{"id":1990,"date":"2012-10-02T09:09:10","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T13:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=1990"},"modified":"2012-10-02T09:37:48","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T13:37:48","slug":"girls-gone-missing-halloween-and-monster-movies-for-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/girls-gone-missing-halloween-and-monster-movies-for-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Girls Gone Missing? Halloween and Monster Movies for Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

Margot Magowan runs the blog Reel Girl , which focuses on gender equality in the media (mostly on the representation, or lack thereof, \u00a0of girls) does a regular feature called “Girls Gone Missing”. With Halloween just around the corner, she did a Halloween edition<\/a> of this feature and shared her impressions of the three Halloween\/monster movies for children out this fall, ParaNorman, Hotel Transylvania<\/em>, and Frankenweenie<\/em>. noting that in all three movies there is a major skew toward male leads and secondary characters, with almost no female characters in any of them. Margot and the Reel Girl<\/em> community see this as a major problem, not just for these movies but for children’s movies in general, because there’s no reason that some of these male characters couldn’t be girls without the story changing at all. To paraphrase one of her commenters, does the story in ParaNorman<\/em> change that much if Norman becomes Norma?<\/p>\n

There are so many girls who love Halloween and monsters and movies about them, who grow up to be women who love Halloween and monsters and movies about them. So why should they be left out of the story, or a token character? But it’s one thing to identify the movies girls are missing from and another to offer options that show strong girls taking the lead. So, I asked Margot:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What do you recommend as far as monster movies intended for kids, then? As the editor for MonsterLibrarian.com and the mother of a monster-loving boy with a sister willing to go along for the ride I\u2019d be interested in what you DO think are good choices. We held Monster Movie Month<\/a> in July, which, while mostly at choices for adults, was inspired by my son\u2019s love of the classic movies, and the three of us picked some movie choices<\/a> parents could share with their kids, but I\u2019d love to know what you think. Halloween is our busiest month of the year and our children\u2019s section<\/a> is one of the most popular parts of our site and that\u2019s something I would love to share there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Margot asked the Reel Girl community for suggestions<\/a>, and here are some of the titles they came up with. <\/p>\n

Coraline
\nScooby Doo (the animated series)
\nThe Corpse Bride
\nA Series of Unfortunate Events
\nHocus Pocus
\nKiki’s Delivery Service
\nMy Neighbor Totoro
\nMonsters vs Aliens
\nThe Addams Family
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a Halloween title, I’ll toss in the Charlie Brown Halloween special. <\/p>\n

The general portrayal of women in horror movies also came up in the discussion, but that’s kind of irrelevant to my question (although it’s something I would be happy to start an individual post for if you want). For those of you reading this, do you agree with their choices for Halloween and monster movies that have gender equality (or at least strong female characters who haven’t been sexualized)? Do you have additional suggestions? I would love to hear what you think!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Margot Magowan runs the blog Reel Girl , which focuses on gender equality in the media (mostly on the representation, or lack thereof, \u00a0of girls) does a regular feature called “Girls Gone Missing”. With Halloween just around the corner, she did a Halloween edition of this feature and shared her impressions of the three Halloween\/monster<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1180,1138,707,1258,155,1260,919,1261,1005,997,1263,1262,1256,1257,1147,1143,1259,1114],"class_list":["post-1990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-series-of-unfortunate-events","tag-childrens-movies","tag-coraline","tag-frankenweenie","tag-halloween","tag-hocus-pocus","tag-hotel-transylvania","tag-kikis-delivery-service","tag-monster-movie-month","tag-monster-movies","tag-monsters-vs-aliens","tag-my-neighbor-totoro","tag-paranorman","tag-reel-girl","tag-scooby-doo","tag-the-addams-family","tag-the-corpse-bride","tag-women-in-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1990"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1996,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1990\/revisions\/1996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}