I’ve seen the animated short “Almost Home” twice, before “Rio 2” and “Peabody and Mr. Sherman.” Both times, it pissed me off that there were no female characters with speaking parts in this mini-movie.
While I meant to blog about the silent females, I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. So, imagine my surprise today when on “Jezebel” I read that “Home” will be Deamworks first animated movie to star a black character, Tip. She also happens to be female.
So here’s my question, Dreamworks: Why is Tip missing from the promotional short? Please, don’t give me the reason it “makes sense” that she’s gone because in the sequence shown, she wouldn’t be in the story yet. Writers and producers make up the story, they can put anything they want out there, so why did they choose an all male narrative showcasing Steve Martin?
It’s kind of like how the two female stars of “Frozen” were missing from the movie’s first preview which featured the Olaf, the snowman, and Sven the reindeer.
Also, in the posters for “Frozen,” Olaf, once again, gets the front and center position, while the female stars are buried in snow.
Recently, Valentina Perez wrote “Judging a Movie by its Trailer” for Harvard Political Review, about sexism in marketing for children’s movies:
While later trailers did show Anna, even the title distanced itself from any fairy tale or princess story audiences might already be familiar with. Disney did this intentionally to appeal to boys, basing their decision on past Disney research reporting that boys do not want to watch movies with the word “princess” in the title…
Disney’s marketing strategy for Frozen reflects a longstanding belief of movie studios that boys will not watch movies with female leads. This has contributed to the scarcity of movies with speaking, leading, or complex female characters. According to a study by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, just 28.4 percent of speaking characters in the 100 highest-grossing American films of 2012 were female, a five-year low…
This change in Disney film content reflects the wider Hollywood belief that women and girls are a niche market, meaning that the longstanding, male-focused business model for movies persists as the standard.
Women and girls are not a “niche market.” We are 50% of the population. Not only that, as “Frozen” and “Catching Fire” show movies with female protagonists make money. Hollywood, please stop hiding the girls. You’re teaching sexism to our kids, to expect and accept a world where girls go missing. It’s not kids that won’t see movies starring girls, but sexist parents who don’t read their kids narratives or show their kids movies where girls star. Right now, the group Let Toys Be Toys For Girls and Boys is running a campaign to convince publishers not to create or market books “for boys” or “for girls.” Stories are for everyone. Why don’t we market them that way?
I live in Belgium and “Home” is showing now in theaters. This is the ONLY version of the poster for the movie I have seen in Belgium :
http://www.impawards.com/2015/posters/home_ver2.jpg
(If the link doesn’t work it is showing the alien with a cat on it’s head)
Guess who’s missing? I haven’t seen the movie, but isn’t the girl the protagonist? You sure can’t tell that from the poster. Even worse, the missing girl is one of the few girls of color. Is it the same in other countries?
OH THIS MAKES ME MAD
Maybe there were posters with Tip as well and I just missed them? I hope so! But when the movie came out the posters with the alien with the cat on its head were everywhere. If there were different posters you would think that they would mix it up a little?
“Writers and producers make up the story, they can put anything they want out there.”
Oh my stars yes. The number of times I’ve read/heard the “well but in the story…” Unless you’re making a documentary, humans made all the choices! And they can choose something else.
For the sake of argument, lets assume that the following is true:
-Boys won’t see movies with female protagonists
-Girls won’t play with toys aimed at boys
(Having a child of each gender, I can conclusively say these statements are incorrect, but if they were true…) Why do they bend over backwards to get boys to come to movies with princesses but just shrug and give up on girls when making ANOTHER line of male Lego Minifigs?
“I’ve been hearing that the reason Frozen didn’t feature the human characters much in the initial advertising is that the movie was undergoing major changes very late in the process. That is, they were still changing things about the plot and characterization shortly before the film was released so they didn’t want to put out a trailer with material that wasn’t ready to be seen or the old material that wasn’t going to be in the finished version of the movie.”
I can verify that this is true. For better or worse, in animation (or heck, in film-making in general), the script is almost never locked down. They’re making changes up to the last minute. The purpose of a teaser trailer is basically to tell the audience “this movie exists” without giving anything away.
I’ve been hearing that the reason Frozen didn’t feature the human characters much in the initial advertising is that the movie was undergoing major changes very late in the process. That is, they were still changing things about the plot and characterization shortly before the film was released so they didn’t want to put out a trailer with material that wasn’t ready to be seen or the old material that wasn’t going to be in the finished version of the movie.
As for Home, the animation looks quite good and as a positive, assuming that all the aliens aren’t male, there don’t seem to be those annoying tertiary sexual characteristics (bows, pink, exaggerated eyelashes).
This is the dumbest thing I have ever read. Of course, I’m a man, so apparently my opinion doesn’t matter.
You are right. This is feminism at its worst. By the way, I am a female so it is not just guys who think this is ridiculous.