's a story like, 'Everything will be fine once we defeat him,' it's better to have a male as a lead. But, if we try to make an adventure story with a male lead, we have no choice other than doing Indiana Jones. With a Nazi, or someone else who is a villain in anyone's eyes."

"He thought heroism was much more complicated than that black hat/white hat stuff," explains Helen McCarthy, a British author who has written extensively on Miyazaki and Japanese animation. "By making the hero a girl, he took all that macho stuff out of the equation and that gave him the freedom to examine heroism. His career has been a very beautiful building of an idea that the feminine doesn't preclude the heroic."

What age bracket are they for?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

all ages, animation isn't neccesarily for children in japan like it is in the west. A lot of their animated stuff is too dark/complicated for children but studio ghibli tends to go for an all encompassing approach.

check out spirited away and princess mononoke, but especially spirited away. amazing movie.

--edit

also, subtitled.. not dubbed

metrovelvet

What I mean is a three year old can watch Pixar, what is te age minimum for these films?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

it kinda depends on the film. mononoke if i remember properly is kinda violent. Spirited away isn't violent at all, but.. it might be kinda scary for a three year old. There's a lot of... weirdness. I guess it depends on the three year old.

Logical Fallacy

metrovelvet wrote: »

I appreciate that article.

Im completely unfamiliar with thoe Japanese movies. Would like to check them out.

However, based on reading the above, it would appear that the japanese genre, is still falling into the gender divide, male = brawn, female =brains.

Well, in a lot of the situations within the different films there will be circumstances where the female characters will need both. It's not really an exclusive divide, and where it is it's purely to drive the character. A character that might be a bit meek and such won't suddenly find herself flourishing in combat, but she may find herself overcoming her fears etc.

Age wise, it all depends on the film and on the child. A lot of the Ghibli stuff will deal with death in places...but Pixar have started doing that recently as well.

Something like My Neighbour Totoro would be very suitable for kids, there is a film called "Panda Go Panda" that would be tailor made for younger audiences...and the more recent Ponyo is definitely child friendly.

Mononoke can be a bit violent in places but is one of the better examples of Ghibli breaking the men = brawn, women = brains mold.

I'm not the best person to talk about what age people should see these types of movies at though, the first anime i ever saw was Windaria when i was 9 years old and it dealt with war, greed, contained a murder suicide, lots of heart break and an ending so crushingly depressing it actually shocked my mates a little when i showed it to them.

Personally i thought it was great at the time.

metrovelvet

What Im saying is it looks like they are making films that break the heroic model of pure brawn, alla Indiana Jones by using girls. But I guess my question is, is if there is room to do that for boys too?

Logical Fallacy

metrovelvet wrote: »

What Im saying is it looks like they are making films that break the heroic model of pure brawn, alla Indiana Jones by using girls. But I guess my question is, is if there is room to do that for boys too?

Oh yeah, definitely. To be honest, a lot of the Ghibli stuff has female leads, but there are many supporting male characters that will show quite a bit of empathy and emotion...and they can start out that way...not the old presto chango "i got to know the female lead and it changed me for the better" style of thing.

I also like the movies because they tend to focus more on developing a workable friendship between male and female characters than the idea of a relationship. Hints might be there, that at some point in the future when the characters are of a certain age it might happen...but it's a lot more honest in how they portray characters simply getting to know and like each other...without the awkward "must have chemistry" angle that will get shoe horned into a live action film.

jill_valentine

Interesting discussion.

Let us not neglect to note however, the great strides made in this regard in modern times with emergence of the phrase "That's what she said."

metrovelvet

Logical Fallacy wrote: »

Oh yeah, definitely. To be honest, a lot of the Ghibli stuff has female leads, but there are many supporting male characters that will show quite a bit of empathy and emotion...and they can start out that way...not the old presto chango "i got to know the female lead and it changed me for the better" style of thing.

I also like the movies because they tend to focus more on developing a workable friendship between male and female characters than the idea of a relationship. Hints might be there, that at some point in the future when the characters are of a certain age it might happen...but it's a lot more honest in how they portray characters simply getting to know and like each other...without the awkward "must have chemistry" angle that will get shoe horned into a live action film.

I forgot about that last point. A lot of the Disney [not pixar] stuff the opposite gender relationships are romantic and adult.

Do you think there is room in the anglo saxon market, primarily driven by Disney/Pixar, that might shift the heroic model, from brawn,extroversion, LOUD [those Pixar movies are so brash - and I forgot I did see a few of those], aggressive, to something more complex and interesting for boys?

Logical Fallacy

metrovelvet wrote: »

I forgot about that last point. A lot of the Disney [not pixar] stuff the opposite gender relationships are romantic and adult.

Do you think there is room in the anglo saxon market, primarily driven by Disney/Pixar, that might shift the heroic model, from brawn,extroversion, LOUD [those Pixar movies are so brash - and I forgot I did see a few of those], aggressive, to something more complex and interesting for boys?

If i am honest, i certainly hope so. Male leads are normally all the same, regardless of age. They'll fall into a very small number of different types, but even within those types will be common threads and themes. They will normally either be seeking new glory, or seeking to return to it. They'll get through whatever is ahead of them based on luck and a complex support group containing people who will normally be better suited to the task. They'll normally be an outsider, plucked from obscurity by fate to acheive by dumb luck what others can't. They'll be out to impress females, either romantically in a partner or prospective partner or be seeking the approval of family...often both.

The simple truth about most male leads is they are kind of dopey, prone to luck, have mostly crap social skills and are emotionally stilted.

It will be slower to change that the traditional female roles simply because it's assumed that male leads are good role models...when they are not, they are normally really bad ones. They are nearly always oddly bitter and nearly always require a scapegoat for their own inability to do what they want to do...hence the prevalence of a "bully" type character in a lot of the male driven stories. It's normally used to get the viewer on the side of the main character, because it's universal stuff...without it we'd focus too much on the shortcomings of the characters themselves and realise they are kind of crap.

I would honestly struggle to think of many male characters from any media that are good role models...there is normally just an assumption that they are because they get stuff done.

pickarooney

How to Train Your Dragon, as mentioned above, features a physically weak male hero. It's a fantastic film; one of the few I can watch with my kids and all of us enjoy it equally.

The hero of Up is in his 80s. I really didn't like the film but fair play for focusing on someone grumpy and enfeebled for once.

There was a mention of A Bug's Life in that article. It's ages since I saw it and the only thing I remember about it was the character of a male ladybird that everyone assumed was female.