Animation boys club?

[James]

This piece is sparking a lot of conversation around the web: Inside The Persistent Boys Club Of Animation
http://www.buzzfeed.com/arianelange/cre ... e-cartoons

What do you think?

[LotsoA113]

There's certainly progress being made in the world of animation, though there are many many hurdles yet to go (Pixar still hasn't had a woman direct a feature from start-to-finish) and man, hearing the struggles many of these women go through in the industry just makes me sick to my stomach. Kudos to them for speaking out about this extremely pervasive and major issue, hopefully it incurs further discussion of these matters in the future.

[EricJ]

...Brenda's off her meds again, huh?

Again, the industry has nothing wrong with women directing, if they can actually put their own issues aside and DIRECT a movie. (Hello, Kathy Bigelow waves that Oscar she's holding?) As the joke goes, "We let you direct movies, and how did you repay us?--'Yentl'! 'Clueless'! 'A League of Their Own'! See if we ever do YOU a favor again! "
No one wants to be That Chauvinistic Guy and say that "Chicks only want to do huggy-suffering mother-daughter movies, or nasty mean-spirited rom-coms!"--But movie directing isn't like a soulfully-created painting to make your personal statement of social frustration in a world you've tailor-created to symbolize your own view, movie directing is like car repair, where you have to dispassionately put yourself aside to put working mechanical story and visual parts together until they hum like a finely tuned race engine, and then paint that singularly unique racing stripe on it. If they can do that, (arm-sweep) by all means, but they have to DO it first. If no women ever directed, it would be easy to cry they were being "left out", but there's a difference between being "left out" and being avoided. The difference is when you're your own worst evidence.

I'll try not to make more jokes about Brave setting female-directed animation back thirty years--
It's just that, not to bring up the old Hans/Frozen arguments again, but that's something you can't UN-see, to the point that you can look back at Wreck-It Ralph, and likely pick out the bits that Jennifer Lee contributed.
(Let's see, the Sonic the Hedgehog cameos, or the whole subplot where Vannelope gets picked on by the mean girls, and ultimately gives them their comeuppance?...Gee, it's so hard to tell!)

[Ben]

Again, the industry has nothing wrong with women directing

So little, he knows...

[EricJ]

So little, he knows...

Uh, I believe the general point was:

Again, the industry has nothing wrong with women directing, IF...

It's that key word that always makes the difference, and "If" is hardly ever "When".

It particularly shouldn't be a complaint in animation, where directors are "invisible" and largely no-name to begin with (we know John Lasseter and Eric Goldberg wear Hawaiian shirts, but would any of us recognize Pete Docter on the street?), and non-Lasseter directors in Pixar especially.
We've had a number of female animation directors in DWA, Pixar, and Sony, but the only female animation directors most of us can name are the two who bothered to....TELL us they were female directors.
The rest just kept plugging along and doing their job.

[Dacey]

Lee wasn't a director on Wreck-It Ralph.

And I don't think Sony's ever had a female director...

[James]

...I don't think Sony's ever had a female director...

Open Season and Arthur Christmas if I'm not mistaken

[Dacey]

Okay, Open Season is the one I keep forgetting for some reason (and I even liked it!). But Arthur Christmas is Aardman, which I see as comparable to saying that Brenda Chapman was a Disney director on Brave.

[droosan]

Lauren Faust is currently developing Medusa at Sony Pictures Animation .. and stands to be the director, if it gets a greenlight.

[ShyViolet]

Hey Eric, how can you possibly know the talents of every single female director out there? Don't you think that there might be a million extremely talented female directors we don't even know about being held back in the movie/animation industry?

It's a gigantic (and extremely insulting) generalization to say that all female directors are incapable of directing anything but an overly sentimental, "heartfelt" yet inferior film.

[Randall]

That was one of Eric's posts that quickly turned into "...... blah blah blah blah blah..." for me. More trolling than commenting.

[Ben]

As I said...so little, he knows...

[ShyViolet]

...Brenda's off her meds again, huh?

Again, the industry has nothing wrong with women directing, if they can actually put their own issues aside and DIRECT a movie. (Hello, Kathy Bigelow waves that Oscar she's holding?) As the joke goes, "We let you direct movies, and how did you repay us?--'Yentl'! 'Clueless'! 'A League of Their Own'! See if we ever do YOU a favor again! "
No one wants to be That Chauvinistic Guy and say that "Chicks only want to do huggy-suffering mother-daughter movies, or nasty mean-spirited rom-coms!"--But movie directing isn't like a soulfully-created painting to make your personal statement of social frustration in a world you've tailor-created to symbolize your own view, movie directing is like car repair, where you have to dispassionately put yourself aside to put working mechanical story and visual parts together until they hum like a finely tuned race engine, and then paint that singularly unique racing stripe on it. If they can do that, (arm-sweep) by all means, but they have to DO it first. If no women ever directed, it would be easy to cry they were being "left out", but there's a difference between being "left out" and being avoided. The difference is when you're your own worst evidence.

Hmmm...well, what about some of these, um, huggy-suffering mother daughter films:

Not Without My Daughter: directed by Brian Gilbert, a man!!

The Joy Luck Club: a film about, well, mothers and daughters. Directed by Wayne Wang, a man!!

Anywhere But Here: Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman, a film about a strained mother daughter relationship. Also directed by Wayne Wang!!

Just goes to show that men can direct sweet emotional films too. Guess they're: "their own worst enemies"?

And by the way, there is nothing wrong with having a personal vision for a film. These often turn out to be the best films out there!

[EricJ]

Not Without My Daughter: directed by Brian Gilbert, a man!!

(Not Without...wait, was that the racist anti-Iranian propaganda one? The titles all sort of blur after a while.)

The Joy Luck Club: a film about, well, mothers and daughters. Directed by Wayne Wang, a man!!

Anywhere But Here: Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman, a film about a strained mother daughter relationship. Also directed by Wayne Wang!!

So--leaving aside Wang's well-known personal sexuality--refresh my memory, who was discussing male directors' ability/inability to direct versatile projects? I seem to have missed that post in the thread.

It was sort of the other crowd we were accusing of being a bit horse-blindered in the Directorial Vision Thing.

[ShyViolet]

Just saying that there is nothing wrong with a man or woman making an empowering film, a personal vision, or a "huggy-mother-daughter" narrative, as you call it.

But whatever. I'm sure you'll find a way to keep trashing women well as other groups on this site.