eldabe | Pixar's Brave

Ok, I'm only going to make this post once. And then I'm going to be nothing but 100%, unmitigated enthusiasm for this movie. (Because it is exhausting to have to be critical of all of my media, all the time.)

Brave.

When it was first announced (The Bear and the Bow, working title.) I was nothing but glee. FINALLY, FINALLY Pixar was making a film starring a girl. It was long overdue, and with Pixar's reputation for quirky, different movies, I was psyched.

Then we started getting details. Scotland? Cool! That's different!

Everything else?

The story is about a princess. Instant horror. Pixar is finally making a movie with a female lead and it's a princess??? Really? REALLY?

Is that it? Is that really all modern girls can long to be? Is that the only role models we will hand them?

And don't give me the crap about her being a princess "rebelling against her role blah blah blah." That trope has been done so much that it's just as cliched as other princess stories. In fact, the only princess story I haven't see is one in which the princess embraces her role as a political leader an enacts change for the better in her society.

But a princess that likes to fight? A tomboy? DONE. DONE, DONE, DONE. They might do it very, very well, but what the hell. I was devastatingly disappointed.

And now? The Japanese trailer? (The first bits of real plot we're getting.) Oh great. She makes a deal with a witch. And it goes badly. No she has to save the kingdom. WOW. I've clearly never seen The Little Mermaid because I'm what? Stupid?

This story is like someone has gutted my Pixar and replaced it with a mockery. Pixar was always innovative and different, telling these untold stories. I'm not saying every Pixar movie was a masterpiece (Cars?) but quirky, fun and different were their bread and butter.

Now, not only are they taking a cliched story and animating it, but the setting is starting to smell. Not Scotland, that's fine, but medieval Scotland?

A quick scan of Pixar films shows a lot of forward thinking. They are firmly set in the present, five-minutes-into-the-future, or the future-future. Their films embrace technology and the modern experience. Sure, The Incredibles had a stylized feel. Toy Story 3 had elements of nostalgia. But even these films incorporated technology and forward-thinking. All of their movies set to capture real, everyday, relatable experiences. The elements of fantasy (grand journeys, flying houses) are still rooted in the now. And that's something amazing. We are telling stories to children and telling that their lives can be something magical. It's not about what happens in a time long ago, in a galaxy far away. Boy scouts can rescue giant birds and talking dogs. Your toys have adventures without you. Cars look like they have faces and personalities because they do!

Medieval fantasy is unreachable, foreign and that's what drives the interest. Or we twist it to look like our own society, only leaving in the parts that drive the plot and make the clothes look pretty. (A Knights Tale, Merlin, Robin Hood.) Or we'll present fantastical versions or unspecific historical eras. (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc.) We'll fantasize about the royal possibilities, about times of chivalry and romance.

Fine. We do that with the 60's too. But this is tasteless medieval fantasy nostalgia hogwash. Because the medieval era was gross, horrible, oppressive and sexist. And we have hundreds of stories like this. We flood the market with this stuff. There's no lack of it, and with this new "remake all the classic fairy tales!" kick we seem to be on, we are going to see a lot more of it. And that's fine. It's fun. But from Pixar?

So boys can have adventures today. But the time of princesses has passed (not to mention that princesses were the very epitome of the elite, impossible-to-reach 1%) so it seems like modern girls do not have anything grand, adventurous or wonderful in their lives. Ellie died before she got to travel. She couldn't have children. E-VA didn't understand emotion until WALL-E showed them to her. Collette was...essentially useless. You can't have magical adventures today, girls. You definitely can't star in your own major stories. Only boys get to do that. You girls should pine for an era when you weren't allowed out of the house unless you were so poor you had to do *gasp* work. Not that we see that in our medieval nostalgia fluff.

These are my problems with Brave. Because I haven't seen anything critical of Brave! Yes, it is exciting that Pixar finally got their (male) heads out of their (male) butts and came up with a female protagonist. Yes, it seems like they have no ability to write/understand/create compelling female characters without relying on cardboard outlines and stereotypes, but trying is something. I'm going to see it in theaters. I'm going to be excited from now on and join the flood of untempered enthusiasm I've been seeing. Because I want to be excited about this.

But there are huge problems. And they are worth recording.