Before I start this rant off, I would like to come with a disclaimer: no, I am not a misogynist and I have absolutely nothing against female cartoon characters per se. I would really like to say I am completely neutral, but that would be a blatant lie as there's probably something subconscious making me prefer male characters as main characters. Anyway, this is something that's been on my mind since I saw Space Jam a couple years ago (yeah I think I've seen it before that as well, but that must have been so many years ago I cannot remember it, and back then my sense of what's good entertainment was likely not very refined), and even though I know many have sentimental feelings towards it I can not refrain for saying what I feel, even though that particular movie is not the main subject in my post.
What I want to say is that the studios should stop adding nigh pointless female characters to act as girlfriends for famous cartoon characters. An example of that is Lola Bunny. No, I am not just disliking the current incarnation of her; I think the character should have never been created in the first place.
In Space Jam, she basically acts like an easily angered feminist, to exaggerate a little. No, it is not too much to ask that Bugs and the others should not use terms as "doll" when referring to her. But I don't like the way she reacts before they have even been acquainted for a little while. If she reacted that harshly about every potentially sexist comment from strangers I shudder to think what her blood pressure levels must be. And later, without too many events in-between warranting such a change of heart, she suddenly falls for him and they kiss. D'aaaw. No. It's more like d'oh. Saw that coming a mile away, and my suspicions of a flimsy and pretty stupid character were confirmed. Basically, the movie makers wanted to portray her (somewhat cliché in my opinion trying to create a "perfect" female) as a strong, intelligent and independent female, but ended up creating an athletically strong, but emotionally weak irrational airhead. If anything, the new Lola in TLTS is at least loony, but even there they botched what made her funny in the first place with the way she stalked Bugs, and made her his girlfriend, even though he reluctantly agreed to the arrangement. After that it seemed to me like they were just making her stupid, silly (and not in a fun way) and annoyingly happy about herself.
They continue the trend in The Looney Tunes Show with Tina Russo. Okay, she is definitely more likable than Lola, but even she seems to have been tacked on to Daffy just to complain about him and make him look stupid. Not good.
Now, I appreciate the fact that many other infamous cartoon characters have their respective girlfriends. Mickey has Minnie, Donald has Daisy, Porky has Petunia, but even those iconic female characters seems to be there mostly to create some sort of simplistic plot, not to be enjoyed on their own as truly independent characters. Minnie were first and foremost created as a damsel in distress, and has sometimes been used to shout at Mickey, often when there are circumstances where Mickey is not at fault. The latter is actually pretty clever since it shows that a story can have two sides and being angry at someone before you have heard their version is not commendable. Daisy were first and foremost created to shout at Donald, often deservedly so, but she seems to be even harder to please and creates a certain disdain for her as a person. Ah well, Daisy picks on Donald and Donald picks on his nephews, so I guess it's only fair that Donald gets a difficult girlfriend. Secondary she's also been used as a damsel in distress, albeit maybe less so than Minnie. Petunia... well, to be honest, I have not seen that many of the early Porky Pig cartoons, but my impression is that she's generally been used as a damsel in distress.
Those classic characters were mainly created as damsels in distress, and that's all fine and well considering the time they were created. But why tack girlfriends now onto characters that didn't have any initially? Why create Lola when she's either an airhead with attitude or an airhead with air scooped on air, with a sprinkle of air as toppings? Why create Tina, when Daffy can be made fun of perfectly simple without her? It seems like they were created just to even out the amount of males vs. females, or as a way to create a girlfriend complex for Porky, when the sad irony is that he was the only one with a somewhat regularly used mate (regular enough to warrant a name, at least).
Now, on a more positive note: Babs Bunny. She is, to me, the best female cartoon character I've ever seen while still being the de facto girlfriend of another great character. She is more character than girlfriend, while I can still enjoy seeing the relationship between them, especially since Buster takes it pretty lightly while Babs is driven to even higher amounts of craziness by him not responding as she wants. He doesn't treat her badly either; he just takes it cool. And while she has legitimate reasons to be mad at him at times, the reverse is also true since she "just can't help" herself. In other words, a balanced yet insane character which in a cartoon context makes perfect sense. She is more of a character than Lola will ever be, and in my opinion more of a character than what most of the classic females have been. Granted, I have not seen everything Disney have done with them since that would require a lifetime study. Anyway, Tiny Toons would have been more dull if Babs were not there than if Buster weren't there. But that doesn't make Buster deadweight either. With Tiny Toon Adventures, the writers have shown that you don't need an either-or situation with one character taking the entire backseat and another one grab all the attention and interesting character traits.
Another good female character I've seen very recently is Rebecca Cunningham from TaleSpin. She isn't Baloo's girlfriend, and tends to complain a lot, but at least she has genuine reasons to since she is his boss. In other words, a character that you need a bit of time to like since she can seem a bit annoying to begin with, but she actually has some faults of her own and depths to be explored character-wise. And not much of the damsel in distress thing going on there.
To sum it up: don't create girlfriends for cartoon characters that's been going strong for 50 years without any steady ones, and at the very least try to make them interesting and not just as cheap plot fillers and finger-pointers at the male characters. With TLTS they did try with Lola, and they should be applauded for the effort. But they still missed the main point: a character should be interesting enough on its own before pairing it with another character, at least if it's a revered and iconic one and they're not creating a clear side-character. If they actually want to give their iconic characters girlfriends as proper side-characters don't spend a lot of time on them and do as WB did with Petunia back in the day: fill one role and use them sparingly.
Well, that sums up the anti sentiment pretty well. Many female characters were created for cartoons just for the sake of gender diversity. Pearl Pureheart seems to exist solely to be rescued by Mighty Mouse. Smurfette has much the same function. The distressed damsel device is a common and alluring one across many media.
Pin the blame for this one on Walt Disney. Shortly after creating Mickey Mouse, he created Minnie to give Mickey something to do: woo the girl, rescue the girl, kiss the girl. Plus, the gender double standard is often in effect. It's funny when boys get into fights and receive amusing injuries. It's not so funny when it's a girl on the receiving end. There are very few female characters that take slapstick damage well.
I think that, for a very long time, Warner Brothers intended to give Bugs Bunny a female counterpart. For a while, they tried this out with Honey Bunny in the comics. But somehow, Bugs Bunny was too anarchic, footloose and renegade to be tied down. So for fifty-odd years, Bugs Bunny has been the ultimate bachelor, while Mickey Mouse has had an almost de facto marriage to Minnie.
Then, in 1994, the Walt Disney Company purchased ABC Television, and bulldozed "The Bugs Bunny Show" off the airwaves. Without a popular outlet, Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes started falling off the public radar. Space Jam was both a desperate effort to revive the Looney Tunes, and Warner Brothers exploiting the name recognition of Michael Jordan. It can be argued that the success of Space Jam was due largely to Jordan's appeal rather than to the Looney Tunes reboot.
Arthur has a point: Lola Bunny should not have been introduced into this "movie." WB suit Gerald Levin described it: "This isn't a movie; it's a marketing event." Years of a girl-bunny character sitting on the back burner, coupled with the Mia Hamm / Sheryl Swoopes zeitgeist of the time, produced an underdeveloped character shoehorned into an established troupe at the worst possible time.
I think the animators believed Lola would be a dead-end character, and expected Lola Bunny to draw fire and get swept under the rug. Which almost happened.
In the case of The Looney Tunes Show, the producers tried rebooting Lola as her polar opposite: loud, intrusive and haywire. Which isn't far removed from the origins of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, as it turns out. Tina Russo seems to have inherited Lola Bunny's original demeanor to complete the Quad. Observe: Bugs Bunny: blue oni male / Daffy Duck: red oni male / Lola Bunny: red oni female / Tina Russo: blue oni female. This ultimately pairs Bugs Bunny with his ideal counterpart, much the way Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam did. Therefore, to my mind, these female characters work well within the show's core dynamic.
Perhaps "The Girlfriend Complex" will always be a device for introducing female characters. Some will not evolve much past a plot device. However, it appears that competent directors can make female characters "grow the beard" and become amusing and rounded characters in their own right. As always, time will tell.
I think OEB has summed it up well, but just one point of correction - it didn't start with Minnie Mouse (who was created in tandem with Mickey, in that it was implicit that Mickey would have a girlfriend). Disney gave Oswald the Lucky Rabbit two girlfriends (but not at the same time!) - first Fanny the rabbit, then a cat (unnamed, apart from being Sadie in Sagebrush Sadie, and later called Kitty by Lantz), besides starting him off as a married man (Poor Papa, the film that Universal were not happy with).
Because of the nature of the cartoons - spoofing the early live action films - the hero-villain-girl set-up was inevitable.
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Back by popular demand - "La-la-La-la.. I can't hear you!"
I think that we'll see some progression when we see some more female cartoon characters who are actual characters in their own right. By which, I mean female character who are created to be stars themselves and not just girlfriends or taking secondary roles to male characters. Although it's not as though there haven't been any. Kim Possible, Pepper Ann, The Powerpuff Girls and Totally Spies! come to mind. And then of course more recently, there's My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
Interestingly, 2 recent examples of animated shows with female leads who are stars in their own right are both aimed at preschoolers; Nick Jr's Dora the Explorer and Disney Junior's Doc McStuffins.
The other thing to consider is the fact that all of the Golden Age theatrical shorts were produced, written and directed by men exclusivley, so naturally, many cartoons end up having a male outlook by default. One sure way to have more cartoons shown from a female prespective is to have more women working within the industry; more female writers and female directors.
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Procrastinators unite....tomorrow.
(This post was edited by SpaceDemon on Sep 8, 2012, 9:33 AM)
I think most females characters, in the current atmosphere of the toon universe, can only be successful as "independent" characters in an either comedy or ensemble (action) format, o maybe a blend there-of. That is, of course, discounting the superhero genre specifically.
To wit- the cast of Avatar: TLA was fully half female on the protagonist side. later on even including another female before it included another male. The villains of the show, from the second season or so onward, were basically all female as well (yeah, I know the big baddie in charge was a guy, but he was never actually a real part of the show until basically the end). Even continuing that trend, the current Avatar: the Legend of Korra is centered on a female as the main protagonist. Both of those shows are a blend of action and comedy (the former is definitely an much more even blend than the latter), but to cite a previous example, that's the same case as with both Kim Possible and The Powerpuff Girls. Even in something like Young Justice, there are independent females characters, but again, we're discounting the superhero genre for now.
Maybe someone else can come up with examples of independent females in a leading or co-leading role in a show that isn't strongly comedy or ensemble action based. Or for younger kids, for that matter.
In the case of <b>The Looney Tunes Show</b>, the producers tried rebooting Lola as her polar opposite: loud, intrusive and haywire. Which isn't far removed from the origins of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, as it turns out. Tina Russo seems to have inherited Lola Bunny's original demeanor to complete the Quad. Observe: Bugs Bunny: blue oni male / Daffy Duck: red oni male / Lola Bunny: red oni female / Tina Russo: blue oni female. This ultimately pairs Bugs Bunny with his ideal counterpart, much the way Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam did. Therefore, to my mind, these female characters work well within the show's core dynamic. <br> <br>Perhaps "The Girlfriend Complex" will always be a device for introducing female characters. Some will not evolve much past a plot device. However, it appears that competent directors can make female characters "grow the beard" and become amusing and rounded characters in their own right. As always, time will tell.
I think you let them off too easily. We already have one obnoxious character to haunt Bugs in Daffy; we don't need another one with a tad more stupidity and less scheming. Basically, they have created Lola as another nuisance which makes her even in her current form seem like a waste of space. In my opinion, they either need to spend less time on her, or make her a more interesting character.
Which brings me to the general point I was trying to make. All characters aren't created equal. Some are made to be side characters, appearing in a couple episodes and a few cameos here and there. Others are created as a pretty major part of the premise, and they need to spend time on them or there will be very little consistency. Many of the girlfriend characters of yore should really be side characters, but they have been shoehorned too often into similar situations. And back to my Lola sentiments: she could be a pretty good side character. Right now, she's a pretty bad major character.
We already have one obnoxious character to haunt Bugs in Daffy; we don't need another one with a tad more stupidity and less scheming. Basically, they have created Lola as another nuisance which makes her even in her current form seem like a waste of space. In my opinion, they either need to spend less time on her, or make her a more interesting character.
Which brings me to the general point I was trying to make. All characters aren't created equal. Some are made to be side characters, appearing in a couple episodes and a few cameos here and there. Others are created as a pretty major part of the premise, and they need to spend time on them or there will be very little consistency. Many of the girlfriend characters of yore should really be side characters, but they have been shoehorned too often into similar situations. And back to my Lola sentiments: she could be a pretty good side character. Right now, she's a pretty bad major character.
There lies the basic conflict: Warner Bros. no doubt is feeling a certain amount of pressure to make characters like Lola and Tina major players for the sake of political correctness. The Looney Tunes have been a boys' only franchise for decades, and in this era of political correctness, this sort of thing tends to be frowned upon.
The 'token girlfriend' syndrome is prevalent on other shows as well: one of my few complaints about Cartoon Network's Regular Show, though it's an otherwise enjoyable program, is that its' only 2 female regulars, Margaret and Eileen, are merely token would-be love interests who only appear occasionally rather than full-blown characters in their own right who regularly take part in the show's wacky antics. One of the reasons Lola was added to Space Jam and was given such a meaty part in the move (and consequently, the LT franchise) was so there'd finally be a female character deemed worthy of rubbing elbows with Bugs, Daffy and the others. Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck were similarly elevated beyond 'just girlfriend' status in the Disney canon around the mid-to-late 80's, a practice which continues to this day, with to be said, some success, no doubt due to how Minnie and Daisy don't have the polarizing characterizations that Lola possesses. In my travels along the internet, I've found that Lola Bunny is one of those characters that it's impossible to be neutral about: people either love her or they loather her.
Now I myself have been a long-time advocate of gender equality in cartoons, and have long been waiting for more prominent female characters in animation. Arthur does make a valid point: not all characters are created equal, some are meant to be major players and other are meant to be minors. Unfortunately, in the case of many female toons, especially in male-centric or supposedly gender-neutral cartoons, the latter is too often the case: female characters are typically conceived as girlfriends first and characters second. case in point: Ninja Turtles: the Next Mutation (not technically a cartoon, but based on a cartoon franchise, which attempted to introduce a 5th female Turtle, Venus DeMilo (a bit late in the game for a new team member, I thought, since by that time TMNT had already went through a long-running TV series and 3 movies); she herself may not have been a bad idea, but the way they chose to inject her into the show's mythos was not: once Venus arrived on the scene, the show's writers enacted a new retcon rule that the 4 male Turtles were not actually brothers anymore (something which is core to the team's being and their relationship with one another) simply so there'd be the possibility that one of them could potentially date the new girl. Co-creator Peter Laird reportedly hated Venus because he felt she shook up the Turtles' mythos too much, my personal issue with Venus wasn't that she existed, but rather how she existed; again, why must female cartoon characters always be girlfriends first and characters second?
IMHO, the best way to avoid "the Girlfriend Complex" is to simply avoid creating girlfriends. When creating and designing a female character (males too, for that matter), the first question in your mind shouldn't be "Who's she going to date?", but rather "Who is she? What is she like? What are her likes? What are her dislikes? Who are her friends? Why are they her friends? Who are her enemies? Why are they her enemies? What's her favorite food? Favorite color? Favorite band? Favorite book? is she a dog person? Cat person? Is she straight? Gay? Basically asexual? Do these labels even exist in this show's universe?" etc.
By creating characters rather than archetypes, syndromes like the titular complex can be best avoided.
Am I letting the female characters on The Looney Tunes Show off too easy? Perhaps, since Honey / Lola and Melissa / Tina are recent additions to an ensemble that was almost exclusively male. Granted, the producers are trying to shoehorn female characters into the spotlight. However, they've chosen characters that have some background, rather than bolt-from-the-blue newbies.
Daffy Duck is one of Bugs Bunny's most established frienemies. The Hunter Trilogy has made this ironclad canon. However, no matter how thoroughly Daffy schemes, he cannot best the bunny. Ever. The only way that Daffy can ruffle Bugs is by being nice to him. Daffy is just that anarchic.
However, Lola Bunny can subvert Bugs Bunny, and has. She's inveigled him to the altar in Members Only, and tricked Bugs into declaring "I'm your boyfriend" publicly in Double Date. Lola has become the one character on the show so far who can actually outwit Bugs Bunny. So, Daffy Duck continues to be Bugs' chew toy, while Lola Bunny has evolved into a nuclear kitten. At the same time, Tina Russo makes a fine foil to Daffy, being completely impervious to his looniness. But rather than humiliating Daffy, Tina repurposes his drive in a very Bugs Bunny way. I stand behind my prior statement: these four characters complete a well-crafted quad that play off each other nicely. To my mind, that makes both Lola Bunny and Tina Russo interesting characters.
I'm not sure what more Warner Brothers can do with female characters; it'd almost have to be an original premise to accommodate so many débutantes. The Walt Disney Company has the female thing down pat, as SpaceDemon iterated. Lauren Faust and Craig McCracken are girl-izing Cartoon Network nicely. Japan loves females, be they moë or action girls. Ultimately, it comes down to how well the character is created / written / directed. A thoroughly crafted character needs no gender, that's just luck of the draw, so to speak.
I agree very much with Starburst's sentiments: it isn't really important what gender the character has, as long as the character is good. And also that they should probably stop creating girlfriends at all since they don't seem to handle the situation too well and don't evolve the character well enough while still spending inordinate amounts of time on her.
oneuglybunny, you do have some interesting points as well. I admit that I enjoyed the Double Date episode and consider it the best usage of Lola I've seen so far. But, and this is kinda important to me: in doing so, and also since they've generally made Bugs a boring straight man, they've almost given Lola the role of Bugs. Bugs is now the victim, while before he was the perpetrator. He's no longer a rascal and a pain to Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd and to some degree Daffy, but now he has to stand having both Daffy and Lola annoy and get him into difficult situations, while he is now too much of a good guy to take revenge, at least with regards to Lola. It's bass-ackwards I tell ya, with Bugs just walking around taking all this from his frienemy and his girlfrieneny and not doing crazy stuff himself. Now was this change REALLY necessary?
Not to take this discussion off-topic, but I have to agree with Arthur's comments on Bugs in The Looney Tunes Show. It's Bugs who should be annoying Yosemite Sam, not the other way around. Hopefully, in season 2, the shows' writers will bring the rascally version of Bugs back.
