The Designated Girlfriend

[matril]

We 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.

Comments

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

I never got why Colette was attracted to Linguini at all, I mean damn, the rat was way more intellectually engaged. I think Toy Story could work pretty well with two female toys (hmm, Jessie and Barbie? It would be in a very different style, of course, but it doesn't seem off). I'll have to dispute you on "Up", though -- flying your house to South America with 80,000 balloons just seems like such a guy thing to do. You know if Ellie had lived she'd have lifted an eyebrow at the idea and then upgraded her plane ticket to first class like a reasonable person :). Also I think this is the part where I have to do the obligatory and point out that the next Pixar movie is focused on the relationship between a daughter and her mother, so I'm pretty sure that will make it through the Bechdel test, though it may fall into an alternate trap of personifying The Rebellious Princess Who Does Not Want To Stay Home And Sew But Wants To Ride Horses Like The Guys. Because that's not new *at all* :). (One day I'm going to write a skit where all the girls have gone off to heroically fight in battles alongside the guys and the traditionally-feminine stuff has been tossed aside as the worthless timewasting stuff it is ... until all of their clothing and food supplies run short and none of them can so much as sew on a button or make a respectable soup!

[matril.livejournal.com]

Yes, Up would have to be drastically different if its lead were female. I guess what I really wish is that with all the movies that portray a man who's inspired/haunted by the memory of a dead woman - be it wife, sister, mother, or whatever - they might try something with the genders reversed. Woman have to deal with grief and loss too, and they don't always deal with it with peaceful maturity. Maybe not by bizarre shows of exaggerated masculinity, but there could be other interesting paths to take.

And I admit I have my reservations about the next Pixar movie, which seems rather ungrateful - "What, a story with a girl front and center and you're still not happy!" but it does seem like a rather on-the-nose attempt to show that Girls Can Be Cool Too. Sometimes I fear that when storytellers (mostly male ones, but I won't leave out the possibility that women fall into this trap too) create stories about women, they kind of think that the only major conflict they have to deal with is not being accepted by the men, or not being considered capable of stereotypically male feats. Sheesh. But I'll try to withhold judgment until I've actually seen it. ;)

And the thought of domestic chores being abandoned randomly reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38mEN34lbTw