Letters to the Editor
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@redfish/bluefish
How long a list do you need for you to feel like they're nothing more than "exceptions?"
You don't see very bright. Do you understand what an anecdote is? And what a percentage is? The difference?
The point is the percentage overall of women in the animation/CGI field, and it's small. The most gender neutral studios have about 1/3 women, tops, in the art dept not counting HR, asst producers, and such glue jobs. The vast majority of studios are 90% male or higher. The same thing goes for US studios. Ghibli for example has been collaborating increasingly with other studios for CGI work, which they don't do much of in-house. The studios they're collaborating with for the additional skill set, are like 90% male.
Also, the higher up the ladder and the more technical it is, the more it tends to be male. There are more women in glue positions, or doing props modeling and such, but far less women doing technical work like high-end rigging, coding, and in key animator positions.
And the more technically advanced a studio is, the more male it tends to be. That's just a fact. Look at WETA, ILM, PIXAR, Dreamworks, all the game studios, etc, etc. are all predominantly male.
The fact is there just aren't as many technically skilled women in CGI. There could be more, but they need to pursue the technical skills and need start young.
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@alarajrogers
You seem to misunderstand my point about Ghibli characters, and about gender in general.
First off, whether one is macho-manly-man, or a girly-girl, or anywhere in-between, has both social and genetic components. Sexual orientation is in large part due to genetics and hormonal development and fixed. Gender differentiation is more plastic, but also has many gender traits ingrained during fetal development and puberty in the brain. I don't think we should force people into PC boxes against their biological nature, to be androgynous, or more one way or another. Aside from the excesses of gender extremes (violence, emotional neediness, etc) it's all good and it takes all kinds.
Regarding Ghibli characters, some of them are based on characters by women authors, but most aren't. All of the characters are more Miyazaki than anybody else in the details, and he is male, and his tastes/quirks tend towards male typical. He likes planes and fighter battles. He likes Rube Goldberg kooky machines. He's emotionally reclusive. Etc. So, on that level they're male typical.
On a higher level, his characters are very androgynous in their major story arc which is philosophical, being for truth, compassion, peace, etc. (Same for PIXAR.) But in the details, aside from breats and hips, they're male. In fact they're Miyazaki himself for the most part.
Point being, androgyny in the story arc + male typical quirks + breasts and hips, does not equal a fully fleshed out female character, related by a female director. Simply putting cartoon breasts and hips on Woody from Toy Story or such, wouldn't actually change anything, and it might be patronizing. (there was a female version that was a bit patronizing, basically being Woody + fem stereotypes, and the character was "cute" but less rich as a result)
That you (and I) happen to like the characters is beside the point. I like PIXAR characters too.
Directors, writers, designers, animators, etc all help shape the character. Each of them has to reach into their own experience and memories for inspiration. The Hero characters have to be the most inspired and fullest. Until there are many more women in that creative process, the characters are by nature male, coming from the minds of men, and simply putting breasts and hips on them won't change that.
It's a tough problem. People want to be PC and provide good role models to girls, but they also want to create rich characters that resonate and are true, and the source material is their own experiences. Also, it makes creative people uncomfortable (and rightfully) to be creating patronizing characters that are male inspired, and gender switched for market/PC reasons.
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Anonymous
Anonymous... as rude as always.
Let's see how our conversation initially went....
The focus was on Ghibli.
What started our little back and forth was this comment:
"I'm not going to argue that Studio Ghibli doesn't have men as key roles (but still, amazing how men as directors can still create interesting female characters, something Pixar, with the same situation cannot do), but the staff itself is a mixture of men and women (mostly 18-25). On Porco Roso, most of the key animators were women."
Your response: "That's not accurate. The Ghibli staff is predominantly male, and all of the lead rolls, are male. The directors are men."
I found an article where an interviewer noted that the there was a mix of male and female animators at the studio. I even found an article of a number of key animators at the studio, two of whom are animation directors (guess not all lead roles are taken by men).
Here's another article that gives some feeling about the dynamic between the male and female animators at Ghibli, and how the young staff members often give the directors advice.
http://animated-news.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=126
And here's a quote from a DVD about Studio Ghibli's policy general policy towards their female stuaff: "Miyazaki is a feminist, actually. He has this conviction that to be successful, companies have to make it possible for their female employees to succeed too."
I suppose we're quibbling over what you mean by "predominantly male." As I said before, I'm not going to argue that women make up the majority of the staff at Ghibli, but they're not non-existant as I suspect as you want to make them out to be. (And they are a few in lead roles... Megumi Kagawa was only second to Tanaka in Howl's Moving Castle in terms of output.)
Oddly enough, you brought up Urusei Yatsura (which you couldn't name at the time) as a rare example of the work as one of those rare animations directed by a woman. I noted that it wasn't even directed by a woman, but it was based on a manga by a woman.... If we look at that situation, it's not rare. There are so many animes created based on shojo manga that its not considered a bizarre event when it happens. (Big artists like Rumiko Takahashi and shojo studio Clamp have almost everything they've written been animated.)
Suddenly, you switch the discussion to CGI. I never made the claim that women make up the majority of CGI animators.
(Ghibli uses SOME CGI, but the fact is that it's determined to be a mainly 2-D animation studio.)
I suspect you're the sort of person who likes to tip chessboards and then rearrange the pieces so that you end up being right.
Fine, if it means that much to you: you're right about CGI. Men dominate. Now go in peace.