In Issues of Representation we will need to write a 3000 word essay on a chosen topic examining representation within animation, and a ~2 minute documentary film on said topic. We will also do a formative presentation establishing our plan.
I enjoyed our tutorial a lot, we discussed the represented groups within animated media, and how what we see represented whilst growing up can effect what we then go on to represent in our own work. We were also encouraged to think about who our influences have been and still are. I'd never really thought about what groups my influences come from, but after thinking about it, the majority of artists I admire are white men, whether they're animators or illustrators. I feel I should try to expand my sources more and actively search for artists with varying backgrounds otherwise I'll box myself into only seeing what's presented to me. This isn't to suggest that these artists that have influenced me are any less important or brilliant at what they do, but it's a limited view of what I could be exploring nonetheless.
We also looked into how people are portrayed within the animation, brushing on Disney Princesses, Pokemon characters and racial stereotyping in classic Disney films, like Native Americans in Peter Pan. There are also studios that seem to have a conflict of interest when it comes to representation, Brave was the first female-led Pixar film, and yet the original creator of the story, Brenda Chapman, was demoted to co-director during the making of the film, so that it was also directed by Mark Andrews and Steve Purcell. The voice-acting choices can also contrast with what is seen on the surface, although Isle of Dogs is set in Japan with Japanese voice actors for the human characters, the dogs are all voiced by white American men, even though the dogs, too, come from Japan within the narrative. These were the actors that were chosen to do all the press tours too. This reminded me of LAIKA's repetitive use of beautifully diverse character designs, but seemingly non-matching casts. Kubo and the Two Strings, again set in Japan, only seems to have George Takei as the ethnicity of the character he's portraying, and that's a minor character too begin with, whilst the main characters are all voiced by caucasians. It's always really frustrated me because it's a stunning film in all other areas. They've also cast actors of colour as white-washed characters, like Richard Ayoade's character in Boxtrolls, meaning that kids watching the film are potentially missing seeing their demographic represented despite the voice-actor.
Throughout the tutorial we were set drawing exercises. The first was to draw someone who entered a shop, what I drew is below:
I didn't think too hard about a story for her like other people did I just drew someone casually going to the shops. My decisions with her outfit were basically just drawing a cooler version of the outfit I had worn the day before, and I decided to give her dreads because I got some wool recently that I want to make a stop-motion or rag doll character with, and used it as an excuse to play with the possible styling.
The second exercise was to draw yourself as an animal, I drew myself as a fox, and then as a worried looking owl as I had time left, and Sam said he imagined I could be an owl before we started drawing.
Then we drew the person sitting next to us as an animal, I drew Rachel as a mouse. It mainly involved me putting her cardigan on a mouse version of her. I also drew a slightly less flattering mouse-Rachel that had stayed up all night animating.
It felt like quite a lot of responsibility to get the animal she would be right, but I liked that we both went with woodland creatures for each other, as she drew me as a badger.
Right now I'm not sure what I want to explore, I could go into the casting vs the characters, like in Kubo, as it's something that frustrates me a lot, but I'm not sure how much I could write about it. I could definitely compare films like Kubo to films that cast the correct ethnicities. We touched briefly on how adaptations white-wash characters, mainly in live-action adaptations of animated series (e.g. Avatar: The Last Airbender, Netflix's Death Note), but it reminded me of how Studio Ghibli's Tales from Earthsea took a book where almost all the characters have dark skin and made them all pale. Having read the first four books of the Earthsea series and drawn some of the characters in my own time, finding out they had changed the characters so greatly annoyed me deeply. I know it's not a particularly faithful adaptation with the narrative either, but you can't change the race of the characters, especially when it's important to the politics of the world it's set in.
Ged in Studio Ghibli's Adaptation versus Charles Vess's official illustrations.
Therru in Studio Ghibli's adaptation versus Charles Vess's official illustration.
It's also notable that the studio has made their facial scarring look more uniform and less painful, as scarring is often associated with the character design for antagonists, which could be read into as well. We've been told that a good way of choosing our topic is by seeing what you're most angry about, so looking into white-washed adaptations could be an interesting route.
The subject I'd have the most prior knowledge about is the representation of gender-nonconforming characters, being non-binary myself, so I would probably have the most understanding of this topic. Despite this I'm not so interested in writing about this as I did a project about gender euphoria and dysphoria last semester in Design, Play and Games, so am feeling less motivated to dive right back into the subject, especially since I know it would mostly be talking about how underrepresented gender-nonconforming characters are.
I'm interested in looking at disability in animation too, especially those with physical disabilities, like wheel-chair users and amputees, as I can't think of many current animations that have many disabled characters. The first thought that comes to mind is Finn, from Adventure Time, who looses his arm, but has a magical replacement for it, therefore bypassing talking about his disability in the show. There's Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I haven't watched, but am aware that she is a blind character in the series, and she still manages to be a very powerful earth bender. There is also the Little Mermaid series from 1989, which features Gabriella, a deaf mermaid who uses ASL. You would have thought that there could be more animated characters who use sign language, as it's a visual medium but this is the only character I can think of that does.
Ultimately I think I'll probably see what I'm drawn to throughout the course as we have the specific lectures on different subjects. I'm looking forward to it!
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