Disney do it again

And by "It" I mean hyper sexualise one of its female characters and send a bad message to young girls watching.

Disney have sexed up Merida, the protagonist of Pixar's Brave in an attempt to sell more merchandise:

Picture from here

Yeah, it is in no way creepy at all. Let's not forget the character is only about sixteen to boot. Disney have a long standing tradition of vamping up its leading ladies in a perverse attempt to appeal to an audience of young girls. A petition has been launched to change the character design back to it's original form stating:

"The redesign of Merida in advance of her official induction to the Disney Princess collection does a tremendous disservice to the millions of children for whom Merida is an empowering role model who speaks to girls' capacity to be change agents in the world rather than just trophies to be admired. Moreover, by making her skinnier, sexier and more mature in appearance, you are sending a message to girls that the original, realistic, teenage-appearing version of Merida is inferior; that for girls and women to have value – to be recognised as true princesses – they must conform to a narrow definition of beauty."

While Brenda Chapman who designed the character said:

When little girls say they like it because it's more sparkly, that's all fine and good but, subconsciously, they are soaking in the sexy 'come-hither' look and the skinny aspect of the new version. It's horrible!

From here 

The redesign takes away everything that was endearing about the character in the first place. It was refreshing to see a female character who could hold her own and had skills beyond being able to charm animals into doing household chores for her with her singing voice (not that that doesn't have it's uses). In the same way Belle from Beauty and the Beast was refreshing because she was more interested in reading and learning than finding a husband, Merida had a totally different set of priorities and the entire point of the film was her fighting for the right to her independence and the right to marry whoever she chooses or to not mary at all.

Read this article over at Hello Giggles for more!

Top TV Opening Titles Part Two

Cross posted from Yellow Bunting

As soon as I’d finished last week’s article I immediately remembered a whole host of other opening sequences that I felt should have gone in so here are ones I missed last time…

Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-Present)

An epic title sequence for an epic show, the music and the visuals are rich in detail and echo the effort that goes into the series as a whole.

Psycho Review on Culturefly

Culturefly has just launched its new web page! It looks pretty snazzy in my opinion.

One of the articles on today's homepage is my own review of Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece Psycho:

I think we can all safely say that even if we’ve never seen the filmPsycho we’re all aware that Norman Bates is the murderer, dressing up as his dead mother. If you were one of the two people in the known universe that wasn’t aware of that fact then my apologies but everyone knew that. It can be hard for us as modern audiences, to relate to how an audience at the time would have reacted to the twist, even the basic plot of the film is crystal clear in our minds.

Read the rest of the article here and take a look around the new site!

Top TV Opening Titles

Cross posted from Yellow Bunting

I’m going to be honest here; I usually fast forward through the credits (and the adverts and if I’m watching Glee, the musical numbers) however I do have my fair share of favourite TV show theme tunes that I’m going to share with you today:

LOST (ABC, 2004-2010)

An exercise in simplicity that also comes off as disconcerting. If only the finale had measured up. It’s also nice and short.

Nudity and characterisation on Game of Thrones

It has been an article overload this week hasn't it?

This piece from Bitch Flicks by Lady T is a good read even if you don't watch GoT. The same logic can be applied to other shows with similar levels of nudity who maybe don't approach the characterisation of their female characters in the same way. It's doubly good as the author has also read the books so there's a double perspective their.

Game of Thrones is not like Lord of the Rings or other popular fantasy series that forget that women exist. Women are prominent in the society of Westeros, whether behind the scenes or fighting on the fields...Considering the presence of so many complex women in Game of Thrones, it seems like critics might save their nudity-related complaints for other programs that populate their shows with mere ciphers (if they cast any women at all). So why are we still talking about nudity on THIS show?

A case could be made to draw parallels between the way audiences respond to the depiction of violence  and the way they respond to gratuitous nudity and sexual scenes. Both raises the issue (in very different ways however, context is key in sexual scenes) of whether showing something condoning it, e.g. the furore that surrounded the release of Zero Dark Thirty.

Where they differ however is that sexuality isn't bad in any respect, the concerns are over how much should an audience see. As Lady T writes, many shows with GoT's levels of nudity are "praised for grim dark realism" but GoT is the one that gets called out on it. Whatever your opinions on how nudity (and let's face it the issue is always with female nudity specifically) no one can deny that GoT is filled with a huge variety of female characters who embody a range of different character types

Following on from yesterday...

This Hello Giggles article carries on the discussion of age gaps between leading men and their lover interests:

Will Smith, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington and Robert Downey, are all either in their fifties, or rapidly approaching the big five-oh (except Denzel – he’s almost 60!) and these A-List actors seem to always be set up with actresses much younger than they are in almost every single film.

Leading Men Age, But Their Love Interests Don’t

Kyle Buchanan has written a great piece over at Vulture.com about the age gaps between Hollywood leading men and their love interests. Plus it is jam packed with awesome graphs to look at.

Article here

With the exception of Tom Hanks, all the other actors profiled are significantly older than their love interests. It is borderline dangerous in Hollywood to be an "older" woman but the same can't be said for their male counterparts. Is the industry under the impression that we don't want to see older women on our screens? That we are somehow offended by this notion but seeing an actor doing a love scene with an actress twenty or so years younger is completely fine? I don't have anything against age gaps but they are disproportionately represented in Hollywood, to the extent that the "older woman" seems to be an endangered species.