Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

Things I appreciated about Inside Out, in regards to gender roles in fiction:

• Well-developed, likable, and compelling female protagonists in a story that did not require the characters to be female; a story that wasn't about femininity or specific female gender roles. At no point do you feel like you're supposed to be surprised, startled, or impressed by the fact that these are girls doing the things that they're doing.
• Near-complete absence of romance subplot. I say near-complete because there was one moment that sort of kinda nudged the concept if you turn your head and squint, and even that moment was great. In Imagination Land, we see a conveyor belt producing fantasy Perfect Boyfriends for Riley. It's hilarious, and also used to surprising effect as a Chekhov's Gun in the most unexpected way later on.
• Complete lack of restraints on Riley's depiction as a goofy kid, up to and including a surprising moment of onscreen toddler butt that is only surprising because the character is female; a naked toddler fleeing from a pursuing parent while laughing and slapping their own ass is a scene one might expect to see from a character such as Bart Simpson, but little girls are expected to be more dignified. This ridiculous ten-second scene felt like progress.
• The entire characters of Disgust and Anger. Making Disgust the unrelenting Alpha Bitch and Anger the traditional raging male beast-man would have been an easy way to depict them, but a clear effort was made to make both characters more three-dimensional. As a result, while they both embody their emotion well, neither feels like the walking female and male clichés they could so easily have been.
• An important male character is pink. That's not a gag. He's not called out for his lack of masculinity. No effort is made to insinuate he is gay. He's pink, deal with it.

I have much more to rave about but it's outside the realm of male and female roles and so it's not really on-topic for this thread. Suffice it to say, Inside Out was an amazing film for many reasons, one of which was its treatment of its gendered characters.

edited 2nd Jul '15 1:01:40 PM by TobiasDrake

I AM planning it on maybe watching it with some real life friends.

I night comment on it in case I ever do.

Inside Out was good, but it kind of bothered me that all the male-coded emotions got to have goofy designs while the female emotions where more human-shaped.

Sadness also had a goofy visual design, and a case could be made for Disgust, who had an exaggerated Hourglass figure to accentuate her role as the snobby, judgmental emotion. Each of the five was designed to visually communicate the emotion they represent; gangly, spindly Fear, blunt, block-headed Anger, preppy, Rich Bitch Disgust, tiny, mousy Sadness, and peppy Genki Girl Joy.

edited 2nd Jul '15 2:09:01 PM by TobiasDrake

They're all exagarated to a degree and depict their emotions well, but I don't think that contradicts my observation. Even sadness looks more human than the male characters.

edited 2nd Jul '15 8:12:38 PM by DrStarky

Women keep a more human shape in things like this because women always need to be attractive so no one dares depart too much from the 'standard' hourglass.

"Near-complete absence of romance subplot."

Is that really important? I mean is Pixar, as far I know they dosent seen very keen about doing romance sub plot, almost all pixar chararter are ina relasioship or barely given nod they like each other, with WALL-E being a exception of course

Bugs Life, Ratatouille and Cars all had romance plots. That's not a lot of them, granted, but they have been a thing before.

I think the Toy Story trilogy also had a romantic subplot? I don't know if it counts.

Toy Story had romance plots in the first and third movie, but the first was more of 'Bo and Woody are a romantic thing' so that's not really a plotline.

Third movie had something along that though.

I don't know if that's a Pixar trend or not, but absence of a romance subplot is noteworthy for films in general in my book.

This sounds like a dumb question, but does a romantic subplot needs more than two characters being attracted to each other? Because otherwise, most of the Pixar movies I can remember have those...

Besides, Inside Out had the short Lava before it

Yeah, first the Umbrella short and now a Volcano short.

They like their gendered inanimate objects.

"We better put eyelashes on the other umbrella or else the audience may assume they are gay umbrellas and we can't be having that no siree."

"This sounds like a dumb question, but does a romantic subplot needs more than two characters being attracted to each other? Because otherwise, most of the Pixar movies I can remember have those"

I was asking the same thing actually, at most pixar chararter have romantics moments or some nods but that it, as far I remenber only Ratatouille have one, while WALL-E have romance as the main plot for the first half.

"I don't know if that's a Pixar trend or not, but absence of a romance subplot is noteworthy for films in general in my book."

it depend of the genre and who is doing, for the most pixar treat romance very lightly which is outright

Up was full of romance.

Unfortunately, romance tend to be handled badly (makes the audience think - omg, survive first - then kiss the boy or girl).

Do it badly enough, and the audience will end up wishing the couple's Romeo and Juliet so they'll end up dead.

The trailer for Inside Out had me pretty worried, as it has the boring pain in the arse stereotype of the Bumbling Dad who is obsessed with football and doesn't pay attention to anything, does he get more characterisation then that?

He's a little more competent than that trailer made him look. I wasn't really fond of that scene either, but I guess the parents weren't the focus of the movie anyway, so eh.

I wouldn't say body types are the problem with Inside Out. I think it deserves some credit for having a sympathetic chubby female character without jokes at the expense of her weight.

I'd say faces are what I have an issue with. Aside from skin tone, the female emotions' faces are only slightly more cartoony than those of the "real world" humans, while Fear has a odd features like a thin noodle-shaped neck and head, long sausage-shaped nose and two eyes practically touching, and Anger is literally just Meat Boy.

edited 3rd Jul '15 6:47:06 AM by FawfulCrump

I think it is more related to something like "Females have features" in drawing to establish that non-human characters are from the female gender.

Not as much as a mean of being attractive but to make sure the audience doesn't spend time trying to figure out the character's gender.

edited 3rd Jul '15 7:03:09 AM by AngelusNox

Yeah, that scene in the trailer had some pretty cringe worthy sitcom stereotypes. That scene was probably the worst of it though, the parents don't get portrayed nearly as bad the rest of the movie. Then again, they're not really the focus.

How'd Inside Out have any residual romance plot? There's nothing there.

Just the existence of Riley's ideal boyfriend and his role in resolving the plot. I don't think it counts.

Yeah. And other things in the movie indicate that this is a really abstract idea and not really tied to romantic/sexual feelings.

The movie does sort of use the template of Bumbling Dad and Closer to Earth mother (and as people have noted, it's potentially troubling that the Father's Anger is his lead emotion and Sadness is the Mother's lead emotion). But I do think that to the extent they are present in the film, it's more complicated than the trailer suggests. Among other things, the vague details we get about the Father's profession suggest he's a pretty smart guy.

Like I said, there wasn't a romantic subplot, but the film kind of sort of nudged against the concept if you turn your head and squint, and did so in a hilarious fashion.

It wouldn't be accurate to say that at no point was a character's romantic feelings ever in any way involved, because Riley's Imaginary Perfect Boyfriend was a thing and demonstrated that Riley's starting to fantasize about boys. But it's a far cry from an actual romance subplot for many reasons and is very well utilized.

edited 7th Jul '15 7:33:56 AM by TobiasDrake

So here's a line of thought I found interesting.

A few years back, when Free! the Gay swimming anime was first airing in Japan, there were lots of nay-sayers and whiners complaining. ostensibly because the creators, Kyoto Animation would dare to make a female fan-service show where the fan-service was the male character's bodies, rather than the traditional emotional fan-service Shojo anime tends to shoot for^note  when shojo anime is doing fan-service/audience fantasy stuff of course.

Now, most of these complaints were pure hogwash, however, one complaint stuck with me as interesting, or at least as an odd complaint to make. the complaint was roughly:

"the characters in Free! do not act like real guys."

Now, on the surface that sounded pretty much like your typical No True Scotsman fallacy, however, the part I found interesting was from what the responses to that argument, which were roughly:

"it's not like the female characters in K-On! act like real women!"

Which to me, sprang forth thoughts of what makes a character's personality in fiction realistic. basically, I read it as an argument of "X's personality is unreal, since their internal thought processes aren't effected by societies definition/assumptions on Y group", rather than just arguing if "X character is a real Y"

Now, I've seen that complaint lobbied at female characters in fiction all the time, since Most Writers Are Male, and whatnot. women have to deal with struggling to come to terms with themselves, compared to what society expects of them, as women. what parts of that expectation do they reject, what parts do they accept, and what not, forming their identity ^note any female Troper, if I screwed up anything on that explanation, feel free to correct me. I am not comfortable talking for groups I am not apart of

Now in truth, this kinda stuff happens to everyone, regardless of gender, but again, since Most Writers Are Male and many don't seem to get that women are people too part of writing, female characters in fiction tend to get the shaft on this part.

However, having seen the first few episodes of Free! I'd say there is some water to the claim. to me at least^note as admittedly only 1 guy, whose not from Japan, but does have an above average understanding of japan's societal assumptions & pressures the men in free! did not feel "real" to me. they don't feel like there thought processes have been effected by Japan's rigorous gender roles or expectations. they feel like fantasy characters, made for an assumed female audience who'd like it if guys had X, Y, and Z personalities, and interacted in blatantly Homoerotic fashions.

I bring up Free!, because recently Funimation has begun dubbing Free!, and their dub has been Criticized for their Woolseyisms, which to me, felt like (an admittedly poor) attempt to make the cast feel "real"

TL;DR: basically, I wanna hear your guy's thought on male and female characters being portrayed "realistically" in terms of their thought processes, and whether or not that type of realism needs to be in play in all types of fiction, of if their are exceptions? and if so what?

edited 11th Jul '15 9:46:59 AM by Jetyl