Disney For Girls?

Growing up, I've noticed that cartoons, animation, etc has been geared towards girls.

For an example, there's so many princess stories. If you've watched Disney Channel, you'll notice that all they're shows have been or centered around a female's perspective.

Since I was younger, I grew up watching Boy Meets World. And now they're making a Girl Meets World, once again focusing on the main character of a girl.

And it's not terrible, because growing up I also watched Lizzie McGuire and That's So raven. But it's honestly hard to list a number of shows that caught a guy's perspective. How about a movie where a prince is taken advantage by a princess?

But all in all, I was also thinking about all of this when Misty said in another thread "Disney won't add a transgender, gay, lesbian, asexual, mixed-race, or other kind of minority character because they're afraid of the negative backlash."

And I guess as far as gay characters, I'm not sure if Disney would ever go that direction. Maybe they would feel that's too much, but society is changing and gay marriage is being legalized. Fact! Kids are being raised by gay parents.

Alright, I guess this is becoming a serious thread that should be moved to discussion, but does anyone agree?

 

Disney taught me a lot of valuable life lessons. Like it' s okay to kiss a girl while she' s asleep, the hunchback will never get the girl no matter how sympathetic he is, monkeys are always dubbed by blacks and you can walk around botomless in public if you' re a duck. *o*

I' m not sure about their TV shows (especially the non-animated ones since most of them never reached my country) but Disney always seemed geared towards kids in general to me, not towards any gender in particular. The more consensual the better. And since the US is a veeeeeeery puritan country ...

 

Disney based a lot of their movies on fairy tales, which heavily involve princesses.
They market half their shows to young female audiences because they make up half the population. That's half their potential viewers, or there about.
They're fairly progressive, but most kids channels are 'safe' and don't explore anything deep often. I think sexism and racism were two things they've pushed in tv shows, but nothing else.
They're alright in my eyes. My childhood and all.

 

I like how you can realize this fact when the big network CEOs and marketing departments can't. The same ones that yank tv shows and then give the most bullshit reasons for it. "Oh, we cancelled this show because the merchandise wasn't selling." 'Did you even have merchandise?'

TRON: Uprising had no toys/shirts/books whatever. So that excuse doesn't work.

The big market these days is with young boys who appreciate 'random humor'. Hence why Teen Titans GO exists. Hence why shows like Young Justice, Green Lantern and TRON: Uprising were cancelled. Hence why Spongebob Squarepants is STILL running strong.

And that's the other reason, because girls don't buy merchandise which is such a load of crap. I would have loved to buy Uprising merchandise but there wasn't any. [I missed out on the Legacy merchandise.]

So yeah, I think these guys are shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, women are a little more than half of the global population. That's a huge potential there that is being snubbed because 'girls don't buy toys'.

 

@Laurence_Fox

I follow a lot of female journalists and writers in real life on twitter. That's one of their main arguments on why there should be more female lead characters in things, specifically games related women i follow. They say there should be more because it would potentially appeal to over half the world. It's not a stupid argument.
I know a few girls who got into gaming because of Lara Croft being the lead. It spawned a mega popular franchise that changed the gaming landscape. They didn't care she was sexualised or big boobed or anything. They just cared they were playing as a woman. That meant more to them than any negatives.

The old farts at the top rarely alter their fixed ways. But the time always comes for when things change.

 

Yeah but Pixar is more geared towards boys so it works out...

Don't know why we're getting sexist up in here and assigning certain things to certain genitalia....

 

Haven't read anything in this thread yet but I DAMN WELL hope it's going well
DAMN
WELL

 

Even that in itself is such a limited audience. My kid brother hardly watches TTG or Spongebob (bless him for preferring the original), but I can't imagine any young kid really clawing after Teen Titans Go or other such paraphernalia. In fact, you'd think the more eye catching, action oriented shows would produce more yield for products, but I digress on that point.

Overall, it is really awful that things are being cancelled just because people outside of the very narrow target demographic are picking up on it. If more people than you projected are enjoying something you're doing, when is that ever bad for sales lol? If they were afraid they wouldn't sell many action figures, add more merchandise. Add shirts, or hats, or bags; so many people would be more likely to buy a shirt either for themselves or their kid, especially if the kid is young enough to be prone to swallowing small parts of toys still. It's ridiculous that CN and other stations are trying to pigeonhole their market when consumers would be fully willing if they expanded more on merchandise/who they want to see their stuff.

On Mike's post:

Disney has taken more towards hosting shows that are predominately geared towards women, I agree. However, I'm sure this started out (and likely, continues to be) a conscious choice on their part due to women not receiving an equal standing or representation elsewhere in media. If we look at the top 50 highest grossing films last year, 64% of them (32/50) were composed of male leads (who were also mostly white middle aged men). Only 7 of the 50 had a female lead (mostly all also white).

I don't really have any qualms with Disney taking this approach as is taking initiative to help get more equal representation of both sexes in media, mostly for children. Granted, a lot of these shows have become rather...less quality than shows like That's So Raven, or Lizzie McGuire, or the Proud Family.

I do, however, also agree with the call for making a situation where a male lead breaks traditional gender stereotypes! Characters like Aang or Peeta or even Shinji serve as good role models to men that it's fine not to be some super macho SHOUNEN I WILL YELL AND DEFEAT ALL MY ENEMIES AND NEVER CRY AND ALWAYS BE 2STRONK, and I feel that's equally as important as having strong female leads if we really want to break the hold gender roles and misrepresentation have over the film/television industry.

 

a thread. by mike. about sexism.

oh boy here we go

 

Feminism .

 

What's the problem?

What?

 

There's also the matter of who gives a damn what the gender of the main character is.
Girls can relate just fine to Harry Potter or Tony Stark. I know guys who relate just fine to Disney Princesses. As long as the character is a good character, it shouldn't matter what their gender is (in terms of being relatable).

Also note Plums' post of the majority of protagonists being straight white dudes. I, personally, think we could use more ladies up in here.

petition for a movie about lesbian dragons

 

On subject of Disney not including gay background characters, let me introduce you to this adorably, tall shop keeper from Frozen.

Now, let me introduce you to the rest of his family.


Another man and their children.

 

This post was too good for a like. It's this mentality that will truly lead to the end of sexism.

I believe the second we make a big deal about one sex existing more than the other in media, it's just aiming the sexism at the other gender. That's not recovery works. Let the artist choose what gender fits. Don't try to force people to write characters they don't want to- it won't feel organic.

 

The 'child' on the right appears a woman to me, therefore it is possible that the man in the middle is simply their eldest son. It is too difficult to discern familial relations based on cartoon features. No brownie points.

 

As much as I liked the original presentation of the pictures, I gotta agree here. Look at their heads for one thing; the one appears to be a fully-grown woman has brown hair. Three out of four of the presumed children have brown hair, and the oldest presumed son has blond hair. Not much to go on, but it's probably the strongest evidence to be had.

Another point made was that there are people who don't care about the gender of a character; it's better to go with what fits right. If you can recall the third Pokemon movie, which I recently reviewed myself, I remembered identifying with the young girl Molly quite a bit because we were then around the same age when I first saw the movie, and my parental situation was not within the comfy, cozy 1950's TV show norm. "Beyond Good and Evil" is one of my favorite games to play (And I REALLY wish they'd come out with the sequel already...), and truth betold, I rarely give a thought about identifying with most of the male characters portrayed in anything. Mostly because they are the so "charmingly" brackish, jocky types and you rarely have characters like Richard Castle from Castle who are both smart and manly; if I go by what the media shows though, I should either be the sweet and sensitive beast with unrealistic girth or the average intelligence jock-beast with unrealistic girth.

There is another point I'd like to make while I'm here: Women are feeling insecure about their weight and society apparently doesn't like fat people because every woman in Hollywood is apparently wasp-waisted, so let's make this female protagonist overweight. Usually, these sort of films fall into the category of "Comedy" because people seem to find it hard to take them seriously, but I believe there are films that I can't think of currently where the theme is serious. Meanwhile, you can't have a thin man as the protagonist without it being a comedy; just can't. Basically, my point is, in trying to bring more gender equality to the screen, catering tends to be done more for women. But another major aspect is the audience. Just make sure the male in the movie has big pecs and the female in the movie also has a big chest so we can have male and female rumps fill the seats; add in a dash of explosion here for the men, some kissing here for the chicks, and some witty dialogue so people remember our movie and nerds have something to quote.

I'm getting into the entertainment business myself, and I find that the more muscular I become (Hard to do when your metabolism is faster than a speeding bullet), the less "character-y" the parts I could play become. It all goes back to what the audience wants to see, and not so much what backstage people want portrayed.

 

kill all straight white men. truly scum of the earth. how dare they exist.

 

Hear ye, hear ye.

 

Same reason why Dan Schneider keeps finding work in Hollywood.

I would say I identify as this kind of person. That's just something that doesn't immediately come to mind when I'm thinking about going to see a movie, read a book, or other things. It's a small detail that doesn't really concern me for the most part. My top 5 movies last year, if I'm forced to think about it, were balanced in what gender the leads were.

It even goes when I'm writing a story. In the beginning, I'm coming up who they are as a person. I think about who they are, according to their personality. I decide on whatever gender they're going to be based partially on the personality, but also due to the theme of the story I want to tell. I don't put gender roles into much thought for it; all I want to do is have interesting characters in a good story.

 

Thisthisthis.
My 2nd semester animation project, I needed to come up with a character for a simple plot that would span about three minutes of animation. The character I came up with, I had such trouble deciding what gender they'd be before finally deciding I didn't give a sh*t, as it didn't matter to the plot. They were a child character, so it's not like they had physical differences. They had a gender neutral, period accurate outfit (WW2 era), and a gender neutral name (Al, which could have been shortened from any number of names from Alice to Alexander).