An academic study of characters in Disney's animated movies has concluded that the heroes and heroines tend to be better-looking, and cleverer, than the bad guys.
This is totally the reverse of live-action films, where the villains are handsome and witty and the heroes are ugly, stupid and usually toothless.
I'm surprised more people haven't pointed this out before now.
The thoughts and observations of the leaders of The Animation Guild (TAG), Local 839 IATSE. Jason MacLeod is the Business Representative, KC Johnson is the President. Mike Sauer is Assistant to the Business Representative.
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18 comments:
Thank God somebody finally got around to doing a study about this.
All these years I've been groping through the darkness, just having no idea how Disney was tilting things toward the pretty people.
But now my eyes can clearly see.
Well, hit yourself over the head with this one: The pretty people are the only ones kept employed....
Meh. The article fingers the universities involved, but doesn't mention who the "researchers" are, or how the article writer obtained the research in question.
It's probably just some classroom exercise on how to do survey-based research projects.
Not that the British press would ever dream of blowing something out of proportion ....
Amazing the hidden things in Disney films that an academic study can reveal. Who'd o' thunk it ? But now that they point it out I can definitely see it.
I hope that the academic study under discussion was taxpayer funded with federal money too , because it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that my tax dollars are hard at work to fund such vital academic studies.
or they're the ones getting the promotions!
In fact, Barbara Walters did a study, where they tested how two guys did with the same qualifications aplying for a job at at stock bockerage company. Needless to say the male model got the job. On the same program they did a small survey, asking the kids about two substitute teachers. Guess wich one they liked better?!?
Disney is all eye candy. At Disney,they have confused the term "appeal" with "cute".
However, that is a general trend. People are pretty shallow, these days....
@ anonymous #3
The specific journal carrying the study IS mentioned and a quick trip to their site gives the abstract which answers your questions and indicates the full paper is available to subscribers who are interested in such things.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00676.x/abstract
On behalf of the Ugly Stupid Villain's Union, I protest!
They need to rewatch the Disney films again. They got the better looking part rght, but most Disney villains are more clever tahn the protagonist, at least the more popular ones.
Clever or not, the implication is that people who don't look like models are evil, and that pretty people are good. It's not what the films are saying, but that it's the impression they create. And young minds are very impressionable.
rufus
You guys telling me that Maleficent isn't pretty? Look at that anorexic figure, those eyes, those cheekbones! She's supermodel material!
Hell, she's even sexy as a DRAGON!
I liked Quasimodo in Disney's "Hunchback of Notre Dame." My first ugly hero.
The best animated movies are the ones like Toy Story and Finding Nemo, which have no villain. Much more mature storytelling, which explores the more intriguing concept that the protagonist can be his own worst enemy.
Almost no villains.
I guess you're forgetting about Sid and Darla...?
I guess they're not as mature as you thought after all...
Sid is not the villain of Toy Story, he is merely a sub-plot obstacle. Same with Darla.
A "villain," in the sense that I'm talking about, provides the central conflict for the protagonist, which drives the entire story. Neither Sid nor Darla fit that bill at all.
In Toy Story, the primary driving conflict is internal to the protagonist, not anything (or anyone) external. The closest you could come to a character antagonist is Buzz, but he is not evil. Rather, it is Woody's own jealousy that is "evil." Jealousy is the only "villain" of Toy Story.
In Nemo, the primary conflict is both internal (over-protectiveness) and external (geography), but again, no "evil" villain.
Yes, these are more mature, and more difficult, story structures than Disney's typical evil villain stand-bys.
to Floyd:
Even though I like the Hunchback as well, he doesn't get the chick, does he? even though she's his love interest. (I do agree that him getting the chick would be a tad,shall we say, unconventional?)But then right there is the rub. The idea that only model types deserve love.
And concerning Maleficent....boy, how long ago was that movie made?!?
rufus
Nice try and nice rationalization, but Sid and Darla are indeed Act 3 villains. They might not fit your definition of a Disney villain, but obviously there would have been no act 3 in either film without them since Pixar dropped the ball on the non-existent villain that you describe.
If Pixar had just followed through in TS without and just made it about Woody fighting with his own demons or they followed through on whatever plot you think they had for Nemo you might have a point. But they didn't. If anything to insert a villain in the last act so there can be a dramatic rescue is almost less mature storytelling then in some of the Disney films and many of the other Pixar films where you sense (if not actually see) the villain from the beginning.
But I'll give you points for trying...
Villain or antagonists, the issue is beyond semantics. Sid is no GQ cover, and yet he's what we could all agree, a sadistic character. Again, it's not that one film in particular says ugly people are bad, but its the body of work that creates this underlying idea that ugly people, and even "normal" looking people are less than model types.
It's no wonder why young girls develop issues with self image. We are bombarded by film and adds with what we should look like, which is at odds with reality for most of us.
Meh, I see I've made the mistake of engaging with an ideological anti-Pixar troll. You're too concerned with trashing a particular studio to actually have an intelligent discussion about story. I couldn't care less about the studio--in fact, I would've praised any other studio's animated film that similarly had no classic villain, but I couldn't think of any.
It is the height of absurdity to claim that Sid was the "villain" of Toy Story. He is not, as you describe, a "third act villain", he is an obstacle of a subplot.
But you're too interested in engaging in a silly Disney vs. Pixar war that, frankly, I couldn't possibly care less about.
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