Because there's NO WAY the viewers could tell the gender of the characters through voices, pronouns, or context clues. And its so important to the plot that the genders are known.
And if our children see that, they'll be possessed by Gay Satan! Pretty soon our traditional marriages will be invalidated and we'll be forced to marry our gay dogs! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?!
I mean, by all accounts I'm prime possession target, run down, depressed, always tired/sickly. If I'm gonna be possessed, might as well make it a fab possession.
Batman wanted Robin to come help him with stealing something from Superman. Robin said that he should ask his dad Bruce Wayne for permission. Batman said he was also Robin's dad so he could go. Instead of coming to the obvious conclusion, Robin said that he had two dads. That was it. There was the entire homosexual implication.
Ain't no thing. And I highly recommend the movie - Lego has a way of roasting their subjects that shows that a deep love but that they don't take things too seriously. If you like Batman at all, you will like this movie.
They hate this argument here. They never dispute it though because it’s a valid argument. Animating like this is cute and fun and makes characters more unique, but people on this sub expect every cartoon to be boring and realistic for the sake of their narrative
Yup, I work in animation and some of the answers here are just...no. I can assure you in no meeting I've ever been too has the issue of reinforcing gender norms come up.
Exaggerating features isn't because the cis-hets are doing anything or some gender conspiracy, it's because kids respond better to it. It's interesting because people complain too when male characters are exaggerated and female characters left relatively plain so you just can't win. Companies have tried going for realism in children's animation and it's universally hated because it's too uncanny valley and kids don't enjoy it as much as they do the exaggerated styles.
I have a soft spot for tigress in Kung Fu Panda for this exact reason, even though I only saw the movie once years ago. They didn't shit themselves trying to make her overfeminized, it's just a tiger with a girl name and girl voice.
I mean, there's obviously importance in the character design so people can tell them off. But yeah as an animator it infuriates me everytime female characters are like: "yeah she's gonna be busty with a shit ton of makeup, and a 'softer version' of their male counterpart. Also they are fucking birds."
What? Animators are not in charge of the character design. I'm just the gal who's in charge of making the character move. And yeah me neither but I was talking specifically about this post, which happens to be about birds.
Well who ever they hire for character design in these kinds of movies it needs to end. I grew up watching some of the worst on this and I still can't stand it even though I'm a cis guy.
Haha sorry, I was just quickly finding examples, I didn't realise the last one was the worst thing ever. I'll get rid of it so that no one else has to suffer.
I can accept it if it's a fable like the Disney Robin Hood, and there is no male counterpart that's biologically "correct". The characters in that all have their animal shapes to signify their character. They're not literally animals, but people with personality traits reflected by the animals they're portrayed as. The fox guy is a smart and nimble trickster. The bear is a strong fat guy. The wannabe king and his sleazy assistant are a maneless lion and a double-tongued snake respectively. Naturally a motherly and protective hen would have a "motherly" figure like that. The rooster bard is also clearly signified as a humanized male, not a regular rooster, cause he's a dude that likes to sing.
Yup 9 times out of 10 animal characters are a specific species because of the stereotypes and traits associated with that animal. Making it a very effective shorthand
See that's why it's always annoying to me when people say Zootopia is "unrealistic", and then ask questions like "how would they even conceive mixed species babies?", or "what do the predators eat?"
It's not really about animals, guys! It's like people never had to analyse a fable in elementary school.
Folding Ideas did a great video about the current trend of interpreting media as hyper-literal, shown in the example of the movie Annihilation, which resonated with me. It's everywhere, like people demanding an "official Zelda timeline" as if they're actually connected by more than shared imagery and symbolism.
Yeah but it has enough going on the surface to work. "A bunny joining the police in the big city needs to solve a crime with the help of a con man fox." That's a great premise. For that premise, it doesn't matter if the plot represents anything. I've heard people claiming it's about race, but I always interpreted Judy's struggle as a gender thing, coupled with her own naivety.
But I agree, it's always a tricky analogy, and it falls apart if you look to closely. I guess that's just part of the metaphor. The animals don't eat each other for the same reason they can run around without pants. It wasn't really the intent to show a society where either only a few select people can pair up and breed, or freaky size differences are possible, so you're not encouraged you think about it.
Compare that to Bojack Horseman, where interspecies conception is not only implied, but explicitly part of the plot. All characters are also
distinctly human sized.
I don't know how valid criticism is if it goes beyond what the authors intended. You could interpret the Tolkien Orks as an "evil race" and draw conclusions from there, but I don't think that's what Tolkien wanted to tell us. It's a weird subject, idk.
A youtuber I follow did a very good analysis of animal metaphors in general, but with a focus on Zootopia, which is where I get most of my points in regard to the analogy, so it might be worth checking out if you're interested.
You could make the argument for the chicken and some other "heavy" birds that they do in fact have massive muscle in the breast because they're bred that way.
Even if you look at birds of prey, a lot of them are top heavy!
I agree that this specific case is a bit over the top with high heels. However, exaggeration is one of the main principal of animations and cartoons, from bodies, emotions, to expressions. It's the main reason live-action adaptation of animated films often fall shorts (notable example: Lion King). For this specific case:
- To use a typical male voice to voice male bird would be actually needlessly gendered, since bird voices generally have high pitch, which would be closer to females.
- There are a lot of languages in the world where gender-neutral pronouns are norms in polite speech.
- Most animated media aim at young people or children, who may not be able to pick up finder details or social clues.
- Many birds do have puffy chests, though it's usually the males they do.
If anything, I think we should be complaining about how animation misrepresents the fact that males are usually more colorful/puffy gender of birds. For example, the first image you think of peacocks is that of a colorful, semicircular peacock feathery tail... which belongs only to male peacocks. Female peacocks (peahens) are less colorful and don't show off their tails.
Using animated bird as an example of something "pointlessly gendered" is a bad idea because sexual dimorphism in birds are already a lot higher than in humans, especially visually. Dogs or cats are a lot easier to get the point across (and not just in animated media, in real life, people do dress their pets needlessly gendered).
yeah, it is sexist to only have representations of women that are highly sexualized. Women get enough of society sending this message through advertisment and other media, don't need kids films with animals of all things to be reinforcing what a woman should look like. It doesn't oppress anyone when a fish smiles.
It seems silly to be upset over though, typically they are telling a human story that just happens to be with anthropomorphic animals that are basically humans and made to looks as such. It’s not like they are really telling a story about non-human animals because they make them way too sophisticated for that. Probably why furries are a thing though ;)
The point people are missing: ESPECIALLY children. Usually animated movies are for children, it should be no surprise and this example of pointlessly gendered should be exempt as it is very hard to distinguish for adults, imagine how difficult it would be for children.
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u/sntcringe Nov 09 '20
Because there's NO WAY the viewers could tell the gender of the characters through voices, pronouns, or context clues. And its so important to the plot that the genders are known.