In Chapter 5 of Understanding Animation by Paul Wells, I learned animation has often been put into the children’s category, or many brush it off as if it has no implication. Cartoons have many biases and discrepancies in how genders are represented. Many main male characters such as Popeye and Superman are shown as tough and strong implying their masculinity because those are classically associated traits. Popeye’s masculinity comes from his working with hard metal, machines, and his display of his biceps. Clark Kent shows many similarities with his muscles, super strength, and his ability to save Lois from evil.
The female image and femininity also have an extremely direct relationship. In “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” Jessica Rabbit portrays the epitome of a cartoon woman. She has large breast, small waist, long hair, and is wearing stiletto heels. Gender-bending is also common in animations. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are no strangers to this; they both have been dressed up and made-up to look feminine, which introduces questions about sexuality. The genders of these characters are sometimes indistinguishable, leaving the audience thinking of the characters being in a state of sexless androgyny.
I thought the section about questioning Jerry’s gender was very interesting. It is never clearly stated or even shown what Jerry sexual identity is, bur she is often shown dressing up in women’s clothes. She also has very feminine mannerism and body language, like covering the area where breasts would be when she is naked. There are also lesbian tensions implied when Jerry is shown being embarrassed from being in bed with a female doll. The question of gender can be implied with shades of colors, with the darker being the male and the lighter typically being the female.
I thought it was interesting that Wells didn't commit to deciding himself whether Jerry was a female or male. He seemed to give enough evidence and conviction to label Jerry as a female while using "him" to describe Jerry's actions. I found this confusing and contradictory to his argument.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I had never really thought about gender bending in cartoons before this weeks readings. In the current political disconnect concerning the idea of gay marriage I wonder how parents would react when they realized that their kids watched shows in which gender bending is a norm. I could imagine that many parents wouldn't be found of such scenes in the shows their kids watch because, I feel, that many parents place too much emphasis on gender when their kids are growing up.
It is interesting that some cartoons like the ones you mentioned are quite clearly either male or female and then others have a very androgynous element to them. One of the cartoons that I think definitely play with that line is Winnie the Pooh. When I watched as a kid I always knew Tiger and Pooh were boys, I thought Rabbit was girl, and I was a little undecided about Piglet even though I kind of leaned toward boy. It wasn't until I was in my teens and somebody told me that I found out all of the animals in the Hundred Acre Woods were boys except for that kangaroo mom. But as a child the gender classifications didn't really matter that much to me and probably the exact identity of what gender Rabbit is means more to me now then it ever did then.
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