Getting AniMated about Gender Roles
Fri, Jan 15 2010 02:38
| AniMates, Corporate Culture
| Permalink
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Because they add humor and let audiences know that they are being represented and taken into account, audience advocate AniMates are extremely popular.
And these characters are most often male.*
Occasionally we're asked the question: what if we made the AniMate a female?
A good question--and very appropriate when the audience skews female. And yet, we usually advise against a female AniMate save for cases in which the audience is *overwhelmingly* female.
It's not that we don't want to do female characters, but the reasons are--perhaps--more indicative of gender roles in most corporate cultures than anything. Whereas a male AniMate can get off telling an executive that they have to prove themselves, and that they're skeptical about the new plan (before the executive gives a refined and credible argument that turns the AniMate around--along with the audience, of course), when a female brings up the shortcomings of an authority (male or female) she can come off as...well...whining.
They're the same words written by the same writer--the only difference is the face and the voice behind the argument--yet in the perception of the character there is a world of difference.
We're not saying it's fair or it's right--it's just how it is right now with most audiences that we deal with. It's interesting that while an AniMate in general is a mirror of an audience, that the bias for a male or a female AniMate is a mirror of society.
*It's interesting to note that the scripting for these AniMates is written by a female writer.
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