This is pretty much the opposite of what I promised to be working on – a series of in-depth discussions about my favorite Slasher films – but perhaps a little digression is just what I need to get back into the swing (it’s kind of exhausting getting all those screen caps).

 

I’d like to preface this, however, by making it clear that I am not a subscriber to or fan of rampant political correctness. I believe that cartoons, like other forms of popular entertainment and art, should be criticized based on the merits of what was considered socially acceptable at the time. If a film, book, or cartoon happens to step out of and beyond anachronistic mindsets, it should usually be considered an admirable trait, but I don’t think it’s anywhere close to a necessity. Children’s entertainment is a particularly interesting cross-section of the pop culture spectrum for me personally, because children on the whole are usually ahead of their entertainment, and modern children’s entertainment has grown in broad strokes of sophistication and quality of content in my brief lifetime.

 

Also, just like a wikipedia article, this article contains many of unverified claims.

 

Television animation, or more specifically action/adventure animated series, was a boy’s club for most of my childhood. Action/adventure is traditionally aimed at a male audience, but there were definite residual effects from centuries of sexism partially to blame for this truth. If we’re not including theatrical releases or Japanese animation the speed of growth in relation to sexism is actually, I think, a solid means to judge the general American public’s open mindedness concerning sex relations. We like to mark the end of civil rights problems with specific events, but even after the suffrage movement was deemed successful, and the sexual revolution was deemed over, television cartoon heroes were still almost exclusively male.

 

This fact didn’t escape actress/activist Geena Davis, who semi-recently was quoted as saying:

 

“Do you remember the kinds of stuff that they made for us, for kids, in the oldie old days? Let’s see, the first animation, of course, was Disney’s Minnie Mouse and… Daisy Duck, who didn’t really do much at all, except ask to go shopping, I think. There were a lot of Hanna-Barbera cartoons — Magilla Gorilla, Wally Gator, George of the Jungle — virtually no female characters…On the Looney Tunes website, they list twelve characters, and only one of them is female, but it’s the great one. It’s the one you all love and remember the best: Granny. She’s the one who owns Tweety, and she has to leave so that the story can happen.” (Quoted from Catoonbrew.com)



Davis, of course, has a point, but also hasn’t been paying attention to children’s entertainment for at least two decades by my count. Her childhood was a virtual wasteland for female cartoon characters, as were the majority of the ‘70s and ‘80s. The best I can think of concerning female role models in ‘70s entertainment is the sexually unappealing but smart Velma Dinkley, and Josie and her Pussycats, who were pretty sexually overplayed. In 1984 the United States Federal Trade Commission deregulated children's television, and removed most prohibition against cartoon series linked to toys. In a way this started the process of homogenizing boy’s and girl’s cartoons. The studios and companies still aimed their products at specific sexes, but were sure to include a few female characters in their shows just in case a little sister happened to be watching.

Because little boys were often stuck playing with their little sisters characters like Teela (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe), Cover Girl and Scarlet (G.I. Joe), and Cheetara (Thundercats) were created as backup for their male counterparts, but none of these characters were necessities to any of their casts, and were rarely given much to do beyond running in to help with a team fight. These were strong role models in the physical sense of the word, but the only things worse than not including female characters at all is shoehorning them in where they don’t belong, or including them out of duty rather than interest.


From what I can gather (and I could be wrong) She-Ra: Princess of Power is the first female protagonist to have her own American made action/adventure cartoon. Though I suppose arguments could be made for Rainbow Bright and Jem being adventure series, She-Ra was undeniably more violent, and thusly ‘boyish’. This was an important step, but the show didn’t last too long, and didn’t have much impact on the rest of the 1980s. Arguably the best long running show of the period of time stretching from 1986-1991 was The Real Ghostbusters, which successfully mixed slightly more complex storylines, with a more adult sense of humor. Still, there was no female Ghostbuster. The closest we got was Janine Melnitz, the fire-house’s secretary and phone answerer.

The ‘90s were a huge turning point in quality (both in writing and animation) for television animation, and along with more sophisticated comedy, drama and characters came better roles for female characters. Things started awkwardly with characters like April O’Neil who acted as Lois Lane to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but never served any real narrative purpose, but some of these seemingly shoehorned characters worked, and early success was found in comedy and (more importantly to this essay) comic book adaptations.

 

Between X-Men the Animated Series and Batman the Animated Series, both of which premiered on the Fox network in 1992, there were dozens of strong female role models (both in the physical and literal senses). But there is a difference in the approach of each show, and Batman’s approach is likely the more enduring one. The X-Men series was largely inspired (story-wise at least) by the Claremont era comics, which were pretty fair to female characters in the interest of the comic’s soap opera style. There isn’t a lot of rewriting save the addition of certain characters, like Jubilee, whose youth serves more importance to the narrative than her sex.

 

The Batman writers, on the other hand, took to adapting most of the comic’s characters for their own means, including some much celebrated new origin stories for male characters like the Mad Hatter and Mr. Freeze. The lead female canon creations that were at least partially rewritten include Catwoman/Selina Kyle, who was re-imagined as a sort of female Batman, with almost as much money and influence (until she got caught of course), and Poison Ivy/Pamela Isley, whose new inability to have children developed into a disturbingly Freudian episode (‘House and Garden’) where she attempts to artificially create a family that is entirely under her control. Also present was a duo of newly created female characters, both of which have since found their way into the Batman canon proper – Gotham City police officer Renee Montoya, and the Joker’s right hand girl, Harley Quinn. These two characters became so popular that many younger fans of the characters have no idea they were part of the pre-animated universe. Each character serves a radically purpose.

 

Montoya, who was revealed to be a lesbian in Ed Brubaker’s 'Gotham Central' comic series, serves as one of Gotham’s best cops, and one of the only on-staff supporters of Batman. She’s not one of the series’ most enduringly memorable characters, but has been picked up by more adult writers like Brubaker, and had an analog in The Dark Knight motion picture. Her sex also has almost no bearing on her character. Even her partner, the largely bigoted Harvey Bullock, never brings up her sexual handicap.




Quinn, on the other hand, is a typically tragic Batman villain, who is helplessly in love with the Joker despite being a trained psychiatrist who should know better. Some Geena Davis types may complain about the abusive nature of the couple’s relationship, and what that relationship meant to the children watching the show (re-watching the show I’ll admit that I’m occasionally shocked). But even at 13 years old the tragedy wasn’t lost on me, so I suspect it wasn’t lost on the other kids watching. The ‘innocent’ nature of the character left the door open to some anti-hero episodes including one where she teams up with Batman, and a couple where she reveals herself to be more dangerous to Mr. Jay than he is to her. The enduring popularity of the character likely has more to do with this ‘innocence’ than her abuse at the hands of her psychotic boyfriend, or at least I’d like to think so.

 

Perhaps the biggest step Batman the Animated Series took concerning the place of women in action/adventure cartoons was the episode entitled ‘Harley and Ivy’, where the man-dependant Harley Quinn teams up with uber-feminist Poison Ivy, in semi-homage to Thelma and Louise (which you may remember co-stared a certain Geena Davis). Besides being the major focus of the entire episode, the duo almost defeats the Dark Knight. At the end of the episode they’re finally brought to justice by none other than Renee Montoya. The episode was successful enough to garner a few ‘sequels’ (part one of ‘Holiday Nights’, ‘Joker’s Millions’ and ‘Girl’s Night Out’).


Look for Part Two soonish.


I'd also like to note how hard it was to find images of these characters that weren't obscene slash fiction stuff.