Tag: Critical and Cultural Theory
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Wicked Wiles: How Feminist Is Disney’s ‘Beauty & The Beast’?
This article is part of the ‘Wicked Wiles’ series examining the positive and negative messages on gender that Disney Princess films impart to their target audience – girls.
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Won’t Somebody Please Think Of The Children? – Steven Universe And The ‘Gay Agenda’ In Kid’s Cartoons
Like every other form of mass commercial entertainment, cartoon creators have to continually walk a fine line between cookie-cutter commercialism and original artistic expression; between pleasing their ratings-obsessed executives and staying true to their visions as storytellers. But what do you do when this vision involves a young boy being raised by a group of…
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Wicked Wiles: Little Mermaid (1989)
Lyrically, ‘Part of Your World’ could be more multi-layered than you might think. On the surface, it is about a teenager’s dream of running away from home, sick of her father’s stifling rule. However, closer examination could provide deeper meaning relating to gender.
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The Lumbersexual Proves That Masculinity Is In Crisis – And It’s a Good Thing.
An on-point lumbersexual has got his keys to his vintage truck in one hand and his brand new iPhone in the other. The perfect hyper-masculine costume for the 21st century. A parody – not an homage – of masculinity.
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Wicked Wiles: Robin Hood (1973)
These Disney bachelors seem a lot more maturely developed than the dwarves of Snow White who lived in squalor for fear of taking up ‘womanly’ chores. The tone, however is still frustratingly unclear: Are Robin and Little John progressively comfortable enough in their masculinity that they can easily affect traditionally female activities? Or are these…
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How The Female Gaze was Celebrated and Censored in Cardcaptor Sakura
Originally published for Bitch Flicks as part of their ‘Female Gaze’ theme week, 26th August 2015. With their starry eyes, cutesy costumes, Barbie-esque features, and catchphrases overflowing with dreamy positivity, the magical girls of the shojo (girls) genre of anime might not seem like the most feminist of heroines upon cursory glance. Yet, the plucky…
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What Is The Real Feminist Message of “Mad Max: Fury Road”?
The primitivism of a world that has seemed to suffer a technological and biological man-made apocalypse in Mad Max is laid bare in the absence of plants, water, or urbanised environments. This planetary devolution has also seeped into human society as any scrap of hard-fought social changes have been stripped back to the patriarchal foundations…
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A Female Character’s Waistline Should be as Realistic as Her Job Description
If we want our heroines to look more positively ‘realistic’ then the parameters of their realism need to be defined by their individual lifestyles just as we real women are defined by ours.
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“You’d Better Become Aware That You’re Just a Woman”: Your New Favourite Feminist Manga.
Seinen stories are primarily characterised by soft-core sexual content and a female protagonist, but rather than rely solely on the usual fan service to satisfy male readers (panty shots, accidental nudity, nosebleeds, etc.) Sacred Blacksmith uses its genre trappings to instead highlight the causes and consequences of sexual violence with chilling realism, and handles it…
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