Thoughts on Harassment in the Industry

For my protest and revolution class, we were urged to write a manifesto on something we were passionate about. After hearing the recent accusations of various animation executives, this is what I came up with.

    November 21st, 2017, headlines screamed that John Lasseter, Head of Disney animation studios, was taking a leave of absence caused by a number of sexual assault allegations.

    Horrific details were revealed, revealing he wasn't allowed to attend work parties without supervision. One female executive stated that “she didn’t realize part of her job description was “being groped by John Lasseter.” More and more stories, after a company wide ‘day of listening,’ made his 6 month sabbatical start to look like a longer sentence.

    “You were there in your place, being a girl,” said a former Pixar employee who described Lasseter whispering in her ear. “It minimized your point of view. There’s a reason that more women haven’t been creatively successful there. The leadership are men. They relate all in a certain way.”

    On March 4th, 2018, Coco won the Oscar for best animated feature film.
Just days afterwards, producer Darla K. Anderson formally stepped down from her position, after 24 years.

    What's more haunting,  Amid Amidi, Editor and Chief of CartoonBrew.com states - “One of the most damning revelations that has emerged out of the entire sordid Lasseter scandal is that his “missteps” were widely known to people who worked at the studio, and the studio’s management spent years protecting Lasseter at the expense of his victims.

    Disney president Ed Catmull production chief, Andrew Millstein, and corporate communications chief Zenia Mucha, among others, described him as “a crazy-horny 13-year-old who you have to keep in check all the time. But there’s no No. 2 for John. He’s the beating heart of Disney Animation and Pixar. He’s a genius. Nobody can do what he does.”

    How can an industry, which pushes for dreams coming true, freedom of expression, the good guy winning, pump out these sexist, overly entitled in positions of extreme power? The same is true across the film industry, as more and more names make come to light, the list grows longer by the month.

    Just last year, over 200 female and gender non-conforming animators signed an open letter to end harassment in the industry, after Chris Savino at Nickelodeon received over a dozen claims of harassment. This is a male dominated industry, and always has been. The solidarity between those that exist in contrast from that is growing, and must continue to do so.

    “We are tired of relying on whisper networks to know who isn’t safe to meet with alone.”

    Last year, Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon apologized for his own disgusting actions, sexual harassment and ‘Treating women like garbage.”
This past January, longtime disney supervising animator, Dylan Brown, was accused of similar allegations.

This is a problem. This has been a problem, for a very long time. 

    In 2015, I came across the book Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson. It told the story of an unnamed woman, from the Ink and Paint department at old school Walt Disney studios. One of the Animators would spend his breaks bothering her, overstepping quite a few lines. In response, attached thumbtacks to her bra, and covered up with a sheer shirt which let him to an incredibly sharp wake-up call.
    Its chilling that conditions haven’t improved since then. The very beginning of the history of animated film, and conditions, power dynamics, relations, are just as bad.



sources:
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/disney-pixar-john-lasseter-leave-allegations
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2017/10/20/ustoo-female-animators-tell-studios-this-abuse-has-got-stop/784794001/