Response to set academic text

I am interested in the presentations of gender in animation and the text- Law, S. 'Putting themselves in the pictures: images of women in the work of Joanna Quinn, Candy Guard and Alison de Vere' in Pilling, J. (ed.) (1997) A Reader in Animation Studies, Sydney, John Libbey, pages 48-70 is very inspiring and helpful in understanding the topic from other professionals’ perspectives. The text introduces the animations and concepts of three stylistically different artists who produce visualise their thoughts and feelings about representation of gender. In Joanna Quinn’s Girls Night Out, she has introduced the topic about body beauty and representation of female characters. There is a scene where the girl group when to a night pub and there was a sexual appearing male stripper performing. ‘The depictions of male/female characters of the Avery films seems to be inverted in the Quinn films discussed here: the undesirable female in Avery’s films is depicted here as desiring but undesired by the male character who purses the voluptuous you women.’ I think the removal of the G-string from the stripper indicates the removal of male power and in here the main female character does not look away as she is underscoring her empowerment.

In Candy Guard’s animation, she included a lot of interesting conversation between females and how feminine could be shown verbally. In What about Me? (1990), two female characters’ talk shows typical conversation of females and the obsession with physical appearances. It is true that females are being judged with a lot stereotype and definitions for example the body shapes and appearance but there is no standard of beauty in this world so what is the meaning of beautiful? Guard’s characters are able to raise resonance from a lot of female audience because they are like women in real life, wondering their position in family, friends and lovers and physical appearance. They have contradictive thought of achieving the standard of beauty set by the social but rejecting the stereotype of female. It is a interesting method to represent feminine by a conversation based story which is so different from Quinn’s films.

Alison de Vere’s The Black Dog is unlike others’ animation. It is a fantasy story and it is less straightforward and included a lot of minor concepts. The female character is transformed by the female fate into a culturally defined object of beauty and de Vere seems to have an issue on women’s complicity in their representation as objects to be displayed for the pleasure of other people. Instead of loving their own bodies, females are easily loss confidence about themselves when judged by others about their appearance. The lack of confidence of females can be due to genes but social problems more likely and it is important for them to have an equal life within the society in the future. Three feminist artists have their unique thought about the representation of females in animation and challenge their stereotype. It is interesting to see the difference of female characters designed by male and females animators who have various experience and concerns about feminism in this stereotyped world.