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THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2016
A6 THE RED & BLACK
M I S R E P R E S E N TAT I O N
Animation industry dominated by men Female characters lack versatiliy in their physical characteristics Rachel Grace @rachelmgrace
Over the past few years, Disney, Pixar and other animated production companies have been making strides in an attempt to rebrand female characters.
Animation companies are largely made up of men. C O U R TESY PHIL WHITEHOUSE
After backlash about how many movies and shows in the animation industry only depict women and girls as damsels in distress with a singular purpose of finding love, the industry decided to begin abandoning an outdated message. In its place these companies have adopted more aspiration-friendly themes, such as sisterhood, adventure and independence. And though this digression from the traditional representation of females and female relationships is greatly appreciated, it seems as though the
physical attributions given to these updated heroines remains disappointingly archaic. The big, jovial eyes, a petite nose and mouth and a disproportionately large head compared to the body are all qualities that can be attributed to a human infant, according to an article by Olga Khazan for The Atlantic. These innately “cute” characteristics are meant to invoke feelings of warmth and adoration in us. This way they are still able to maintain a docility and innocence about the female character, regardless of her personality. One factor that has the biggest affect on this uniform look is the lack of female representation within the animation industry. Eighty percent of jobs in animation are held by men, leaving the remaining 20 percent of the roles to women, according to statistics compiled by the Animation Guild in 2015. An industry that is so heavily dominated by men usually results in the dismissal and invalidation of women’s creative contribution to designing female characters. This is why we see an overwhelming amount of diversity in male animated characters because males are able to freely invent images of themselves while female characters are restricted to what men believe a woman should look like. Lino DiSalvo, head of animation for Disney’s “Frozen,” is a perfect example of why we need more female representation in animation.
“Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult … you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive …” said DiSalvo according to Time. Why do females in animation need to be “pretty?” I know sex sells, but these are children’s films and in my opinion the more unique looking women like Edna Mode from “The Incredibles” or Maleficent from “Sleeping Beauty” were always characters I identified with, simply because of how realistic their characters felt. And it is possible to create complex, interesting female characters that are unique looking and not just villains or comic relief — just let women create them. Although Disney and Pixar’s efforts to diversify their storylines are valiant, continuing to deny their audience female characters with diverse facial structures and body types is both lazy and sexist. When there is only one face that represents an entire gender, it dehumanizes women and shows the audience that only one type of girl really deserves a story. For young girls, that can be a very impactful message. For them, if they only ever see one body type, one nose, once face, they might think that it is the only face that females are allowed to have. Diversity is not complicated, if they are able to do it for men, why can they not do it for women? Rachel Grace is a junior from Johns Creek majoring in journalism
P E D D L I N G P R O PA G A N D A
The problem with openly biased media Zach Hansen @zach_ehansen Ever since 1909, the Society of Professional Journalists, the nation’s most broad-based journalism organization, has been fighting to improve and protect the objectivity and integrity of journalism. Being objective should be one of the most important aspects of being a journalist. Americans should be able to trust that the collective media is accurately informing the masses. However, all that work and progress seem to be in vain since large portions of the American public seem to prefer to get slanted news coverage from organizations that openly admit to having a biased agenda instead of established, objective ones. Given the claims of liberal and conservative bias among mainstream media platforms, such as Fox News and MSNBC, it is no surprise that readers flock to alternative media sites and blogs to get their version of the news. But websites such as Conservative Daily, NowThis, Right Wing News and ThinkProgress don’t even attempt to be objective, but instead they own their political biases — something much more dangerous. For example, Young Conservatives’ about page on its website boldly states, “. . . it is our mission and duty to steer the country away from the false promises of progressivism and advocate a smaller government of moral absolutes and individual responsibility.” Notice that the organization’s mission isn’t to fairly inform the people or report the full extent of the facts. It is to “steer the country” in the way it best seems fit. That means Young Cons openly states it has an obligation to its readers to present them only the
OPENLY-BIASED NEWS
FB LIKES
MAINSTREAM MEDIA
FB LIKES
Conservative Daily
7.7 million
CNN
22.4 million
NowThis
6.7 million
NY Times
11.5 million
American News
5.3 million
ABC News
8.6 million
Think Progress
1.7 million
Yahoo News
6.6 million
Chicks on the Right
964 thousand
NPR
4.9 million
The Facebook likes between some openly-biased news organizations and mainstream media platforms. All statistics are reported as of press time. T H O M A S M I L L S / S T A F F information and facts that benefits its pre-determined agenda. This also leads to a marginalized discussion between different ideas, which is the only way informed opinions grow and develop. After all, how can you truly know your side is correct if you’ve never been accurately presented the other side? Take the Facebook description for Chicks On The Right for instance. It says, “If you are a liberal looking for a fight, please go to the main site and debate us to your heart’s content THERE. This Facebook page is dedicated to LIKE MINDED individuals, and trolling will not be tolerated.” Presenting your media platform as a place dedicated for like-minded individuals only leads to a vacuum of ideas. The only ideas COTR wants presented on its Facebook are ideas that support its own political agenda, actively discouraging constructive criticism and counterarguments that lead to a more informed opinion. That doesn’t mean the information these sites produce is always incorrect, but the tone presented doesn’t seem interested in giving other opinions a fair listen. It becomes easy to cocoon yourself within one political ideology without ever fairly being pre-
sented the other side. And when these organizations have a clear agenda to isolate themselves from opposing opinions, do you really expect them to fairly present separate ideas? Instead, they often go on the offensive, with edgy, provocative headlines. These headlines often include someone “destroying” someone’s stance in only five minutes or less. Also, these articles — presented as legitimate news and not comedy — seem purposefully crafted to insult liberals or conservatives in petty ways, such as name calling and stereotyping. I urge you not to trust these websites that openly present their news as biased and pandering to a political platform. Journalists work very hard to protect our objectivity and credibility and giving slanted news organizations credit for presenting the news you want to hear (and only the news you want to hear), isn’t proper journalism. It’s propaganda. Opinionated reporting belongs on radio talk shows, TV segments and op-ed columns, not a media organization’s featured “news.” Zach Hansen is the managing editor at The Red & Black
Opinions expressed are those of contributors and not necessarily those of The Red & Black
EDITORIAL
The social election
W
hoever wins this election, it will be won through social media. From the beginning, all prospective candidates utilized social media more than any candidates have in previous years. Social media has long been a part of our world as college students and it has begun to dominate how we receive news. Whether celebrity news or political news, we stay in the know through sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr. This is 2016 — the first time many of us are voting for a major political office. In 2008, President Obama catered to people our age and even to adults closer to our parents’ ages with his social media accounts. Additionally, political news ran rampant across social media platforms. This was an election hyped up through social media and at the time we thought we had never seen anything like it. But it is 2016 and we are left to choose between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. And this election has arguably been the most social media driven yet. The Pew Research Center conducted a study in 2008 of adults who go online for news or information about politics, finding that 44 percent of adults found their news on the internet. In 1996 when many of us were born, only 4 percent of adults went online for this information. This is quite the jump — 11 times the percent of 1996 — in just 12 years. Yes, internet users grow year to year, but how the internet is shaping the election is something we have never seen before. Pew conducted another study focusing on how candidates in each election since 2000 used the internet to further their campaigns. “In January 2016, 44% of U.S. adults reported having learned about the 2016 presidential election in the past week from social media, outpacing both local and national print newspapers,” the study reported. In addition, it analyzed the links that each candidate posted to their accounts. Seventy-eight percent of Trump’s Facebook posts link back to larger news outlets while 80 percent of Clinton’s posts that include links lead to her official campaign website. This election will make social media history. However in future years, we can predict that Trump and Clinton will stand to be outdone given how rapidly communication changes each year. Trump announced his running mate for Vice President, Mike Pence, via Twitter, breaking the political mold we have become accustomed to. After Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention, social media accused her of plagiarizing Michelle Obama and twitter fingers began calling her out in #MelaniaTrumpQuotes. After which, Donald Trump later tweeted about all press being good press. Clinton has certainly made her mark with the infamous “delete your account” tweet and other digs at Trump throughout this election season. And these are just some of the most noteworthy and recent examples. This election has changed how we learn about candidates. No matter who you vote for, or why — social media is winning this election. Written by Nicolle Sartain on behalf of the editorial board of The Red & Black
Corrections
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In the July 14 edition of The Red & Black Kendell Williams’ name was misspelled in a cutline. The Red & Black is committed to providing our readers with the most accurate and upto-date news as possible. As a student-run news organization with the mission of training future journalists, we know that mistakes happen and we do our best to correct them as quickly as possible. Online articles that contain corrections can be found at: redandblack.com/corrections. If an error appeared in a print article, we will run a correction in the next print edition possible. If you spot a factual error, please let us know by sending a correction to editor@ randb.com.