Animation and feminism

Yellow Fever (Ng’endo Mukii, 2012):

• Eurocentric beauty standards (e.g. fair skin)
• Cultural Genocide/ethnic cleansing
• Indoctrinated with distorted beauty ideals

 

What is Beauty? (Anna Ginsburg, 2018):

• The changing beauty ideals through time
• Shows the beauty of all forms of the female body
• Definition of beauty is fluid due to its subjectivity and changing forms
• At all times women were expected to look one way – any others were not beautiful

 

The Herstory of the Female Film-Maker (Kelly Gallagher, 2011):

• Inequalities in the industry – women not given the proper credit

 

Cage of Flame (Kayla Parker, 1992):

• Nature – mother nature?
• Purity in its most basic form? – “Child of the Earth” – Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
• Symbolism of the female sex organ and the social construct of virginity
• Menstruation?

 

Le Clitoris (Lori Malépart-Traversy, 2016):

• Men having more say/control over the female body, thinking they know more their body
• Plays on the joke that men cannot pleasure women/find the clitoris
• Openly discussing sexual pleasure for the female

 

Asparagus(Suzan Pitt, 1979) – short clip

 

Selection of short clips from Leeds Animation Workshop, 1978:

 

Shub Vivah (Nina Sabnani, 1984):

• The preference of sons over daughters
• Forcing gender norms onto them (e.g. doing housework, stay home, have children, etc.)
• Literal debt – the need to offer a large dowry leaves many families poor and hungry
• Dowry does not ensure the safety of the women – still a possibility of being abused, expected to be submissive, always 2^ndto the husband, etc.

 

More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters: The Revolutionary Life of Lucy Parsons (Kelly Gallagher, 2016):

• A working woman with a fighting soul 

 

Agua Viva (Alexa Lim Haas, 2018), 6:46 mins:

• An immigrant woman and her journey of learning to maneuver around a new culture, language, and location.
• “I though changing cities, changing countries, changing languages would help… but I am the same”
• Her philosophy about finding happiness and maintaining herself
• Learning to accept the unfamiliar

 

African American Women and the Struggle for Equality (NMAAHC, 2018), 2:59:

• Knowing one’s privileges
• “The white could at least plead for her own emancipation, the black woman, doubly enslaved could but suffer and struggle and be silent”
• The difficulty for black women to help themselves due to multiple discriminations against them