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Brain Diving - You Fight like a Girl

Hmm, that's a good point there. I wonder what sort of toys girls nowadays are playing with if the lion's share of them are watching the live-action Disney tween sitcoms that everybody's been trying to imitate.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

I'm not so optimistic about that. Even when Avatar proved to be popular among boys and girls, Nickelodeon was unhappy because the viewership didn't match the demographic they wanted. And despite repeated and vocal requests, Mattel refused to create figures of any of the female characters. They were convinced boys would not buy them, and apparently they didn't like the color of all the money girls and women would've been willing to spend. Baffling.

I think that's more Nickelodeon's thing. Nickelodeon pulled Invader ZIM off the air because it, too, was getting the wrong audience. (Granted, the primary reason was because it was Nick's most expensive show up to that point to make, but it WAS turning a profit with its high ratings numbers.)

because it's a new channel, and new channels NEED to take in anything they feel could even slightly work in order to gain a foothold to survive the rough first few years. Nickelodeon is an old veteran among children's programming and can afford to pick and choose what it wants and whom to aim it to. The Hub cannot.

Avatar:TLA actually has a much larger and more dedicated fan base** than either Ben 10 or the new animated Transformers series, but A:TLA's demographics, like anime fans, tend to skew older than what the toys Nickelodeon are aiming for.

It didn't reach the demographic they wanted. Well, actually it did, but it went beyond just drawing boys, and that seemed to bother them. But it did get excellent ratings (and won the 2008 Kids Choice Award) on Nick, pulling in 3-5 million viewers, because girls were watching too. Part of the reason the toys didn't sell as well as they'd hoped, I think, was because half of the character set was missing, i.e., the girls (and girls weren't the only ones who wanted Katara and Toph and Azula). If you want to collect the Justice League, and they only offer Superman and Batman and Green Lantern, what's the point of getting any of them?

Yes, the lead was a boy, but the female characters were indispensable to the plot and the powers that be couldn't see past the "boys series feature boys, period" mindset to market to the people who wanted to buy stuff from them. That's why I was saying I wasn't optimistic about action series with girls in the lead here. The people in control don't seem to want to risk any new marketing strategies, and selling boy heroes to boys and Barbie princesses to girls seems to be as far as their thinking will take them.

enurtsol wrote:

Avatar:TLA actually has a much larger and more dedicated fan base** than either Ben 10 or the new animated Transformers series, but A:TLA's demographics, like anime fans, tend to skew older than what the toys Nickelodeon are aiming for.

I'm gonna say no way to that. Ben 10 has a much large fanbase from what I've seen. Ben 10 and Avatar skew similar demographics. And no way if you think shipping is exclusive to anime or Avatar or whatever I've seen people crazily ship the silliest pointless shows like Phineas and Ferb and Fairly Odd Parents. Timmy/Trixie and Timmy/Tootie go to wars, man.

Now, I'd be willing to admit Avatar's fanbase is more anno-I mean vocal, but that doesn't mean much. Ben 10 fans certainly don't go around toting it as 'better than REAL anime' or anything silly like that.

Also I see tons of adult Transformers Animated/Prime fans. Transformers in general has a really old fanbase. Look at all of them doing toy reviews on YouTube.

And having panels doesn't mean much. I've seen panels for the stupidest stuff at conventions; like some guy's furry comic he made. Anyone with money to blow can host a panel.

Gonna disagree. You're really over estimating Avatar, especially if you think 3 million viewers is something worth bragging about. Nickelodeons other shows got 7/8+ million on average, and their more popular shows went into the 12+ million range.

It's more likely the toys didn't sell because there weren't many fans of it.

Sailor S wrote:

littlegreenwolf wrote: blahblahblahnonsenseBS It's because of idiotic rants like yours that so many people roll their eyes at feminists. But, by all means, keep raging. Maybe you would be happiest finding your Amazonian village and becoming a lesbian. Give it a try, and don't hurry back.

By all means point out what was so idiotic and we can discuss where you went wrong with your interpretation.

Growing up I could never connect to Wonder Woman because as a little girl I couldn't really understand all her hate of men, and she was always so serious and, well, just seemed mean. Instead I latched onto the likes of She-Ra, Batgirl, Sailor Moon, and heck, why not say it; Xena. I never looked back at Wonder Woman until recently because I always felt that Western Superhero comics failed me in femininity compared to the Japanese creations done by women (I'll keep Sailor Moon a prime example of this).

Now when I read Wonder Woman I can't help but feel I should have given her another try when I was in my teens and still developing ideas of what feminism is because in my 20 my ideas seem too concrete and not at all budging for what Wonder Woman represents. I'm sure they'll evolve over time as anything else, but I don't think they'll lean towards Wonder Woman.

I always wondered if there was some sort of symbolic significance that Sailor Moon, an adolescent, was fighting the sexually mature Queen Beryl. I didn't think about it much until I watched the first episode of Cutie Honey, where a similarly-aged protagonist fights similarly mature women. And as I pointed out in my review, The Strike Witches lose their powers at age 20, just like members of Morning Musume. What is it about being a teenage girl that is symbolically magical in Japan? I think this book contains some Freudian explanation that I've been looking for. American fighting girls, like Wonder Woman, are more often the mature type.

Oh yeah, I agree. I didn't mean to give off this impression, it's just in the example of Wonder Woman, her creator just... disgusts me. There's plenty of women characters I LOVE created by men, and feminist ones can be created by men, there's no doubt to me about that - I see it all the time, but Wonder Woman... She's always been this weird bizarre creature to me. I want to love her, but in a way she's so tragic, trying to represent so much when really it's all based on this one man's theories on female strength and domination to the point she just becomes a walking talking theory and nothing more. Feminism of course has many interpretations, but Wonder Woman fails from the get go by outright defining them via her creator.

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I've read a few interview blogs/posts about some would-be animators who pitched their ideas to big networks like Nickelodoen and Cartoon Network. They were literally told that 'girls don't sell' and if they wanted their show greenlit they'd be forced to change the lead into a boy. That's a bit depressing to know... I guess that's why all the cartoons on TV star a boy unless it's Barbie or based on a doll line. I guess those are okay since they know Barbie sells.

I do not think America is completely sexist when they say 'girls don't sell', if they honestly though they could make cash doing something they would jump on a bandwagon and completely milk it for all it's worth in a heartbeat. So I do genuinely believe them if they say that female figures do not sell. They have marketers researching this stuff all the time.

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Part of the reason the toys didn't sell as well as they'd hoped, I think, was because half of the character set was missing, i.e., the girls (and girls weren't the only ones who wanted Katara and Toph and Azula).

Well, if by "America" you mean "Corporate America" then you are right. They simply go where the money trail is. The question rather is if it is us, the consumers, who are unable to accept a female hero. I'd like to think we can, it's just that every female creation that gets greenlit is a shadow of its former self by the time it's off the factory line. A male hero does not get nearly the same degree of executive scrutiny, thus they're more able to retain unique, non-politicised characteristics that would interest the average consumer. It's a catch-22. Girls don't sell, but when you finally greenlight one that you think can, it's only after you've drained the character of any individualistic quality she ever had.

While I realize Shee-Ra has been mentioned, I'm surprised she hasn't gotten MORE comments seeing as she was the "female He-Man" (much more directly than Wonder Woman was a female equivalent for Superman or Batman or whatever). Also, I know GIJoe was a "boys" show and had lots of dudes, but no love for Scarlet or Lady Jay? Both of whom were major characters during the run of the show (and had their own action figures).

So has anyone of you read the reviewed book? If you did, what's your take on it?

"In one of the Marx brothers' films, Groucho Marx, when caught in a lie, answers angrily: "Whom do you believe, your eyes or my words?"

This apparently absurd logic renders perfectly the functioning of the symbolic order, in which the symbolic mask-mandate matters more than the direct reality of the individual who wears this mask and/or assumes this mandate. This functioning involves the structure of fetishist disavowal: "I know very well that things are the way I see them /that this person is a corrupt weakling, but I nonetheless treat him respectfully, since he wears the insignia of a judge, so that when he speaks, it is the Law itself which speaks through him". So, in a way, I effectively believe his words, not my eyes, i.e. I believe in Another Space (the domain of pure symbolic authority) which matters more than the reality of its spokesmen. The cynical reduction to reality thus falls short: when a judge speaks, there is in a way more truth in his words (the words of the Institution of law) than in the direct reality of the person of judge - if one limits oneself to what one sees, one simply misses the point."