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Mar
9
Classic Characters
Filed Under animation, character development, writing | View Comments
I’ve often read that what makes a classic cartoon character is the character’s ability to fit into any time and space. Bugs Bunny could walk the streets of France, sing an opera, and run away from a (rather inept) hunter. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can face the Shredder in modern-day New York, New York of the future, and cyberspace. Mickey Mouse can drive a steamboat, enchant brooms, and still find time to court Minnie Mouse.
It works that way in books, too. Look at the Nancy Drew books. Nancy solves cases all over the world, and has for decades. Children’s picture books like the Arthur series feature similar timeless characters who can move naturally between very different situations.
These characters are strong in their own personality. They’re defined more by what they do and how they do it rather than by where they do it, and that gives them a flexibility that allows them to draw viewers or readers in and drag them along on their adventures. That, in turn, gives them a timelessness that allows them to reach out to different generations, making them truly classic.
Jan
29
As I pointed out the other day, for all the ways we girls complain about how hard it is to get anywhere because we’re girls, the guys really don’t have it easier. Sure, there are a lot of ways in which society favors guys, but there are also points where guys can (and sometimes do) cry foul.
For example, if a guy is emotionally sensitive (and isn’t funny that we’d call a guy “emotionally sensitive” while we womenfolk are just “sensitive”?), he gets picked on for being weak. If he’s gentle and compassionate, he’s derisively called “effeminate”. And if he aspires to “women’s work”, then his sexuality gets challenged (and if he’s lucky, that’s all that happens to him).
The guys just don’t have it any easier when their actions and dreams lead them in a path not traditionally considered “masculine”, and they have to fight to prove that what they’re doing, the choices they’re making, don’t make them any less of a man. They’re just trying to be who they want to be.
Sound familiar, girls?
And like us girls, guys are getting bad messages from media, too. It’s the tough, strong guy who gets the pretty girl. Or it’s flawless Prince Charming. One of my favorite examples comes from a Lifehack article showing how boy-targeted action figures have changed since I was playing with Star Wars and G.I.Joe action figures. What? Now in order to save the galaxy, you have to look like He-Man? I don’t think so!
Oh, and being a smart guy? You’d better be smart in just the right way, or you’re a nerd looking to get pushed into a wall of lockers…or the wall of the conference room. Whatever’s handy for the resident tough guy.
So, we women have a fight on our hands getting the right to become the people we want to be…but we’re not alone. A lot of guys are right there with us, fighting for their own right to be who they want to be, too.
It’s something to think about…
Jan
26
Reverse perception
Filed Under animation, character development, writing | View Comments
Last week, I focused on the messages media can inadvertently send girls. And that’s where a lot of people stop: “Oh, no! Look at what media is doing to our girls!”
Yeah, well, girls aren’t the only ones affected. Look at action/adventure cartoons with a mostly-female cast, and then look at the token guy. Yep, I said it: token guy. It’s like someone decided that the only way you can create a girl-centered action is by inverting the boy-centered action cartoon structure. A bunch of strong girls and a wimpy or subservient guy.
Really, what happened is that they wrote the base of the cartoon with the characters in their “traditional” gender roles, and then just swapped the genders of all the characters. (I want to say I’m kidding, but I have actually seen this technique recommended. I can only hope no one has ever taken it seriously.)
Assuming that there’s even a hair of truth to it, though, male characters don’t have to be weakened to make the female characters around them look strong. In fact, to do that creates a whole new problem. It starts sending the lesson to both girls and boys that it’s okay to turn the tables rather than find equal footing, a mindset that has failed repeatedly throughout history.
Why can’t we promote characters who are strong and capable, regardless of their gender? Why does one side have to be put down so the other can be promoted?
Jan
21
Hope for princesses
Filed Under character development, content development | View Comments
This morning, I came across some links that fit in nicely with my post from Tuesday.
First, I came across an entertaining video on Target Women about the Disney Princesses. I balk at the inclusion of Mulan, who is not a princess, and I feel that Briar Rose/Aurora’s situation wasn’t well-explained, but other than that, I couldn’t stop laughing. What I did like, and what might have been a sheer accident on Target Women’s part, is that Sarah Haskins does point out how formulaic the Disney movies are.
Hopefully, I’ll have time over the weekend to watch more of the videos.
The other link brings a small ray of hope. In wondering how harmful these princesses are to our little princesses, Eric Steinman included this wonderful quote from Peggy Orenstein:
“there are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs–who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty–are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception.”
So, while little girls love to play princess, it might not be as harmful to their self-image as it could be. That’s great!
Of course, in watching and reading this morning, I started thinking about my own childhood. I loved Disney movies, but Mom made sure I had access to the fairy tales these movies were based on so I didn’t see the world through a Disney Princess filter. I was also an assertive girl from the get-go. I was the princess who ran off into action with everyone else. In fact, it wasn’t until I was an adult in a LARP that I suddenly found myself playing the Damsel in Distress on rare occasions.
I think there’s something to Orenstein’s quote. How the Disney Princesses affect you, what lessons you absorb from them, are dictated to some extent by the kind of girl you already are.
Jul
24
The Token Girl
Filed Under character development, gaming | View Comments
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been keenly aware of female characters in the everything I read or watch. I love a good strong female character, but was always very aware that there just weren’t that many, protagonist or otherwise, in the action series I was fond of.
I was so aware of how few girls there were that by middle school, I was calling characters like Gloria Baker and R.C. “token girls”, a term I still apply to the girl character in a group of guys. I was keenly aware of the token girl in every cartoon I watched or book I read. I resented when Gloria was knocked unconscious and one of the men had to rescue her. When Artemis Entreri took Catti-Brie hostage, I was nearly ready to walk out on IceWind Dale.
Playing with my boy cousins, I was invariably the person who got kidnapped by the “bad guy”. (I was always fairly well-treated by my captor, too.) When I grew up and fell in with a LARP crowd, I often found myself the only girl around and therefore the damsel in distress during games. Sometimes, both as a child an an adult, I didn’t really care because it made sense with the storyline of the game. But then there were times where it was clear that the caveman thinking went: She’s a girl. Girls always get kidnapped by the bad guy. Let’s go to great lengths to kidnap her in favor of a more easily snagged guy. And I protested.
There are plenty of examples where the token girl is allowed to just be part of the team, but there aren’t enough of them to have a strong impact on children, their games, and the stories they create.
Jun
19
These days, people are concerned about their job security and with good reason. No industry is safe from it. At my current job, we’re all facing reduced hours just trying to get through this. It’s tough to do your best when you know that tomorrow you might lose your job. You can guard against downsizing by making do with what you have and by acting the role you want to move to. You can also protect yourself by becoming the person the staff can’t imagine functioning without.
Now understand, being the “go-to” person is rough in many ways. You have to keep your ears and eyes open so you know what’s going on, even if no one has told you. You have to provide timely and beneficial advice, ideas, and work results. This doesn’t mean you have to be the best at everything, but it is helpful if you can produce consistent, high-quality work. It even helps to get along well with your co-workers. You don’t have to make them your best friends, but you should at least be cordial, know their names, etc.
Of course, once you’ve become that person no one wants to make do without, be careful. If you don’t set clear boundaries, people may start taking advantage of those skills and attitudes that made you indispensable to begin with, and that only leads to burning out. Do it with the same thoughtfulness and respect, and it should be smooth sailing for you and for those you work with.
Jun
17
Fake it till you make it
Filed Under character development, lifelong learning, personal development | View Comments
Being thrust into an unfamiliar situation can be rough. You have no idea what you need to know or are expected to know, and sometimes you’re pretty sure your current skills aren’t enough.
Relax! The first step in making yourself believe you belong there is acting like you have every right to be there. A little projected confidence goes a long way toward making everyone (including you) that you belong there. You can be a complete mess on the inside, but no one will ever guess that as long as you act with confidence.
The second step is to keep up the act. It sounds crazy, but maintaining the act requires you to learn and practice the skills you’re pretending to have. Before you know it, you’re no longer acting. You’re doing.
You can even move yourself into that dream job by pretending you already have it and doing what others in that role already do. You pick up the skills and attitudes you’ll need.
With a little confidence and a lot of learning, you can turn things around and make a more successful situation for yourself.
Jun
12
The Heroine’s Journey
Filed Under character development, content development, storytelling, writing | View Comments
Last year, one of the io9 editors complained that the Hero’s Journey is male-specific, and no one ever approaches it with a female character.
But I’m currently reading Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters series, and while the books themselves aren’t impressing me, they’re making me think. Each novel retells a different fairy tale, presenting a different take on Beauty, Cinderella, and Briar Rose.
The retellings are interesting because they do show the core of each girl’s story, and in revisiting each girl in that different light Lackey actually shows how much the Hero’s Journey story structure affects fairy tale heroines. Each girl goes on a transformative journey where she loses something or someone important to her, meets someone (often supernatural) who wants to help guide her through her journey, meets a supernatural being who wants to stop her journey, experiences some form of death, and emerges changed and ready to take her place as the heroine she is.
So, the question isn’t, “Why don’t women have stories told in the Hero’s Journey format?” It’s “Why can’t we see the Hero’s Journey format for what it is, regardless of the gender of the character?”
It’s something to think about.
May
11
Experience vs. Social Promotion
Filed Under character development, writing | View Comments
It’s a sad truth, but you can be self-deprecating and modest all you want, and at the end of the day insecure people will still try to tear you down. It usually has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with how they see themselves.
What’s that you say? This is starting to sound like the opposite of that post from the other day? That’s because it is, in a way.
What we have here is someone whose confidence comes from a series of failures and successes, who has genuine life experiences, in the same space as someone who’s spent most of their life hearing how wonderful and perfect they are, and how everything is someone else’s fault. It plays out every time you put people in the same space.
Okay, that’s a little extreme, but there seriously isn’t anywhere that’s safe from this clash, and that’s what makes it such a great tool for developing tension between characters. The characters may actually be at different skill levels competing for a position that requires the higher skill level. They may be at the same skill level, giving you the opportunity to explore the characters’ point of view as they deal with the same situation.
There are so many ways you can play with the characters while exploring this idea of self-confidence.
May
6
Building genuine self-esteem
Filed Under character development | View Comments
One of my former directors used to have a cartoon taped to her monitor where a teacher was assuring parents that the curriculum would teach the child no real world skills, but would leave them with excellent self-esteem. What made the cartoon so tragically funny is that self-esteem and experience go hand in hand. If you aren’t allowed to make mistakes, if you don’t learn how to cope with or positively diffuse bad situations, then you can’t truly have good self-esteem.
In fact, certain mental illnesses have recently been linked to artificially inflated self-esteems. Because someone grew up being told every mistake they made was someone else’s fault, because they weren’t expected to accept responsibility for their own actions, they can’t cope with mistakes in a socially acceptable way, so they suffer from a mental illness.
Sheltering someone from the fact that the world is a mix of good and bad doesn’t help, either. I was working at a summer camp once, and the campers were creating a skit for the talent show. They wanted to show how to deal with mean people, so the first half of the skit showed people being mean, and the second half of the skit showed how to deal with each situation. The camp’s staff was horrified that the campers were showing all of that negativity and ruining the camp’s perfectly positive atmosphere, and they made them change the skit. The campers weren’t happy. I wasn’t happy.
There’s a difference between providing a positive atmosphere and pretending negativity doesn’t exist, and this camp failed to understand that, and in its efforts to provide a safe place for the campers to develop their self-esteem, it robbed them of an opportunity to reflect on what happens outside of camp.
Instead of focusing on inflating self-esteem, why not create a safe zone where children can learn to experiment, to feel comfortable making mistakes? Give them the means and the tools to handle failure and negativity. Those character-building moments lead to strong, successful adults with genuine self-esteem.
