FROZONE
I thought I'd start with one of the few 3D animated characters of colour: Frozone. There is an entire post about the number of black characters in 3D or 2D animated film/television, but I'll get to that at a later date.
Frozone is a very typical solution to a very standard problem that studios face when they make a family-centred story: "We have an all-white family and all-white supporting characters, so how do we get some diversity to keep the non-whites happy and not look like we're stuck in the 1950's?"
The answer: The minority best friend!
"Yes, that's the ticket. The little kids will like him and the white protagonist will love him like a brother. He'll play a useful counter-balance and even assist the hero on his journey. That will silence the critics and keep everyone happy!"
Before I go on, I don't think The Incredibles would have been a better movie, if we went into Frozone's past or his personal life. He's not the main character and all supporting characters must
support the story and not distract from it. As a character, I really liked Frozone when I saw him in the film. I thought the character was well written, well acted by Sam Jackson, and well animated. Given what they had to work with, I thought the job was tremendously well done and very believable.
However, Frozone is a
type of black character that I see repeated over and over:
- emphasis on being 'cool' (as opposed to having a real personality)
- emphasis on being good with women (we are introduced to him as a kind of super-hero 'playa')
- no family of his own
An interesting note is that his 'woman', is never seen and is only defined as a loud, back-talking shrew. While funny, is that not a popular stereotype of black women? The typical portrayal of the black female as a head-snapping "no-he-di'in't" ignorant person. She grills him on why he needs his 'super suit' instead of thinking that her husband has a duty that is calling to him and she, as his life-partner, has a job to support him.
There is no "Go get 'em tiger" for black heroes. Just bickering.
To the average person, all of this went completely unnoticed. To me, I am long to see what a black family might look like in animated form. Instead, I see animated film after film, with no black characters on the horizon. And the sad truth is that this is not going to change. The average middle-class black family just doesn't exist in the world of representative media. I don't blame studios, because they just write what they know. It is the responsibility of black creators for us all to do our part to help build the genre.
One last addendum: I don't believe that a movie HAS to have diversity. Every story has its own dynamic and usually reflects the creators. If you look at the makers of movies, the content of movies is really not surprising. Part of the artistic organ is personal expression. Part of what makes movies and storytelling great is being able to see and understand yourself in different terms. The frustration I feel is that when what I experience is never represented, I feel that I obviously don't exist or that no one else feels the way that I do. The other problem is that when black characters are consistently reduced to these terms, non-black people can naturally fall into the assumption that this is representative of the 'other'. Especially if they feel that they are accurately represented, then there is a natural assumption that the other representations must also be accurate also.
Well, that's it for my first outing.
Next I take aim at....DONKEY from Shrek.
This is going to be ugly...Norbit ugly.
AE.
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