Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1079787
SPRING 2019 5 F R O M T H E P R E S I D E N T As animation artists and writers, we create life through our characters. The lion's share allow us to derive inspiration from the voice actors' performances. Our (not so) silent partners give us boatloads of lilts, falls, beats, and breaths to dig our pencils and styluses into. Capturing all the nuances of reads requires attention to and repetition of the track. When we nail it—and we do, because Animation Guild members are the best in the world—the craft is felt, and our audience travels along the journey with us. Meanwhile, those phrases and lines spin around in our heads. For me, they tend to be from The Simpsons. There was a scene where Moe the bartender renovates the bar. He swings a sledgehammer at a here-to-fore never seen and there-to-fore never reappearing support pole in the middle of the tavern, accompanied by a lively "Hnn-dah!!" For weeks, my cubemate and I would declare, "Hnn-dah!!" at random moments. Ironically, the sound never made it to air (ah, entertainment!), yet it remains in my brain a decade later. The line making the recent mental rounds is from "Springfield Splendor," where a deep male announcer's voice thunders, "Bechdel Test FAIL!!!" while Lisa and Marge share a Comic-Con panel with Fun Home graphic novel artist Alison Bechdel. Although the test first appeared in 1985 in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, crediting her friend Liz Wallace, it was new to me in 2017. For those likewise unfamiliar, the simple test measures the representation of women in a story using three questions: 1) Are there two female characters? 2) Do they have a conversation? 3) Is that conversation about something other than a male character? (Spoiler: Marge fails the Bechdel Test.) In 2004, actress Geena Davis asked an even more basic question: are there female characters? At an event in the early days of her organization See Jane (seejane.org), Davis described watching animated programs with her daughter where she noticed a dearth of female characters, even in the crowds. She noted that with this invisibility, "we're showing children at the youngest age that women and girls do not take up half the space and do not have the same value and importance as men and boys." This reality hit an animator attendee who declared, "My gosh! That's ME! I drew a crowd today!" As the booming "Bechdel Test FAIL!!!" circled my thoughts, it prompted me to use that lens when watching programs and movies. It's jarring how many stories don't pass, including ones with some fantastic female characters. But then out of the ones that do pass, I was surprised to realize how many would fail a "Reverse" Bechdel Test. The solution to the tricky knot of equal representation in entertainment is not the extremes of either/or. We can have stories featuring one gender as well as those about the other, but what we're missing is stories that truly feature us all together. The same goes for other underrepresented groups. Likewise, See Jane has expanded into researching many marginalized groups across media in their effort to "engage, educate, and influence content creators." And guess what? We're the content creators. Whether we're running shows, writing scripts, or populating crowds, my gosh, that's us. We create the characters and the dialogue. We're the ones who choose their gender, their heritage, and their story. We have the chance, every day, in our glorious industry, to either repeat the cycle or start a new one. When we nail this—and we will, because Animation Guild members are the best in the world— the impact will be visible, and our audience, all of it, will travel along the journey with us. In Solidarity, KC "Hnn-dah!!" Johnson ON REPETITION & STARTING NEW CYCLES ON THE COVER Sketch of Hiccup drawn by Dean DeBlois, Director of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Additional artwork courtesy of DreamWorks Animation/ NBCUniversal.