Paul Dini Tells Kevin Smith about Hollywood’s Fear of Girl Cooties

And to think just earlier this week you had the New York Times calling Hollywood about their long time claims about not being able to lead movies. And now you have a big name comic and animated creator telling us exactly what Hollywood thinks of girls when it comes to shows targeted at kids.

Paul Dini is interviewed on Kevin Smith’s Fatman on Batman podcast this week and during it he explains from personal experience how Hollywood devalues female viewers and female characters. Dini was, of course one of the creators on Batman: The Animated Series. He has also written and produced a number of other animated shows including Batman Beyond in addition to writing comics. The Emmy award-winning creator also had a live-action show targeted to younger viewers call Tower Prep.

In the interview, transcribed by Agelfeygelach Dini talks about the change in how Hollywood views the audience for animation (this starts around 41:00.- bold is mine)

But then, there’s been this weird—there’s been a, a sudden trend in animation, with super-heroes. Like, ‘it’s too old. It’s too old for our audience, and it has to be younger. It has to be funnier.’ And that’s when I watch the first couple of episodes of Teen Titans Go!, it’s like those are the wacky moments in the Teen Titans cartoon, without any of the more serious moments. ‘Let’s just do them all fighting over pizza, or running around crazy and everything, ’cause our audience—the audience we wanna go after, is not the Young Justice audience any more. We wanna go after little kids, who are into—boys who are into goofy humor, goofy random humor, like on Adventure Time or Regular Show. We wanna do that goofy, that sense of humor, that’s where we’re going for.’”

Okay, so they want younger kids. But wait, it gets worse.

Dini talks a bit about Young Justice and how it had a sophisticated mythology (he calls them “Buffy style stories) but now they have to be, based on his interactions and observations, funny and … NOT FOR GIRLS… (warning f bombs ahoy!)

DINI: “They’re all for boys ’we do not want the girls’, I mean, I’ve heard executives say this, you know, not where I am but at other places, saying like, ‘We do not want girls watching this show.” SMITH: “WHY? That’s 51% of the population.” DINI: “They don’t buy toys. The girls buy different toys. The girls may watch the show—” SMITH: “So you can sell them T-shirts if they don’t—A: I disagree, I think girls buy toys as well, I mean not as many as fucking boys do, but, B: sell them something else, man! Don’t be lazy and be like, ‘well I can’t sell a girl a toy.’ Sell ‘em a T-shirt, man, sell them fucking umbrella with the fucking character on it, something like that. But if it’s not a toy, there’s something else you could sell ‘em! Like, just because you can’t figure out your job, don’t kill chances of, like, something that’s gonna reach an audi—that’s just so self-defeating, when people go, like… these are the same fuckers who go, like, ‘Oh, girls don’t read comics, girls aren’t into comics.’ It’s all self-fulfilling prophecies. They just make it that way, by going like, ‘I can’t sell ‘em a toy, what’s the point?’ DINI: “That’s the thing, you know I hate being Mr. Sour Grapes here, but I’ll just lay it on the line: that’s the thing that got us cancelled on Tower Prep, honest-to-God was, it’s like, ‘we need boys, but we need girls right there, right one step behind the boys’—this is the network talking—’one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, not as interesting as the boys, but right there.’ And then we began writing stories that got into the two girls’ back stories, and they were really interesting. And suddenly we had families and girls watching, and girls really became a big part of our audience, in sort of like they picked up that Harry Potter type of serialized way, which is what The Batman and [indistinct]’s really gonna kill. But, the Cartoon Network was saying, ‘Fuck, no, we want the boys’ action, it’s boys’ action, this goofy boy humor we’ve gotta get that in there. And we can’t—’ and I’d say, but look at the numbers, we’ve got parents watching, with the families, and then when you break it down—’Yeah, but the—so many—we’ve got too many girls. We need more boys.’” SMITH: “That’s heart-breaking.” DINI: “And then that’s why they cancelled us, and they put on a show called Level Up, which is, you know, goofy nerds fighting CG monsters. It’s like, ‘We don’t want the girls because the girls won’t buy toys.’

The rest of the discussion is along similar lines. Dini talks about how successful Adventure Time is with both boys and girls. It’s a bit repetitive and Smith is in full Smith zone but go give it a listen.

It was confirmed earlier this year that Young Justice, which had a huge female following and was considered to be way for DC to rejuvenate its animation, was cancelled due to the lack of toy sales. Of course, as many point out those toys had many problems including a price point that was generally thought of as ridiculously high.

I’ve had multiple discussions with others in comics about the perceived value/focus of boys vs. girls when it comes to superheroes. But really when you hear crap like this you wonder how these people can look their daughters in the face.

Girls buy toys. Girls like superheroes. As Kevin Smith says (and you know, who thought I’d be quoting him here) just because these people can’t "figure out” their job is not a good reason to discount the majority of the population. The NFL is raking in the cash because they figure out women will buy merchandise. So did Nascar. What is Hollywood smoking that they can’t get this?

(Source: howtoraiseageek)