"Idiosyncratic Sexism" Isn't Idiosyncratic

Look at the picture:

Which is coded "male" and which is coded "female"? It sounds like a stupid question. It really isn't. The one we see as inherently masculine, and thus male, has no markers as such. "He" has no testicles. "He" has no hairstyle specific to men - the hairstyle on the figure we see as feminine is exactly the same. "He" is masculine for two reasons: the other figure is "clearly" feminine, and because male is the default gender. "He" needs no signifiers. Absent any, we assume the figure is male. 

Simone de Beauvoir has written, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." In that one line, there are a myriad of different readings. I've pondered many of them. But the figures above illustrate the interpretation I like best, that I see as best representing what my own take on the thing is. And that is this: 

Gender is both real, and made.

Women learn how to be women from a young age. Men learn how to be men from a young age. But in the case of stick figures, books written in the singular before the implementation of "s/he", and medical studies, men (and boys) are the default.

There is nothing idiosyncratic about sexism, aside from the fact that it happens and is accepted. There are people who display their sexism idiosyncratically, like Keith Olbermann, who has engaged in sexist remarks when it comes to women he doesn't like or doesn't agree with. But sexism, from representation in films to representation in medical research to representation in government, is profoundly linked to certain historic - and systemic - elements. To deny the role sexism - unintended, unexamined, unrecognized sexism - plays in these areas is to deny the very truth of the matter. The truth of the matter is that men, mostly white and able-bodied and middle-class, are still generally in charge. 

Look at Pixar's roster. Look at the people running Pixar: Steve Jobs, John Lassetter, Jim Morris. 

Look at the writers: Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird, Bob Peterson, Pete Doctor, John Lassetter.

There's nothing idiosyncratic about a bunch of men writing movies about men. It is seen as much more idiosyncratic for men to write about women, and strong women. Those men get asked questions like, "Why do you always write these strong female characters?"

Which is why describing sexism as idiosyncratic kind of misses the point about the big deal regarding sexism. It isn't that only Pixar's films don't do a good enough job representing women. It is that films don't do a good enough job representing women. I pick on Pixar for a couple of reasons:

1) I love Pixar films.

2) Pixar is a studio that consistently makes thoughtful, complex, daring films that are commercially viable.

3) Pixar is a children's film studio, and it is important to show children media with both girls and boys as the main protagonists.

It's important in other films as well. There is a line in America's Sweethearts,

I really want to play a character like the Terminator, you know, because I think the Hispanic people are crying out to see a deadly, destructive, killing machine that they can embrace as their own, you know, that they can relate to...

Now I don't know if women necessarily need a female deadly killing machine. But there is a problem when, as Joss Whedon says, "all it takes is one Catwoman to set the cause back a decade."

That isn't an example of Pixar's "idiosyncratic" sexism. This is an industry-wide issue.

Look at the statistics compiled by Women & Hollywood:

2008

Only 6 of the top 50 grossing films (12 of the top 100 films) starred or were focused on women.
Women comprised 9% of all directors.
Women accounted for 12% of writers.
Women comprised 16% of all executive producers.
...
...
Women comprise only 23% of film critics at daily newspapers. (San Diego State)
2007

In 2007, women only comprised 15% of all directors, executive producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 grossing films. (San Diego State)
In 2007, only 6% of the top 250 grossing films were directed by women. (San Diego State)
In 2007, only 5 of the top 50 films starred or were focused on women.
Of the 6,833 single speaking characters in the film nominated for best picture from 1977-2006 only 27.3% were females. (USC)
Women make up 27% of TV writers and 19% of film writers (WGAW)
2006

In 2006, less than a dozen of the 307 films eligible for an Oscar were women driven (EW).
In 2006, only 3 movies in the top 50 starred or were focused on women. (EW)

And one of the reasons for this is direct discrimination, both historic and current. But part of it is the discouragement one receives when one doesn't see oneself reflected in a particular industry/job. I'm not saying this happens with every person; obviously, it doesn't. If it did, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would have never run for president, because no one who looked like them had won that job before. But I wonder about how many kids never even entertained the thought of becoming president. I know I didn't, and I can't say whether that is because I saw no one who looked like me on my presidential flashcards or because I honestly didn't think I, as an individual, had the ability to do so. I do know that my cousin - a tall, muscular, multiracial guy - wanted to be a kindergarden teacher. I do know the constant discouragement, both direct and oblique, eventually pushed him away from that path.

I know that as much as everyone is an individual, we are also shaped by our experiences - by how those around us react. I know that there is a reason why women are better at chess when they are unaware their opponent is a guy. I know there is a reason why "white males got higher customer satisfaction ratings than women or people of color, whether they were doctors, university bookstore employees, or staffers at a golf course."

And I know that the reason Pixar is only a year younger than me and has yet to release a film with a female protagonist isn't idiosyncratic in the least. Instead, it is merely par for the course. Which is why it is sexism, and why sexism is dangerous.

Pixar's Up: Uproariously Funny/Infuriatingly Gendered

What can I say about Pixar's most recent offering, Up? Well, after the pure and innovative wonder of WALL•E, Up seemed almost destined to come in second. And yet, I don't think it is in Pixar's power to make a bad movie. Up, the story of Carl Fredrickson, is so moving, so powerful, so slapstick funny, so entirely different than what has preceded it, that it both fits in the pantheon of Pixar films in terms of greatness and reaches those heights independently. Just like all of the great Pixar films that came before.

I can say that Russell is the most believable kid I've ever seen in a movie. From his reason for wanting the last necessary Wilderness Explorer badge, to his complaints about how his knee hurt and how he had to go to the bathroom, Russell was a prepubescent kid. The excitability, the lack of precociousness, the poking Carl in the face when he thought Carl might be dead - all were spot on.

I can say that the twenty minute montage of Carl and Ellie's life together was perhaps the best and most moving piece of animation I have ever seen. It in and of itself could have been a Pixar short, though a rather somber one.

I can say that Carl's reactions throughout the film, from bonking that guy on the head to his obsession with his mailbox to talking to his house as if Ellie were still in it to kissing Ellie's picture, were achingly, heartbreakingly realistic.

I can say that Dug the Dog was an awesome addition to the movie.

I can say that I would watch this movie perhaps more than any other Disney or Pixar film - if it weren't for Dory's "I wish I could speak whale" moment in Finding Nemo.

And yet. And yet there is the "girl problem". I've posted about this before, after WALL•E came out. But Up continues to highlight the problems I've had with Pixar films - and in ways, it goes farther toward making it worse, to making it less female-friendly.

Like, Ellie gets a couple of lines in the beginning of the film when she's a kid, and then is silenced by the (again, thoroughly beautiful and moving) 20 minute montage, a montage that ends with her death. Young Ellie, for all of her 5 minutes on screen, is the only actual speaking role a main female character, partially because there is only one other main female character. And that's a bird. Named Kevin. I've probably posted before about my dislike of boys' names for girls in movies and television shows. Which I was fine with for quite a while. My antipathy for that particular practice didn't develop until I heard Bryan Fuller talk about how giving girls boys' names made them easier for him to write, that it was hard for him to write a 'girl' character. Then I had a bit of a lightbulb moment.

The lightbulb moment is this: "characters" are easy to write. "Girl characters" are not. A film about someone bringing his house to Paradise Falls and having a young stowaway who only wants his Wilderness badge is a film the Pixar people can write. A film where a girl does the same thing is not.

In many of the other blog posts about gender issues in Pixar films floating around the feminist ether, some commenter inevitably makes the point that Pixar isn't the only film studio almost exclusively living in Boysville. And that's true, but that (a) doesn't really absolve Pixar, and (b) only demonstrates exactly how prevalent this problem really is - which just reinforces the point that this is a bad and deserves to be addressed. However, the reason I'm picking on Pixar is because the films they make are so imaginative, so talented, so brilliant, so emotionally resonant, that it is all the more disappointing when they either can't or won't write a film with a main character who is a woman - and who isn't a princess. Pixar movies about boys can be chef-rats and toys and superheroes and fish and cars and old men. Pixar movies about girls - the one Pixar movie in the works about a girl - is about a princess. The juxtaposition the complex imaginings of the Pixar oeuvre with the seeming inability to imagine where women and girls fit as individual characters within that oeuvre is profoundly depressing. It is depressing because I believe if ever there was a studio that has the ability to create a universal story with a female protagonist, Pixar is that studio. It is depressing because these are children's films that continually privilege boys, making them the centers of each individual universe, and thus reinforce the idea of Male as default and Female as the other. It reinforces the idea of Woman being the Second Sex.

The Mad Typist has a run down of Pixar films and grades them accordingly in terms of how the women are portrayed, and FilthyGrandeur has another run down of the Pixar dilemma. And again, the problem isn't the films individually. It is incredibly easy to defend the decision to make a film about Flick, or Buzz and Woody, or Bob Parr, or Marlin and Nemo, or Carl and Russell, or Lightening McQueen, or Remy, or Sulley and Mike, or WALL•E. Each individual movie is great. Each individual movie can be rationalized. It is when all of the movies are taken as a group that the issue emerges. Out of the 10 movies that have been released, not one of them features a female protagonist. If we add the 3 movies in some form of production, the average goes to 1 out of 13 movies features a female protagonist. Meanwhile, one is about a newt named "Newt", which just goes further to reinforce that "male as default" thing.

Pixar, because of the power the studio commands, because of the audience their films attract (like, young ones), because of the fact that women make up more than 1/13 of the world population, need to engage in some serious corrective measures. Because as much as I love Pixar, it cuts to consistently see my gender underrepresented or outright erased from the films I pay to see. It hurts to have my gender consistently portrayed as "love interest" or "sidekick" - or both in one character. And to be perfectly frank, it's kind of pissing me off that after the wondrous ingenuity of rats who want to cook and toys who are alive (in a noncreepy way) and old men dealing with grief and life's disappointments, girls once again get the princess crap. As if "Princess" is an underrepresented genre of film for girls. As if "Princess" isn't a problematic description for little girls, if for no other reason than most little girls won't ever be one - because "princess" is something one is and not something one can work at becoming. As Monique Fields said regarding Disney's The Princess and the Frog,

Some little girls are telling anyone who will listen that they want to be princesses when they grow up. If nothing else, I expect a more ambitious and attainable goal from children who haven’t yet learned to read or write.

I have faith in Pixar. I have the expectation that I'll be going to see Pixar films in the theater much more frequently than I will see any other type of movie. I anticipate that, like Linda Holmes, I will adore The Bear and the Bow. But as much as I want Pixar to recognize that there are girls in the world and we're worth their attention, I'd also really love it if they recognized that shorthand for "girl" isn't "princess". You'd think they would have gotten that memo, after making Ellie and EVE and Violet and Dory. But apparently, they haven't yet.

Saturday Sesame Street

This is my mother's favorite Sesame Street clip, ever. Even higher on her list than The 39 Stairs, or "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ". She wants it for her phone's ringtone, and I'm hoping someday soon we'll be able to get it for her. I love it a lot too, partially because I have fond memories of my mother being so happy when it came on randomly in the middle of my show, partially because it is a really fun song, partially because the ladybugs are really cute with their bonnets, and partially because now that I'm older I actually get what some of the lyrics are referring to, like "They talked about the high price of furniture and rugs, and fire insurance for lady bugs". So, this goes down as yet another example of Sesame Street being great for kids, and adults too! And so, "Lady Bug Picnic":


Apparently the animation and singing was done by Pixar's Bud Luckey! He was an animator on Toy Story, and wrote and composed and directed and narrated my mother's favorite Pixar short, Boundin'!

What I Want

What I want, what I crave, is a Pixar movie that is based around a female protagonist. Crazy, I know. I love Pixar films. I watch them incessantly. I love the characters, the complexities, and the crazy-cool worlds they build. But what I would really love is for the main focus of a couple of their films to be on the girls. Maybe I'm being selfish. After all, Disney films did tend to focus on girl characters; of course, many of them are now kind of gender-traditional and not exactly with messages I want my movies to espouse. And Pixar women tend to be rocking. Elastigirl? Awesome. Dory? Wonderful. EVE? Powerhouse badass. Jessie was pretty incredible herself. Mrs. Potato Head was a bit of a nag, but her heart was in the right place.

So why, with these multitude of great, complex female characters, does Pixar shunt them off to the side to focus almost exclusively on their (equally great, complex) male characters? I don't know. But it definitely re-highlights concerns of Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and her assertion that women are The Other, while men are "Normal". It is something that exists in society today. Men find it hard to buy into women's stories, because women are separate entities. Men aren't asked to identify with them, or expected to identify with them, because men's tales are thought to be Universal and women's tales apply only to women. And it happens in every medium. Products advertised as "women's" products, or thought to be women's products, don't sell cross-gender as well as men's products do. And this isn't about true women's products, like tampons, but cars and phones and other gender-neutral (in that both genders can use them) products.

So, I would very much like for Pixar to focus on a female character. Human, fish, robot, toy, car, bug, monster, whatever. I want Helen Parr to have her own film. Or something. Because right now, women's mainstream films are Sex & the City and Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. I think Pixar has the magic to make a movie centered on a female protagonist not be just a women's film and not have its audience be women-majority. I think Pixar has the ability to have men identify with women, to battle back implicitly against the vision of Women-as-The-Other. Also, some minorities might be nice, other than Frozone. Who I loved, but didn't really play that big a role in the film.

I want to not come to the shocking realization that it is easier for men to relate to a robot than someone who may someday have boobs (or already does). And most of all, I want not to be inculcated with the idea that men really are the norm and women are not. That men's experiences are universal, therefore women do not need to be present. That men and men's emotional journeys are what are most important, and a woman's job is to play a supporting roles in that. Pixar is filled with talented people, and hasn't gone wrong yet. But it is depressing to see myself so absent from their success; I want that to change. I want the world to change; and I want Pixar to help.

WALL•E is Wondrous

Some time after Toy Story, Toy Story 2, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Finding Nemo, critics stopped beginning (or ending) their reviews with the question of when Pixar would get it wrong, when Pixar would stumble, or when Pixar would lose that magical quality that allows it to continually put out hit after ingenious and lovable hit. Like Anton Ego, Pixar has reduced film reviewers to simply fans; instead of contemptuously wondering when it would end, they began to wonder how much farther Pixar could go. And with good reason. WALL•E, the newest Pixar creation, does nothing to fall off course. It tackles more, and succeeds in every possible way.

It is a "G" rated children's movie that encompasses everything from politics to environmentalism to the nature of love, and yet doesn't feel preachy or as if it is imparting a lesson from on high. And it does so by, in the words of the New York Time reviewer AO Scott, acknowledging that "the paradox at the heart of "WALL•E is that the drive to invent new things and improve the olds ones -to buy and sell and make and collect- creates the potential for disaster and also the possible path away from it". It is the classic nature of a tragedy: that which is our greatest strength is our greatest weakness. At the beginning of WALL•E, we are presented with the end of the tragedy; after we have destroyed the planet and abandoned it. But it would not be a children's film -or at least not one released in conjunction with the Disney name- if it did not end in triumph.

The movie, though, does contain some fairly eery scenes and images. First up is, of course, the earth; covered in trash skyscrapers on the ground and surrounded by bits of space junk; our beautiful planet is thoroughly trashed. Massive dust storms threaten our hero and his pet cockroach. And it is utterly deserted. The most chilling Twilight episodes featured futures of this nature; as do the most frightening horror films, the ones where no one is left. And then there are the people, when we do find them. Doughy-fat and impossibly disengaged from their peers, these humans have lost the ability to walk. A scene that is both funny and alarming is one that shows what happens when one of them falls off of his hover-recliner. Unable to lift himself up, he lays helplessly for robot assistance; meanwhile, traffic is rerouted (and we may be able to take some lesson about traffic control away from this), and a robotic voice soothingly says, "Please remain stationary". Then there is what seems to be the degeneration of the education system, with youngsters being taught their ABCs via the Wal-Mart-esque corporation, here called Buy 'n Large, and the Captain not understanding how to work a book. And, of course, the robots. In a world that pulls from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the robots take orders from a long-ago given protocol.

Pixar has done what it has done in the past, and delivered a child's film with adult themes. The love story and the cuteness of WALL•E, his devotion to EVE, will keep kids engaged. As will the overall message of environmentalism and the indomitable spirit of humans -once it has been activated, of course. But for adults there is the repeated message of "Stay the course", used repeatedly by President Bush and echoed by BnL's CEO and the world's president. Pixar also highlights the wasteful laziness of consumer culture by having WALL•Rs, larger WALL•Es for the space ship, simply box up our junk and catapult it into space, and by having the continued message of the BnL Corporation be that Earth has become uninhabitable and not worth saving. It is the captain, educated by his computer as to the beauties of earth and dancing, and WALL•E and EVE and other rogue robots who champion the opposite message once hope of life has sprung up in the form of a tiny plant.

In the end, Pixar does what it does best. It makes WALL•E, EVE, M-O, and even the cockroach seem interminably human. It makes the humans that as well. And it cleverly references and alludes to other aspects of popular culture, like WALL•E's obsession with "Hello, Dolly". It has a philosophy beyond fun and hijinks, though there are plenty of those as well. And it focuses on the goodness that exists within us, even if it is sometimes subdued or atrophied. The humans of the future aren't evil; just ignorant. And Pixar manages to make going outside seem cooler than sitting home and playing with the Wii or Playstation, makes talking to the person next to you on the subway seem more fun than talking on a cellphone or listening to an iPod. It stretches the boundaries of what a child's film can be, what it can say, and what mediums it can encompass. In short, WALL•E succeeds in almost every way.

Top Ranked Animated Films

In anticipation of WALL•E, the cutest movie robot ever, I thought I'd give you my feelings on a list of top ranked animated films that appeared on the Yahoo! homepage about a week ago. The entire list is there, so I'm going to concentrate on the films I feel have been grossly neglected or overly praised.

First up: Happy Feet, coming in at #22. I was so excited for this movie. I love anthropomorphic animals in animation, I love tap dancing, and I love penguins. Penguins even look like traditional tap dancers with their little tuxedos. The animators even got Savion Glover, the love of my tap dancing life, to actually tap the part of Mumble through motion capture technology. So what went wrong? Well, to start with the movie did not come close to matching the emotion of that other penguin movie, March of the Penguins; or even the fun of Surf's Up (not that Surf's Up should be on this list, so I'm not complaining that it isn't). It was akin to a bad drag film. Good drag films (Kinky Boots, Rocky Horror Picture Show) are excellent; bad ones are beyond torturous. And Happy Feet was beyond torturous. Convoluted, long, and boring, it contained few characters anyone would really give a good damn about. And its messages of love, equality, and environmentalism were great notions but poorly examined. So why, in the name of all things holy, does it come before such classics as Mulan (#27), and Lady and the Tramp (#26)? Why is it even on this list?!

Next up: Toy Story. There is no way Toy Story should be only #14 on this list, being beaten by the likes of Cars (#7) and Shrek (#8) (and Shrek 2). Cars was a good animated film, but in terms of Pixar film hierarchy it was one of their more mediocre efforts. I loved it, but it didn't reach the emotional highs and lows, or the pure imagination, of Toy Story. There was no scene that rivaled the "Mrs. Nesbit" scene. And Shrek, though a wonderful and cliche subverting film, didn't have one of those either. Not to mention that Shrek 2, though the highest grossing animated film, didn't come close to matching Toy Story 2 in terms of content and deliverance. Toy Story 2 was one of the best sequels to a film ever, containing all that made the first movie brilliant and adding new -funny and heartwrenching- elements as well. So why does Shrek 2 beat out even the first Toy Story at #11, and Toy Story 2 is nowhere to be found on the list?!

Kung Fu Panda makes the #2 spot. I can't say much about that, as I haven't seen it yet. The "Skadoosh" of the previews doesn't exactly thrill me. But I can't help but feel as if this is the shine of the New taking over instead of an actual look at this film's content. I don't think it could possibly be better than Ratatouille (#6) or The Incredibles (#3), films that rival live-action "grown up" films in terms of dealing with more adult problems.

And Enchanted, a film that makes the #10 spot, shouldn't even be on the freakin' list. This is a movie with about 10 minutes of animated sequence. And it may be a wonderful movie, but 10 minutes of animation doesn't make for a Top Ranked Animated Film. A film that could have replaced this one would be Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That film is also left off of the list.

I do agree with Finding Nemo in the number 1 spot. And I do like how the top 10 is a mixture of different film studios instead of simply being a gay old romp in the Disney (or Disney affiliated) film archive. Spirited Away (#4), Nightmare Before Christmas (#9), these films deserve to be there.

But there are other films that were left off the list that deserve to be there as well. Instead of Over the Hedge (a movie I loved), how about Chicken Run? Where was The Triplets of Belleville? How about James in the Giant Peach instead of Enchanted, if Roger Rabbit was thought to be too adult? How about Monster House, which was raw and dirty and had characters that were more human (and dislikable) than most animated films have without those characters being the villain?

As with all lists of these kinds, there are always going to be controversies in the rankings; I'm not going to nitpick each film I think should have been ranked higher or lower, because it is personal choice instead of objective fact that make up a majority of our conclusions in matters like this. I'm not even going to get into what I think about The Simpsons Movie being #16, for instance. But as a consummate viewer of animated films, it was important for me to rant about this particular topic.