#which before anyone @s me on if male characters can be visually infantalized: yes. they just need baby heads/faces and adult bodies

[show-us-kaidenshenandoah]

the western animation nerd in me wants to commission an editor (alas: i am broke) to edit together an amv of Taylor Swift's "Clara Bow" where

the Clara Bow section: would have a montage based off of Betty Boop. Because she was a caricature of Clara Bow (and also Baby Esther since Clara Bow copied her scat + baby-voice gimmick) and heavily influenced the infantilization of women in animation (for anyone who doesn't know: Betty Boop was purposefully designed to have a baby head and an adult woman's body to reflect her voice. infantalization in animation of women is based similarly off of "baby proportions in head" + "adult woman body" via peanut-shaped heads, big eyes, and facial spacing (space between nose and lips, a small bottom of the nose as well as a short height of nose, and many more) mixed with an adult body with breasts) Betty Boop, through globilization, famously impacted how Osamu Tezuka drew children and women (along with other influences, of course, but Betty Boop was one of them). So she impacted both Japanese animation and USA animation through trickle-down influences, but her biggest impact was probably on the iconic Ariel of the "Little Mermaid"

the Stevie Nicks section: would have a montage based off of Ariel from "The Little Mermaid". Betty Boop influence Glen Keane in his designs for her as he was trying to differ away from Disney's past princess designs (where you'll see stylization, yes, but also more adult-modeled facial structures) and one of the sources he looked for how to draw this 16 year-old girl was the design conventions (aka: infantilization) of Betty Boop, another famous teenage girl(? Betty's age is complicated and in constant flux depending in what age range best suits the story, but teenager is her classic statis) in western animation. From then on, seeing Ariel explode with popularity, they carry the same design philosophy to Belle and so on to success after success leading to the "Disney Renaissance" period. You can see other studios start to take note of this global success, as Dreamworks changes (it's wild seeing the facial differences between "Prince of Egypt" or "El Dorado" compared to any contemporary human-female characters from the studio) and you can even see Japanese animated properties start to change away from designing adult faces in its animated women (That generalization specifically is likely be correlation and not causation, I will fully admit, but globalization of media has lead to some fascinating influences and trends). Betty Boop was the start of this animation design trend of visually infantilizing women, but Ariel is the one who really catalysted and popularized the trend. Like. To the point that you'd be hard-pressed to not be influenced by her impact of not her, or "the Disney Princess Style" directly lmao

the Taylor Swift section: I'm not sure. I waffled between several different styles and properties ("Avatar: The Last Airbender", "Frozen", Miyazaki specifically from Studio Ghibli, "How to Train Your Dragon", "Steven Universe",... I think you could make an argument for having the Taylor Swift verse just be a montage of a bunch of properties) but I think for the infantilization throughline + chronology (as "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" came out before "The Little Mermaid") + western (USA specifically) animation stylizations of how women are designed... I think I'm going to go with the "Into The Spider-Verse" series? And say to cycle that tiny final verse with shots of all the series' female characters. because it truly has changed animation as we know it. Yet it still keeps with infant baby-heads for some of its female characters. Thankfully, not all of them as I think that would've been reductive to the movie series message about "Anyone can be Spider-man"; though even all the female adults have bigger eyes than the adult males which is one of the traits of infantalization. But it makes sense for both the teen boys and teen girls to have some infantilization in their faces since they are in-between childhood and adulthood. But yeah, the infantilization is the most prominent in Gwen and Penny. But it's cool. I don't see visual infantalization as bad btw, I just see it as a design choice that I like tracking the family tree of since it's a design choice that can be done in any style lol But I'm not confident in my choice of "Spider-verse", because it's female characters are not the main characters and I kind of want that to be an over-arching theme as well. But Gwen does sell a LOT and this series has impacted the animation industry's stylization in general (and hopefully also itd depictions of women and diversity ♡). So maybe I'll change my mind, maybe I won't. But the parts with Clara Bow/Betty Boop and Stevie Nicks/Ariel? I love that part of this concept so, so much, I'm cemented on those verses, and I am on CUSP of something with this idea lmao

like?? do you see the vision? idk, man. maybe i'll animate something or edit it myself (i won't; i'm too sickly rn lmao rip)

[lucky-clover-gazette]

season 4 first watch impressions

under the cut are my thoughts and my new overall series episode ranking (spoilers)

ep1 - uss callister

- by far my favorite of the season

- a perfect blend of comedy and tragedy 

- i would have loved this as a full movie

- honestly nanette is amazing, like she owns her smarts and sexuality and never gives up i love her

- male coder: “it won’t work, i’ve already tried”

nanette: “well i haven’t” HELL YEAH

- i honestly loved all the ‘crew’ characters, even the gym rat boss

- i especially enjoyed the speech from the boss to robert, where he’s like ‘i acknowledge that i was an ass, but dude, YOU PUSHED MY SON OUT AN AIRLOCK’

- also the fuckin casual dialogue between the monster and bad guy and the crew

- OHHH BOY AND THE FACT THAT ROBERT’S GONNA ROT TO DEATH IN HIS APARTMENT BECAUSE HE PUT ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ ON HIS APARTMENT DOOR, HELL YEAH

- ‘oh my fuck’ 

- 10/10, watch it now

ep2 - arkangel

- preface: the kid playing young owen teague and his family were actually really close with my family when he and my little sister were kids. it was goddamn surreal to see that lil guy talking about porn when i remember him being, like, eight. but nice going nick, keep kicking ass lil dude

- okay so this episode was... conflicting 

- the opener made sense, but in some ways i thought it was TOO obvious and indicative of the episode’s message and tone. i can’t help but wonder if it would have been better just starting like five minutes in

- her father looked like counselor healy from orange is the new black, so that was distracting

- okay jesus christ lady, i get that losing your kid is scary, but implanting her with ‘optional’ optic spying and censoring software is such a massive violation of her privacy. like, it’s one thing when she’s tiny, but how the hell are you going to feel okay with yourself as a parent when she’s an adolescent? 

- the blocking especially pissed me off. that’s so fucking dangerous. either this woman is just very stupid, or very desperate

- at least the narrative established that it kind of was the latter. when her father gets sick, the mother has to care both for both her father and her child. that’s a lot. but still not an excuse for such mental violation of a quickly-growing human being

- young edgelord and sara are fucking adorable

- sara’s self-harm and rage issues are not, however,, and i’m glad that her mother took her head out of her ass and ditched the tablet

- is it just me or is fifteen-year-old sara kind of an idiot? like i get it she’s grunge and artsy, and i loved her giving a treat to the dog, but she seems to be almost hanging out with owen teague because he deals, and not despite it. like i get that i’m supposed to buy that their romance has kind of a subtext of him ‘teaching’ her about things, but like the underage sex and coke are kinda yikes. i feel like he definitely should have had more restraint, and although what the mother does is royally fucked, he and sara are also both to blame

- all right, so the smoothie motif. what a great narrative tool. the miscarriage pill was the most clever part of the episode. sara’s reaction was very well-acted, and the standoff between her and her mother was intense as hell

- i liked that sara’s rage issues remained into adolescence. i was glad that the tablet got wreckt, but i can’t help but wonder if it would have been more effective to have her rage-smash it prior to her mother coming come, leaving the pieces for her to find. the actual beating up of the mother with the tablet seemed to literal, too much sinking in the message. there were moments in crocodile and hang the dj that were the same way. 

- the ending, with sara hitchhiking in some stranger’s truck, was very smart. the ambiguity of a young girl, on her own, hopping in some stranger’s vehicle, is powerful without much explanation. any parent would be horrified by this; that’s what i don’t think we actually needed to see the mother screaming sara’s name and bleeding to understand the horror of losing a child to the unknown

- this one definitely gives me the most complicated feelings of the season; on one hand, it had a lot of great devices going for it. on the other hand, it was over-written and at times trying too hard to be ‘black mirror.’ the grey morality and ambiguous ending reminded me of a literary short story, which i love in my TV.

- 7/10, watch it if you liked most black mirror episodes that weren’t san junipero

ep3 - crocodile

- ah yes, the ‘i watch black mirror to be fuckin ashamed of humanity’ episode

- idk man, i liked it. it was bleak, and fucked up, but i’m all about that downward spiral. i liked that the story kind of began in three different places and then tied together. just as i had with ‘hated in the nation,’ i love police procedural stuff

- also damn, it was freaky as hell to see the straight-laced white blonde soccer-mom type being a despicable murdering sociopath!!! like, gotta go kill an entire family of POC, including a goddamn INFANT, and then see my kid’s show, that’s great. i was so happy when she got what she deserved. 

- all right, so i had one MAJOR PROBLEM with this episode: why the fuck did they make the son blind? the guinea pig twist was so GOOD, and mia fuckin killed a BABY, they didn’t need to further modify that!!! this is another example of black mirror doing just a tad more than it needs to make the audience feel horrible. 

- okay black mirror, we get it, that song is your thing, but can you maybe slide it in as a less glaring easter egg? 

- 8/10, but only if you’re into dark shit and bad endings

ep4 - hang the dj

- not nearly gay enough

- seriously, the entire episode i was unable to focus on the main characters because i kept looking around this Tinder-esque 20′s dating paradise and saw ZERO GAY OR LESBIAN COUPLES. i’m so surprised by this, especially after ‘san junipero.’ at first i was like, maybe this is like society’s way of encouraging procreation because of population decline, but that wasn’t the twist at all. no reason for nearly everyone to be hetero

- THAT BEING SAID, i see you. bi amy. even before the girl partner, i was aware that she used ‘they/them’ pronouns when referring to hypothetical partners. i just wish we could have seen more gay couples in the background (for example, at the choosing ceremony thing, it coulda been two dudes of something)

- uh okay, so everyone loved this episode, and it was okay. some of the banter and jokes were funny and relatable, but honestly, this wasn’t *that* good. the plot wasn’t super original (reminded me a lot of ep1 of hulu’s ‘dimension 404′) and the execution was kind of suuuuuuper basic. like, black suited Enforcers with tasers? a massive matrix wall? the whole thing seemed so predictable and just... basic as hell. 

- but shit man, amy was cool. loved that character in a vacuum. 

- honestly if someone could explain the reasons for loving this episode, i’d like to hear them. because i just don’t get it, man. maybe it’s because i’m gay, or young, or single, or unexperienced... but i just wasn’t very impressed

- 6/10, not even fuckin close to ‘san junipero’ lmao 

ep5 - metalhead

- black and white seemed sort of pretentious, not gonna lie. i think i would have preferred the dirty palette of ‘white bear’ post-apocalypse

- i am all for these female protagonists this season. hell yeah

- soo those corpses in the bed were heavy, but i actually kind of wish we got to see more of that? like, the remains of humanity after the dogs attacked? also, more small explanations for the dogs’ attack would have been interesting

- loved the chase and fight scenes. i can see how they’d be boring, but the moments of conflict between man v. machine were fucking awesome

- K N I F E  D O G

- anyone else get serious farenheit 451 vibes?

- the teddy bear thing was dumb. i don’t think we needed to see what was inside the warehouse. yet another time black mirror threw in just a little more than we needed

- okay so belle keeps alluding to the fact that she has safe family members out there somewhere, so am i to believe that there is some place where humans are safe from dogs? if so, why the actual fuck did she leave? i can’t believe it was just because of fuckin teddy bears

- alllllll the david lynch vibes

- 7/10, but you gotta actually pay attention to the visual details to get the best parts

ep6 - black museum

- BOOOOYYYYYYY! this entire episode i waited for the fuckin shoe to drop and then SHE! DID! THAT!

- the amount of callbacks to previous episodes was,, nice,, but also it was kind of annoying??? and unnecessary? 

- the museum owner was reaaaaaalllly annoying, which is think was intentional. what a fuckin sleaze. in comparison, i thought that jon hamm in ‘white christmas’ was still a somewhat charismatic narrator, but this dude was just yikes

- so, the first story was... kind of a lazy reach? idk, it just felt kinda like a parody of black mirror itself. i get the entire ‘mad science’ vibe they were trying to evoke, but as opposed to the next story, this one had very little to say about human nature. black mirror works its best when it tells stories that use technology as a way to analyze humanity; this one really didn’t (we all already know we’ve got weird kinks)

- the second story was better, but, like, SUPER heartbreaking. poor carrie. i don’t think her husband should have done The Thing at all, honestly, I don’t believe that he couldn’t have seen what happened next coming. it’s like the arkangel mom again; either these characters are just SUPER present-oriented, or just fuckin dumb

- the most tragic moment in this season was ‘monkey needs a hug.’ i felt nauseous 

- okay, now for THE TWIST! the accent drop was a great touch, and i loved that she was poisoning him the entire time. also fuck white men and supremacists, and fuck the museum dude for enabling them. 

- the ending was great. i liked that her mom was chillin with her. the building blowing up was very tarantino. loved her a lot

- 8.5/10, boring in the beginning but the end is worth it 

and now.. 

BLACK MIRROR EPISODES RANKED (AS OF SEASON 4)

1. U.S.S. Callister

2. Nosedive

3. Hated in the Nation

4. San Junipero

5. Fifteen Million Merits

6. Be Right Back

7. White Bear

8. White Christmas

9. Black Museum

10. Crocodile

11. Arkangel

12. Metalhead

13. Hang the DJ

14. Playtest

15. The Entire History of You

16. Men Against Fire

17. Shut Up and Dance

18. The National Anthem

19. The Waldo Moment