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Love and Robots
So, to start my Stay-at-home feminist series, I'm going to look at Wall-E. Let me clarify a few things. I love this movie. It might be my favorite Pixar movie. It's definitely up there with Monsters Inc. and Toy Story 3. Now, my favorite part isn't the robot romance. We'll get to that in a second. My favorite part is the story of humanity, summed up by line, "I don't want to survive! I want to live!" Perhaps a little on the nose, but I love it. The sense of simple wonder found in making old things new ("We have a pool? I didn't know we had a pool!"), by bringing hope back to a long-abandoned Earth - I don't fuss about the heavy-handed ecology message, because it's just a vehicle to get humans off Earth and back again. The end credit sequence alone gives me goosebumps.
I like the Wall-E/Eve story. It's cute, and the animators and sound designers did fantastic work to make a box with eyes and a metal egg into believable love interests. I really only have one criticism, and it's really directed more at our culture in general than at one specific movie.
Switch the genders.
Imagine an awkward female, watching with mingled fear and awe as a shiny, impressive male appears. She is immediately smitten, based entirely on the fact that he is shinier and more capable than she is. She lurks around, desperate to get his attention but too shy to make advances.
Wow, that's basically the plot of Twilight.
My point is, it's not as acceptable. (Unless he's a vampire, apparently?) It would make the girl look weak, and the man borderline-abusive - especially since his first action would be to shoot at her. Remind us again why she's so desperately in love with him? But switch the genders back, and suddenly it's sweet, charming. This is a very common trope nowadays. I like to call it New Sexism. We'll see if that term catches on. (Or is it already in use for some other meaning? I didn't bother looking it up.) It's the idea that since women were too long portrayed as weak, incompetent and lesser than men, we can make up for it by portraying them as strong, capable, and basically better in every way than men. No pressure for real women or anything. It's not as mean-spirited, perhaps, but it's still inaccurate, and makes both genders look bad - women, for being one-dimensionally perfect without any struggle, and men, for being oafish idiots whom women tolerate because there's no other option. I think generally speaking it comes from good intentions, but at the bottom of it all men are still seeing women as the Other - that incomprehensible creature who is fundamentally different, foreign, unrelatable. (Also consider that ALL the robots are male except the EVE units. Sure, it's kind of silly to accuse the robot designers of being sexist, since all the robots are technically genderless...but it's something to think about.)
Wall-E's journey consists of saving Eve and gaining her love. Not falling in love with her; that takes place the instant he meets her. Everything he does afterwards is motivated by that instant, uncomplicated love. Eve's journey, meanwhile, is exclusively to fall in love with Wall-E. Which isn't terrible. That's a pretty common journey for a romance, obviously. It's just that there's an inherent inequity, in which the male must earn her love, but the female doesn't need to earn anything - his love is there because she's female. Whether she is a beautiful statuesque figure amid a scene of celestial domestic bliss, or a sleek curvy robot bent on following her directive, she is the alluring and mystical Female, and it's kind of hard on us regular old mortal women.
I like the Wall-E/Eve story. It's cute, and the animators and sound designers did fantastic work to make a box with eyes and a metal egg into believable love interests. I really only have one criticism, and it's really directed more at our culture in general than at one specific movie.
Switch the genders.
Imagine an awkward female, watching with mingled fear and awe as a shiny, impressive male appears. She is immediately smitten, based entirely on the fact that he is shinier and more capable than she is. She lurks around, desperate to get his attention but too shy to make advances.
Wow, that's basically the plot of Twilight.
My point is, it's not as acceptable. (Unless he's a vampire, apparently?) It would make the girl look weak, and the man borderline-abusive - especially since his first action would be to shoot at her. Remind us again why she's so desperately in love with him? But switch the genders back, and suddenly it's sweet, charming. This is a very common trope nowadays. I like to call it New Sexism. We'll see if that term catches on. (Or is it already in use for some other meaning? I didn't bother looking it up.) It's the idea that since women were too long portrayed as weak, incompetent and lesser than men, we can make up for it by portraying them as strong, capable, and basically better in every way than men. No pressure for real women or anything. It's not as mean-spirited, perhaps, but it's still inaccurate, and makes both genders look bad - women, for being one-dimensionally perfect without any struggle, and men, for being oafish idiots whom women tolerate because there's no other option. I think generally speaking it comes from good intentions, but at the bottom of it all men are still seeing women as the Other - that incomprehensible creature who is fundamentally different, foreign, unrelatable. (Also consider that ALL the robots are male except the EVE units. Sure, it's kind of silly to accuse the robot designers of being sexist, since all the robots are technically genderless...but it's something to think about.)
Wall-E's journey consists of saving Eve and gaining her love. Not falling in love with her; that takes place the instant he meets her. Everything he does afterwards is motivated by that instant, uncomplicated love. Eve's journey, meanwhile, is exclusively to fall in love with Wall-E. Which isn't terrible. That's a pretty common journey for a romance, obviously. It's just that there's an inherent inequity, in which the male must earn her love, but the female doesn't need to earn anything - his love is there because she's female. Whether she is a beautiful statuesque figure amid a scene of celestial domestic bliss, or a sleek curvy robot bent on following her directive, she is the alluring and mystical Female, and it's kind of hard on us regular old mortal women.