Hotel Transylvania opens today. What’s wrong with this poster?
That’s right, the usual skewed gender ratio that puts females in the minority. Here we have 6 male characters and 2 females. One female in– surprise, surprise– pink!
Check out this giant promo I walked by in a mall in San Francisco this morning. I count 7:1
If all goes right for me, I actually plan to be sitting in a theater, watching this film in one hour, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be eating my words and females will fare well in this film. After all, the synopsis reads that the Vampire Dad wants to give his daughter the birthday of her life because she’s turning 118. But I fear that the vampire daughter will not be the star of this movie. One obvious clue is that she’s not front and center in the poster, her dad scores that prime real estate. I worry that males will radically outnumber females in crowd scenes and spoken lines, and that the vampire daughter will be limited to the role of Minority Feisty.
The Minority Feisty refers to how Hollywood represents females, who are half of the kid population, as a minority. But a feisty minority! Isn’t that great?
Parents can point to examples of a powerful female but the power structure is never threatened because there are so few of her. I used to call her the Token Feisty, but that’s not really fair because there can be two or even three of her. The important thing is that, proportionally, she is outnumbered by males. The Minority Feisty’s job is to limit female power in a way that never threatens the power structure. That number seems to be, not only in Hollywood, but across all professions, about 16%.
I’ve got to go now or I’ll miss the movie.
More soon…
I wonder where the pink/girls thing came into place. My daughter is what you could call “girly” and would prefer a light blue. Isn’t pink (a light red) more of a mandly color anyways….
From my post “Female desire and the princess culture”
“Children were not color-coded until early twentieth century. Before that, babies wore all white, because to get clothing clean, it had to be boiled. Boys and girls also used to all wear dresses. When nursery colors were introduced, pink was more masculine, a pastel version of the red, which was associated with strength. Blue was like the Virgin Mary and symbolized innocence, thus the girl color. When the color switched is vague. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Alice in Wonderland all wear blue. Sleeping Beauty’s gown was switched to pink to differentiate her from Cinderella.”
I was writing about Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein which covers pink and blue. There is also an entire book on this that came out last year by a historian called Pink and Blue.
And it’s not 7:1, you didn’t count the invisible man (see the seemingly floating glasses?).
Aninha,
OMG 8:1
I’ve read some reviews that really discouraged me from seeing the movie, it sounds very bland. And I’ve seen a worst poster than that. It has three panels that read: dracula and his daughter, the werewolves, frankenstein and his wife.