Amber Sweet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ambersweet) wrote2010-06-25 02:46 pm
ambersweet) wrote2010-06-25 02:46 pm
Consciousness-raising, silencing, and the insidiousness of Pixar's campaign of masculinity
The "problem" with becoming socially conscious is that you can't really turn it off when you're tired. (This is seriously a first-world problem, I know.)
I'm a double major, English and Women & Gender Studies, and I got into the second when I was almost done with the first, so I was taking primarily English classes with a couple of WS classes thrown in (and ones that were both! Like "19th Century Women Writers!" Which was AWESOME.)
So, English. English with an emphasis in Literature, to be specific. This is the degree where they take people who love to read and attempt to cure them of it. There was a point (during a summer session where I was taking two classes at the same time, reading two novels plus analysis and writing two 5-page papers a week for eight weeks - I do not recommend it) where I got to the point that I didn't want to read a fucking cereal box because OMG WORDS NO. Obviously that went away. I watched movies, played video games, avoided text for a couple of weeks, I got better. Very good. Still love to read, still do it all the time.
And now, Gender Studies. This degree is really about changing the way you think, the way you understand and interact with the world, about raising consciousness and increasing awareness, and what you learn is that society - especially American society - is sexist, racist, classist, heterosexist, ableist, and transphobic. (Transphobic isn't quite as inclusive as I want it to be - maybe cisgenderedist? Is that a word? The idea that there are exactly two sets of genitalia, male and female, with no variation AT ALL and the person inside matches the external plumbing every single time. It not only erases trans people, but intersex and genderqueer and all sorts of folks who don't fit that little mental scenario.) It's also monogamist and overwhelmingly Christian.
The problem with this is that obviously the world doesn't look like this. The "default human being" is not a middle-class married white guy of western European origin with two children (boy and girl), a mortgage, and a lawn with the occasional dandelion. If you watch commercials, this is what a family looks like. This is not my family. I am not that guy. To be totally honest, I don't even KNOW that guy. I was not his daughter and I will never even be his female partner, which are the only two roles open to me in that scenario.
And now that I'm fully aware of this, I can't turn it off. It affects the way I think, the way I process everything I see, read, hear, and buy. Unless I shut myself in a box and have no contact with the outside world, I can't stop it. There is no respite. And sometimes, when I am mentally exhausted and mood-crashy and just plain out of spoons, I would give ANYTHING to be able to shut it off. I realize I'm privileged enough that most of it doesn't touch me directly - I'm white, middle class, cisgendered, refer to my significant other with masculine pronouns, largely able-bodied. My disabilities are (mostly) invisible and fairly minor. I'm lucky.
But world, really, can't you give the unrelenting shitstorm a break for five fucking minutes? I can't watch Toy Story 3 without having a moment of total feminist horror.
They also showed the trailer for Tangled in front of Toy Story 3. If you haven't seen it, take a couple of minutes and track it down, if you would.
This trailer really upsets me. A lot. Disney has made literally billions of dollars, truckloads of fucking money, telling girl stories to girls. The "Princess" line alone is a multi-billion-dollar annual industry, selling virtually anything a little girl could possibly want, with a princess's face plastered on it. Princess and the Frog made $267 billion worldwide in box-office earnings alone. That's not counting what they made selling DVDs, soundtracks, dolls, costumes, plushies, tea sets, little plastic dinguses that go WHIRR, action figures, mugs, T-shirts, and so on ad nauseam. Telling girl stories to girls has never once steered them wrongexcept for Pocahontas. I'm also not saying that there are not problematic representations of women in these stories. I literally wrote a paper about how the princesses of color have to have marriage as a priority; aspiring to be a princess is not exactly the height of a woman's liberation. But the protagonists, no matter how flawed they are, are at least WOMEN. Cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, largely white women, but women nonetheless. And Belle, despite everybody dithering about her beauty, is smart. Ariel is willing to go after what she wants no matter how dumb it is. Mulan is canny and strong and dedicated. Tiana is smart and dedicated and hard-working and isn't about to let some man get in the way of achieving her dream. Even the old school heroines have a lot to recommend them - Snow White is kind to strangers (I know, I'm reaching), Cinderella is hard-working, and Alice is totally fucking unflappable OMG.
Pixar, on the other hand, has told a lot of boy stories. THEY TELL THEM WELL, DO NOT GET ME WRONG. I LOVE EVERY PIXAR MOVIE I HAVE SEEN EXCEPT FINDING NEMO. However. They don't have a single female protagonist; there are a handful of female characters in the ensemble casts, but Toy Story and its sequels are about Woody and his interaction with the world, his friends, his (male) kid. Boys have adventures and blow stuff up, girls have...tea parties. The main female character in Monsters, Inc is literally a plot device. The main female character in Finding Nemo is a joke. In The Incredibles, the women are a (jealous, desperate housewife) mother, a boy-crazy teenaged girl, an evil seductress, and a bossy career woman who doesn't listen.
What scares me is that Disney merged with Pixar, and immediately took a "girl story" ("Rapunzel") and made it about the boy. Asfinch put it, it looks like "Disney does Shrek." And Shrek is fun and funny and I enjoyed it - in much the same way I enjoyed the eminently forgettable Emperor's New Groove. I watched the trailer and went, "That's going to be dated in five minutes." It disturbs me that Disney looked at Princess and the Frog and went, "That didn't make enough money. It must be because boys didn't go see it." Because girls will watch boy stories, but boys don't watch girl stories? Is that how that works? It couldn't be because the economy is struggling and going to the movies is fucking expensive. It couldn't be because the songs aren't exactly mind-blowingly amazing or the plot's kind of plodding. It has to be because of the title, the fact it's about a girl - even though the girl spends half the fucking movie as a boy-attracting FROG. Really, Disney? Really?
And now, my moment of feminist horror, because, to a certain extent, it's extremely emblematic of what's going on.
MINOR SPOILERS FOR TOY STORY 3, if you're a purist who hasn't seen it yet, go look at lolcats or something. I'm done with you.
Okay, everybody else good?
So The Gang discovers that the daycare that they've been donated tobecause they STILL WON'T LISTEN TO THE MALE CHARACTER WHO IS ALWAYS FUCKING RIGHT IN EVERY MOVIE, JESUS PEOPLE DON'T YOU LEARN???? is actually being run by an EVIL PINK BEAR. Mrs. Potato Head is yelling at him, and he TAKES HER MOUTH OFF. Mr. Potato Head gets all huffy, and they take him (WITHOUT removing his mouth) and throw him in the sandbox. And I had this moment of O NO THEY DIDN'T that totally threw me out of the movie for a minute. This female character is literally silenced, this person who has been friends with the group for ~ten years (she's introduced at the end of the first movie) and the ONLY PERSON who protests this treatment is her HUSBAND. NO ONE ELSE.
This is an issue. This is a major, major issue, that didn't manage to eliminate my enjoyment of the rest of the movie (fortunately), but silencing female characters is not acceptable, and not protesting the silencing of your female friends is even LESS acceptable. It's a single minute in a movie, but it's emblematic of the whole fucking world, and it's emblematic of a Pixar-run Disney making a fairy tale named after a female character about the male character and changing the title to erase her prominence. It's gonna be emblematic of my foot in somebody's ass, at this rate.
So here we go. I'm protesting the silencing, I'm protesting the change, I'm protesting. Because I can't stop thinking, and this was supposed to be about the fact that I can't get away from the world and it's eating my face and wearing me out and stealing my motherfucking spoons, but this. This is more important. Which I suppose is emblematic of my entire problem.
I'm a double major, English and Women & Gender Studies, and I got into the second when I was almost done with the first, so I was taking primarily English classes with a couple of WS classes thrown in (and ones that were both! Like "19th Century Women Writers!" Which was AWESOME.)
So, English. English with an emphasis in Literature, to be specific. This is the degree where they take people who love to read and attempt to cure them of it. There was a point (during a summer session where I was taking two classes at the same time, reading two novels plus analysis and writing two 5-page papers a week for eight weeks - I do not recommend it) where I got to the point that I didn't want to read a fucking cereal box because OMG WORDS NO. Obviously that went away. I watched movies, played video games, avoided text for a couple of weeks, I got better. Very good. Still love to read, still do it all the time.
And now, Gender Studies. This degree is really about changing the way you think, the way you understand and interact with the world, about raising consciousness and increasing awareness, and what you learn is that society - especially American society - is sexist, racist, classist, heterosexist, ableist, and transphobic. (Transphobic isn't quite as inclusive as I want it to be - maybe cisgenderedist? Is that a word? The idea that there are exactly two sets of genitalia, male and female, with no variation AT ALL and the person inside matches the external plumbing every single time. It not only erases trans people, but intersex and genderqueer and all sorts of folks who don't fit that little mental scenario.) It's also monogamist and overwhelmingly Christian.
The problem with this is that obviously the world doesn't look like this. The "default human being" is not a middle-class married white guy of western European origin with two children (boy and girl), a mortgage, and a lawn with the occasional dandelion. If you watch commercials, this is what a family looks like. This is not my family. I am not that guy. To be totally honest, I don't even KNOW that guy. I was not his daughter and I will never even be his female partner, which are the only two roles open to me in that scenario.
And now that I'm fully aware of this, I can't turn it off. It affects the way I think, the way I process everything I see, read, hear, and buy. Unless I shut myself in a box and have no contact with the outside world, I can't stop it. There is no respite. And sometimes, when I am mentally exhausted and mood-crashy and just plain out of spoons, I would give ANYTHING to be able to shut it off. I realize I'm privileged enough that most of it doesn't touch me directly - I'm white, middle class, cisgendered, refer to my significant other with masculine pronouns, largely able-bodied. My disabilities are (mostly) invisible and fairly minor. I'm lucky.
But world, really, can't you give the unrelenting shitstorm a break for five fucking minutes? I can't watch Toy Story 3 without having a moment of total feminist horror.
They also showed the trailer for Tangled in front of Toy Story 3. If you haven't seen it, take a couple of minutes and track it down, if you would.
This trailer really upsets me. A lot. Disney has made literally billions of dollars, truckloads of fucking money, telling girl stories to girls. The "Princess" line alone is a multi-billion-dollar annual industry, selling virtually anything a little girl could possibly want, with a princess's face plastered on it. Princess and the Frog made $267 billion worldwide in box-office earnings alone. That's not counting what they made selling DVDs, soundtracks, dolls, costumes, plushies, tea sets, little plastic dinguses that go WHIRR, action figures, mugs, T-shirts, and so on ad nauseam. Telling girl stories to girls has never once steered them wrong
Pixar, on the other hand, has told a lot of boy stories. THEY TELL THEM WELL, DO NOT GET ME WRONG. I LOVE EVERY PIXAR MOVIE I HAVE SEEN EXCEPT FINDING NEMO. However. They don't have a single female protagonist; there are a handful of female characters in the ensemble casts, but Toy Story and its sequels are about Woody and his interaction with the world, his friends, his (male) kid. Boys have adventures and blow stuff up, girls have...tea parties. The main female character in Monsters, Inc is literally a plot device. The main female character in Finding Nemo is a joke. In The Incredibles, the women are a (jealous, desperate housewife) mother, a boy-crazy teenaged girl, an evil seductress, and a bossy career woman who doesn't listen.
What scares me is that Disney merged with Pixar, and immediately took a "girl story" ("Rapunzel") and made it about the boy. As
finch put it, it looks like "Disney does Shrek." And Shrek is fun and funny and I enjoyed it - in much the same way I enjoyed the eminently forgettable Emperor's New Groove. I watched the trailer and went, "That's going to be dated in five minutes." It disturbs me that Disney looked at Princess and the Frog and went, "That didn't make enough money. It must be because boys didn't go see it." Because girls will watch boy stories, but boys don't watch girl stories? Is that how that works? It couldn't be because the economy is struggling and going to the movies is fucking expensive. It couldn't be because the songs aren't exactly mind-blowingly amazing or the plot's kind of plodding. It has to be because of the title, the fact it's about a girl - even though the girl spends half the fucking movie as a boy-attracting FROG. Really, Disney? Really?And now, my moment of feminist horror, because, to a certain extent, it's extremely emblematic of what's going on.
MINOR SPOILERS FOR TOY STORY 3, if you're a purist who hasn't seen it yet, go look at lolcats or something. I'm done with you.
Okay, everybody else good?
So The Gang discovers that the daycare that they've been donated to
This is an issue. This is a major, major issue, that didn't manage to eliminate my enjoyment of the rest of the movie (fortunately), but silencing female characters is not acceptable, and not protesting the silencing of your female friends is even LESS acceptable. It's a single minute in a movie, but it's emblematic of the whole fucking world, and it's emblematic of a Pixar-run Disney making a fairy tale named after a female character about the male character and changing the title to erase her prominence. It's gonna be emblematic of my foot in somebody's ass, at this rate.
So here we go. I'm protesting the silencing, I'm protesting the change, I'm protesting. Because I can't stop thinking, and this was supposed to be about the fact that I can't get away from the world and it's eating my face and wearing me out and stealing my motherfucking spoons, but this. This is more important. Which I suppose is emblematic of my entire problem.
no subject
The problem is that lately, I hardly have the spoons to deal with everyday life, and things like Enchanted and Pushing Daisies and my various other happy places are just that - happy places. I can't watch s1 or s2 of Supernatural these days because I DO notice the utter fail, and it's just... too much.
I feel sort of like it makes me a bad person, wanting to not have to have my eyes opened to sexism or cisgenderism or whatever is going on in these shows, but... I just can't bring myself to look for it. I need anything that helps me not run out of spoons before the day is up. -_-
no subject
This rant, until it turned into a screed about TS3 and Tangled, was SUPPOSED to be about how I wish I could just turn it off and ENJOY something every now and then, in the same way I could go for a couple of weeks without reading anything significant. Lately I've been feeling so overwhelmed by the constant bombardment of various kinds of fail, in fandom and out, and so unable to get away from it at all, that I just want to be able to shut that little part of my brain UP and watch a fucking MOVIE. I'm discovering that apparently I can read 19th century literature (Jane Austen, L.M. Montgomery) without switching on that part of my brain, so I guess that the stuff I'll be reading for fun will be the stuff I used to have to read for class. That's at least Alanis Morissette level irony.
no subject
no subject
Word first of all
Second of all HOW THE FUCKING HELL CAN EDUCATED PEOPLE NOT REALIZE THAT REMOVING THE MOUTH OF A FEMALE CHARACTER IS IN ITS VERY BEING FUCKING HORRIBLE?! HOW CAN THEY ....HOW... HAVE THEY NEVER READ ANYTHING?! WHAT...
....
WORDS!!!
Not seeing this movie. I didn't really intend to, but why the hell.
no subject
no subject
And I said to myself "...where are all the girls?"
I think there was a woman in charge of texture maps for clothing and there was like one, MAYBE two females at the storyboarding crit.
This is partially what pissed me off so much about the EUP Animation Society- it was male dominated in way that made you think baboons were running it (which...was not far from the truth). Rather than try to compete with all that testosterone the ladies did their own thing. I personally found it (the guys being gorillas) so offensive that avoidance was the vastly preferable option.
The (American- I have no specs for other nations) animation world is still heavily male-dominated which...is incredibly unfortunate.
Clearly what I need to do is start my own CLAMP office here in the US. ;P