The Designated Girlfriend
Jan. 12th, 2012 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrilWe got our kids a bunch of movies for Christmas, including Toy Story 3 and Ratatouille. We're well on our way to having the complete Pixar collection, and I want to emphasis that I really love these movies. The only ones that haven't interested me are the Cars movies, because I'm not really, um, a Nascar enthusiast. I picked apart Wall-E's gender conventions earlier, but it's not because I dislike the film - quite the opposite. These are some of the best movies out there, animated or otherwise, entertaining for kids and grown-ups alike, and endlessly thought-provoking.
Here's a few more thoughts they've provoked.
Ratatouille's plot is anything but conventional. A chef-rat trains a hapless human to cook for him, marionette-style? I can't think of a single other movie that has even one similar trope in it. Except...the romance. It's not the focus of the movie, but it's by the far the most predictable element. Oh, there's a female in the kitchen? Well, sooner or later she's going to fall in love with somebody, probably the protagonist. It's inevitable. Girls can't exist without falling in love with somebody. Sigh.
Colette has a nice rant about how hard it is to be a successful woman in a man's world, but this is undermined by her shifting role in the storyline. She starts out as fierce chef who's fought like a lion to get where she is, annoyed with an apparently talentless upstart. It might have been nice if she had warmed to Linguini, becoming friends - but without the predictable kissy-kissiness. And that kiss is itself just a plot contrivance to delay her discovery of the rat under the hat. What would Remy have done, in that circumstance, if Colette were male? Not such a convenient distraction then, hmmm? And it's slightly disturbing that she's seriously considering macing him for a psychopath just seconds before happily succumbing to his kiss. What's with that?
This problem certainly isn't unique to Ratatouille. Its strengths all come from its clever original ideas. It's where it retreads the tired old tropes that it disappoints me. And the trope of "strong independent woman softens and finally melts in the arms of the hero" has been done several billion times. There's such a skewed ratio of men to women in movies to begin with; it's depressing when the few women who are there invariably serve the same old role as romantic interest. Honestly, it's not the romance itself I'm opposed to. Deep beneath its crusty exterior, my heart is quite soft and mushy. I love a good romance story. (Emphasis on good). What I really want is more movies that pass the Bechdel test (two women talking to each other about something other than men - and I would personally add clothing and shopping). That means more female characters, period. Switch things up a bit. Imagine Toy Story with two female leads. Up with an old woman in a flying house. Do those plotlines now seem utterly implausible or just plain off somehow? What does this say about our culture as a whole, that we have trouble conceiving of women as anything but complements to their male counterparts? It's not Pixar's problem; it's everyone's problem.
Here's a few more thoughts they've provoked.
Ratatouille's plot is anything but conventional. A chef-rat trains a hapless human to cook for him, marionette-style? I can't think of a single other movie that has even one similar trope in it. Except...the romance. It's not the focus of the movie, but it's by the far the most predictable element. Oh, there's a female in the kitchen? Well, sooner or later she's going to fall in love with somebody, probably the protagonist. It's inevitable. Girls can't exist without falling in love with somebody. Sigh.
Colette has a nice rant about how hard it is to be a successful woman in a man's world, but this is undermined by her shifting role in the storyline. She starts out as fierce chef who's fought like a lion to get where she is, annoyed with an apparently talentless upstart. It might have been nice if she had warmed to Linguini, becoming friends - but without the predictable kissy-kissiness. And that kiss is itself just a plot contrivance to delay her discovery of the rat under the hat. What would Remy have done, in that circumstance, if Colette were male? Not such a convenient distraction then, hmmm? And it's slightly disturbing that she's seriously considering macing him for a psychopath just seconds before happily succumbing to his kiss. What's with that?
This problem certainly isn't unique to Ratatouille. Its strengths all come from its clever original ideas. It's where it retreads the tired old tropes that it disappoints me. And the trope of "strong independent woman softens and finally melts in the arms of the hero" has been done several billion times. There's such a skewed ratio of men to women in movies to begin with; it's depressing when the few women who are there invariably serve the same old role as romantic interest. Honestly, it's not the romance itself I'm opposed to. Deep beneath its crusty exterior, my heart is quite soft and mushy. I love a good romance story. (Emphasis on good). What I really want is more movies that pass the Bechdel test (two women talking to each other about something other than men - and I would personally add clothing and shopping). That means more female characters, period. Switch things up a bit. Imagine Toy Story with two female leads. Up with an old woman in a flying house. Do those plotlines now seem utterly implausible or just plain off somehow? What does this say about our culture as a whole, that we have trouble conceiving of women as anything but complements to their male counterparts? It's not Pixar's problem; it's everyone's problem.
