Mark Mayerson and Thad Komorowski (whose blogs I should have added to my BlogRoll a long time ago, recently rectified) posted an excellent video each on the subject of animation re-use. The first, posted by Mr. Mayerson, shows many examples of Disney animation re-use, particularly in the films of director Wolfgang Reitherman. Warning: this video is set to a jaunty chanson française.

The second, created by Mr. Komorowski, shows many examples of extensive animation re-use in cartoons by famed director Bob Clampett. Warning: this video is set to awesome music by Raymond Scott.

I find this stuff fascinating, especially the Disney one. It’s like rotoscoping². It also appears that dancing is difficult/laborious/expensive to animate from scratch. But: why bother completely re-doing something picayune but complicated like a dancing scene when the audience hasn’t seen the original version in years? The re-use of animation in the dancing scene is certainly not the biggest problem occurrant in Disney’s Robin Hood, nor the most egregious example.

Found via The Disney Blog, here is a  video essay on YouTube™ entitled Sexism, Strength and Dominance: Masculinity in Disney Films. Some brief comments afterward.

I found the essay to be short-sighted and reductionist. He seemed to cherry-pick the characters which fit his thesis (mostly from Beauty and the Beast, which is often used as a dead horse for essays of this nature). For every shallow example he brings up, a counterexample could surely be found. Off the top of my head: characters in Tarzan, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound. The topic of the representations of masculinity and femininity in Disney movies is worthy and interesting, and deserves better. For a much more thoughtful and insightful discussion (without the crutch of video clips or lame This American Life-esque background music), see the very excellent over-analyzation Mulan: A Modern Rescripting of the Classic Romance.

Contributed by E. A. L.

A friend of mine wrote this for her English class and when I read it I thought of your page. This is actually not the entire paper, but these are the parts that I thought would apply. By the way, she got an A.

Beauty and the Beast is a movie about a girl who frees an enchanted prince from entrapment in the form of a beast. In the beginning of the movie, the prince is transformed into a beast to punish him for being “spoiled, selfish, and unkind,” to punish him for judging people based on appearances, and to teach him to love someone other than himself. Belle, the girl, is only able to free him from the enchantment if she can learn to love him in spite of his being a beast. The theme of this movie is that people who do not judge others based on appearances are often rewarded. Two sub-themes of this movie are that 1) people who make sacrifices out of love are often rewarded and 2) sometimes people don’t realize that they love someone until it is almost too late.

Symbolic elements are used often in the settings of this movie. When Belle’s father first stumbles upon the Beast’s castle, it is a dark and stormy night with lightning stabbing across the sky and rain pouring down, which represents the terror Belle’s father feels upon finding the castle. The inside of the castle is dark and gloomy, which symbolizes mystery and the way the Beast broods over both his fate and the shame he feels about his appearance, which makes him hide in the dark. Because the inside of the castle is full of gargoyles and hideous grimacing statues, which are thought to drive away evil spirits, it symbolizes that the Beast is not really evil, because if he were, he could not live in a castle full of gargoyles. Since the Beast uses the west wing for his sulking rooms, he is facing the sunset, or the end of the day, which symbolizes his waning hope for redemption. The west wing is full of old rubbish and dust, which symbolizes feelings of desolation and neglect, as well as the frustration and rage the Beast feels at his situation. Windows symbolize enlightenment, and allow people to look outside. In this movie, the windows grow progressively larger until the fill entire walls as Belle and the Beast get to know each other. This symbolizes that they are becoming enlightened about the other’s character, and that they are looking outside themselves and learning about someone else. After Belle and the Beast dance together in the ballroom, they go outside, where the sky is full of stars, which symbolize the hope that the enchantment might be broken. Wishes are made on falling stars, so the single falling star represents the chance that the Beast’s wish might be granted and Belle will break the spell. As the movie moves from that scene to the point where the Beast releases Belle, the sky progressively fills with clouds, until all the stars, and symbolically, all the Beast’s hopes, are blotted out. A candle flame can also symbolize hope, and when Belle runs away from the castle for the first time, she slams a door and extinguishes Lumiere’s flame, which symbolizes extinguished hope, because without her there is no hope for the enchantment to end.

Books are a repeated symbol in this movie. For Belle, they symbolize a way of escape from a life she does not want, and they are her only source of adventure and romance. Each time there is a room full of books in this movie, there is also a globe, symbolizing the way books allow Belle to travel and have experiences she would never have otherwise. Books are also likened to and associated with water. When Lumiere and Cogsworth are attempting to lead Belle away from the west wing, they mention the library and speak metaphorically of “fountains of books, cascades of books,’ and other comparisons of books to water, or the source of life. For Belle, they are the only means by which she can escape from the little town and they provide her with the adventure and romance she feels she needs to live. In the opening town scene, Belle is reading a book by a fountain, once again connecting books with water, and a herd of sheep walk past, all going the same direction. These sheep could symbolize the townspeople, who are all the same and who are all going in the same direction. One of the sheep takes a bite out of a page of Belle’s book, which symbolizes the way the townspeople have no use or appreciation for books, which consequently represents the little use or liking Belle has for the townspeople. Additionally, books are associated with the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” which is the theme of this movie.

Mirrors and reflections are also a repeated symbol in this movie, and they symbolize the action of seeing oneself as others do, and again this shows the emphasis on appearance in this movie. For instance, Gaston is obsessed with himself and he is always looking in the mirror, but he fails, like all the other townspeople except Belle, to see what he really is. However, the Beast shatters a mirror in his rooms, which shows that he is aware of how others see him.

Gaston is always associated with mud, which is a contextual symbol showing Belle’s dislike for him and symbolizing what he really is inside. Characters as symbols are prevalent in this movie. For example, Lumiere is supposed to be a Frenchman, and he represents passion and romance. Cogsworth, the clock, is supposed to be an Englishman, and he symbolizes fuss and bother and caution. The cupids on the ceiling of the ballroom are an allusion to the god of budding love, which is the situation Belle and the Beast find themselves in. After the wolf fight, Belle washes the Beast’s wounds, which symbolizes and foreshadows that she will be the one to heal him from his despair. When Belle wears a yellow dress, the color symbolizes their growing love that is dazzling, inextinguishable, young, and strong. Later, when the Beast is transformed back into a prince, he glows with a golden light, again symbolizing the strength and inextinguishable love that they share.

This article was originally written as a response to Sexual Ambiguity in The Brave Little Toaster. Alas, the name of the original author has been lost to the mists of time. And my poor organizational skills of ten years ago. Also: we apologize for the lack of updates this week. We take our update schedule very seriously.

I hope you were referring to The Brave Little Toaster (a 1987 Disney-affiliated cartoon movie) and not its parody, “The Brave Little Trailer” (a 1994 ten minute short on Animaniacs). The latter I know for sure starred a male cartoon character because at the end you see the Trailer as a grandparent with a white beard and the Pooh-bear voice of cartoon vocal-master Jim Cummings. But at any rate the first film does fail to meet your criteria for deducing the gender on cartoons for a number of reasons.

First off, you’re talking about appliances here. They have no clothes either way. In fact, going over the movie several more times I found no instance where the animators hinted of clothing on any of those characters; possibly to keep them subliminally apart from the human characters. And supporting my theory. (Yes there was that Hawaiian projection scene during that song but I’m talking about hints of clothing that was actually fused onto the characters kind of like Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast.)

Then you’d probably like to discuss color coding. Alas, it holds all too true for the stereotypically (hot pink) female examples, but remember- out of a million billion cartoons, I’m only evaluating the Toaster. Subliminally, I didn’t notice gender because the Toaster has chrome silver and black (those aren’t even really colors) which are exactly what all classic toasters are like. Hence, this character has passed the color coding test by avoiding it altogether.

Let’s see, the Toaster is seen dutifully and enthusiastically tidying up the cottage and minutes later is replacing burnt fuses and hot-wiring a car battery for a chair. Two opposing stereotypes=nothing.

The eye-detail doesn’t lead you much in any direction here. The Toaster has got the dinner plates thing but that’s because, being a toaster, it’s whole face is also it’s body (it’s sort of a verbal to visual pun). Absent are the eyelashes and that ever-alluring white glare found endlessly in Japanimation. To top it off, the Toaster has dark brown irises which not only transcends gender-specifications but ethnicity as well.

In dealing with the voice-issue, that one is totally arbitrary. In my case, I sit next to this student in my Algebra 2 class I would’ve sworn, for the rest of my like, was a full-fledged tomboy had I not heard someone speak his name.

Moving onto emotional status, examples grow increasingly murkier (as I would expect). The Toaster does briefly display what could be conceived as maternal instincts toward Blankie halfway into the movie- though by the end doesn’t mind sitting flat on him like a frat boy on a beanbag chair. Personally, I think that electric blanket is gay for several obscure reasons as well as those flagrant one (a scene where Curby “unloads” his bag of dirt, the Toaster wants Blankie not to gawk- my take on it is the Toaster also has a form of “unloading” like with breadcrumbs on the real appliance and since Blankie has none, he isn’t allowed to intrude this sacred act- it’s almost like a third gender! But now I’m really going off).

How about suggestive hints? If you want to think dirty you could say the Toaster has those slots on its head suggesting female genitalia (and the bread to toast process as pregnancy) but you will also notice the Toaster is the one with the inserting mechanism for those baked goods and, most obviously, it has a nice long power cord sticking out. Do you suppose that represents male genitalia? But rather than go off on a tangent rant of why this cartoon is suggesting of a hermaphrodite, it would be far better to just say “Hey, it’s toaster that happens to talk, okay?”

There was one scene that really, really had my gears turning and that was the otherwise meaningless encounter the Toaster has with a flower in a secluded, almost romantic setting. Well, my thoughts (as I’m writing this) are that the flower softly throwing itself at the Toaster symbolizes someone giving away their virginity- often associated with girls. But, then the flower seems to go into despair and wilt when it is told it was looking at a reflection (the Toaster clearly doesn’t want to get involved in anything here). Does this mean the flower was basically trapped in this romantic setting all alone and believed it found true love in the form of a reflection… or just a companion at all? Comments are welcome- either way, it still keeps the intrigue of my claim alive and well.

I was so convinced of my theory that I decided to view that sequel The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars. I shuddered when I heard it existed and I shuddered more at each passing minute of seeing it- this is the marriage of mediocrity and bribery at its worst, folks. But in the end, I got just what I wanted- more proof the Toaster has no gender. There is yet again a scene where they were supposed to refer to it by third person (by some gigantic refrigerator?) but it could have very well also been referring to the Radio or Lampey. I know it gets rather cumbersome to dissect a movie so thoroughly but to me, it’s increasingly obvious that the animators took great lengths to avoid the issue (and possibly the children’s book this was all based on). The simple fact of the issue is they refuse to give the audience any definite truth on the Toaster. However another totally different possibility is they’re letting you chose the specific gender of this utterly neutral character with an utterly flawless design. I choose neither side for all those reasons stated above. Of course, you can still choose male… if you want to believe that.