In which I badmouth Pixar a bit

[soc_puppet]

This is something I've been sitting on a bit, especially since there's so many avid Pixar fans on my f'list, and criticism in general is not always taken well.

However. I just read a good percentage of a particular spoiler-tastic Up review, and now it's not going to stay behind locked teeth any longer.

Therefore, if you cannot hear a single bad word against Pixar, please do not click the cut.



Dear Pixar,

Your graphics are fantastic. Amazing, even! Your stories are often touching and funny. I love how you're bringing back the pre-film short cartoon, and, generally, what you're doing with them. As of Up, you're even getting better at including diversity in your films*!

However. You are absolutely horrible at passing the Bechdel Test**.

If I recall correctly, The Incredibles and A Bug's Life pass. If I recall correctly.

So, Pixar, I love you, but seriously. Please to be getting to work on writing more female main characters. In fact, a film that stars a female character wouldn't be remiss! Princess Atta and Helen Parr*** are the only ones I can think of# that come close, and they'd be co-starring. With male counterparts.

You've already got plenty of films that star or co-star male characters exclusively. As a young woman, I would definitely like to see myself better reflected in your work.

Yours,
Me


* Former examples of diversity: Frozone in The Incredibles, supporting character; that one chef in Ratatouille, bit character (although - possibly Colette? I saw her as generic Mediterranean, but my therapist saw her as Asian, so IDK/YMMV); those two cars in Cars (god, one of them is Flo, I think, the one with the diner? And the other one is the guy who paints and I feel horrible for not remembering his name, but considering Flo's is one of three names I remember from Radiator Springs, I'm giving myself a bit of a pass), supporting characters(?). I for one could only tell by the clear dialect that they were intended to be non-white - which actually almost makes it worse for me. See, specifically casting for dialect use in those two cases points out that you didn't cast anyone using stereotypical non-white dialect in pretty much any other movie of yours that I know of to date. Which means you recognized it was an issue. Which means that pretty much any character in any previous movie defaults to "white". And, before Up, those are the only instances I can think of. See where I'm going at all?

** For movies that pass the Bechdel Test, see this blog.

*** Just for you, I'm temporarily skipping the housewife tangent.

# As inarticulate has pointed out to me, I forgot Dory from Finding Nemo. I feel incredibly foolish now. And I could probably also add Eve from Wall-E in there, with a possible side-order of what's-her-face that's on the BNL ship and stuff. I'm also willing to give points to Jessie from Toy Story 2 and Sally from Cars, but I really don't know how much you could count Boo from Monsters, Inc. Rassa frassa memory failure... I'll show you how to remember something...!



...Upon a brief look around Wikipedia, it seems as if someone has already written this letter. And while the subject of a female protagonist is apparently going to be addressed, there's still a nice gaping hole for a non-princess role.

Edit: Now with less memory fail!

Edit 2: Review mentioned in the comments is here, for the sake of. Is transparency the word I'm looking for here? Well, whatever. If you're insanely curious, there's where it is. Be warned, it is not a nice review.

Comments

[inarticulate]

I'm not going to argue this, because, lack of speaking female main characters aside, I loved the movie. But I do want to add Dory onto that list, because she's definitely in the co-star role and one of my favorite characters ever. And not a princess or a romantic lead, which is a breath of fresh air in any movie, really.

[soc_puppet]

*headdesk* Right, forgot about Dory. And yes, Pixar does get special shiny bonus points for actually making a (popular!) movie without a romantic sub-plot. So. *goes to edit, argh failure argh argh*

[inarticulate]

…Also, wow, looking at that review, I am, uh. Wow. That's a lot of vitriol! And a lot of… expectations of very high realism in a kid's movie about a flying balloon house. So while I agree with you generally on the gender front, I, uh, really can't agree with that review at all as a main source of information about Up.

[soc_puppet]

Honestly, I only read about half-way through the review in question ^^a Watch me go read the rest now! And, well. I have to admit that while I don't realistically expect to get it at any time soon, I have still somehow come to expect More. From just about everything.

[inarticulate]

Please, please, don't read the rest. It just… augh. Knowing that it's keeping people from watching the movie (as the comments say) just makes my heart ache because that is not what the movie's about. At all. It spoils everything in a really… overly critical way (and, again, not going into the gender issues it addresses at all-- it critiques a fight for being unrealistically bloodless in a movie about a flying balloon house!)

[soc_puppet]

I, uh. Already skimmed it? Er. If it helps at all, it's not going to keep me from seeing the movie. I wouldn't even expect it to keep me from thoroughly enjoying the movie. Honestly, most of what I took away from it myself was the confirmation of my private prediction re: lack of female characters ._.a Even after the skimming. (I'm willing to suspend my disbelief about a lot of things for the sake of a good story, and that includes the ability of blood to spatter, etc.)

[inarticulate]

That does help, yeah. I just… I was expecting something like "lack of speaking female roles is problematic," which I would agree with, not… this movie has murdered my family levels of hatred. E-eep.

[soc_puppet]

Merf. Maybe I could dig around tomorrow for an entry that is more suited to my uses :| Or something similar, at least.

[inarticulate]

Honestly, I'd say just give it a try yourself, if you're interested in it, because the only reviews I've read have been either overwhelmingly positive or… that particular review. If you have a purpose in seeking out reviews, then… wouldn't the source be better?

[soc_puppet]

An excellent point. It also just occurred to me that this entry - the one we're in right now, that is - could be written just as well without linking to the review in question at all, so. *goes to do the edit dance again, whee*

[inarticulate]

[nods] Again, I agree with your point about Pixar needing more female leads or starring roles! And, honestly, I think you'd be a lot more… er, on my level? and able to vocalize that without it reaching into the hatred territory, particularly since the movie does do some really good things for Asian Americans (who are even more underrepresented in popular media-- which doesn't give Up a pass for gender issues but IS notable.)

I'm also trying to figure out who they could have gender-reversed to make female, and… honestly, I'm not sure it would work, except for some of the bad guys-- I think Dug would have struck a different chord if he were female, Russell would work best but the parallels with Ellie would have been a lot creepier, Carl would have suddenly been a woman entirely motivated by her love for a man, and… yeah. :|a So… Bechdel fail aside, I'm not entirely sure that it wouldn't have squicked me gender-wise if they hadn't been male (short of reversing the whole cast, which would have been cool except that woman!Carl would still make me B| unless she was a lesbian).

[soc_puppet]

I am now 100% tempted to do this for all the Pixar movies I have seen.

I definitely sympathize with the whole "character/story dynamic balance" issue; as of RaceFail '09, I've been trying to tweak some of my original fiction ideas to include more racial diversity, and it's tough work. However, I'm aware of the importance of the issue, so I'm going to keep at it until I'm satisfied (which basically translates to, "I feel I can submit it to verb_noire without failing their most basic qualifications").

Would Up have worked with a third main character? Maybe make it a non-gender-specific scouting troop, make it a girl and a boy going out to earn that last badge, have Carl be reminded of himself and his late wife through their dynamic? [/suggestion] ...On that note, I think it would've been totally cool to see Marlin go looking for Nemo with his wife, as well as Dory, 'cuz she seemed like a stand-up lady fish lady-fish to me, and loyal married couples always could use more screen time. Alternately, Gil and that puffer in the fish tank would've also made awesome lady-fish, IMO.

[inarticulate]

Short answer, because I keep essaying and deleting and I need to leave soon: no, it wouldn't have. Pixar movies work because they have a tight focus, and expanding that focus is just going to make weaker movies with less emotional punch; the issue isn't adding more female characters, it's making a movie where that focus is on female characters at the expense of male characters.

[meigui]

Randomly--I haven't seen Up, but I absolutely hated The Incredibles because the message encapsulated exactly what I believe to be the core mentality that is behind absolutely everything that's wrong with American culture: the idea of individuals who are the Chosen People. If you are of the Chosen People, then, no matter what extenuating circumstances get in the way, destiny will conspire to put you in a position where you will shine, and there is nothing you could possibly do that's wrong, because you're a Chosen One. If you are not one of the Chosen People, then it doesn't matter how passionate and persevering and hard-working you are--you will always be Wrong and therefore either collateral, if you accept your fate; or else a villain, if you try to escape it. So give up already, go home.

[soc_puppet]

Yeah, Pixar really failed with that theme there :/ Every time Buddy came up in "flashback" mode, I was internally head-desking, because Bob handles the situation so badly. I mean yes, Buddy does have a flawed world view, and yes, the Supers in general have a leg up on non-Supers, but that does not mean Buddy's message - that anyone can be special, that anyone who wants to has a right to try - is invalid. Additionally, the movie never touches on Supers who never went the hero route, who never wanted to go the hero route, as well as villainizing the one person we see who wants to be more than the sum of his parts.

In that respect, I'd have to say the Disney Channel Original Movie Up, Up, and Away did much better; Sky High is various orders of more of the same, unfortunately (only people with powers are heroes, though eventually it's shown that it doesn't matter what your power is, so I give them half-credit).

[comic]

I'll be honest and say that I didn't read that into it at all, and am having a hard time grasping that as a theme to the movie. But. I didn't read far into it beyond 'this guy wants fame and he'll do whatever it takes to get it, and that's wrong'.

[meigui]

Hahaha, well I think it wasn't so much a theme as a corollary to the theme they were trying to get across. Not so much how things happened in-story, as how the writers arranged them from a metafictive point of view. I don't know, I guess I might have had my minority-group goggles on when I watched the movie--if we replaced "non-supers" with "Black people" or "Asians" or "women" or "homosexuals" or so on, hypothetically (since a lot of those actually wouldn't have worked in the context of the plot), it would have been a lot more transparently terrible. Even Etna, the single non-super who I recall was portrayed in a major positive role, was just there to support the supers. The only thing they really got that minorities typically don't was that a presumably non-super was Violet's love interest, which... yeah, he's an object, and he doesn't actually do anything. None of the non-supers really had any meaningful personal agency.

It's like... the way people tend to take the whole "with great power comes great responsibility" thing. Which I don't think is a bad theme in and of itself, but the way it seems to be interpreted by laypeople so often is "and I have great power, and those people, upon whom I plan to act, have no power at all." The Incredibles takes it even further than that: "I have great power, and these people, who are oppressing me, must be guided to the path of what's right because I'm just that selfless". It's this dumb Dostoyevskian ubermensch fantasy that I don't like--I am the ubermensch and everyone who stands against me or isn't sufficiently like me is an upstart peon who needs to be either saved or defeated.

This is the problem behind our foreign policy that makes us so despised by the rest of the world. This is the power behind our institutional racism that makes it so difficult to pin down and defeat. This is the ideology that I have seen make so many intelligent, talented children fail--because once they hit that point where they actually have to make an effort, they stop. After all, if they were really special, they wouldn't have to try, would they? We privilege innate specialness of whatever nature far beyond the kind of strength of character that it takes to create one's own success. Those who are truly special need only find the self-confidence to act boldly, and everything is theirs. Those who aren't may try as hard as they want but probably won't get anywhere. Or even worse: if they do get somewhere, then it's a stolen success, something they don't deserve to have. The Incredibles failed on this account not simply on the basis of what it did say, but also for what it didn't say.

Or maybe I am reading too far into it, I dunno |D

[comic]

I need to figure out where my minority-goggles are :( Anyhow, I'm not sure I agree that Etna was just there to 'support' the Supers, which, technically is true. But she was definitely the one calling the shots and telling them how they were going to take it, and they were going to LIKE IT.

I.... didn't get ANY of that from the movie, in fact taking from it the fact that the superheroes save people because THEY CAN and just standing aside is irresponsible when you can make a difference. That said, the whole beginning of the movie wasn't about how people were standing in his way rather so much that he was incredibly bored after his exciting life as a superhero, simply being an office worker no longer does it for him. This also kind of mirrors a mid-life crisis rather well.

About the foreign policy though, you have my agreement. On the bit about confidence... I'm waffling. There was definitely a point in the movie that tells the viewer that confidence is important, but it doesn't simply negate hard work, the main dude had to work hard to get back into shape after all (though the fact that his wife and kids were able to do what they could while inexperienced and/or rusty DOES negate that a lot).

[meigui]

Haha, I'm just one of those people who obnoxiously overanalyzes absolutely everything I watch/read, I think :(

Well, she did have a pretty flamboyant personality--but, effectively, I felt like she was a cross between a cheerleader and a resource. I mean, particularly in such a result-driven story (as opposed to cause-driven), she wasn't a direct player in the plot so much as a plot device. If that makes any sense? She has some modicum of agency, but only in that she serves super heroes; she even expresses disdain towards the idea of designing for non-supers. She is a member of the non-privileged group whose power and significance comes from how she, at best, interacts with the privileged group (privilege here from a metafictive point of view, not an in-universe one). But like I said, if these were real-world groups, that would have very unfortunate implications.

Well, yes; but the corollary to that--what of the people who don't start out with the abilities that they have? The two examples we have are pretty much Etna and Syndrome. Etna I discussed above; Syndrome is, well, he's the villain. In fact, though, the antagonist's side of the story is two-fold: first, Syndrome, a non-super who is dissatisfied with his own role as a bystander; and second, the government, which works to oppress the efforts of those who would otherwise be able to make a difference. The latter is implicated as much as the former in the story, though in less direct way; considering the time at which this movie was made, this came across as very political to me--as I recall, this was within a year after the beginning of the Iraq War.

Eh, I feel like the worst that happened to him was when he fought the first robot, and most of those difficulties were played for laughs; and the training montage itself was built up as... kind of glamorous, more of a confidence-building sequence than actually honing his skills again. Like, "I thought I'd lost it, but look, it was still inside me waiting to be let out again all along, and look how happy I am now!" I mean, really. (I actually thought there was more to it, because I felt like he must have had trouble at some point or another, but then I looked up a longer clip, and--nope, that was it.) To me, it positively reeks of self-help culture, which I... also kind of despise. Hahaha.

[pleonasm]

I love Pixar movies, but every time, every time they come out with a new one I want more women in it. And I adored Up! but really, would it have been so difficult to have a living woman featured in it?

[soc_puppet]

That's basically it 100%, yeah. Their first movie with a female main protagonist won't be until winter 2011, IIRC. Their thirteenth film. (Not to hint at anything particularly superstitious, only that they will have made twelve films already with male main characters by that point. Couldn't they at least have gotten to it before they reached double-digits? APPARENTLY NOT.)