What the Shea

But still, why is the Pixar movie with the female lead a movie solely about female relationships?

Richard Lawson’s review of Brave

(via shiphassailed)

YEAH WE NEED MORE MEN MOVIES LIKE MAYBE A BUDDY COMEDY ABOUT A COWBOY AND AN ASTRONAUT OR MAYBE A MOVIE ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A FATHER FISH AND HIS SON OR ANOTHER BUDDY COMEDY ABOUT TWO MONSTERS OR ANOTHER MOVIE ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP OF A FATHER FIGURE AND A YOUNG BOY

YOU’RE RIGHT, RICHARD, PIXAR DOESN’T REPRESENT NEARLY ENOUGH MALE RELATIONSHIPS

(via blankflank)

WOAH now, feministas, reign it in for a second.

Obviously, I am all for a movie that focuses on female relationships, as well as a lynching for anyone who doesn’t think female relationships are worth attention. Yes, duh, go team vaginas, etc. I love female relationships! Have you spent even a moment around me or my blog? There’s literally nothing I love more than girls being friends with other girls, taking care of each other, fighting for each other and pushing each other to overcome great adversity. It’s like, one of my top three favorite things right after nail polish and my special California ramen.

But. C’mon, guys. Don’t just senselessly reblog an out-of-context quote that seems anti-feminist! Read the article before you unleash those Wolverine claws. This Richard Lawson isn’t condemning the fact that this movie focuses on female relationships, he’s saying that Pixar movies usually aspire to a theme that is greater than just relationships, male or female. Pixar does death and time and human waste and childhood and all these really enormous topics that they somehow, brilliantly, manage to distill into animated, PG-rated ~~films~~ masterpieces. I liked Brave, I liked it a whole lot, and the mother/daughter relationship in it struck a particular chord with me. But the honest truth is that it really wasn’t Pixar’s finest, and a large part of that is because there just wasn’t quite enough meat to it. As Richard Lawson points out, had anyone actually been willing to actually read the context of the quote above:

So actually this is less a story about independence than it is one about teenage daughters and their mothers, such a contentious relationship at times, and in that vein there is a nice glimmer of that old Pixar sageness… But still, why is the Pixar movie with the female lead a movie solely about female relationships? That seems like it could be a nice subplot, a teen and her mom coming to appreciate each other’s point of view, but the scope feels awfully small compared to, say, the softly profound rumination on time that is Toy Story 3, or Ratatouille’s deep and rich meditation on artistic conviction. That’s not to denigrate this complex relationship, there’s plenty there to mine, but as the main narrative thrust of the film, it feels a little thin. Or lonely, maybe. Merida is a fun, spirited character, and it would be nice to see her do and experience so much more than this essentially domestic drama allows.

He’s not saying that this one female relationship has somehow threatened the revered bromance, he’s saying that most other Pixar movies had a greater message beyond the revered bromance, and he (and I, and many others) wishes that Brave had gone the same way. Lawson’s argument on Brave, if anything, is more pro-feminist than the movie itself, stating:

But wait, why can’t Pixar’s first head girl take a balloon adventure to Venezuela or go traveling to Sydney to find a lost loved one or cook beautiful food in a Parisian kitchen? She’s just a girl who doesn’t want to get married? She’s a girl who rejects girl things and is thus a hero? (Because girl things are silly, whereas swords and arrows are totally cool, period.) There’s a strange undercurrent of mistaken feminism running throughout the film. It’s as if the writers and directors felt that making the girl be interested in traditional boy things might somehow elevate her out of the creaky old framework they seemed to think she belonged in.

…The point is that, this being a Pixar film, Brave is a dismayingly unimaginative movie, one that presents a seemingly exciting, liberated young woman but still keeps the walls pretty tight around her. It’s a nice, heartwarming story, but it could have been so much more. It literally could have been anything! The limits of the universe have, in the past, seemed of no concern to Pixar’s crack creative team, so it’s strange to see them so cowed by, well, a little girl.

The point is that before everyone mounts their battle horses to rage against a single, antifeminist-when-out-of-context line plucked from an actually overwhelmingly feminist review, y’all should probably read the source material first. This is actually a great assessment of many of the problems I had with Brave (and again, I really liked both it and the female relationships portrayed within. Shit, I was sobbing puddle of tears by the movie’s end), and is worth the read.

I’m also probably gonna post a large portion of that review to Nerd Girl Elitism, because it spotlights this twisted modern mentality that “rawr the only way for a woman to be liberated and awesome is to REJECT ALL GIRLY THINGS RAWR.”
(Source: graceebooks, via xlonglivethequeen)