Pretty as a picture

by Doctor Science

Part of the fannish web blew up this week because of an interview with Lino Disalvo about Disney's upcoming animated movie, Frozen. One thing that's different about Frozen is that there are two female leads in the "Princess" position (critical for Disney marketing purposes), Elsa and Anne. Disalvo said:

Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, 'cause they have to go through these range of emotions, but they're very, very — you have to keep them pretty and they're very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they're echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna (Kristen Bell) being angry."

Many people have taken serious umbrage at the implication that animating girls is *hard* because they all look alike, or something -- especially given that the two female leads in Frozen look a *lot* like Rapunzel from Tangled:

The animated gif at the top was made by tumblr user moopflop, as part of a very wide-ranging discussion. I slowed it down and made it smaller for display here. The three comparison images were assembled by me.

I had the feeling that Disalvo was trying to say something specific that he couldn't articulate, so I asked for help. A reader who's a professional animator explained:

What he's trying to say is, in every Disney movie I can think of, all of the women are very contained and "pretty." It's more how seriously you want the audience to read the character.

Think about Aladdin. Genie goes off model almost constantly, he's the comic relief. Aladdin is a bit of a silly character, so he goes off model sometimes. Sultan is also a bit silly, so he also goes off model. Jasmine almost never goes off model. She's a more serious character. You're not supposed to think she's goofy, she's a calm collected woman.

The more serious the character, the less crazy they can let the animation get. Disney movies like to portray their women very seriously, they're almost never off model and they're more realistic. Pocahontas, Mulan, most of the male characters were a little goofier and had sillier proportions, but the women were always on model. It's just how Disney has always done things.

There are exceptions. Villains, like Yzma, in The Emperor's New Groove! She goes off model all the time! She's supposed to be comic relief though, you're not supposed to take her seriously. Pacha's wife was almost always on model, because she's a more serious character.

It's just the aesthetic of Disney movies, it's always been this way. The two main women in Frozen are the typical "pretty" women, like Jasmine, Pocahontas, Cinderella, etc. etc. that cannot go off model or they risk being too silly looking.

Bottom line, animating stiff, contained subtle characters is difficult because they're more realistic. Realistic animation is always harder than goofy bouncy animation.

"On model" and "off model" refers to how closely the animation sticks to the original character design. "Off model" animation can be bad, when it means "this doesn't look like the character any more", but it's also one of the great strengths of animation, because you can give characters more flexible and expressive faces and gestures than are possible in real life. But those exaggerations are almost always going to come across as funny.

These days, Disney's female lead-character designs can hardly be called "more realistic" than their male lead characters:

Left to right, top row: Rapunzel from Tangled, Anna and Elsa from Frozen. Bottom Row: Flynn from Tangled, Kristoff and Hans from Frozen. Image assembled by me.

The girls' faces are all very similar, with the same enormous eyes, wide smiles, wide cheeks, and very small chins. It's so very doll-like that I wonder if the similarities come from designing the characters for merchandise, to easily be turned into dolls. The male designs, though heavily stylized (and similar), look much more like real human faces.

Now, it's quite possible to make a female character with the lead role without making her stay "on model" so much. For instance, in Legend of Korra, the eponymous heroine has a wide variety of facial expressions:

Image by drowningoatmeal.

many of which go off-model in the style of Japanese anime. But even in Korra the character who's supposed to be "the beautiful one", Asami, stays on-model a lot more than the heroine does:

Image by 5th-element-love.

It seems to me that Disney, by having a "house style" where heroines are "on-model" and "serious", creates characters for girls to identify with who aren't as *interesting*. Girls identify with the Princess Brand™ characters because they're always, infallibly pretty, something the culture constantly tells us to aspire to. But to always be pretty is to lack a full range of emotions: Korra is a much more *interesting* character than any of the Disney Princess Brand™ girls.

Even with the doll-like restrictions on female face shapes, Disney is capable of creating girls with more characterization, as in the two female leads from Wreck-It Ralph:

Sgt. Calhoun and Vanellope. Images cropped for comparison by me.

So the idea that Disney finds it intrinsically difficult to make interesting and different female characters is clearly bollocks. What we do see, though is that neither Calhoun nor Vanellope is "serious" in the way the Princess Brand™ heroines are: they have character and emotions, but they aren't part of the Princess Brand™ marketing juggernaut. They aren't consistently *pretty*. It's not female characters that are hard, it's Princess Brand™ characters.

Sprog the Younger pointed out to me that part of the appeal of the Princess Brand™ for girls is that they *are* so "serious*. In particular, you don't laugh at the Princesses™ the way you laugh at the wackier leading man, which is actually reassuring for girls of all ages -- we all have to face, at some point, being laughed at for *being a girl*. The Princess Brand™ heroine is the *perfect* girl, who may be mildly wacky but is never embarrassingly wrong -- her mistakes, if any, are in good faith. In contrast, The Younger says she HATED Lilo and Stitch "because when you are the same age as Lilo, her mistakes are less cute and more embarrassment-squick."

Fans were already dubious about Frozen because, though supposedly based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, almost nothing from the story is in it. Most importantly, Andersen's story is about a girl who makes a heroic journey to rescue a boy from an enchanted castle, helped mostly by girls along the way; Frozen appears to be about a girl who makes a journey to rescue her sister, helped by a boy and some wacky animals (and ... things).

Not to mention that Frozen continues Disney's recent trend of having human characters who are white as the driven, heh, snow -- even though there are lots of ways to imagine the story differently.

Before looking at this topic, I'd never really appreciated how restrictive the concept of "pretty" is, how much it limits you from expressing interesting feelings. It's one of the several points Adele Waldman overlooked in her recent New Yorker piece on The Problem of Female Beauty, which is really about the problem of female beauty for *men*, especially in literature. I realized some years ago that the adjective "beautiful" (or, for that matter, "pretty") in a description does not describe: it tells us how the viewer reacts, but it doesn't give any information about how the person actually *looks*. Specifically, it's a way for a man to describe a woman without being interested enough in her to actually *describe* her.

I'll close with a selection from perhaps my favorite Disney animated movie, and one that proves that they can make a movie about poor, non-white people in a non-standard family. And can talk about different ideals of beauty without having to actually *say* anything.
 
Direct YouTube link.

Comments

[Model62]

GIF is migraine inducing.

Below the fold?

[SarahJane]

“Animation is an intricate and complex art form,” a Disney spokesman told TheWrap. “These comments were recklessly taken out of context. As part of a roundtable discussion, the animator was describing some technical aspects of CG animation and not making a general comment on animating females versus males or other characters.”

taken from : http://www.thewrap.com/disneys-frozen-animator-female-characters-really-really-difficult/

Now shut the fuck up

[Doctor Science]

Model62:

I put it below the fold and slowed it down. How's that?

[cleek]

how could female CGI characters be more "technically difficult" to animate than male CGI characters? do their waspy waists break if you make them run too fast?

[hairshirthedonist]

I have a hard time telling many animated female-lead characters apart. There are a few types (something like Mary Anns and Gingers, maybe), but those falling within a given type are nearly indistinguishable to me. And I'm not sure it's limited to Disney animation. Male characters are far more distinct, as a general rule.

It seems the main differences among females are most commonly hair and eye color, except for the occasional ethnic character with dark(er) skin.

This is something I've discussed with my wife. (We have 4 young kids, so we've seen a lot of animated features.)

[russell]

Now shut the f*** up

well, that seems kind of harsh.

[wj]

["Pretty" or "beautiful"] is a way for a man to describe a woman without being interested enough in her to actually *describe* her.

Well, that is one possibility. But another is that it allows a man to say something about a woman without getting ripped up because what he chose to describe about her was something that "sexist". And let's face it, pretty much anything that a man says to describe a woman from the neck down is going to get him in trouble these days. (Hair and eyes are generally OK. Complection, maybe.)

You can maybe get away with something marginally more descriptive than "pretty." But going further than "petite," or maybe "sturdy," is just not on.

If any of the ladies here would like to give counter-examples, by all means feel free. Especially if you can offer up something where the characteristic described has more than one option. That is, I could say X, but if that is not accurate I have some option beyond "not X".

[liberal japonicus]

Hmmm, I think using Japanese animation to refute the on model/off model distinction is a bit problematic, because Japanese animation generally allows all characters to go off model almost any time. It is something that is slowly working its way into western animation (if you watch the Teen Titans cartoons, you will often see them going off-model), but the notion that serious characters don't do that is really a strong tendency.

There is something interesting, though, in that in the Teen Titans, iirc, the one who goes off model most often is Starfire, who, as you have noted earlier, is the one that had the problematic reboot. So I'm wondering if the refusal to go off model is sexist in some way? It may be, but it is buried in a network of assumptions about what people want to see that it may be a lot more difficult to get people to see the connection. It may point to how 'pretty' is a very restrictive concept, but it also deals with the general Western reaction to characters who go off model.

The explanatory parallel I would draw is that we have words that everyone uses in a particular way. If someone chooses to use that word in a different way, they might be able to get away with it IF they are totally consistent in the way that they use it and can get that meaning across to others. For example, Eric Shanower, in his 'Age of Bronze' comics, uses (if I am understanding this on model/off model distinction correctly) the off model i.e. cartoony style, to portray mythic events, (see this cover) while using the on model style to portray what is happening at the time. (see here) This works because Shanower is absolutely consistent, and he never confuses the two. But it works because there is a consistency. That the Disney brand (which is hugely consistent across the canon, especially in the newer releases) is totally consistent could be viewed as sexist, but if it is, it is a sexism that is similar to what is invoked when people talk about the patriarchy, not something that can be changed by an animator deciding to go his or her own way, but something built into the system. This rightly famous Hofsteader essay about sexist language points to the same thing, I think. I do think that there is some merit in the suggestion that keeping female characters on model is related to product merchandising, which again points to this being a lot more deeply rooted in the system.

Your tribute to Lilo and Stitch is interesting. If you take the first movie alone, I'd agree with you, but if you take the whole package, which would include the sequels and the TV series, (and possibly the Japanese reboot(?)), I don't think that is the case.

On the topic of on/off model, the TV series did an interesting thing, which was to bring in characters from other Disney series (Kim Possible, The Proud Family, Recess and maybe a few more) as guest characters for single episodes, and in bringing them in, kept them in 'model' from the shows they came from, which I think was a first. I'm curious how much that bothered viewers, I found it very distracting (though I'm not a fan of the TV series for a number of other reasons as well). Still, my view is a pretty bizarre one (not particularly a manga/anime fan, but been seeing them for so long, that my western sensibilities might not actually be in place), so it should be taken with the requisite amount of salt.

[Doctor Science]

wj:

I guess I wasn't clear. I'm really talking about the use of "beatiful" as a descriptive adjective in *fiction*.

To find an example, I went to Amazon's best-sellers list and started Looking Inside. From Stephen King's Doctor Sleep:

She was a presence, and that was putting it mildly. Rose the Hat was six feet tall, with long legs in tapered white slacks and high breasts inside a t-shirt branded with the UNICEF logo and motto: Whatever It Takes To Save a Child. Her face was that of a calm queen, serene and untroubled. Her hair, now unbound, tumbled halfway down her back. The scuffed tophat cocked on her head was jarring, but otherwise she was the most beautiful woman Andi Steiner had ever seen.

Note that this is from a woman's POV, supposedly.

This passage gives very little information about what Rose's face *looks like*. Is she white, black, asian, mixed-race? Does she have a dainty nose or a strong one, thin arched eyebrows or thick straight ones, black or brown or blonde hair? High cheekbones or none, wide mouth or sweetly curved?

You get none of that because King isn't interested in describing *Rose*, only her effect on the viewer.

[hairshirthedonist]

This passage gives very little information about what Rose's face *looks like*.

(...)

You get none of that because King isn't interested in describing *Rose*...

Rose's face, or Rose?

[Nigel]

Disney just has issues. They have a house style which is grounded in the middle of the last century, and it's a little difficult to get beyond that.

Compare with Pixar (eg Jessie in Toy Story 2&3, or the Parrs in the Incredibles...); Dreamworks up to a point (Chel in The Road to Eldorado - one of my daughters' all time favourite movies); even 20th C Fox (Anastasia)...

Disney is simply reactionary.*

(& Disneyland is an abomination, IMHO...)

*Though daughters did like Mulan, a lot, & remain fond of many Disney efforts.

[Nigel]

Ah, The Emperor's New Groove...
I'd forgotten that one. Could have been a great movie; as it is, just slightly strange though rather likeable.

I'd no idea at the time, but Wikipedia now explains why:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperors_New_Groove#The_Sweatbox

(Notably, Dindal also made Cats Don't Dance, which was also slightly off the wall.)

[Hartmut]

'Beautiful' has the advanatage that it is sufficient to describe the effect on the viewer without having to go into detail. People considerably differ in what they see as the apex of beauty and giving details may cause dissonance in a reader ('It says she is beautiful but now I learn she has red hair and green eyes. I hate redheads and find them ugly'). Also studies indicate that lack of distinctive features ranks high in beauty perception. People shown a selection of different faces typically rank high (but not top) the artificial one that was created by electronically mixing all the others equaling out the distinctions. They differ on who is the most beautiful but agree on who comes second place. But how does one describe such a face that is defined by the absence of distinctive features?
I might add that beautiful and likable can be two very different things. I mean only looks here. There are unquestioned beauties that I dislike on looks alone and non-beauties that I would like to know personally just based on their picture and I cannot usually say why. Admittedly I could not give a coherent description of myself even with a mirror in front of me that I'd get recognized by.

[Hartmut]

You may ignore my opinion totally when you hear that I think Kate Winslet never looked better or more likable than when wearing owl-glasses in 'Enigma' ;-)

[bob mcmanus]

Azumanga Daioh 2004 i think

Girls und Panzers 2013 ...too fashionably moe, but still varied

1) Granted that CG characters design is still very rare in anime, and considered more difficult, but they still manage to put out hundreds of hours every year with cel, so it can't be about production costs

2) Sorry, just can't deal, after watching hundreds of female characters in anime those pictures at the top of the screen are unbearable, as images and in implication

3) This is why I no longer watch anything made in original English language. Everything foreign. This is one deeply sick culture.

[bob mcmanus]

A publicity poster from Shingeki no Kyojin, a huge hit from spring summer.

The faces are more adult and not as cute as GuP, and a little too uniform for my tastes, but still...they look a little bit like human beings. Note, at least one third are women, and they fight very well. A very violent anime.

I could go on forever. I suppose I should look for stuff in the Disney age-range, I watch only teen plus stuff. What is the age range of Disney target audience? Aww, who cares.

[liberal japonicus]

"This is one deeply sick culture."

This = ???

I keep threatening to write a post on Japanese sexuality and will continue to do so until someone actually wants it, but I hope this Grauniad piece by Ian Buruma might whet the appetite.

[liberal japonicus]

Oh, and Bob, your comment about Azumanga Daioh has me ask have you seen Yotsuba& and what do you think of it? I've got a student writing her graduation thesis aspects of the manga, and I'm curious to get another viewpoint on it.

[bob mcmanus]

Not a fan of Buruma, of course you can find horrible problems

So I went out looking for anime 12-yr-old girls and younger enjoy

Good Anime for 12s ...kids appear in comments, the OP was boring and ignorant. The kids watch more mature anime.

Tokyo Mew Mew Cast Lineup was a number one

So..what? Unacceptable to enlightened American audiences? Too sexualised? What do little girls want? What do we think is good for them?

[bob mcmanus]

I keep threatening to write a post on Japanese sexuality

Recommend Mark D West's books, especially Lovesick Japan 2011

[liberal japonicus]

Thanks Bob!

[Hartmut]

I like GuP, although until now I am limited to youtube with fansub. I have my doubts that there will be a German release and hope for a proper British one but it may take years (and I do not want to go for bootlegs).
The series lives off the contrast between the 'typical' animation of the girls and the hyperrealistic surroundings.

[clew]

I have a Theory about this. Better! It's probably testable! It's a Hypothesis!

Part A, from Scott McCloud's _Understanding Comics_: realistic drawing of a character *reduces* reader identification. Me, I think this is because we *feel* like our eyes are popping out or our faces are changing shape, when we're emoting strongly. Convincing unrealistic comics depict internal as much as external states.

Part B: Female characters are drawn more on-model.

Synthesis: We aren't supposed to identify with the female characters as having internality. Possibly we aren't supposed to have internality either, if we're supposed to identify with someone who doesn't show any.

Marina Warner is good on this, too.

[Brett Bellmore]

I watch a lot of these movies, having a 4 year old in the house. Frankly, taking "Tangled" as an example, your hypothesis fails. Rapunzel's face is, if anything, more exaggerated in it's expressions than Flynn's.

I'd go back to the toy hypothesis: Disney makes quite a bit of money selling dolls, or the rights to manufacture them, and the sort of facial features they use on their female leads are well suited to dolls.

But, because of these exaggerated features, they have to be more in control of the character, more in model, because they're skirting that "uncanny gap" that roboticists talk of.

Flynn, having a much more realistic face, doesn't have this problem.

[Nigel]

Synthesis: We aren't supposed to identify with the female characters...

In the case of Disney, I'm inclined to see that as an unintended positive consequence.

Btw, Wreck-it Ralph was executive produced by Pixar's John Lasseter, so either it's atypical, or else Disney is slowly being transformed from within.

[liberal japonicus]

Rapunzel's face is, if anything, more exaggerated in it's expressions than Flynn's.

But that is also a product of the narrative. Rapunzel, as the person who has never experienced life outside her castle, has to react more than one would expect of Flynn, who portrays the cynical voice of experience. You could take this as disproving they hypothesis, but to me, it points to the fact that there are multiple factors that effect this.

Frex, if you [are forced to] watch any one of the Tinkerbell sequels, you'll note that ALL of those characters stay on-model. While merchandising is driving those sequels more than anything else, the fact that all the characters are women might also have something to do with that.

[Brett Bellmore]

Wy wouldn't they stay on model? They're computer graphics, they're generated BY the model.

No, all the characters aren't women. I can think of at least four male characters off the top of my head, one of whom is rather important to the plot in "Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure". (Oh, yeah, I'm having to watch these. Over and over...)

[Countme-In]

"(Oh, yeah, I'm having to watch these. Over and over...)"

It's amazing the way echos on a site like this mirror the commonalities of our child-raising experiences, Brett.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's worth recalling, occasionally, that politics is a rather small part of life, and family a rather large part. Ideally the former would be a smaller, and the latter still larger.

[Hartmut]

But some will draw the line at Disney. :-)
(Cue Wednesday Addams)

[liberal japonicus]

Why wouldn't they stay on model? They're computer graphics, they're generated BY the model.

As I understand the process, the model generates the images and then human animators go thru and move them 'off model'. This is because totally on model makes them fall victim to the 'uncanny valley'. By adding that small human touch, it helps address that, though not completely. The lower the budget, the more likely they will turn it more to the computer.

And while I don't want to be making gendered comments, surely you've noticed that the male characters in the Tinkerbell movies are generally quite effeminate, which seems to be related to Disney's marketing.

[Brett Bellmore]

Really? To the extent it's true, ("Clank" is effeminate?) I think it's more likely related to the fact they're, you know, fairies.

[liberal japonicus]

Sorry I didn't explain myself clearly. You said

I can think of at least four male characters off the top of my head, one of whom is rather important to the plot in "Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure".

and I pointed out that because of the way the films are structured, they generally want everyone to be 'on-model' (and I can't think of who goes off model in the series, though Tom Hiddleston is voicing Cabin Boy James in the upcoming one, who will grow up to be Captain Hook, so something might happen there)

That you argue it is because they're fairies, is sort of what I was trying to note (though I would say fairies/merchandise prototypes and maybe suggest that they were all in the same in-group that needs to be valorized, so that no one is really 'the bad guy') so I was disagreeing with your invocation of 'they're males, so your theory is wrong' . Of course, if you were just agreeing with Doc, sorry I didn't understand that.

[liberal japonicus]

Ahh, sorry, I see you were responding to my off hand comment that "the fact that all the characters are women might also have something to do with that" Sorry about missing that.

[bob mcmanus]

One thing I realized or wondered after a while, is if the portraits in the OP look the way they do partly because they are intended for 3-D or IMAX or intended to be adaptable to 3-D. I don't get out much so know nothing of that process.

I did with some comparison notice that the anime examples look spectacularly flat and 2-D. There is an old bit by Walt D himself on the nets showing how movement creates depth in 2-D animation, and then the changes Disney went through around the time of Bambi to get even more cinematic.

I generally disapprove of the cinematic (and 3-D) and approve of the animetic on moral grounds, seeing how moving into depth, moving into (or out from) the frame or scene is phallic, masculinist and imperialist.

Moving across the scene or frame in a horizontal flow is the essence of the animetic, and is feminist, pluralist, democratic.

Difference between being in the cab of the train looking forward (Zoom! I'm in control. I have the Power!) and looking out the passenger windows at the landscape sliding by. A moral difference. Maybe another time.

[Hartmut]

Why not going fully La Linea then? ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Linea_%28TV_series%29

[liberal japonicus]

Bob, wonder what your take on Flatland is.

[cleek]

moving into depth, moving into (or out from) the frame or scene is phallic, masculinist and imperialist

hmmm. my art classes in high school never mentioned this.

[Hartmut]

lp, there are two classic flatlands. One is the 'seen from above' that you mention but there is also one 'seen from the side' (the planet the characters live on is a circle not a plane, all males look clockwise, all females counterclockwise). I forgot the author's name but the idea got taken up by others too. That way is more interesting for practical* applications because it introduces gravity as a force to reckon with.

*as opposed to the primarily philosophical ones of the Victorian plane based one

[bob mcmanus]

I really don't have a position on Flatland.

hmmm. my art classes in high school never mentioned this.

Did they discuss icons, ME or Asian art?

Here's an article about one of my favorites Karatani Kojin and the Japanese discovery of landscape and the "West's" placing of Japan in its landscape

And an interview with Thomas Lamarre from whom I stole most of my ideas above. Also Lacan, Deleuze, Haraway, many kinds of Marxians.

I take the "movement-into-depth" thing very seriously, extending it into critiques of science, religion, politics...the ontology of seeking the Ultimate, the top or bottom of it all...as opposed to skimming the surface or overlapping surfaces...the cloacal flow versus the phallic architecture, fascism vs socialism....transcendance vs immanence, relational versus hierarchical, etc, ad infinitum. It all started with this book on Joyce vs Pound back around 1975.

My theory's gone critical, not terminal but dissolute.

[Pete Gaughan]

clew's Hypothesis A: "realistic drawing of a character *reduces* reader identification"

I say, it *can* and often *does*; but this is because "realistic" to a lot of animators for a long time meant looking like Final Fantasy, where all the faces are perfectly photoreal and completely boring. We're starting to get more "real" CG faces that provide those ID cues, but it's slow because it means work.

Check out the book Stop Staring by Jason Osipa (which I edited) on this topic.

[bob mcmanus]

1) I'll look at the book because I am interested in what animators think they are doing and how they do it.

2) Takahata Isao recorded the voices before the animation and then animated the faces to fit the dialogue in Only Yesterday. There are other examples, although it's rare. I didn't really like it, although it is a terrific movie otherwise. I can't say why it bothered me, but guessing, the uncanny valley is broad and deep

3) I don't even know the words to use:"Mimesis?" "photo-real?" but as clew said I think it may be unnecessary and even counterproductive. I have seen enough animation, as have most of us, to believe that how affects, emotional connection with characters or onscreen actions etc in visual art are very complicated and more art than science. Thumper made me smile. Obviously, obviously, animators understand this better than I do.

There is so much latitude, so many tools, and "realism" is to me one of the least important, and these tools and techniques are very culturally conditioned in what can be a pernicious and stultifying way. Bordwell and Thompson have spent a career showing that the Classic Hollywood style is entirely conventional, and in part created audience expectations.

Does "realism" sleep the imagination?

[Hartmut]

As Lovecraft put it, realist description serves the purpose of buying credibility (and building trust) for the nonrealistic stuff in the plot thus increasing the shock value when the author drops the anvil in the end. He even had a bit of an idea of uncanny valley (cf. The Whisperer in Darkness with the aliens that manage a close but not perfect imitation of a human which hits the protagonist harder than their true crustacean shape).

[liberal japonicus]

Bob, I would really really like you to write a guest post some time. Pretty please?

I'm trying to grapple with some of this for some research I'm doing with EFL students dealing with video presentations of an extended metaphor. In my data, it feels like students are missing particular aspects of the metaphor because of the way they look at videos, however, given the super saturation of western norm, I'm not really sure I can make that argument. I want to relate it to Ritchie's argument that the fundamental disjuncture between Japanese and Western films is that Japanese films have been viewed as a form of theatre while Western films began as a new form of photography which accounts for many of the differences and I'd be interested to hear your views on that.

[David Chisholm]

It is quite interesting that the pupils of all the eyes are greatly enlarged. A persons eyes become larger when experiencing or thinking of sexual excitement.
Don't believe me? Try this with your lover: look into their eyes from18 inches or so , then say, "would you like to make love"? Their pupils will immediately grow large.
If they don't your love is over!