Is it really too much to ask of an animated film about animals

[bellatrys]

that the moral of the story not be that only the boys can save the world, and that even adult women should be sent home and kept safe, even "chivalrously" lied to in order to protect them? Can't we get away from this in anthropomorphic fantasy?!?!?

Comments

[randwolf]

Sigh...it's hard to walk away from the social iconography; mass media mostly doesn't even try. I think many artists are actually scared by the freedom of fantasy and sf; if the normal ordering of a world is taken away, how does one find one's way?

still, given that this is from the company that gave us Buffy...

[bellatrys]

it's not *too* much to expect that they should be at least as cutting edge and outrageously advanced as, oh, Disney...

[tekanji]

Geez, next thing I know you'll be saying that normal movies should have women saving the world, too. Absurd! Absurd I tell you!

you know, there needs to be a feminist screenwriting group

[bellatrys]

where we come up with pitches and screenplays for action/adventure movies, skiffy, and comedy-dramas with female leads and protagonists and also where women are just presented as normal and not The Other, for good or bad, all the time...

Re: you know, there needs to be a feminist screenwriting group

[tekanji]

I would endorse such a group. :)

Re: you know, there needs to be a feminist screenwriting group

[anna_wing]

Chinese kung fu movies somehow are much better at having decent female characters. In the hey-day of the great Hong Kong female action stars, they had their own vehicles, a la Schwarzenegger and Cruise.

See:

http://www.heroictrio.com/

Also the splendid "Dragon Inn" starring Maggie Cheung, Lin Ching-Hsia and Tony Leung Kar Fai, which I may have mentioned before.

[evilstorm]

...dammit, and that looked like such a cute film too.

I know! I was so optimistic

[bellatrys]

and I'm flipping through the picture book, and going, oh great, they show how penguing moms* go off to hunt while the dads* stay home and watch the babies, this is cool nod to reality as well as showing multiple ways of life as role-model - and then I couldn't believe it when they actually have him tell her he doesn't love her, even though she's full-grown and he's still an adolescent whose growth has been delayed, so that she'll stay home and be safe, followed up by her having stayed single, pining chastely for him like Penelope, but demonstrating her female nurturing maternal instinct by becoming a schoolteacher...

*or same-sex SOs, of course.

[nextian]

Ohhh god. I just got back from seeing it ... The sexism totally pales in comparison to the wild, rampant racism, really. I mean. Robin Williams is a) not allowed to pretend to be Mexican b) not allowed to pretend to be a black preacher for the whole movie; a movie about soul music & blues should not be entirely populated by white actors/actresses; even the fucking scientists and politician humans at the end were all white.

It actually made me angry and I was sitting feeling very San Franciscan and miserable for not being able to watch the movie and just -- just enjoy it, for what it was, but afterwards my mother leaned over and said, Why the hell are they all white? and it cheered me up immensely.

As to feminism -- oh my fucking god, Brittany Murphy & Nicole Kidman are not the hottest female singers in the history of the world, okay? Not all attractive women are breathy sopranos.

*breathes, walks away*

[evilstorm]

...ow. I take it I shouldn't see it, then. Ow.

*hugs?*