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January 17
Yes, I missed yesterday. I might miss the whole weekend because of Real Life. Any days I miss, I'll make up in February. Requests still open, etc.
Hahahahah, well![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
90scartoonman made this request originaly, but we've already had this discussion before, so I'm going to try quite hard to say something new…even though my opinion hasn't changed that much. Good luck to me?
Ok, the actual request was to talk about Brave, specifically what it means for feminism in animated movies and how well it does as a mother/daughter story.
Well, feminism in animated movies overall is not a topic I'm going to fully tackle. Because then I have to see all the animated movies. AND fully define feminism. D:
Let's just say for my purposes that we need more well-rounded representation of women in animated movies. Like, say, just as well-rounded as the representation of the men. I'm going to break it down to three key points I can think of right now.
First, we need to tell more stories ABOUT women. It's very sad that Pixar so far has one movie starring a woman, and quite a few of their films suffer from the Smurfette principle: Men outnumber women to an extreme degree. Women are still more than half of the population, why are we not at least half of the main characters? And yeah, it starts young. It starts when we tell our children that girls can enjoy stories about boys but boys maybe can't enjoy stories about girls. Frozen's advertising campaign was INCREDIBLY misleading, just to get boys in the theaters. (Check out the comments to that article. Hoo boy.)
We need a range of stories about women. At this point, I can't even summon the energy to discuss if we need more "women's stories" or if we need more "stories that happen to star women." It frankly, doesn't matter. WE JUST NEED MORE OF THEM.
On that level, the very basic one, Brave was great, because it was a story about a woman. It's still far too little. Pixar needs about dozen more films that unquestionably star women before we can even talk about balance.
Now, second. I think we need far more diversity in women portrayed. I mean this in every conceivable way. Our biggest problem is non-white women. I'm not an animation expert, but outside of a handful of Disney princesses*, I can't think of one. Maybe Jewel from Rio? She's a bird, but she's definitely Brazilian. Other than that, it's mind-boggling how few mainstream animation flms even feature non white-women, nevermind star. Don't let my later points take away from this one, this is critical.
We also need more women of different sizes. At one point, watching Frozen, I realized that Elsa is extremely skinny. In isolation, by the way, I'm totally fine with that. There are people out there with naturally skinny bodies and they shouldn't feel any shame about that. But that realization came with loads of baggage. Why don't we have a range of bodies in our animated ladies? The range for men isn't representative of reality either, but it's certainly more divers than it is for women. (We don't all have perfect boobs and hips either, ugh.)
*Mulan, Tiana, Jasmine, Pocahontas.
The last thing didn't occur to me until I wrote my problems with Brave the first time, but the more I think about it, the more important I think this is. We need more women's' stories that aren't set in the past. I'm not saying none, obviously. In general, I'm just as much of a sucker for historical romanticism as anyone else. But we need more stories starring women that take place in the present, or the slightly off-present in which many animated movies take place. Because making it so women only see themselves in the highly romanticized past is a disturbing trend. This complaint may actually be specific to animation, actually, because I don't think the trend is the much more significant in live-action films. But as animated films are generally aimed at children, it's also important to pay attention to what they're constantly watching.
Brave does star a young woman with a round face and crazy curly hair. But she's a white woman, and a princess in a romanticized, magical historical past. I enjoyed the film a lot on its own merits, but it's place in some of these trends made me uncomfortable.
Ok, now specifically mother/daughter stories?
Well, this one is going to be a little personal and perhaps unpopular. Sorry! Feminism has a range of opinions, etc.
Ok, I am done, done with conflict mother/daughter stories with absurdly bad levels of communication. I don't agree with my mother all the time either, but I've never tried to possibly POISON her because we didn't agree. Most of the time our conflicts are very small, and I've always known that my mother had my best interests at heart. She has, in fact, rarely stood in my way for anything. Admittedly, I'm a ridiculous goody-two-shoes. But when I was choosing colleges, she literally said to me "you make your own choice and we will figure it out together." Note I was choosing between a full ride at a state institution and nada from a much better place. And she left that decision to ME.
So I'd rather more stories about mothers and daughters getting along. Or agreeing. Or having conflicts that they work out WITHOUT attempts at magical lobotomy that go wrong. Because here's something else that these stories rarely acknowledge: Sometimes the mothers are right. Not all the time, and I'm sure there are women who have had really terrible relationships with their mothers. But I doubt we're ever going to see anything darker than Tangled, so how about we try some other ways? I want stories where the rebelling teenage daughter is in the wrong, not the partly-right. I want a story where the daughter recognizes that her mother is right.
This is just off the top of my head, but father-son stories just don't seem as fraught as mother-daughter stories. I don't know if that's because it's men are the ones in charge of these stories most of the time, or because culturally we have stereotypes about women not getting along or mother's always being expectant nags, but I'm ready for some more types of stories out there, thanks.
Specifically to Brave, I have a few things to say. The story was beautiful and well-told and absolutely. nothing. new. It inspired people and I don't ever want to take that away from them. But for me, in terms of feminism? It was so safe as to be neutral.
In terms of Pixar, which maybe likes to tell safe stories but at least wraps them up in new adventures and some really brilliant emotional layers, I was disappointed.
As a first step, though, I could applaud Pixar the effort. We just need to see where they go from here.
Hahahahah, well
90scartoonman made this request originaly, but we've already had this discussion before, so I'm going to try quite hard to say something new…even though my opinion hasn't changed that much. Good luck to me? Ok, the actual request was to talk about Brave, specifically what it means for feminism in animated movies and how well it does as a mother/daughter story.
Well, feminism in animated movies overall is not a topic I'm going to fully tackle. Because then I have to see all the animated movies. AND fully define feminism. D:
Let's just say for my purposes that we need more well-rounded representation of women in animated movies. Like, say, just as well-rounded as the representation of the men. I'm going to break it down to three key points I can think of right now.
First, we need to tell more stories ABOUT women. It's very sad that Pixar so far has one movie starring a woman, and quite a few of their films suffer from the Smurfette principle: Men outnumber women to an extreme degree. Women are still more than half of the population, why are we not at least half of the main characters? And yeah, it starts young. It starts when we tell our children that girls can enjoy stories about boys but boys maybe can't enjoy stories about girls. Frozen's advertising campaign was INCREDIBLY misleading, just to get boys in the theaters. (Check out the comments to that article. Hoo boy.)
We need a range of stories about women. At this point, I can't even summon the energy to discuss if we need more "women's stories" or if we need more "stories that happen to star women." It frankly, doesn't matter. WE JUST NEED MORE OF THEM.
On that level, the very basic one, Brave was great, because it was a story about a woman. It's still far too little. Pixar needs about dozen more films that unquestionably star women before we can even talk about balance.
Now, second. I think we need far more diversity in women portrayed. I mean this in every conceivable way. Our biggest problem is non-white women. I'm not an animation expert, but outside of a handful of Disney princesses*, I can't think of one. Maybe Jewel from Rio? She's a bird, but she's definitely Brazilian. Other than that, it's mind-boggling how few mainstream animation flms even feature non white-women, nevermind star. Don't let my later points take away from this one, this is critical.
We also need more women of different sizes. At one point, watching Frozen, I realized that Elsa is extremely skinny. In isolation, by the way, I'm totally fine with that. There are people out there with naturally skinny bodies and they shouldn't feel any shame about that. But that realization came with loads of baggage. Why don't we have a range of bodies in our animated ladies? The range for men isn't representative of reality either, but it's certainly more divers than it is for women. (We don't all have perfect boobs and hips either, ugh.)
*Mulan, Tiana, Jasmine, Pocahontas.
The last thing didn't occur to me until I wrote my problems with Brave the first time, but the more I think about it, the more important I think this is. We need more women's' stories that aren't set in the past. I'm not saying none, obviously. In general, I'm just as much of a sucker for historical romanticism as anyone else. But we need more stories starring women that take place in the present, or the slightly off-present in which many animated movies take place. Because making it so women only see themselves in the highly romanticized past is a disturbing trend. This complaint may actually be specific to animation, actually, because I don't think the trend is the much more significant in live-action films. But as animated films are generally aimed at children, it's also important to pay attention to what they're constantly watching.
Brave does star a young woman with a round face and crazy curly hair. But she's a white woman, and a princess in a romanticized, magical historical past. I enjoyed the film a lot on its own merits, but it's place in some of these trends made me uncomfortable.
Ok, now specifically mother/daughter stories?
Well, this one is going to be a little personal and perhaps unpopular. Sorry! Feminism has a range of opinions, etc.
Ok, I am done, done with conflict mother/daughter stories with absurdly bad levels of communication. I don't agree with my mother all the time either, but I've never tried to possibly POISON her because we didn't agree. Most of the time our conflicts are very small, and I've always known that my mother had my best interests at heart. She has, in fact, rarely stood in my way for anything. Admittedly, I'm a ridiculous goody-two-shoes. But when I was choosing colleges, she literally said to me "you make your own choice and we will figure it out together." Note I was choosing between a full ride at a state institution and nada from a much better place. And she left that decision to ME.
So I'd rather more stories about mothers and daughters getting along. Or agreeing. Or having conflicts that they work out WITHOUT attempts at magical lobotomy that go wrong. Because here's something else that these stories rarely acknowledge: Sometimes the mothers are right. Not all the time, and I'm sure there are women who have had really terrible relationships with their mothers. But I doubt we're ever going to see anything darker than Tangled, so how about we try some other ways? I want stories where the rebelling teenage daughter is in the wrong, not the partly-right. I want a story where the daughter recognizes that her mother is right.
This is just off the top of my head, but father-son stories just don't seem as fraught as mother-daughter stories. I don't know if that's because it's men are the ones in charge of these stories most of the time, or because culturally we have stereotypes about women not getting along or mother's always being expectant nags, but I'm ready for some more types of stories out there, thanks.
Specifically to Brave, I have a few things to say. The story was beautiful and well-told and absolutely. nothing. new. It inspired people and I don't ever want to take that away from them. But for me, in terms of feminism? It was so safe as to be neutral.
In terms of Pixar, which maybe likes to tell safe stories but at least wraps them up in new adventures and some really brilliant emotional layers, I was disappointed.
As a first step, though, I could applaud Pixar the effort. We just need to see where they go from here.
no subject
I would love to see more mother-daughter stories where the mother-daughter conflict isn't a major part of it, yes absolutely -- but I do feel that Brave gave us a case where both the mother and the daughter were right in some fashion.
no subject
Oh wait, I though of one! Finding Nemo! Note that there was father/son conflict in which they disagreed and ended up having adventures and learning things and communicating better and at no point did Nemo attempt to harm his father. Why can't I get stories like that starring mothers and daughters?