For me, the best part of writing is getting into other character's heads and working out what makes them tick. It can be really cathartic to go through someone else's experiences and how they deal (or don't deal) with the problems they encounter. But for some people, creating characters can be a really big hurdle, and there are a few different ways to deal with this.
One that works for many people is planning out their characters backgrounds, details, likes and dislikes, etc. on a character planning sheet. This can be basic details or really in depth. You can use a pre-existing template (easily found with a quick search) or make your own. This can work very well when you have a lot of characters to keep a track of.
I find this doesn't work too well for me, and can often serve as a distraction to actually writing. Now, I tend to do this only for secondary characters, who don't necessarily need a detailed back-story or motivations, but just need to be kept consistent.
My preferred method for developing characters is through writing itself. Some of the early pieces might never make it into the finished piece, but for me, it's the most useful way of getting inside the heads of my characters and working out what makes them tick. Generally I'll be thinking about a character's childhood, or the moment that pushes them to begin their story, or an isolated incident that makes them reflect on or change who they are.
The most frustrating character I have ever had to write was Talli, the protagonist in a project I started for ScriptFrenzy way back in 2011. No matter what I tried, she seemed so boring and lacklustre compared to literally everyone else (including minor characters). While I finished the plot, she still seemed undeveloped and unmotivated, even as she was in the heart of it.
So, what did I do? Essentially, I took a break from her. I developed more of the backstory and followed around the antagonists and worked out what made them and this world tick. I wrote about how and why the events of the story took place, from other people's viewpoints. I worked out some of the more complex entanglements of the plot - information that Talli wasn't privy to. It took me four years to eventually getting back into her head and rewriting the events that she was part of.
But when I finally got there, something clicked for me. Instead of Talli being a character that this 'had to happen to', she became more of a driving force in her own story. Instead of passively reacting to events, she started actively trying to effect and change what was happening to her. By knowing more about why things were happening, and what motivations everyone else had, I had more freedom for her to push against these forces.
Another factor, for me, is that Talli was a character who was meant to be, for lack of a better word, average. The idea meant that she needed to be surrounded by forces that were more powerful than her, and trapped in a seemingly helpless situation that she could eventually triumph over. I strongly believe that back when I started the project, I simply didn't have enough experience to write that in a compelling way, but over time, having experienced similar things and honing my craft, I have learnt how to approach the humanity in 'normal' characters.
So, for writers in similar situations, I would advise trying to come at the world from a different angle. Work out what compels you about this idea, and what different perspectives you can find on it. But don't worry if things don't magically fall into place. Some stories simply don't want to be written now, or not by the person you currently are. Give it time, work on something new, and it will be waiting when you are ready for it.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Tuesday, 22 December 2015
Saturday, 28 November 2015
Writing Research: How to Write Fight Scenes
As a writer, I'd consider my biggest weakness to be fight scenes, and
I know I'm not the only one. It's one of the reasons I like to write
scripts and screenplays, where you can describe the fight itself in a
couple of lines, and leave the detailed scuffle up to the storyboard
artists, directors and cinematographers as and when it's needed.
However, as I write short stories and novels, too, it is a necessary
part of what I do. So this post is a bit of a brief how to, for myself
and other writers out there who struggle with this.
First of all, the basics of sentence structure. This is vital. Short, sharp sentences give the immediate feel of every impact, whereas longer, bloated sentences will drag out the action. At best, sentence structure will serve to enhance a fight scene, but at worst, it will confuse and disorient the reader.
Research is a must. To make your universe credible, it must follow it's own internal logic. If swords are used, research different types of swords and the styles of combat they are used in. If a character has trained with a specific type of weapon, improvising with a different weapon will put them at a disadvantage. If they have sustained injuries, that will also impact the fight. If magic is a force, what are the rules around it and how easy/difficult is it to wield in a combat situation?
A tavern brawl will be very different to a duel. The brawl will be chaotic, people are unlikely to be seasoned fighters, there will be little to no concept of 'fair' fighting. People might not know the initial cause, but stuck in the middle of the fray, they have no choice to fight back to escape or survive. In a duel, the fight will likely be more organised, with a form of judge ensuring some form of rules. The stakes will be more personal, and more complex than simply 'fighting to survive'.
Every fight should feel unique and different. You wouldn't repeat the same section of dialogue for no reason, so why should you write the same type of fight scene twice? What would be the point?
Different characters will respond differently to battle. The character who is willing to survive at any cost would have no qualms taking the easiest route out of a fight, even if that is to avoid it completely. The character who values personal honour over pragmatism may rush into ridiculous situations without really considering the outcome of their actions.
Do not disorient the reader. Fight scenes can easily become a blur and make it difficult to work out what exactly is going on. Many readers will skip them if they become too challenging to follow. Make sure that the fight is easy to read.
Alternatively, consider deliberately making it disorienting. Battle can be overwhelming, especially if the characters aren't trained for combat. Reflect that in the characters. Make them confused. What are the consequences? Injury? Losing a character or important item behind in the chaos?
Above all, practise. If you are aware that fight scenes are a weakness for you, go out of your way to write a few fight scenes. Writing, like any art, is a craft you hone over time and hours of practise. There's no shame in admitting that this element of your craft needs more work.
A few extra resources for additional reading:
Vary your sentence length to make your writing more interesting: A good primer on how and why to vary sentence length with some specific examples in both text and audio, talking about the musicality of the written word.
Here's how to write a damn good fight scene: More about the specifics of language used in a fight scene and specific techniques to try out.
Writing Fight Scenes: Specifically for fantasy writers, and covers a little bit of everything, including suspense and build-up before the fight has truly begun and how to develop characters through fight scenes.
5 Essential Tips for Writing Killer Fight Scenes: More about the motivations behind specific fight scenes - understanding why they are (or aren't!) necessary for your plot is the first step to tackling them.
First of all, the basics of sentence structure. This is vital. Short, sharp sentences give the immediate feel of every impact, whereas longer, bloated sentences will drag out the action. At best, sentence structure will serve to enhance a fight scene, but at worst, it will confuse and disorient the reader.
Research is a must. To make your universe credible, it must follow it's own internal logic. If swords are used, research different types of swords and the styles of combat they are used in. If a character has trained with a specific type of weapon, improvising with a different weapon will put them at a disadvantage. If they have sustained injuries, that will also impact the fight. If magic is a force, what are the rules around it and how easy/difficult is it to wield in a combat situation?
A tavern brawl will be very different to a duel. The brawl will be chaotic, people are unlikely to be seasoned fighters, there will be little to no concept of 'fair' fighting. People might not know the initial cause, but stuck in the middle of the fray, they have no choice to fight back to escape or survive. In a duel, the fight will likely be more organised, with a form of judge ensuring some form of rules. The stakes will be more personal, and more complex than simply 'fighting to survive'.
Every fight should feel unique and different. You wouldn't repeat the same section of dialogue for no reason, so why should you write the same type of fight scene twice? What would be the point?
Different characters will respond differently to battle. The character who is willing to survive at any cost would have no qualms taking the easiest route out of a fight, even if that is to avoid it completely. The character who values personal honour over pragmatism may rush into ridiculous situations without really considering the outcome of their actions.
Do not disorient the reader. Fight scenes can easily become a blur and make it difficult to work out what exactly is going on. Many readers will skip them if they become too challenging to follow. Make sure that the fight is easy to read.
Alternatively, consider deliberately making it disorienting. Battle can be overwhelming, especially if the characters aren't trained for combat. Reflect that in the characters. Make them confused. What are the consequences? Injury? Losing a character or important item behind in the chaos?
Above all, practise. If you are aware that fight scenes are a weakness for you, go out of your way to write a few fight scenes. Writing, like any art, is a craft you hone over time and hours of practise. There's no shame in admitting that this element of your craft needs more work.
A few extra resources for additional reading:
Vary your sentence length to make your writing more interesting: A good primer on how and why to vary sentence length with some specific examples in both text and audio, talking about the musicality of the written word.
Here's how to write a damn good fight scene: More about the specifics of language used in a fight scene and specific techniques to try out.
Writing Fight Scenes: Specifically for fantasy writers, and covers a little bit of everything, including suspense and build-up before the fight has truly begun and how to develop characters through fight scenes.
5 Essential Tips for Writing Killer Fight Scenes: More about the motivations behind specific fight scenes - understanding why they are (or aren't!) necessary for your plot is the first step to tackling them.
Saturday, 19 September 2015
Fanfiction and Fanart: What is 'Real' Art, Anyway?
Every fan-artist or fanfiction writer has heard a variation of this at least once: "Why don't you do real art instead?" Sometimes it's phrased more like concern: "You're really talented, and you'd be successful if you only stopped drawing/writing 'x'" or "You'll never make a career out of fanworks".
I don't like this at all. It devalues not only creative endeavours, but the people who create them. It's a a social problem, and it needs to stop. You probably think I'm overreacting, and right now, that's fine. Just read on a bit before you make up your mind completely.
Fanart is seen as 'lesser' because it draws on existing work and doesn't require the artist's own imagination or creativity.
If anything, people are more critical of fanfiction and fanart because it draws from an existing work, one that people admire enough to find and read fanworks of. Characters are judged against the standard of the original - if they are too different, works easily become out of character and unappealing to fans.
It takes a lot of close analysis to truly understand complex characters - to not only understand what they do, but why. This 'why' is essential to fanworks, to understand how a character may react in circumstances they aren't shown in in the original media.
Original art and writing has the privilege of being judged on it's own merit, outside of a pre-existing idea of setting, tone and character. It's far easier to work out the motivations of your characters - you should know them intimately, having created them - than the motivations of another's characters, where you only have what limited knowledge the creator has made public about them.
If fanart was somehow a 'lesser' art form, you would be writing off a vast proportion of art through the ages. Every biblical and mythological painting would be inferior, because it's just fanart (often commissioned fanart) of the Bible and classical myths. Not to mention the wealth of literature you'd be passing up. Tolkien was inspired by Shakespeare, Shakespeare was inspired by Chaucer and Plutarch. All classical literature were inspired by word of mouth tales, embellished over years of oral storytelling tradition, before writing and reading were commonplace.
The Arthurian tales are a good example of this: Celtic folkstories were passed down by word of mouth over hundreds of years, finally being written down in the Mabinogion. These tales were later embellished by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and framed in a way to be more appealing to French audiences. These chivalrous tales became reinterpreted time and time again - Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain, Marion Zimmer Bradley - they've all had a hand, big or small in changing the way we perceive the Arthurian legends. This is of course, without mentioning the many film and television adaptations of the myths; from Disney to Monty Python, so many people have reworked and re-imagined the tales. It is a truly successful fanwork, in it's current state. It bears little resemblance to the original Celtic myths, barring a few recognisable details, and yet it's known internationally.
Of course, delve a little deeper, and you'd see that there aren't many 'original' works of art, anyway, even in modern media. Films are predominantly sequels and adaptations of other media. Any long running television show has to employ writers to carry on the existing story, as it is too much work for one writer to do alone. Long running comics and graphics novels are in a constant cycle of renewing artists and writers to carry on the story as previous artists and writers move on to different projects. Even games are often sequels or remakes of existing games. In fact, if you wanted to eschew any unoriginal ideas, you'd have to search for obscure content creators - independent film festivals, small press books, small art shows - it'd be a huge boost for independent media, until you noticed the reoccurring tropes in all these things, even as original as they are.
The thing is, art doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's meant to ask questions, to be explored and responded to. The problem is, the people who are against fanworks aren't really against the idea of fanworks. They want their favourite series to continue, and they want to keep enjoying film adaptations even if they aren't aware of the original media it came from. If they were against the idea of fanworks, these logical arguments would have won out against them a long time ago - I'm certainly not the first to make these points. The world would also be much poorer for the amount of art that got spurned as they rejected anything that could be feasibly termed a fanwork.
No, they're really against the people who make fanworks. Fanfiction and fanart is primarily a term applied to female artists within fandoms. It's certainly not to say that male don't create fanworks - they do, and face a lot of the same criticisms, but the problem is caused by the way society sees and codes fandom as female. There is a long history of bias towards work that is coded as 'feminine' as being valued less than work coded as 'masculine'. Fandom creators become seen as amateurs, creating work for free - ignoring the fact that some creators are professionals, and dabble in fanworks as exercise, for publicity or even just because it's fun - and further devaluing the idea of fanart in capitalism (the argument being that if creators are so talented, why aren't they making money from it, which implies that money is the materialistic end goal for all creative endeavours).
When a caricaturist draws a celebrity, it's not fanart, it's just art. When a woman does the same, it's fanart. When a screenwriter writes the script for the latest book adaptation, it's not fanfiction, it's just a script. When a storyboard artist or a concept artist or a digital painter is doing the work that makes any movie possible, often referencing earlier designs or movies or media, they are creating art, not fanart. All of these positions are male-dominated, where female artists are the exception, not the norm. There are social, economic and cultural barriers in order to limit the amount of women in these jobs (and this is not limited to the art world and creative jobs, either). It's not the fault of any one person, but a system of exclusion that is upheld to maintain the status quo as much as possible. Disregarding fandom and fanworks as 'not real' art helps maintain that status quo.
While I have many issues with '50 Shades of Grey', it's undeniable that it is an example of fanwork that has become successful. It's far from an isolated incident, either; many authors have been discovered through fanfiction, many fanartists have gained work through their fanart. I only hope this becomes more usual, and that the stigma around fanworks ceases for good. It helps no one to put down fanworks - not the artist creating them, nor the established artists making a name for themselves through 'original' works.
I don't like this at all. It devalues not only creative endeavours, but the people who create them. It's a a social problem, and it needs to stop. You probably think I'm overreacting, and right now, that's fine. Just read on a bit before you make up your mind completely.
Fanart is seen as 'lesser' because it draws on existing work and doesn't require the artist's own imagination or creativity.
If anything, people are more critical of fanfiction and fanart because it draws from an existing work, one that people admire enough to find and read fanworks of. Characters are judged against the standard of the original - if they are too different, works easily become out of character and unappealing to fans.
It takes a lot of close analysis to truly understand complex characters - to not only understand what they do, but why. This 'why' is essential to fanworks, to understand how a character may react in circumstances they aren't shown in in the original media.
Original art and writing has the privilege of being judged on it's own merit, outside of a pre-existing idea of setting, tone and character. It's far easier to work out the motivations of your characters - you should know them intimately, having created them - than the motivations of another's characters, where you only have what limited knowledge the creator has made public about them.
If fanart was somehow a 'lesser' art form, you would be writing off a vast proportion of art through the ages. Every biblical and mythological painting would be inferior, because it's just fanart (often commissioned fanart) of the Bible and classical myths. Not to mention the wealth of literature you'd be passing up. Tolkien was inspired by Shakespeare, Shakespeare was inspired by Chaucer and Plutarch. All classical literature were inspired by word of mouth tales, embellished over years of oral storytelling tradition, before writing and reading were commonplace.
The Arthurian tales are a good example of this: Celtic folkstories were passed down by word of mouth over hundreds of years, finally being written down in the Mabinogion. These tales were later embellished by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and framed in a way to be more appealing to French audiences. These chivalrous tales became reinterpreted time and time again - Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain, Marion Zimmer Bradley - they've all had a hand, big or small in changing the way we perceive the Arthurian legends. This is of course, without mentioning the many film and television adaptations of the myths; from Disney to Monty Python, so many people have reworked and re-imagined the tales. It is a truly successful fanwork, in it's current state. It bears little resemblance to the original Celtic myths, barring a few recognisable details, and yet it's known internationally.
Of course, delve a little deeper, and you'd see that there aren't many 'original' works of art, anyway, even in modern media. Films are predominantly sequels and adaptations of other media. Any long running television show has to employ writers to carry on the existing story, as it is too much work for one writer to do alone. Long running comics and graphics novels are in a constant cycle of renewing artists and writers to carry on the story as previous artists and writers move on to different projects. Even games are often sequels or remakes of existing games. In fact, if you wanted to eschew any unoriginal ideas, you'd have to search for obscure content creators - independent film festivals, small press books, small art shows - it'd be a huge boost for independent media, until you noticed the reoccurring tropes in all these things, even as original as they are.
The thing is, art doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's meant to ask questions, to be explored and responded to. The problem is, the people who are against fanworks aren't really against the idea of fanworks. They want their favourite series to continue, and they want to keep enjoying film adaptations even if they aren't aware of the original media it came from. If they were against the idea of fanworks, these logical arguments would have won out against them a long time ago - I'm certainly not the first to make these points. The world would also be much poorer for the amount of art that got spurned as they rejected anything that could be feasibly termed a fanwork.
No, they're really against the people who make fanworks. Fanfiction and fanart is primarily a term applied to female artists within fandoms. It's certainly not to say that male don't create fanworks - they do, and face a lot of the same criticisms, but the problem is caused by the way society sees and codes fandom as female. There is a long history of bias towards work that is coded as 'feminine' as being valued less than work coded as 'masculine'. Fandom creators become seen as amateurs, creating work for free - ignoring the fact that some creators are professionals, and dabble in fanworks as exercise, for publicity or even just because it's fun - and further devaluing the idea of fanart in capitalism (the argument being that if creators are so talented, why aren't they making money from it, which implies that money is the materialistic end goal for all creative endeavours).
When a caricaturist draws a celebrity, it's not fanart, it's just art. When a woman does the same, it's fanart. When a screenwriter writes the script for the latest book adaptation, it's not fanfiction, it's just a script. When a storyboard artist or a concept artist or a digital painter is doing the work that makes any movie possible, often referencing earlier designs or movies or media, they are creating art, not fanart. All of these positions are male-dominated, where female artists are the exception, not the norm. There are social, economic and cultural barriers in order to limit the amount of women in these jobs (and this is not limited to the art world and creative jobs, either). It's not the fault of any one person, but a system of exclusion that is upheld to maintain the status quo as much as possible. Disregarding fandom and fanworks as 'not real' art helps maintain that status quo.
While I have many issues with '50 Shades of Grey', it's undeniable that it is an example of fanwork that has become successful. It's far from an isolated incident, either; many authors have been discovered through fanfiction, many fanartists have gained work through their fanart. I only hope this becomes more usual, and that the stigma around fanworks ceases for good. It helps no one to put down fanworks - not the artist creating them, nor the established artists making a name for themselves through 'original' works.
Monday, 14 September 2015
Representation Matters: Studio Ghibli
I like to focus on the positives rather than the negatives in media. Partly because there are plenty of people already calling out mass media for what they're not doing well, and those people are doing pretty well at raising awareness and getting their voices heard. But partly because I feel like if we fail to recognise the stuff that is done well, many things become seen as unsuccessful, and makes similar projects much harder to finance and make a reality. The best way to support messages that you want to see is by throwing your financial and social support behind it - the money lets executives know that this kind of idea is profitable, so they'll continue doing it, and the social support makes the message more widespread and hopefully encourages other people to support it, too.
With that in mind, I want to look at Studio Ghibli and their presentation of female characters over the years. Due to the nature of the post, there will be some spoilers, but I will endeavour to keep them to a minimum. Still, this is your early warning: there are spoilers within!
Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio famed internationally for their gorgeous imagery and complex storytelling. They range from cute, family-friendly stories like Kiki's Delivery Service to darker works like Princess Mononoke. They won the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2002 for Spirited Away, the only non-English-speaking animated film to win the award to date (the majority of winners comes from Disney/Pixar, with the occasional Dreamworks film).
Even a cursory look at the Studio's history reveals a wealth of female lead characters rarely found anywhere else: of the 22 main feature films released by Studio Ghibli, 11 have the lead 'view point' character be female and a further 5 have stories that have either an even amount of importance between the male and female lead or the female driving the plot, despite a male viewpoint. Even in the stories where women don't drive the plot, they still appear: as maternal characters, sisters, friends, family - in short, as people, with ambitions and skills and their own point of view.
But for examples of something a little more specific, I'm going to be looking at a couple of my favourite films that they've made, and point out instances of what I mean.
Princess Mononoke is one of the films where the viewpoint character is male (Prince Ashitaka) however women are a vastly integral part of the world and the plot of the film. San, the titular Princess Mononoke, is a woman raised by the god-wolf Moro, and shares Moro's distaste of humans, whom she sees as polluting the land and destroying the forest. San takes an active stance in this fight, directing her wolf-brothers into fights and attempting to assassinate Lady Eboshi.
Lady Eboshi herself is a strong woman who rules Irontown (Tatara in the original Japanese) fairly, rescuing and creating a safe haven for ex-prostitutes and lepers, and using the local resource of iron to maintain a strategic advantage over her neighbours. What I love about the film is that nothing is absolute in terms of morality. While it would be easy to completely vilify Lady Eboshi, we are shown that she is sincerely only acting in the best interests of her people, and she's highly compassionate towards the least valued members of society, not only offering them safety, but work and shelter. The women of Irontown work the bellows that smelt the iron they use for trade and weapons, and the film shows it to be hard work, but work they chose over their old lives. When men try to put them down for their work being safer than theirs, the women have the power to retort back. Without them, the economy and trade of Irontown would be diminished, if not downright broken.
Moro, the god-wolf and mother figure to San is a wonderful example of the ferociousness of a mother who is threatened. She's smart - smart enough to see what humans have done to other animal-gods, and smart enough to recognise the humans luring the boars into a trap, and to know that the boars will still charge in blindly even if they knew. She's protective of her adoptive daughter in the same way as her wolf-sons. She fights to protect her land and those dependant on her in a very similar way to Lady Eboshi.
If anything, it is Ashitaka who takes a passive role for much of the film, observing the differing points of view and only interfering when absolutely necessary. In fact, he openly acknowledges that he is watching and trying to stay neutral in the conflict. It doesn't stop him from doing the right thing, and acting to make the situation better, but it does stop him rushing 'to the rescue' of these women without understanding how and why they're in conflict, like so many films would.
The film portrays the early stages of a romance between Ashitaka and San, yet this doesn't reduce San to just a romantic interest. The characters complement each other and help each other grow - Ashitaka opens San to the idea that not all humans are bad and helps her come to terms with her own humanity, yet her goals and ideals remain the same - protect the forest. One of his major contributions to San is convincing her that she shouldn't throw her life away in mindless defence of the forest and that her life matters as an individual, not just a cause.
On all levels, the film is very respectful of women and the choices that female characters make, from background flavour characters to the women who drive the conflict and the plot forward. There are no blameless heroes, nor truly vilified characters, and all of the women have a complex nature that makes them stand out as fully formed characters, not two-dimensional stereotypes.
Spirited Away, arguably their most famous work, stars Chihiro, a young 10-year old girl moving to her new home. She begins the story reluctant to uproot her life, a little sullen and nervous and self-centred - things that are perfectly normal for a young girl, especially when facing such a big change in her life. Even this is quite a leap forward from many children's movies - she's allowed to be flawed in a way that isn't so extreme to be unrecognisable. Everyone's encountered a shy child, or a self-centred one or a nervous or sullen one. There's a good chance that was you, when growing up.
When the plot truly begins, and the 'abandoned' themepark is revealed to be a bath-house resort for the gods, Chihiro is scared and runs to her parents for support, but finds them transformed into pigs. This kickstarts her character growth, forcing her to become more emotionally independent and confident in her own abilities. The whole film explores this growth, and allows you to see a slow and steady improvement from clingy, nervous, self-centred child to a confident, generous young girl. She has to muster up courage, resourcefulness and put in a fair bit of hard work, and she's still the same person, but it is very clear that she learns a lot through the course of the film.
Chihiro is a wonderful character for children to learn from - she is faced with things children find scary, and she is scared herself, but she finds a way to be brave and get through it. She loves her parents dearly. She learns to be respectful of all kinds of people, no matter how weird or alien they might seem at first. She grows while learning to remain true to herself. She's not afraid to shoulder her fair share of the hard work, despite not being practised at it.
The supporting cast are good, too, from Lin, who acts more brusque and mercenary than she truly is, to Yubaba, the money-motivated owner of the bathhouse who would do anything to keep her baby safe. They all have their own motivations and goals and actively achieve things on their own.
These are just two brief examples from a very long list of wonderful female characters in Studio Ghibli. I could have mentioned the pirate matriarch in Laputa: Castle in the Sky, the sisters in My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki and the baker whom she rents her room from in Kiki's Delivery Service, Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle...I honestly could have thrown a dart, and as long as it didn't land on Tales from Earthsea, I would have had something positive to say.
This is (quite obviously, I hope) something that's pretty dear to my heart. I don't want all films to be only about and for women. But I do want to see women as being represented as more than an accessory for a male character. More than a 'sexy lamp'. As we can see, it's not impossible - it's not even difficult. Just treat your characters - all your characters - as human, with their own strengths and flaws and backgrounds and motivations.
In the words of Miyasaki himself: “Many of my movies have strong female leads - brave, self-sufficient girls that don’t think twice about fighting for what they believe in with all their heart. They’ll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a saviour. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.”
With that in mind, I want to look at Studio Ghibli and their presentation of female characters over the years. Due to the nature of the post, there will be some spoilers, but I will endeavour to keep them to a minimum. Still, this is your early warning: there are spoilers within!
Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation studio famed internationally for their gorgeous imagery and complex storytelling. They range from cute, family-friendly stories like Kiki's Delivery Service to darker works like Princess Mononoke. They won the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2002 for Spirited Away, the only non-English-speaking animated film to win the award to date (the majority of winners comes from Disney/Pixar, with the occasional Dreamworks film).
Even a cursory look at the Studio's history reveals a wealth of female lead characters rarely found anywhere else: of the 22 main feature films released by Studio Ghibli, 11 have the lead 'view point' character be female and a further 5 have stories that have either an even amount of importance between the male and female lead or the female driving the plot, despite a male viewpoint. Even in the stories where women don't drive the plot, they still appear: as maternal characters, sisters, friends, family - in short, as people, with ambitions and skills and their own point of view.
But for examples of something a little more specific, I'm going to be looking at a couple of my favourite films that they've made, and point out instances of what I mean.
Princess Mononoke is one of the films where the viewpoint character is male (Prince Ashitaka) however women are a vastly integral part of the world and the plot of the film. San, the titular Princess Mononoke, is a woman raised by the god-wolf Moro, and shares Moro's distaste of humans, whom she sees as polluting the land and destroying the forest. San takes an active stance in this fight, directing her wolf-brothers into fights and attempting to assassinate Lady Eboshi.
Lady Eboshi herself is a strong woman who rules Irontown (Tatara in the original Japanese) fairly, rescuing and creating a safe haven for ex-prostitutes and lepers, and using the local resource of iron to maintain a strategic advantage over her neighbours. What I love about the film is that nothing is absolute in terms of morality. While it would be easy to completely vilify Lady Eboshi, we are shown that she is sincerely only acting in the best interests of her people, and she's highly compassionate towards the least valued members of society, not only offering them safety, but work and shelter. The women of Irontown work the bellows that smelt the iron they use for trade and weapons, and the film shows it to be hard work, but work they chose over their old lives. When men try to put them down for their work being safer than theirs, the women have the power to retort back. Without them, the economy and trade of Irontown would be diminished, if not downright broken.
Moro, the god-wolf and mother figure to San is a wonderful example of the ferociousness of a mother who is threatened. She's smart - smart enough to see what humans have done to other animal-gods, and smart enough to recognise the humans luring the boars into a trap, and to know that the boars will still charge in blindly even if they knew. She's protective of her adoptive daughter in the same way as her wolf-sons. She fights to protect her land and those dependant on her in a very similar way to Lady Eboshi.
If anything, it is Ashitaka who takes a passive role for much of the film, observing the differing points of view and only interfering when absolutely necessary. In fact, he openly acknowledges that he is watching and trying to stay neutral in the conflict. It doesn't stop him from doing the right thing, and acting to make the situation better, but it does stop him rushing 'to the rescue' of these women without understanding how and why they're in conflict, like so many films would.
The film portrays the early stages of a romance between Ashitaka and San, yet this doesn't reduce San to just a romantic interest. The characters complement each other and help each other grow - Ashitaka opens San to the idea that not all humans are bad and helps her come to terms with her own humanity, yet her goals and ideals remain the same - protect the forest. One of his major contributions to San is convincing her that she shouldn't throw her life away in mindless defence of the forest and that her life matters as an individual, not just a cause.
On all levels, the film is very respectful of women and the choices that female characters make, from background flavour characters to the women who drive the conflict and the plot forward. There are no blameless heroes, nor truly vilified characters, and all of the women have a complex nature that makes them stand out as fully formed characters, not two-dimensional stereotypes.
Spirited Away, arguably their most famous work, stars Chihiro, a young 10-year old girl moving to her new home. She begins the story reluctant to uproot her life, a little sullen and nervous and self-centred - things that are perfectly normal for a young girl, especially when facing such a big change in her life. Even this is quite a leap forward from many children's movies - she's allowed to be flawed in a way that isn't so extreme to be unrecognisable. Everyone's encountered a shy child, or a self-centred one or a nervous or sullen one. There's a good chance that was you, when growing up.
When the plot truly begins, and the 'abandoned' themepark is revealed to be a bath-house resort for the gods, Chihiro is scared and runs to her parents for support, but finds them transformed into pigs. This kickstarts her character growth, forcing her to become more emotionally independent and confident in her own abilities. The whole film explores this growth, and allows you to see a slow and steady improvement from clingy, nervous, self-centred child to a confident, generous young girl. She has to muster up courage, resourcefulness and put in a fair bit of hard work, and she's still the same person, but it is very clear that she learns a lot through the course of the film.
Chihiro is a wonderful character for children to learn from - she is faced with things children find scary, and she is scared herself, but she finds a way to be brave and get through it. She loves her parents dearly. She learns to be respectful of all kinds of people, no matter how weird or alien they might seem at first. She grows while learning to remain true to herself. She's not afraid to shoulder her fair share of the hard work, despite not being practised at it.
The supporting cast are good, too, from Lin, who acts more brusque and mercenary than she truly is, to Yubaba, the money-motivated owner of the bathhouse who would do anything to keep her baby safe. They all have their own motivations and goals and actively achieve things on their own.
These are just two brief examples from a very long list of wonderful female characters in Studio Ghibli. I could have mentioned the pirate matriarch in Laputa: Castle in the Sky, the sisters in My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki and the baker whom she rents her room from in Kiki's Delivery Service, Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle...I honestly could have thrown a dart, and as long as it didn't land on Tales from Earthsea, I would have had something positive to say.
This is (quite obviously, I hope) something that's pretty dear to my heart. I don't want all films to be only about and for women. But I do want to see women as being represented as more than an accessory for a male character. More than a 'sexy lamp'. As we can see, it's not impossible - it's not even difficult. Just treat your characters - all your characters - as human, with their own strengths and flaws and backgrounds and motivations.
In the words of Miyasaki himself: “Many of my movies have strong female leads - brave, self-sufficient girls that don’t think twice about fighting for what they believe in with all their heart. They’ll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a saviour. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.”
Sunday, 23 August 2015
Hating on Banksy: A New Trend
With the opening of Dismaland, there's been a trend on some social media networks to badmouth Banksy. I went into this with a reasonably open mind - while I've seen and enjoy a lot of his pieces, I wouldn't consider myself an avid fan, and I was perfectly willing to listen to the arguments against him. If he were genuinely problematic, I'd prefer to know about it and inform myself. But the more I listened to other people's genuinely angry discourse, the more I felt like they were wrong. They bought up a variety of points, some which were nonsensical, and others which, while they had a very strong point, felt somewhat unfair to use as an attack on a person, when they were addressed to a culture as a whole. So, for my own benefit, I'm going to look at the key arguments against and explain why I feel this isn't a constructive movement to criticise both Banksy himself and the wider art world.
He's marketable and successful
On the surface, this almost makes sense. After all, his art is openly and repeatedly critical of capitalism and how it hurts people, so how can an artist profit from the system they despise? Except the problem is that we live in a capitalist society. You can't dismantle a system from within without using the tools of that system. In order to change anything, you need power. And for the most part, in a capitalist society, power comes from money. Now, you can be critical of what Banksy does with his money - does he use it as a force to help others or not? But I haven't seen anyone touch on this, possibly because of Banksy's own anonymity. However, while researching, I did come across this story of how he helped a homeless man who was displaced by his art. I'd like to believe that's typical of his actions, but I have no way of knowing for sure. Just as I have no way of knowing that he doesn't do more actions like this.
By being marketable, his art is getting into the hands of the people who should, by all rights, be the biggest proponents of capitalism. Banksy's works have been sold in Sotheby’s in London (extremely upper-class auction house for art). They were selling for hundreds of thousands of pounds. Not exactly pocket change for the buyer - this is the kind of money that could outright buy a house in most areas of the country. These are people who have greatly profited from capitalism buying anti-capitalist art...there's a certain level of irony there. His success has given his anti-capitalist ideas a platform that he wouldn't otherwise have had. You can bemoan the evils of capitalism all you like, but if no one listens, what's the point? This way, at least people have thought about his art, and maybe gone on to learn more and work towards making a change. Art is a starting point for discussion, but no one can discuss it if they never see it.
So at the end of the day, this is an argument that goes roughly: I don't like that this artist gets paid for his art. I don't like that his career is successful and that he can afford to support himself on the back of his art. And that feels like nonsense to me, especially when said by the same people who openly support artists, stop art theft and think artists should be paid reasonably for their work.
He's popular/He creates art that takes no skill
Much like the argument above, it attacks him personally for something he has fairly little control over. It also comes with the implication that there are other artists more deserving. But mostly it smacks of 'hipsterism' to me. Liking things because they aren't mainstream, even if that means abandoning artists once they achieve a level of notoriety. And that's ridiculous.
However, the implication that other artists deserve more attention is actually a good one. Because I can't argue. Art is subjective; people are never going to agree on who the most 'deserving' artist is. There are almost certainly artists with better ideas than Banksy, and greater technical skill than Banksy. It's not fair that he makes a lot of money off his work while others don't. It's not fair that there are artists who are living in abject poverty while he isn't. The world isn't fair.
If you really feel that strongly that other artists deserve more attention/exposure/money, then rather than hate on one artist, and tear him down, love on the artists you like. Elevate them up. Blog about their art. Buy their work. Recommend them to friends. Make a positive difference.
He creates art that's too easily accessible
I've seen this alarmingly often. It has the smack of artistic gatekeeping to me. My inability to agree with this argument is the same reason I really dislike a lot of modern art. I really hate what I feel is pretension around art. I have a degree in film, and I can't stand this. This is a very personal one for me, and I'm fully willing to admit I'm wrong on this point.
Basically, if you have a message in your art, and it's an important message, why would you ever want to make it more difficult to understand?
Modern art is apparently full of hidden depths and means. I use the word 'apparently', as I wouldn't have guessed without reading the caption besides the piece. There's actually a lot of pieces that I wouldn't have guessed were art without reading the captions besides the pieces. That's okay. I've long known most modern art isn't for me. I'm still convinced that the modern art world is something of an 'emperor's new clothes'-style delusion, and that by interpreting new 'meanings' to a piece, we somehow aren't meant to see its lack of skill or originality or intent.
All this means that I really don't mind that an artist's work is easy to understand. At least I am sure that they had a meaning and a driving force behind creating it.
He is celebrated for making art when other artists (predominantly black) are criminalised for exactly the same thing/He's white and male
This is a genuine problem. It's racism, and it's all kinds of hypocrisy to reward one person for their behaviour, while criminalising the other, based solely on the colour of their skin. However, this is a cultural problem, not an individual one. This isn't helped by attacking the artist who benefits. Bring up an awareness of it, definitely. Point it out. But you don't need to be hostile towards the people who can't control it.
Again, take constructive actions. Get involved in politics. Write letters to politicians. Form petitions. Raise awareness. On smaller levels, look into local arts projects and see how they systematically exclude certain types of people. Raise awareness of gentrification of areas and what that means for many types of people. Notice who profits from the system being organised in this way.
Banksy made graffiti art popular and a lot of businesses are employing artists to decorate their buildings as a result. But they predominantly only want graduate artists. Why? It systematically cuts out a large proportion of artists. Write to them. Ask why they wouldn't hire an artist who hasn't been lucky enough to afford a degree. Put pressure on them to change.
He built an art exhibition on that site when he could have done something useful, like build a home for poor people
He's an artist. He has the skills and experience and contacts needed to set up an exhibition. I doubt he does have the relevant contacts to get a building planned, approved and built. Even if he did, the cost of a safe, permanent building would be many times more expensive than a temporary 5 week exhibition, much of which is outdoors.
Even setting that aside - Dismaland has drawn people from all over the world to go to Weston-Super-Mere. That's insane. For those who don't know, Weston-Super-Mare used to be a popular seaside town before budget holidays meant you could go to Spain as easily and cheaply. Now it's a rundown town with a small population and a sizeable drug problem. It's not a place you travel to, you travel through it. I've gone through Weston-Super-Mare more times than I can count, but I've never stopped there. And now people from all over the world want to go there. Not to mention that where there are people, there's money. Dismaland is estimated to result in £6 million being spent in the area from the influx of people. An extra £6 million in 5 weeks. That's phenomenal. That's actually going to make a good deal of difference to a lot of local businesses in the area.
If he'd built housing there, even assuming that he got planning permission to build a permanent structure and everything else that's so unrealistic: how many people would have benefited? Maybe 4000, in a block of flats. How long would the benefits have lasted for? Who would be responsible for maintaining the housing? How are the people who're going to live there going to eat? What jobs are available in the area? It's run-down and has very little industry. It would be a temporary fix to a very longterm and complicated problem.
-------------
In short: are any of these reasons worth attacking an individual over? By all means, don't like his art. Discuss the issues surrounding the art. No art exists in a vacuum, and it's good to have these discussions. But can't we be civil about it? Can't we just have the courage to say we dislike something, without personally attacking the creator for it? Or can we at least direct the anger to where it actually belongs - upwards.
One last point that I didn't feel were relevant to any particular argument, but relevant as a whole:
Dismaland isn't filled with Banksy's work. He has 10 pieces in there. He's displaying work from other artists, including people of colour, and if anything, he's using his name as a way of promoting the exhibition. I can virtually guarantee you that only the most dedicated of art buffs would have trekked out to Weston-Super-Mare for an art installation if his name hadn't been attached, and it wouldn't have attracted national news, let alone international news.
He's marketable and successful
On the surface, this almost makes sense. After all, his art is openly and repeatedly critical of capitalism and how it hurts people, so how can an artist profit from the system they despise? Except the problem is that we live in a capitalist society. You can't dismantle a system from within without using the tools of that system. In order to change anything, you need power. And for the most part, in a capitalist society, power comes from money. Now, you can be critical of what Banksy does with his money - does he use it as a force to help others or not? But I haven't seen anyone touch on this, possibly because of Banksy's own anonymity. However, while researching, I did come across this story of how he helped a homeless man who was displaced by his art. I'd like to believe that's typical of his actions, but I have no way of knowing for sure. Just as I have no way of knowing that he doesn't do more actions like this.
By being marketable, his art is getting into the hands of the people who should, by all rights, be the biggest proponents of capitalism. Banksy's works have been sold in Sotheby’s in London (extremely upper-class auction house for art). They were selling for hundreds of thousands of pounds. Not exactly pocket change for the buyer - this is the kind of money that could outright buy a house in most areas of the country. These are people who have greatly profited from capitalism buying anti-capitalist art...there's a certain level of irony there. His success has given his anti-capitalist ideas a platform that he wouldn't otherwise have had. You can bemoan the evils of capitalism all you like, but if no one listens, what's the point? This way, at least people have thought about his art, and maybe gone on to learn more and work towards making a change. Art is a starting point for discussion, but no one can discuss it if they never see it.
So at the end of the day, this is an argument that goes roughly: I don't like that this artist gets paid for his art. I don't like that his career is successful and that he can afford to support himself on the back of his art. And that feels like nonsense to me, especially when said by the same people who openly support artists, stop art theft and think artists should be paid reasonably for their work.
He's popular/He creates art that takes no skill
Much like the argument above, it attacks him personally for something he has fairly little control over. It also comes with the implication that there are other artists more deserving. But mostly it smacks of 'hipsterism' to me. Liking things because they aren't mainstream, even if that means abandoning artists once they achieve a level of notoriety. And that's ridiculous.
However, the implication that other artists deserve more attention is actually a good one. Because I can't argue. Art is subjective; people are never going to agree on who the most 'deserving' artist is. There are almost certainly artists with better ideas than Banksy, and greater technical skill than Banksy. It's not fair that he makes a lot of money off his work while others don't. It's not fair that there are artists who are living in abject poverty while he isn't. The world isn't fair.
If you really feel that strongly that other artists deserve more attention/exposure/money, then rather than hate on one artist, and tear him down, love on the artists you like. Elevate them up. Blog about their art. Buy their work. Recommend them to friends. Make a positive difference.
He creates art that's too easily accessible
I've seen this alarmingly often. It has the smack of artistic gatekeeping to me. My inability to agree with this argument is the same reason I really dislike a lot of modern art. I really hate what I feel is pretension around art. I have a degree in film, and I can't stand this. This is a very personal one for me, and I'm fully willing to admit I'm wrong on this point.
Basically, if you have a message in your art, and it's an important message, why would you ever want to make it more difficult to understand?
Modern art is apparently full of hidden depths and means. I use the word 'apparently', as I wouldn't have guessed without reading the caption besides the piece. There's actually a lot of pieces that I wouldn't have guessed were art without reading the captions besides the pieces. That's okay. I've long known most modern art isn't for me. I'm still convinced that the modern art world is something of an 'emperor's new clothes'-style delusion, and that by interpreting new 'meanings' to a piece, we somehow aren't meant to see its lack of skill or originality or intent.
All this means that I really don't mind that an artist's work is easy to understand. At least I am sure that they had a meaning and a driving force behind creating it.
He is celebrated for making art when other artists (predominantly black) are criminalised for exactly the same thing/He's white and male
This is a genuine problem. It's racism, and it's all kinds of hypocrisy to reward one person for their behaviour, while criminalising the other, based solely on the colour of their skin. However, this is a cultural problem, not an individual one. This isn't helped by attacking the artist who benefits. Bring up an awareness of it, definitely. Point it out. But you don't need to be hostile towards the people who can't control it.
Again, take constructive actions. Get involved in politics. Write letters to politicians. Form petitions. Raise awareness. On smaller levels, look into local arts projects and see how they systematically exclude certain types of people. Raise awareness of gentrification of areas and what that means for many types of people. Notice who profits from the system being organised in this way.
Banksy made graffiti art popular and a lot of businesses are employing artists to decorate their buildings as a result. But they predominantly only want graduate artists. Why? It systematically cuts out a large proportion of artists. Write to them. Ask why they wouldn't hire an artist who hasn't been lucky enough to afford a degree. Put pressure on them to change.
He built an art exhibition on that site when he could have done something useful, like build a home for poor people
He's an artist. He has the skills and experience and contacts needed to set up an exhibition. I doubt he does have the relevant contacts to get a building planned, approved and built. Even if he did, the cost of a safe, permanent building would be many times more expensive than a temporary 5 week exhibition, much of which is outdoors.
Even setting that aside - Dismaland has drawn people from all over the world to go to Weston-Super-Mere. That's insane. For those who don't know, Weston-Super-Mare used to be a popular seaside town before budget holidays meant you could go to Spain as easily and cheaply. Now it's a rundown town with a small population and a sizeable drug problem. It's not a place you travel to, you travel through it. I've gone through Weston-Super-Mare more times than I can count, but I've never stopped there. And now people from all over the world want to go there. Not to mention that where there are people, there's money. Dismaland is estimated to result in £6 million being spent in the area from the influx of people. An extra £6 million in 5 weeks. That's phenomenal. That's actually going to make a good deal of difference to a lot of local businesses in the area.
If he'd built housing there, even assuming that he got planning permission to build a permanent structure and everything else that's so unrealistic: how many people would have benefited? Maybe 4000, in a block of flats. How long would the benefits have lasted for? Who would be responsible for maintaining the housing? How are the people who're going to live there going to eat? What jobs are available in the area? It's run-down and has very little industry. It would be a temporary fix to a very longterm and complicated problem.
-------------
In short: are any of these reasons worth attacking an individual over? By all means, don't like his art. Discuss the issues surrounding the art. No art exists in a vacuum, and it's good to have these discussions. But can't we be civil about it? Can't we just have the courage to say we dislike something, without personally attacking the creator for it? Or can we at least direct the anger to where it actually belongs - upwards.
One last point that I didn't feel were relevant to any particular argument, but relevant as a whole:
Dismaland isn't filled with Banksy's work. He has 10 pieces in there. He's displaying work from other artists, including people of colour, and if anything, he's using his name as a way of promoting the exhibition. I can virtually guarantee you that only the most dedicated of art buffs would have trekked out to Weston-Super-Mare for an art installation if his name hadn't been attached, and it wouldn't have attracted national news, let alone international news.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)