Feminist rant ;)
So, I decided to read the "Swiss Family Robinson" to Werner. Sounds harmless, right? Well, first I checked out the kid version (from the Illustrated Classic Series)and it SUCKED. It was like reading the cliff-note version of the book, except it didn't even explain the plot that well. While Werner could read it ok on his own, he kept coming out and asking me questions like "why would they just shoot a porcupine and leave it there to rot?" (For those who don't know, that isn't at all what happened in the original version). Anyway, I sent the stupid book back to the library and got the full version and started reading him a chapter a night. Most of the book is a pretty boring tale of day to day survival with every member of the family scrounging for food and supplies and trying to survive on this uninhabited island. My son thinks it's totally cool though, so yesterday I rented the Disney movie of the same tittle and we all sat down to watch.
OH MY GOD... Disney was/is a group of sexist pigs!! It was horrifying. In the movie, the Mom screamed and then hid her face in her husband's chest just because a big lizard wandered into her tent. In the book, if there had even been a lizard (which there wasn't), she would have hit it over the head with a rock and cooked it for dinner. The movie Mom threw a hissy fit that she wasn't going to climb the scary ladder to get to the tree-house... in the book it was HER flipping idea to build the tree house in the first place! Werner was totally confused. He thought the Mom wasn't being very nice to her family to "not do any work" in the movie. I reminded him that in the book she worked all the time and didn't scream even once. I then had to have my first ever talk with him on the subject of prejudice and antiquated views on women. Poor kid. He pointed out that the book was written BEFORE the movie (and so why would the people making the movie change it like that?), and was also confused as to why there was ever a time in our history where women were perceived to be afraid of so many things. On the good side, when I asked him if Mommy was afraid of rats, or snakes, or bugs, or any of the MANY things that caused the two female characters to scream and cling to things... he giggled and said that was "silly." He then declared that the movie people weren't the "real" Swiss Family Robinson family and that he didn't like them as much as the people he imagined when I read to him. Sounds good to me.
OH MY GOD... Disney was/is a group of sexist pigs!! It was horrifying. In the movie, the Mom screamed and then hid her face in her husband's chest just because a big lizard wandered into her tent. In the book, if there had even been a lizard (which there wasn't), she would have hit it over the head with a rock and cooked it for dinner. The movie Mom threw a hissy fit that she wasn't going to climb the scary ladder to get to the tree-house... in the book it was HER flipping idea to build the tree house in the first place! Werner was totally confused. He thought the Mom wasn't being very nice to her family to "not do any work" in the movie. I reminded him that in the book she worked all the time and didn't scream even once. I then had to have my first ever talk with him on the subject of prejudice and antiquated views on women. Poor kid. He pointed out that the book was written BEFORE the movie (and so why would the people making the movie change it like that?), and was also confused as to why there was ever a time in our history where women were perceived to be afraid of so many things. On the good side, when I asked him if Mommy was afraid of rats, or snakes, or bugs, or any of the MANY things that caused the two female characters to scream and cling to things... he giggled and said that was "silly." He then declared that the movie people weren't the "real" Swiss Family Robinson family and that he didn't like them as much as the people he imagined when I read to him. Sounds good to me.