Director’s Blog – Lisa Charlotte Davis
The campaign articulates the need for us to call out sexist jokes. This is a theme that featured in an animation we were commissioned to create by the Principal of a Durham University college, simon Forrest, which you can watch on our You Tube channel.
You might think – so what? It’s just banter.
But it’s worth stopping to consider what some of this “bants” reinforces. If we make jokes about who wears the trousers in a relationship, the implication is that a relationship is a dynamic that is inevitably built on control.
Again you might think, so what, people get that it’s just a joke.
Are you sure?
Is it not possible that there are people listening who take this as a green light for controlling their partner, under the impression that none of their peers would question them “wearing the trousers”?
Obviously no one wants to be the banter police! But it’s also important to recognise that we are social creatures – we exist in groups, in society, and our ideas are shaped by the messages all around us.
Original zine designed by Rupert Philbrick
Animation credit Sheryl Jenkins
With sound by Grace Stubbings
