Sexualisation of cartoon characters in film.

Sexualisation of cartoon characters in film.

A big part of the sexualisation of cartoon characters comes from ‘their animation to their look-alike toy products’. Many female characters ‘often wear form-fitting clothing that shows off their small waists and large breasts’ which often allow the audience to indulge in visual pleasure as this is an exaggerated idea of a ‘perfect’ female in film often being consumed by younger audiences. It can be argued that with cartoon characters the creators themselves can encode how they want their ‘ideal’ female to look like and turn the characters into their own fantasy which was exactly the case with Jessica Rabbit. 

Even when it comes to characters that were not originally sexualised their creators may still give them ‘makeovers’ in order to sexualise a children’s character. This was the case with Disney’s Merida, even though her film focused on ‘a young princess refusing to obey stereotypes’ she was still later given a sexualised makeover in order to make her more appealing to a wider range of audiences, so that older audiences can engage with the children’s film and be relieved of the fear of castration from the character who knows how to use a weapon. The later sexualisation may be due to the fact that Disney tries to turn their characters into a ‘reassuring fetish’ rather than a threatening character.

An article from BBC News suggest that ‘every generation alive today has grown up with subversive animated female characters and comic book heroines… Many of these creations, often idealised and oversexed’ so maybe the reason as to why cartoons in film are hyper-sexualised is due to the fact that we have grown up with it a don’t know any different therefore each generation that follows will also continue to make over sexualised female cartoon as this is what we are used to. Even with very old cartoons such as Betty Boop there is an ‘endless display of animated risqué behaviour, in which nearly every male character—even animated objects—becomes a lothario, crassly lusting after her’ which has been projected into many cartoons right up to the present. Betty Boop’s creators made her to be hyper sexualised as they projected her own fantasy’s onto her. So, the reason as to why female cartoons are over sexualised is due to the fact that creators can encode their own fantasy’s into these characters and don’t need real life females to fit their ideal mould. 

References. 

• ·     The stream (6^thmarch 2017) (online) available from https://stream.org(accessed 16^thJanuary 2019)
• ·     American Psychology Association (July 2012) (online) available from https://www.apadivisions.org(Accessed 17^thJanuary 2019) 
• ·     The verge (16^thMay 2012) (online) available from  https://www.theverge.com(accessed 17^thJanuary 2019)
• ·      Laura Mulvey (1999) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Film Theory and Criticism, New York, Oxford UP
• ·     BBC News (11^thDecember 2008) (online) available from http://news.bbc.co.uk(accessed 17^thJanuary 2019) 
• ·     The Huffington Post (12^thMay 2017) (online) available from https://www.huffingtonpost.com(accessed 17^thJanuary 2019)