Patrones malvados en Disney. Una reflexión crítica sobre las figuras malvadas de la colección “Los clásicos” (1937-2016) desde un componente estético

Resumen: A modo de introducción, la productora de animación Disney tiene un gran potencial, desde sus inicios en la década de los años veinte del siglo pasado, para transmitir unos mensajes ideológicos y doctrinales en quienes consumen sus largometrajes, generalmente quienes se encuentran en la infancia. De entre la pluralidad de ideas destaca la mentalidad maniquea que construye la sociedad en base al binomio bondad-maldad negando en la cotidianeidad comportamientos intermedios a esta dualidad; todo ello recurriendo a la imagen como recurso visual de comunicación. Esta aparece como constante en las figuras malvadas que diseña para sus largometrajes y se relaciona con el concepto de estética, es decir, la apariencia que presenta este grupo de figuras en relación con el término de maldad. Concretamente, recurriendo a una metodología de investigación cualitativa, la Investigación Basada en Imágenes (IBI), se pretende como objetivo conocer cuáles son los mensajes sesgados que Disney dispersa en la sociedad y erige como verdades absolutas en 4 grupos de dibujos viles: principales, secundarios y ayudantes de cada sector (lacayos de figuras malvadas principales y secuaces de figuras malvadas secundarias). Este colectivo se encuentra en una colección de 60 largometrajes de animación llamada “Los clásicos” que se ubica temporalmente entre 1937 y 2016. Se especifica un análisis de la estética centrado en: la fisonomía, el color, la condición y la capacidad de metamorfosis. Con todo, se recurre a una cuantificación de los resultados para compararlos en los resultados y así establecer conclusiones con quienes ejercen el mal en la muestra seleccionada. Estas manifiestan que la construcción maniquea de las figuras es más severa en quienes ejecutan un rol malvado principal. Palabras clave: estética, Disney, figura malvada, cine de animación, colectivo infantil. Abstract: Introducing, Disney has great potential, since its inception in the 1920s, to transmit ideological and doctrinal messages about people who consume its feature films, generally in childhood. Among the plurality of ideas, the Manichean mentality that builds society based on the goodness-badness binomial stands out, denying behaviors intermediate to this duality in daily life; using the image as a visual communication resource. This appears as a constant in the evil figures that it designs for its feature films and is related to the concept of aesthetics, that is, the appearance that this group of figures presents in relation to the term evil. Specifically, using a qualitative research methodology, Image-Based Research (IBI), the objective is to know what are the biased messages that Disney disperses in society and establishes as absolute truths in 4 groups of vile drawings: main, secondary and helpers from each sector (lackeys of main evil figures and minions of secondary evil figures). This group is in a set of 60 animated feature films called "The classics" that is temporarily located between 1937 and 2016. An analysis of aesthetics focused on: physiognomy, color, condition and the capacity for metamorphosis is specified. However, a quantification of the results is used to compare them in the results and thus establish conclusions with figures who exercise the evil in the selected sample. These show that the Manichean construction of the figures is more severe in images that perform a main evil role. Keywords: aesthetics, Disney, evil figure, animated cinema, childhood.

An Eye-Tracking Analysis of a Restaurant Menu

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of color on eye movements while viewing a restaurant menu. Heat maps suggest that participants tended to view the middle and upper-left parts of the menu the most, regardless of color upon first exposure. Gaze plots showing the order of fixations indicated that color may have impacted initial eye movements in the first 10 seconds. Participants tended to view the center of the menu first in the color condition and the top left portion of the menu first in the non-color version. These results may be useful when designing restaurant menus and understanding the role color may have when attracting users’ gaze.

Temporal integration and attentional selection of color and contrast target pairs in rapid serial visual presentation

Performance in a dual target rapid serial visual presentation task was investigated, dependent on whether the color or the contrast of the targets was the same or different. Both identification accuracy on the second target, as a measure of temporal attention, and the frequency of temporal integration were measured. When targets had a different color (red or blue), overall identification accuracy of the second target and identification accuracy of the second target at Lag 1 were both higher than when targets had the same color. At the same time, increased temporal integration of the targets at Lag 1 was observed in the different color condition, even though actual (non-integrated) single targets never consisted of multiple colors. When the color pairs were made more similar, so that they all fell within the range of a single nominal hue (blue), these effects were not observed. Different findings were obtained when contrast was manipulated. Identification accuracy of the second target was higher in the same contrast condition than in the different contrast condition. Higher identification accuracy of both targets was furthermore observed when they were presented with high contrast, while target contrast did not influence temporal integration at all. Temporal attention and integration were thus influenced differently by target contrast pairing than by (categorical) color pairing. Categorically different color pairs, or more generally, categorical feature pairs, may thus afford a reduction in temporal competition between successive targets that eventually enhances attention and integration.

Infants’ prospective control during object manipulation in an uncertain environment

This study investigates how infants use visual and sensorimotor information to prospectively control their actions. We gave 14-month-olds two objects of different weight and observed how high they were lifted, using a Qualisys Motion Capture System. In one condition, the two objects were visually distinct (different color condition) in another they were visually identical (same color condition). Lifting amplitudes of the first movement unit were analyzed in order to assess prospective control. Results demonstrate that infants lifted a light object higher than a heavy object, especially when vision could be used to assess weight (different color condition). When being confronted with two visually identical objects of different weight (same color condition), infants showed a different lifting pattern than what could be observed in the different color condition, expressed by a significant interaction effect between object weight and color condition on lifting amplitude. These results indicate that (a) visual information about object weight can be used to prospectively control lifting actions and that (b) infants are able to prospectively control their lifting actions even without visual information about object weight. We argue that infants, in the absence of reliable visual information about object weight, heighten their dependence on non-visual information (tactile, sensorimotor memory) in order to estimate weight and pre-adjust their lifting actions in a prospective manner.

Changes in surface roughness and color stability of two composites caused by different bleaching agents

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of two bleaching agents (10% and 35% hydrogen peroxide) on the color stability and surface roughness of two composites, one nanohybrid and one nanoparticle. Specimens were polished, aged, stained, bleached and polished again. The action of the bleaching agents on the composites was analyzed using a profilometer (surface roughness) and a spectrophotometer (color stability). The effect of polishing the composites on the surface roughness and the resumption of the composite color was also evaluated. The results were analyzed statistically by ANOVA and Tukey's test at 5% significance level. The analysis indicated that the nanohybrid composite was more affected by staining. The bleaching agents were not able to promote bleaching of either composite over the evaluation period. Surface polishing returned nanohybrid composite to its original color condition, which did not occur for the nanoparticle composite. Additionally, polishing did not return the surface roughness of either composite to its original value. It may be concluded that polishing surface after bleaching should not be the treatment of choice, as it was not possible to reverse the roughness of the composites to their original values, suggesting that a more extensive and irreversible degradation might have occurred.

Distinct Cortical Activation Patterns during Long-Term Memory Retrieval of Verbal, Spatial, and Color Information

Slow, DC-like event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the scalp of 30 healthy young adults to test the hypothesis that distinct cortical areas are activated when different types of information are retrieved from long-term memory. Three groups of 10 subjects each were first trained with associations between either pictures and spatial positions (spatial condition), pictures and color patches (color condition), or nouns and nouns (verbal condition). All three experimental conditions were completely analogous with respect to the established associative structure, the learning procedure, the performance criterion, and the retrieval test that followed 1 day after learning. Slow event-related brain potentials being recorded during retrieval had a significantly distinct topography. The maximum of a DC-like negative wave was found in the verbal condition over the left frontal, in the spatial condition over the parietal, and in the color condition over the right occipital to temporal cortex. These results are consistent with the idea that memory representations are either “down-loaded” into or directly reactivated within those cortical processing modules in which the same material was handled during perception. Response times, on the other hand, revealed no difference between the three retrieval conditions. In each case RT increased monotonically, if more items had to be scanned. Thus, while the ERPs suggest the involvement of different cortical processors during memory search the response times suggest that a sequentially operating scanning mechanism applies to all of them.

Effects of Color and Trait Anxiety on State Anxiety

A 2 (trait anxiety) × 4 (color) factorial design was used to determine the effects of red, green, yellow, and blue on state anxiety as a function of high and low trait anxiety. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was used to assess both trait (A-Trait) and state (A-State) anxiety for the 10 students assigned to each of the eight treatment combinations. High A-Trait students were significantly more anxious while viewing blue, red, and green than were the low A-Trait students and blue produced significantly more state anxiety than did either yellow or green. These results are consistent with state-trait theory and indicate that the effects of color on state anxiety may be confounded with trait anxiety unless the levels of A-Trait are equivalent for each color condition. The role of cultural and individual differences in the relationship between color and emotion and implications for research are discussed.