Too Many Girls?

It has been over a year since the show Young Justice, shown of Cartoon Network's DC Nation block has been cancelled, but it took a while for the actual reason why to come out. Below is an excerpt of an interview with Paul Dini, a writer and producer working in television and comics, talking about why the show was cancelled. I have bolded some of the quotes that particularly stand out.

"Below are excerpts from the conversation, via Vi at Tumblr agelfeygelach.
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. Do. Not. 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 f***ing 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 f***ing umbrella with the f***ing 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 f***ers 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, 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, 'F***, 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."

When it gets to the point where animated shows are made only to sell toys, you have to wonder what is going on in the industry. Obviously merchandise makes up a large portion of profits, bt animation was never made to do that - the purpose of animation was to entertain, to create something that people enjoy. Pulling a show because too many of the wrong people enjoy it is a ridiculous idea; surely it would make sense to look at the audience you have, to see what attracted them to your show, and to use that to your advantage - it isn't like there haven't been shows for girls before that have been successful. Or better yet, stop gendering shows. It might be easier to target a specific demographic when it comes to marketing, but that does limit your audience - especially if your marketing aims at a specific demographic, then yes, that specific group of people will buy your toys. If you have gained an audience you didn't intend to, then why not extend marketing of your toys to them as well, rather than just writing them off straight away? Misogyny is present throughout every entertainment industry, with boy female creators and audience holding less value than their male counterparts so it shouldn't be as much of a surprise that this kind of thing is happening, but if people are producing animation soley for profit than entertainment purposes, then it definitely makes sense to take advantage of having a wider audience than try to cut it back down.

As Anjin Anhut, writer at http://howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/ says:

"There never was a moment in the history of geek media, when geek media was advertised equally to men and women and there never was a moment in the history of geek media, when it was equally culturally acceptable to be interested in geek stuff for men and women.Women never ever got as much marketing attention as men have and women always have been treated as an oddity in geek culture, with all the barriers that come with that. There never was a time, when toy cars and robots and construction toys have been made equally accessible to little boys and girls. The same goes for safe spaces and tech education." ( Howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/12/marketers-fear-female-geek-2/)

The fact is that women and girls are not inherently going to like or dislike certain things put in front of them in the media; if they grew up with, say, Action Man having been marketed to them all their lives, then maybe they would buy Action Man as much as Barbies. If people grow up constantly being told that certain things are made for them and certain things are not made for them, then yes, they will naturally gravitate towards the things they are told are for them, because people feel like they should act as their culture and society tells them to. If people grown up without the idea of gendered products and actions, then they would not be biased towards one interest or another.

Obviously it would be impossible to change things just like that, but people are slowly taking notice of changing audiences and the desire for inclusion. There is still an audience out there who try to oppose it, because with all of the best things in entertainment tailored towards them, why would they want change? But these are no longer the only people who will influence the industry in the future, and we can only hope that enough people care to try and change it for the sake of the huge audience they aremissing out on.