Scratching the Celluloid Ceiling: Women's Labor as Technology in the Industrialization of Animation at Disney from 1928-1945
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Date
2024-08-07
Authors
Mastrostefano, Stephanie
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Scratching the Celluloid Frame: Women’s Labor as Technology in the Industrialization of Animation at Disney from 1928-1945 challenges the pervasive myth that women did not have a pivotal role in animation’s industrial development in the United States. By examining how cinematic technologies, labor practices, and social attitudes about women defined—and sometimes subverted—the shape of women’s labor in animation, I show that the Golden Age of Animation was also a golden age of women’s progress in the industry, arguing that white women made substantial contributions to the aesthetic and technological development of the art form. By naming the whiteness of women working in animation during this period, this project aims to shift conversations on animation's industrial development towards institutional constructions of gender and race that were reified by gendered divisions of labor and occupational hierarchies. This project traces the liminal positions that women occupied in the first twenty years of American animation’s industrialization to locate the social, political, and technological influences that drove hundreds of women to the industry in the 1930s but did not lead to its first mainstream female director until 2013.
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Keywords
Animation, Disney, Labor, Technology, Whiteness, Women