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.

"If The Love Is True, It Will Just Show Up"

The Feminist Underground beat me to the newest Target Women. I had such a streak going, too! Anyway, it is a good one about Disney princesses:

Now, as everyone who knows me is aware, I love children's films. Especially animated films, and especially Disney films. And everyone who knows me and who will go with me to these movies with me has mandated we have to go at "kiddie" times, because otherwise I laugh obnoxiously and am a great embarrassment. Pathetic, I know. However, my love for these films in no way stops me from recognizing the gender-normative and heteronormative issues present therein, and the extreme whiteness of it all. And Sarah Haskins demonstrates those incredibly well - along with illustrating how all of those empowering songs the modern Disney princesses sing can be melded into one. Which is as cool as it is freaky. 

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.