What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

lierdumoa:

battlenuggalope:

Jurassic World, Mad Max Fury Road, and Little Girls

For her birthday, we took my soon-to-be six year-old to Jurassic World. Prior to that, she had watched a bootleg copy of Fury Road with me after I had confirmed that it fit the levels of violence I consider acceptable based on what I know of my daughter.

The most interesting thing to me was her reactions after each film.

After watching MMFR, she talked incessantly about it. (She had talked during the film as well, making observations, etc.) Her name was suddenly changed to Angry Cereal, mirroring two of her favorite characters. She made a new Sims game, spending more time than she ever had before perfecting the characters - and giving them all pets. A Lego car set was turned into a crazy car that could fit into the Mad Max world. Barbies were now the Wives and her dad’s Diablo figurine was now Immortan Joe. It’s been a little over two weeks and she still talks about it.

When the credits rolled on Jurassic World, she said, ‘Can we go see another movie?’ –And that was it. The only other comment vaguely related to the movie was her assertion she liked dinosaurs. Nothing else. No elaborate recreations, nothing.

I had thought with MMFR that my excitement had rubbed off on her but that doesn’t seem to be the case. After Jurassic World, I was excited, encouraging her to talk about her favorite parts. She asked for a Happy Meal. When we went to spend a gift card at Toys-R-Us the next day, I pointed out all the Jurassic World toys. They had Blue! She barely gave them a second glance.

It didn’t jive. She had tons of dinosaur books. Why was she infinitely more interested in an adult movie that was pretty much one big car chase rather than a movie about dinosaurs? Was it because despite the differences in ratings, Jurassic World had frightened her more? Maybe. But when she picked out a new stuffed animal to buy with her gift card, she informed us the little owl’s name was Splendid.

And that was it.

She had watched Fury Road in almost complete silence until the first shot of all the Wives. Then she turned to me and said, “There’s so many girls!” That was her takeaway from MMFR: there were lots of girls! All the girls were fighting together against the bad guy! The girls were the heroes! That was important to her, seemingly even more important than it was to me. Maybe because she’s just getting her first taste of playground culture where boys and girls are separate and the two don’t mix often and it’s been confusing. Maybe because she just really liked seeing girls on the screen. When I ask her, she just shrugs and says, “I don’t know, mommy, I liked all the girls. I liked Toast.”

As an adult, I’m aware of issues with representation. I don’t remember consciously noticing it as a child but I remember Leia and Uhura and Janeway being my favorites. I remember dressing up as Dana Scully. As a mom, I watch my daughter gravitate to girls and women on screen. A movie I thought would a sure thing because DINOSAURS! became a total miss because for her, there was no one on screen that she left the theater wanting to dress up as. There was no incentive for her to change her name to mimic favorite characters. I left grinning because holy shit, raptor squad! She left wanting a cheeseburger.

image

Children know when they’re being marginalized. They might have no idea what they word marginalized means, but they can still tell, instinctually, when they’ve been misrepresented in and/or excluded from the story.

[look, there’s even a scientific study supporting this]

I blogged this story back in 2011, but I’m reposting it here, because it’s relevant:

A couple of years ago, I went with a friend to see a children’s show as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival. It was based around the conceit of a magic pencil: there was an interactive screen where a digital cartoon character interacted with images the (male) comedian drew in real-time, with a pre-recorded voice providing one half of their conversation. At four different points, the comedian asked for child volunteers to come up onto the stage and have themselves drawn, with the subsequent caricatures becoming part of the show. It was a small audience mostly comprised of young children and their parents – my friend and I were almost the only exceptions to this – and whenever the call came for volunteers, a sea of eager little hands would stretch into the air.

Sitting directly in front of us was a pigtailed girl, aged about seven, who desperately wanted to participate. Each time she wasn’t chosen, she slumped down dejectedly in her seat, only to spring straight back up again at the next opportunity. There were easily as many girls as boys in the audience, with an equal parity in the number of hands raised; and yet the comedian never picked a girl. The fourth and final time her hand went ignored, the girl in front of us let out a frustrated sigh and exclaimed, ‘He’s only choosing boys!’ Both her outrage at this situation and her powerlessness to correct it were fully evident in her voice, and I felt myself getting angry. I’d noticed the same problem, and hearing it summed up by a child in tones that suggested she’d witnessed the problem before made me utterly disconnect from the show. I tried to think of reasons why the comedian had chosen only boys. Maybe he thought their facial features would make for better caricatures; or perhaps he was worried that the good-natured teasing with which he accompanied his drawings might be more likely to upset a little girl. Maybe he was simply picking the first hand he saw, regardless of who it belonged to. Most likely, though, he didn’t even realise he’d done it: whatever other planning he’d put into his act, the idea of trying to choose two boys and two girls for the sake of equality seemed never to have occurred to him.

When the show was over, I caught sight of the little girl on the way out. She looked forlorn and sad, which is hardly the reaction that a children’s comedy show is meant to provoke, and I left feeling dejected and furious that a seven-year-old girl had already learned that sometimes, it doesn’t matter how badly you want something or how high you raise your hand: just being female is enough to make you invisible. For whatever reason, the comedian hadn’t seen her or any of the other girls in the audience, and no matter how benign the reasons for that blindness might have been, it had unquestionably had consequences.

As the OP says, children know when they’re being marginalized. From the time they’re tiny and we start picking their clothes and toys on the basis of whether they’re boys or girls, we teach little kids that gender is important. Kids learn by example in the most literal sense: if they haven’t seen something done before, then they don’t know it’s really possible, and if they never see women being heroes and explorers, then they’re going to assume that stuff is just for men.

Representation matters.  

(Source: yokohamasonebraincell, via jenndoesnotcare)

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