Sunday, 6 September 2015

Disney Gender Representations Assignment- Reflection

I believe I put in a solid effort into this assignment. I took in all of the corrections that my peers and teacher pointed out. One problem though, is my word limit. I never took in consideration the importance of keeping within the time of 4-6 minutes and comparing that with how long my script was. When I came to record my voice, I realised that it was 9 minutes and 38 minutes long. At this point is was much too late to go back and change the script as I was already in the process of adding an interesting video to the audio. Aside from this, I made the video as perfectly and visually interesting as I could and the content of my speech nothing but relevant. I do believe that 4-6 minutes was not enough to explore this topic in depth as we had to.

Disney Gender Representations Script

Animated Disney films retain a very large role in creating and reinforcing gender stereotypes into the minds of their viewers. For many years, Disney has entertained families and especially children with animated films and fairytales. The reinforcement of stereotypes projected within these films are very influential in shaping societies ideas of gender roles presented to the vast number of the target audience. These gender representations can be found in Disney movies such as Beauty and the Beast (1992) and The Little Mermaid (1990), depicting men and women in certain ways to reinforce the roles of the genders in society. The expectation to be physically attractive is reinforced in these Disney films through the natural yet very unrealistic beauty of the Disney Princes and Princesses. Similarly, the stereotypical gender roles are also heavily reinforced by having women and men only completing certain tasks appointed for their gender. As well as these roles, the idea is enforced that the two genders are to have certain character attributes, never crossing the thick line that differentiates the two.

Disney’s films reinforce the idea that men and women are to be physically attractive and they set appropriate body proportions that are completely unrealistic. It is a fact that when people hear “Disney Prince” or “Disney Princess”, they automatically think of an attractive person with a flawless complexion, hair and body. This says a lot about the messages that Disney are getting out to their audience. Just take a look at Belle and Ariel. They are both petit, with small waists, yet have nice curves and breasts, gorgeous flowing hair, large eyes, and fair flawless skin. However, physical beauty representations are not only represented through princesses and princes. The Bimbettes in Beauty and the Beast, who seem to appear everywhere in the movie, are constructed into the blonde, beautiful, dumb and male-desperate category of stereotypes. This well-known stereotype has a big impact on people in today’s society expecting that all beautiful blonde women are bimbos and promiscuous. Teri Polo, a very successful and very blonde actor, is one of many victims in this situation. She said “People take a look at me and say, “She's cute. She's blonde. She's an actress. She's a bimbo.” You know? So I take great pains to show I'm intelligent, to show I'm not a twinkie.” Polo knows that people automatically judge, and place her into that blonde female stereotype, but she knows that’s truly not her, and the same case goes for many other blondes. Ariel’s sisters, who are just as beautiful, and voice-talented as Ariel and Belle, have very similar traits to the Bimbettes as their breasts are unnaturally perked up all the time and have a constant stance that visibly shows their unrealistic curves. What is this saying about how women are viewed in today’s society? Disney enforces a standard of beauty in society by conveying to the audience that for a female to have a happy ending and find true love they must look beautiful and have curves like a Princess, and for a male to be successful and find a woman, he must be as physically attractive as the average Prince. This includes being handsome, having great hair, big muscles, and nice fitted clothing to expose those muscles. As young children watch these Disney films, it is inevitable that that are going to grow up aspiring to be exactly like these characters that are clearly unrealistic. This can easily stimulate future disproportionate self-images for the viewers of these films. These reinforced stereotypes in Disney fairytales are highly influential and can be harmful because the male and female body proportions and beauty expectations are unrealistic and physically impossible to conform to. 

As well as physical expectations, stereotypical gender roles are heavily reinforced in Disney’s family entertainment films. It is accepted worldwide that the stereotypical woman cooks, cleans and spends a large proportion of her time keeping her physical beauty in high maintenance. And of course, on the other hand, the men are to go to work, earn the money and be the backbone of the household. These images of posters from the mid 1900’s, of women working in the house, support and assists in heavily reinforcing this gender role into society, along with Disney animated films. Although these images portray only women from Western countries, this domestic stereotype is universal. The personified house objects in Beauty and The Beast, strengthens these gender roles. The females are associated with the objects used by stereotypical women; teapot, dust brush, wardrobe. Whereas the men are the candle and the clock; objects which are seen to be useful and very independent. Reinforced gender roles in Beauty and the Beast can also be seen when the Beast heroically and bravely saves Belle from the hungry wolves in the forest, implying that men are always to save the women who are too physically weak to stand up for themselves. This is followed directly by Belle comforting and caring for the Beast with a hot wet towel, applying her domestic and nurturing skills, which is a stereotype of the role of all women. These roles of men being strong and brave, and women being domestically educated and have a nurturing nature are prominent in Beauty and The Beast. Also, in The Little Mermaid, Sebastian’s duty was to look after and keep an eye on Ariel to keep her safe. This reinforces the idea that a woman needs to be assisted and protected by a male at all times as she is incapable of taking care of herself, regardless whether she is brave or not. Disney films have a prominent contribution in reinforcing gender role stereotypes to their viewers by conveying how men are to have strength and bravery and women are to have domestic skills, and that these are their main purposes.

A stereotypical attribute that is evident within the Disney animated fairytales is that women are emotionally and physically weak, whereas men are emotionally and physically strong. In both  films, only the main female characters were depicted as absurdly emotional and weak. Ariel is seen twice in the movie, crying her eyes out and the same goes for Belle. Furthermore, in typical Disney style, they maintain their poise by being positioned gracefully when they are crying. Through these scenes, Disney successfully demonstrates to the audience that women are exceptionally emotional, yet they fail to identify that males are just as emotional as women. According to a study by neurologists at Mindlab, men are actually more sensitive than women when reacting to different emotional stimuli. Scientists asked 15 fathers and 15 mothers, to watch a series of videos while their physiological responses were measured by skin conductance electrodes. They were to watch videos that were categorised into: blissful, funny, exciting and heart-warming – and experts were surprised to see that fathers tested higher for emotional responses to a range of stimuli. Even more surprising was the results for the “heart-warming” category, as the experiment showed that men responded twice as much to this content than women. This study proves that the common assumption that women are emotionally weaker than men, is incorrect. Furthermore, Disney reinforces the idea that women are to be polite, reserved and respectable. At the beginning of The Little Mermaid, Ariel had an adventurous and risk-taking character, and her father punished her for being like this and disobeying his orders. When Ariel finally lives her happily ever after with Prince Eric, she conforms into the common agreeable woman like every other Disney Princess, hence losing her adventurous side. This also occurs in Beauty and the Beast. Belle used to be the intelligent outcast that read books all day long, and people would call her strange, but her marriage to the Prince changed that. Disney tells their audience what certain characteristics are acceptable for a Disney Princess to have and what aren’t. So what do young Disney viewers think when look up to these Princesses and aspire to be like them? Clearly these films outline and reinforce the idea that women’s lives are supposed to be dependant on males, and that they can only live their happily ever after once they conform to the stereotypical attributes of being polite and reserved.

Animated Disney films have a very large role in creating and reinforcing gender stereotypes into the minds of families and especially children with animated films and fairytales. The stereotypes projected within these films can be hazardous and very influential in shaping societies ideas of gender roles because of the large target audience and the completely incorrect messages that are being portrayed. Young viewers grow up with the ideas that women are required to be physically attractive, be domestically educated and nurturing, and polite in character. As apposed to men who are also supposed to be attractive but embody totally different attributes and roles to women. This can easily stimulate future disproportionate self-images for the viewers of these films. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid are both films that depict men and women in these certain ways to reinforce gender roles in society.

Thursday, 3 September 2015

Rumpelstiltskin -> Playing The Game

Today in class, my group and I decided that we would figure out all of the little details of our film noir like finalising the storyline, characters, plot, and brainstorm some cool lighting, shots, and locations to film.

Action Location/props Lines
Detective is in her car driving down a dark street. She reads a document in a folder and looks at a file about the father. She talks into her tape recorder.

She puts the tape recorder away and walks out into the darkness of a street to investigate
(Street in Tedder avenue) 
Document on Father
Bella’s mums car
“0240 hours. Wednesday morning,  July 13th, 2014…
Potential criminal suspect has made their way to Grim Lane, goes by the name of …. “
Detective is hiding in the darkness. Pull focus to father who is talking to an assassin and hanging him a profile.  (Street in Tedder avenue) 
Document on father
Document on Max Patterson
“Max Patterson. 30 years old. Some say that he almost found our spot, so we’re suspicious. Just kill him.”
Father gets in his car, drives away. Detective gets in her car and follows him. Slow subtle car chase (Street in Tedder avenue) 
Bella’s mums car
Libbys dads car

Establishing shots of the money being made cut between click of boss’s heels and clicking of the money being made. Detective walks in someone hands her a shirt. Detective says yes. Employer grabs her places her in a work bench. King walks in. 
king examines a bill and starts shouting at a employer for bad quality. Anna walks in and uses feminine charm to get the king to shop shouting at employer. 
(Basement of Bella’s parents office) “Hurry up, you’re late. Nice disguise, but its first day in business. Learn to be more prompt.”
"Don’t say a word.”

We also established a temporary replacement name for Rumpelstiltskin... I came up with this as Libby referred to the Rumpelstiltskin lines "You know how to play the game. You must guess what is my name." and this sparked an idea to call it Playing The Game as it fits in both storylines of our film and the folk tale.

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

Rumpelstiltskin Storyline Plot

Today, my group and I really dug deeper into changing the Rumpelstiltskin storyline into a Film Noir style short film. We also discussed how characters can be fitted into different film noir character types. Here are those notes:

Storyline
  • There is a secret business of money forgery 
  • (KING) is the ‘Corrupt Official’ that is the overlord of this business and (ANNA) works for him along with very few others
  • They are so rich that they pay assassins to kill anyone who may be suspicious of being in knowledge of their secret business
  • (ANNA)s father likes to get drunk because (some tragic backstory that bella can easily come up with)
  • A detective goes to a bar after a longs hard day’s work
  • One day (ANNA)s father gets too drunk in the same bar and spills the beans about (KING)’s business “they makes money and don’t need to do anything but press a print button.” 
  • He was telling this to his drunk friends so they wouldn’t have remembered that (ANNA)s father was telling them that “if you wanna make some more cash come to *address* on *day of week*”
  • The detective overhears this in the bar and decides to investigate
  • The detective becomes close to (ANNA) to trick her into letting her join the money-forgery
  • (ANNA) has a contemplating look in her eyes as she doesn’t know whether to assassinate the detective or not bc she knows about the company, but then decides that she can be in on it
  • When the detective is in, we see a lot of the relationship between (KING) and the workers
  • (ANNA) then somehow finds out that the detective is actually a detective and kills the detective
As homework, I also made notes of my contribution and ideas to the storyline

for ending* - The detective gives (ANNA) a jacket to wear while working because she was cold and (ANNA) feels something in the pocket and we don’t see what it is yet. Later, (ANNA) goes and speaks to the detective and they say something along the lines of:

ANNA: (suspicious of detective) You’re happy to be making all this money, right?
DETECTIVE: (nods) It’s pretty convenient
ANNA: Pretty convenient? It’s damn right convenient, this is how we are able to live our lives … Just out of curiosity; have you told anyone about us?
DETECTIVE: (frowns and shakes head) Of course not…
ANNA: (using her femme fatale attitude) You do know what would happen if the word got out, wouldn’t you?
DETECTIVE: Yes…
ANNA: We pay assassins to take out any person that could be suspicious of being in knowledge of our little money making business down here.
DETECTIVE: I know…
ANNA: Well you should’ve drilled that into you head before you got yourself in this mess (or some sassy line before she kills him)

Straight after she says this, Anna then has someone else kill the Detective right in front of her. She chucks a ‘cop badge’ on top of the dead detectives body which is what she found in the jacket earlier.
  • the detective (suspensefully) stops the car, takes out her keys, searches for her wallet in her bag and walks into a dark area
  • she opens the door and loud people talking noises is heard
  • anna’s father regularly sees tee detective in the bar and greets the detective quite enthusiastically (because he is drunk) as she walks in
  • detective gives a small smile and wave ad reaches the bar and asks for ‘the regular’ looks around the pub of drunk people
  • when the bartender gives the detective her drink and the detective overhears anna’s father say “hey listen up, I have a secret to tell you… but don’t tell miss detective over there because this is some bad stuff” the detective listens in “I’m not actually as rich as you all think I am” he begins to tear up* “My daughter makes fake money… like monopoly money… but real” somehow the drunk people all steer away from that convo and are all happy cheery again
  • OR THE FATHER COULD BE BOASTING ABOUT HOW MUCH MONEY HE HAS and then says “oh lets be real. my daughter works for (KING) in forging money, I’m not that rich”
  • This grabs the detectives attention 
  • Later on in the story, instead of the badge being found, anna’s father could actually recognise the detective at (KING)s underground forging place and anna’s father says to ANNA very worriedly “what’s Detective whatshername doing down here?” and (ANNA) gathers that the detective is actually a detective. The Detective didn’t know that Anna’s father was down there (because the detective and anna’s father see each other in the bar) and telling (ANNA) that she’s a cop
  • Then the conversation between ANNA and the detective commences.

Rumpelstiltskin Pilot Ideas

After much debate and deep thinking, my group and I decided to stick with the Grimm Brother's Folk Tale of "Rumpelstiltskin" as it has a very interesting storyline and characters that can be subverted quite creatively. After Day One, these were my ideas:

Anna: 
  • is a phoney. pretends to know something that the King doesn’t and he uses her in advantage of that
  • it actually a detective
  • could pretend she has “the Kings” money
King:
  • a criminal
An anonymous person was supposed to meet with The Criminal in a secret town spot. Anna happened to be walking around late at night (or she could be a cop) and follows the anonymous person, suspiciously. The criminal mistakens anna for the person he is meeting with and talks to anna as if she was the person that he was expecting. Anna cannot see his face in the dim.

*2 body guards grab anna from around the corner* 
The Criminal says, with his back to her “I’m here, you idiot. You’re 28 minutes late. What did I tell you about being prompt. We could get caught here.”
Anna is speechless unknowing what is happening, so she goes along with it, knowing that she has gotten herself into trouble

The Criminal reminds her that she is yet again late in giving her payment


The Criminal locks her up in their own ‘jail’ and another person in another jail cell (rumpelstiltskin) is the person that helps her from across the hall being unseen and telling her how to survive and what to say to the criminal

Film Noir Introduction

In class, we began to watch Double Indemnity (1944) . Some other famous Film Noir movies include:
  • Out Of The Past (1947)
  • Touch of Evil (1958)
  • The Maltese Falcon (1941) 
  • Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Judging by the film covers of these movies, there are a few similarities between all of these movies.
  • They all include a 'Femme Fatale' or a desired woman that could act as "The Prize"
  • A powerful male figure
  • Cigarettes
  • Guns
  • Emotionless faces
  • Men informal attire and detective hats