Brenda Chapman speaks about Roles for women in animation

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Although I may have stopped going onto cartoonbrew, a friend of mine had send me something that think would interest me.
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/pixar/brenda-chapman-speaks-about-women-in-animation.html

Now Brenda Chapman(Who was supposed to direct Brave for Pixar but sadly enough was removed from the project) gives a quote on what she says about women in animation ever since she was kicked off of the project.

"?I think it?s a really sad state. We?re in the 21st century and there are so few stories geared towards girls, told from a female point of view."

Do you guys agree with her? I think its time that female characters in general should stop being put in the backseat. At least we got Friendship is magic with strong female leads. But how long will it be before we see more shows(or even animated features) with female characters that are not the copy and paste Barbie/Bratz type characters?
 
Speaking as a teenage girl, gender shouldn't really define a character - the writers should actually write the character first and foremost and choose gender, age, race/species. etc. secondly.
 
Does it have to be geared towards girls? I'd be more impressed if a movie featuring a female character can draw in both a male and female demographic. I agree with suss2it that background information can define a character. However, that does not mean their background information relates the character to the audience, their objective does, so I don't know why it has to be geared towards girls.
 
Sorry, should've clarified my message better.

What I really meant was that just because, say, a character's race is black, that doesn't mean they should act in ways that are stereotypically “black”, the character has defined interests and actual personality and quirks, and their race just so happens to be black.

Likewise, writing a character who is a girl doesn't mean she should act stereotypically girly, she has an actual personality and quirks to call her own, but her gender happens to be female.

Sadly, it seems to be this way:

Male main character - universal appeal irregardless of viewers' gender or male-aimed audience

Female main character - for female audiences ONLY; what self-respecting guy wants to be caught dead watching a girly show or movie? /sarcasm
 
Cartoon Brew didn't add anything substantial, so here's the original story about women in the animation industry.I get what you mean. I think Tangled did a great job of creating female characters that had their own quirks and defined personalties without solely being defined by their gender. But some stories need to be told from the perspective of female, black, gay, male, white, straight, etc. characters.

Basically I think that gender, race and sexuality shouldn't be the sole things to define characters, but they are all important characteristics nonetheless.

Sadly, it seems to be this way:

Regardless means something without regard, so "irregardless" would mean something with regard.
 
I was reading the article, and then I remembered how the oldest surving animated film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, was directed by a woman.
Just a little fun trivia.
 
I know Faust basically went that route when she rebooted My Little Pony, but as far as the rest of animation on tv right now....not too many females in leading roles or ensembles.
 
So true.

I am male, yet greatly interested in female roles in movies. To me, male main characters are more dry compared to female main characters because they tend to be overused. I have another example of a female lead movie, but in a different way, fails to reach a universal audience: Sucker Punch.

Sucker Punch's ensemble five cast was all-female, yet aimed towards a male audience. It was almost entirely action-oriented, with moderate doses of fanservice, alienating a universal audience. I'm not saying that all girls were turned away by this, but it was not a typical movie.
 
Most of my ideas either feature female leads or ensembles that have quite a few of them. I think I only have 2 of them that have guys as the designated protagonist and even then there's quite a few women.

It wasn't my intention to do this. It just happened. My current project started out with a guy as the hero and then switched gears and the love interest stopped being a love interest, became her own person and probably the lead of a group of characters that leans female.

They are characters first though. Always character first. I just hope I don't end up upsetting people. I fear that treating some of my characters certain ways will land me in hot water. But people tell me I'm over-reacting.
 
If you want cartoons that appeal to more girls, your going to need women working on them.
That is if you want girls watching your cartoon.

Grown women have their little girl memories and experiences to draw on. That gives them an advantage.

At least that's my theory.
It would be interesting to put it to the test by having a competition to see who can make the ultimate girls cartoon, an all guy team or an all womens team.
 
That should be the normal way to do things.
For the sake of experimentation though, you want to eliminate the possibility of saying a cartoon was better because of the one guy working on it, or vice-versa.
 
When I was in film school, we went over gender differences in both creators and characters. It's too much to go over here, but I will say that female characters are often used as a device more than just being a character to be female. This goes back as far as the Bible and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it because that is how the human mind works. Now that's not to say two characters of different genders can't do the same exact thing. Wizard of Oz and Star Wars are identical in theory.

Anyways, the issue with creators is marginally unfair. I know the animation is full of heterosexual white males, which is why we are getting the same style ad naseum. However, some creators fought to show other ethnicities, gender, and character development with the help of behind the scenes crew members of other ethnicities and genders. I really don't know the difference between picking a female creator to do develop female characters. The question has to ultimately deal with talent.
 
I agree with her it's sad there's no real American cartoons for girls out there. I've pretty much relied on anime for my girl focused shows for over a decade now. I don't think it's due to the lack of women in the industry though, because plenty of manga and anime are written by men and feature girl leads, like Soul Eater and K-ON! Granted there's like no female cartoon creators either, but that's another issue entirely. And still, all the girl shows we get are kind of stereotypical: like Bratz, My Little Pony, and so forth. It definitely doesn't pay to be a girl when it comes to cartoons :sad:

The problem with Brave, from what I've seen, is it follows the Disney Princess formula with the 'princess who wants to see life beyond the castle walls' which is so overdone and seems to be the only archetype out there. Tangled was simiar, as well as pairing the lead with a 'bumbling idiot male' to make the girl seem more competent, like on Kim Possible. It's like the only way to make girls strong is to make guys weak and play the 'irony card'
 
And the boys shows aren't? What about GI Joe, or Transformers or any of the other toy tie-ins? Are those acceptable because they're for boys? What about Ben 10? Generated Rex The Clone Wars? Are any of those particularly original? Anime isn't any better, shoujo is easily as cookie cutter as shounen. You like K-ON but don't like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? Guess what, if you make the ponies high school girls it turns into.... a curiously K-ON type show!

And there are most certainly female cartoonists in Japan! Rumiko Takahashi, Bisco Hattori, Hiromu Arakawa, Akiko Higashimura just to name a few. Sure, the anime versions of their creations might be helmed by men, but they're still adapting works original made by women and in some cases FOR women.

Flynn wasn't an idiot. And neither was Ron Stoppable - not really. Ron is a klutz, sure, but he's a hella fun character - it wasn't like Kim was dragging Homer Simpson around with her. Heck, all of the Ron and Drakken Being Silly moments were some of my favorite parts of the show.

Besides, the formula of "princess who wants to see life beyond the castle walls" can easily be interpreted as a strong feminist message. Girls are still, in many ways (some more literal than others), trapped by traditional gender roles. The princess's desire to escape the castle can very easily represent a young girls desire to transcend gender and make it in the world on her own wits and strengths.

Our society still has a weird obsession with both marginalizing women whilst simultaneously placing women - more specifically an idealized vision of female purity - on a pedestal in the highest room of the tallest tower of a dragon guarded castle. The very fact that they've been consistently visiting the theme of a young girl wanting to ESCAPE all of that and be seen and accepted as HUMAN is rather interesting.

That said, I would like to see something other than the same old formula. There will always be a place for the Princess Escapes Castle stories, and if they're well executed they can still be thoroughly enjoyable; but there are other stories to be told, and all kinds of nifty ways to tell them.
 
I've never watched K-On, but everything I've read and heard about it suggests that it's extremely shallow and doesn't offer anything outside of generic moeblob cuteness. MLP: FiM is nothing like that.

I have watched some Azumanga Daioh, and IMO that is a much more appropriate anime antecedent (although it was more of a sketch show).
 
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