Disney putting down the pens and picking up the software.

 

Disney turns away from hand-drawn animation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/07/disney-hand-drawn-animation

 

What a saddening article.

 

Let me start off by saying I don't dislike 3D animated features.  They're good, often quirky, usually funny. But I think they have a personality that is very different to a 2D hand-drawn film.

I was born in the mid-80s so I grew up smack-bang in the middle of the Disney Renaissance - just when Disney was having a resurgence of popular animated movies and enjoying time at the top.

I remember my uncle giving me a copy of The Little Mermaid on VHS – still have that too, despite my lack of VHS player. I remember seeing The Lion King and Aladdin at the movies. I re-watched Pocahontas just today and realised, hey – I knew at least two of those songs word for word and I didn’t even have a copy of Pocahontas as a kid. The same phenomenon occurred when I re-watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Epic soundtrack to that one.

So, what was it about these 2D hand-drawn animated movies that I love so much? Why do I prefer them over the 3D films?

For a while, I thought I may be recapturing a sense of my childhood when I watched Disney, especially the ones I grew up with. But, hell, it’s not just me. The Lion King is the highest grossing hand-drawn animated movie ever.

It can’t be the storylines. The films under the banner of “Disney Renaissance” don’t exactly follow the same formula.

Hercules, for instance, is a comedy. It’s filled with comedic antagonists, an oddly unfitting motown score and chock full of pop culture references.

Nice.

 

Pocahontas is a serious story about race clashes and the telling of the fictional love between historic figures John Smith and Pocahontas. It's also one of the only (the only?) Disney movies where the love interests don't end up together at the end. Though I'm not in love with the art in this one, it's a bit flat unless there's neon leaves whisking about.

Mulan is a study on gender equality from a Chinese poem, with the best love story in a Disney movie to date - I mean, she's a "dude" when their love story blossoms.

He's up for it.

(p.s. love how wiki categorises this one: "Mulan is a 1998 American animated comedy-drama martial arts musical film")

 

It's a combination of story, art and soundtrack that made the Disney Renaissance what it was. But that old Disney magic shines brightest through the physical efforts of it's animators. And as much as I like 3D animated movies, I am yet to see them match the feeling evoked by the Disney Renaissance. I'm yet to be convinced it CAN be replicated. 

Iconic.

Tangled was Disney's fiftieth animated movie and marked a turning point for the company. I think that turning point was that it was using half 2D half 3D animation and beat Princess and the Frog twofold in box office ticket sales.

And I know that the crinkle of hundreds of millions of dollars is hard to argue against, but I am. There is a place for this, there’s an undeniable charm of 2D hand-drawn Disney.

Hopefully, that charm lies in the future as well, not just the past.

 

 

 

Why it’s important to have more “Brave” roles for women in movies

Brave is an important movie, perhaps more important than it thought it might be. Media attention aside for the moment. Revenue and profit aside too, for the moment.

Brave is a movie about women.

I’ve had people ask me why that point is important. It’s important because women honestly don’t feature in most movies. Actually, they don’t feature in most media.

That statement might send some people into scoffing disbelief, but pay close attention to it. I said feature. Women might exist in every movie or television show you’ve seen recently – but do they feature? Is there more than one woman in that movie? Do they progress the plot? And Bechdel’s infamous question: do they talk about anything other than a man?

For interest, I had a look at the top 50 most popular 2012 movies in IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/search/title?year=2012,2012&title_type=feature&sort=moviemeter,asc

As of writing this blog, 6 of those 50 had female leads – and one of those was Twilight. Another 3 titles had split 50/50 male and female leads.

Considering women are half the population, those aren’t great odds.

This is important, and no, it’s not just because I’m menstruating.

Movies themselves are a microcosm of our current culture. Women being underrepresented in movies says something about our culture at large. While egalitarianism is no longer at the forefront of our minds – ‘cause women can work and buy their own tampons and shit – this phenomenon still shows our current culture clearly. This underuse shows that men – and their stories – are more important to our society.

Brave is Pixar’s thirteenth movie, and their first female protagonist. Why? It’s a money thing. There’s a secretive agreement we’ve all come to, in the boardrooms of the people who greenlight movies and in the isles of Target when you’re buying a movie to watch: men will watch movies about men, and women will watch movies about women AND men.

The movie houses get nervous about releasing things with female leads because they honestly think it can’t sustain a male audience and thus will lose out on 50% of the supposed earnings.

Which is why Brave is so important. Because Brave is a great movie, it’s an actioned packed, emotional movie about breaking social norms. About breaking free and taking charge of your own destiny.

And it’s driven by women. Strong women, who can lead and have their own stuff to deal with, and their own female-female relationships to nurture. And just like little girls could love Woody and Buzz – little boys could love Merida.

And no, I’m not saying you should never have a movie aimed at women, or a movie aimed at men. I’m just saying, that by the law of averages, we should be about 50/50 and we’re not – we’re nowhere near.

It's an anthropomorphic sausage party up in here

This issue is especially important in children’s movies, because children need role models. Most female roles in children’s movies are either princess (a ‘girls’ movie), a secondary character or some sort of token femme-ification of a male character.

How did that woman get in here?

Children are like little sponges, and if all little girls can take away from movies to look up to is a token female they’re going to learn their place in our society very well and very quickly. They’re going to learn that women aren’t equal. They’re going to learn that a story about a women is merely a secondary plot. They’re going to learn that a woman is just not as important as a man is.

It’s important for women to be represented in movies, and television and books. And our society can change its current standpoint. If it's Brave enough.