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| Red from Hoodwinked Too |
Yesterday, I wrote a blog post about watching my niece Chloe play with her Baby Alive doll. That led to a quote from an essay about children and gender-typing and how toys teach antiquated gender roles to both girls and boys. But you know what else teaches antiquated gender roles? Children’s movies. The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media “is the only research-based organization working within the media and entertainment industry to engage, educate, and influence the need for gender balance, reducing stereotyping and creating a wide variety of female characters for entertainment targeting children 11 and under.” The Institute’s extensive research shows that many animated films portray girls and women in negative ways (over-sexualizing young girls, for instance), while others don’t even bother including women and girl characters, especially as leads (see every Pixar movie ever made). However, some animated films must exist that impact girls and boys in positive ways, right? Well, we welcome your reviews–whether they praise or scathe the films! (We’d like to discourage reviews of films that we’ve already reviewed at Bitch Flicks, but please browse them to get an idea of what we’re looking for: Fantastic Mr. Fox, Howl’s Moving Castle, Tangled, Toy Story 3, Up, WALL-E.)
Email us at btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to contribute a review. We accept original pieces or cross-posts. The DEADLINE for us to receive your finished review is Wednesday, November 23rd.
Some of our film suggestions include (but are definitely not limited to) the following:
Toy Story (1 and 2)
Finding Nemo
Monsters, Inc.
A Bug’s Life
Ratatouille
Kung Fu Panda
Ice Age
Fantasia
Coraline
Pinocchio
Cars
Despicable Me
The Jungle Book
Bambi
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Dumbo
Alice in Wonderland
Peter Pan
A Bug’s Life
The Iron Giant
Corpse Bride
Sleeping Beauty
The Sword in the Stone
An American Tail
Wallace & Gromit
Madagascar
The Fox and the Hound
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Ponyo
Charlotte’s Web
Prince of Egypt
Ice Age
Megamind
Meet the Robinsons
Rango
Bolt
Monster House
Mars Needs Moms
Alpha and Omega
Chicken Run
Monsters vs. Aliens
The Polar Express
Antz
Rio
The Aristocats
Flushed Away
Bee Movie
Pocahontas
Robots
Happy Feet
Open Season
Gnomeo and Juliet
Hoodwinked
Ferngully
Astro Boy
Dinosaur
Thumbelina
The Swan Princess
The Ant Bully
Alvin and the Chipmunks
The Wild
Tokyo Godfathers
Rock-a-Doodle
Spirited Away
YOU GET THE IDEA. 
Cool! I wish I had time to submit something. Alas… I recently ran across this article and I’d love to read a companion piece about what’s happened to the feminine-identified characters in these more recent films. So, yeah, here I am trying to assign someone to write a piece via your blog comments. Sorry!
Post-Princess Models of Gender: The New Man in Disney/Pixar
by: Ken Gillam, Shannon R. Wooden
Journal of Popular Film and Television, Vol. 36, No. 1. (2008), pp. 2-8
What a great idea! I will definitely write a piece for “Princess and The Frog.”
Hi! Does one need to have professional writing credentials or a resume to submit? I’m a feminist animation student who loves discussing film, and if you’re accepting submission from passionate amateurs I’d be interested!
Hi Yellow Trolley and Kat — We’d love to read your proposals. One definitely does NOT need professional writing credentials (or a resume) … just email us at btchflcks@gmail.com, and we can give you more details about submissions!
How exciting! I am so making a feminist review of some childhood favorites. I’ve been itching for the chance to call B.S. where it’s warranted.
Why are some of these crossed out? Can we not do those anymore? Also can we submit more than once?
The movie titles with a line through them are already being written about. We’d like to look at as many different movies as possible, but if you have a particularly unique perspective on an already-claimed movie, you can make an argument for writing about it. Finally, you can certainly submit more than one. Email us for additional details!
i like wall-e in general, but that scene when wall-e drags an unconscious eve around to have a “date” with her robot body always twigged me off…
I’d like to submit a review for lilo and stitch if you don’t have anyone else doing it?