Brave (Page 2 of 3)

Despite it's problems, as far as Disney goes, Mulan is probably my favorite, followed closely by Lilo and Stitch.

Mulan 2 certainly is not perfect, but worth at least one watch.

I mostly cringe at the far more Western influences on both movies. So, I certainly understand that.

I totally respect where you're coming from, Isaac, and I've been sitting at my keyboard for several minutes now, trying to figure out exactly how I should reply. I'm probably feeling a little defensive of my second favorite Disney movie because I repeatedly have to defend my favorite Disney movie, The Little Mermaid, from accusations that it's anti-feminist.

Certainly, I agree that upsetting the status quo is a good thing, that's just not what this story is about. Mulan is the story of one exceptional person doing some exceptional things, and in my experience that almost never directly causes a change in the status quo. In fact, I think I would have greater problems with a story that implied that changing the status quo could be so easy. The little I've seen of the sequel, on the other hand, does show Mulan going on to provide an inspiration to other little girls in her village.

But the major reason I don't take issue with the character's exceptionalism is because even if not much has changed in the rest of her world, that doesn't lessen the fact that things have greatly changed for Mulan. She is the character with whom the audience (of primarily young children) is intended to identify, and I don't really find the messaging problematic in that regard.

And at the very least, I give it more credit than Brave; Mulan never apologizes to her father for defying him.

Totally agree on all the other stuff, tho, particularly the drag double standard. One of the other teachers at my school recently brought in a collection of cast off skirts and dresses for the kids to play with, and I am daily reminding them that it's perfectly okay for the boys to play dress up, too. Being the only foreigner in the room, however, makes me wonder if the kids aren't just dismissing it as "Cotterpin-sensei is so weird!"

Well put, CP! I was trying to figure out a good response, since I think Mulan is one of the more admirable Disney movies out there. Your response is excellent, and connects the sequel in a way that I agree with. I like seeing the inspiration that Mulan has among the young girls, as well as the inspiration she has on the others around her. She is not just exceptional because of what she does; she is exceptional because she inspires others.

I would be curious to hear your defense of Little Mermaid. I don't always consider it anti-feminist, but it is not my favorite film either. In order to not derail this thread, feel free to PM anything you have written prior. I am very curious now

I totally hear what you're saying Cotterpin.  I think, as redxavier points out, my issues are less about the movie and more about the world I want my child (and all other people) to live in.   While I could nitpick further, but "is Mulan a great kids movie or only a very good one" is probably not a debate that warrants further hashing.

I feel like that's a "bring your own concrete" excuse to the movie being so broken. For an explanation as to why this is generally considered to be not good and how if accepted, it could start movies on a slippery slope, revisit WAYDM's Prometheus commentary.

Yup, yup, yup and ditto.

I've heard men criticize The Little Mermaid before and it really bothers me, but it's so hard to put into words why. I'm of the age group that watched it A LOT growing up and it was never my favorite film (I kinda preferred 101 Dalmatians, Cinderella and various other animal centric films.) But to echo Cotterpin, I don't find either The Little Mermaid or Mulan problematic. They both take women and their ambitions and challenges seriously which is a lot more than some "strong female character" movies do. We kind of talked about this on The Avengers thread, but I've been realizing it's much more about how the story respects the woman as a complete person and makes her feel real than it is about how many stereotypes she breaks. The stereotype-breaker movies feel a lot more superficial than the take-the-woman-seriously movies and seem to get a bit more praise for how "groundbreaking" they are in the press, but they don't seem to resonate with actual real-life women as much.

If it's only guys bashing how anti-feminist a movie is and women seem to love it (Twilight, Titanic, The Little Mermaid, etc.) then I feel like something's missing. If that many women love it then there's probably something real and serious in there that our culture trivializes about women. When people take what could otherwise be a thoughtful discussion about women and the arts and turns it into "why women are dumb for liking Twilight", something has gone seriously wrong. There's few things more soul-crushing to a woman than misogyny in the disguise of feminism. Misogyny, in part, minimizes the strength of female voices and their struggles; misogyny in the disguise of feminism practically eliminates female voices altogether. Women and teenage girls in particular have a hard time getting listened to once a man declares something "anti-feminist". If they defend it, the women look unenlightened, backwards and simple. If they decide to agree with the man, they reinforce the feeling that men know best and must decide what is fit for women to experience. That's not to say that men can't recognize mistreatment of women and call society out on it, just that, imo, women should be the key voices in a discussion like that.

That said, I've been trying to figure out why The Little Mermaid works for me (and my sister) specifically for about the past year, since Scriptnotes did an episode on that movie and basically said it was anti-feminist. We decided that it does a few key things wonderfully:

1. The narrative is guided by Ariel's main desire. She wants to be a human and live with the man she's in love with. She makes sacrifices to do this in giving up her family and her main talent, goes up against near insurmountable odds, defeats the villain, reconciles with the father, becomes the master of two worlds, literally gains her voice back and saves the prince in the process, btw.

2. Her voice. She sacrifices her voice *literally* to get what she wants in life and that's something a lot of women can relate to. (My sister really agreed with this part of the story resonating with her, as I recall.)

3. The villain is a woman and uses her insight into Ariel as a woman to manipulate her. She does this by keying into her dislike of her father, her romantic feelings towards this guy, the value Ariel places on her "one talent" and her fascination with the "other world". Disney female villains are a bit of a trope, but I think it's used to especially good effect here. Ursula is a fully realized character with actual motivations that make sense and she stacks the odds against Ariel in a way that makes Ursula look smart while still making Ariel look real, if a bit naive and vulnerable which gives her room to grow as a character during the rest of the movie.

4. The prince has something of a personality. Many 90's girls name Prince Eric as a character they love and why wouldn't they? Unlike other Disney princes, he actually gets to talk! He behaves in a believable, thoughtful and respectful manner towards Ariel and even has a key signifier of Disney main character personhood: an adorable animal sidekick.

5. Did I mention SHE saves HIM in the end? And HE is the one entranced by an evil witch.

6. She looked somewhat unconventional. It's easy to forget this in the age of Pixar red-heads, but a female Disney heroine who wasn't blonde was actually groundbreaking and ushered in a new era of diversity in main characters for the company. The Little Mermaid behind the scenes even talks about the moment when the Disney guys realized this plucky mermaid girl could have something other than blonde hair and how important that moment was for them and the reverberations of that decision. The behind-the-scenes are worth a watch, I'd say, if even just for that moment.

Pro-tip: since there appear to be a lot of dads of daughters on this board I thought I'd share how my dad handled this issue, since it's something I'm really thankful for: He exposed us to variety of movies/stories (all age appropriate) and encouraged us to share our gut reactions to whatever we were watching. He didn't just provide them but watched them with us (even if it was The Little Mermaid for the 100th+ time) and had long thoughtful discussions with us regarding whatever topics came up. He treated what we liked with respect. If we had a particular interest or really enjoyed one specific movie he'd try to find all the other similar movies and present them to us for our judgement. He rarely prescribed movies and when he did they were films like The Karate Kid that were personally important to him and he would share why he loved it and where he was in life when he saw it. That said, he did try to make sure we saw a lot of classic musicals, I think in part because of the wonderfully realized women they portrayed. We were free to like or dislike any movie, but instead of saying "yes, that's the right opinion" or "no, it's not" he would just sit down, look at us seriously and ask "Why don't you like it?" or "Why do you like this movie?" and then, as I said, listen for a long time. This gave us a chance to develop and feel secure in our own opinions and come to feel that our home was a safe place for creative exploration. That meant more to us than any supposed "message" in any movie. I think you'll find that your daughters are naturally going to gravitate towards self-respect, standing up for themselves and movies that respect them as women if you, too, treat them and their opinions, whatever they may be, with respect.

Alright /preachy rant. Thanks for listening. This is probably redundant in places as I've been flying for hours, but it's an important issue to me and I'm glad you guys talk about it.

Last edited by Bathilda (2014-06-12 06:57:39)

Bathilda, your dad sounds awesome. If I have kids, that's definitely the approach I'll take to movies.

Disclaimer: if you dislike the tone of a post I make, re-read it in a North/East London accent until it sounds sufficiently playful

The important thing to realize in these kinds of conversation is that as a man, you (and I) are automatically less informed on the subject of what it's like to be a woman, and therefore should do more listening than talking. Also consider that there's a very good chance they already know your perspective and have heard it and had the same conversation before with other men. The whole thing is that your case, the male perspective, is often already made, it's the baseline social assumption. They've heard your side, or a variation on it, significantly more often than you've heard theirs.

That being said, I would be extremely interested in hearing an argument in favor of Twilight as a feminist novel. I wouldn't say it's explicitly anti-feminist, but it certainly seems to promote and celebrate all of the social structures feminism seeks to oppose.

To be fair, most Hollywood movies promote a version of romantic love that, if not quite completely toxic, is at least unrealistic.

The extra problem with Twilight is that it's full of textbook red flags for an abusive relationship.

I meant to jump back in sooner, but I knew it was going to take a while to gather my thoughts, which meant putting it off until Sunday. 

First off, regarding The Little Mermaid as an anti-feminist work, I've heard this argument many, many times. I disagree heartily with the idea that it's anti-feminist and don't see it as problematic. Without straying too far into strawman territory, the primary complaint usually I usually hear is about how Ariel "gives up everything for a man," which seems to me an inaccurate and reductivist reading of the story. Personally, I think Ariel's motivations are fairly complex for a 90 minute kids' movie. For one thing, Ariel never directly says, "I'm doing this for love of Eric!" It's implied, and Ursula, Flotsam, and Jetsam use it as the primary focus of the argument to convince her, but she never echoes their point. And once she becomes human, a great deal of time is spent focused on Ariel enjoying the human world in addition to her efforts to woo Eric. There's also the fact that two women are driving the action in film in which two men are the prize, which is just brilliant.

This is a big point for me. I'm not willing to judge a story with a female protagonist by standards well above and beyond those by which I would judge a male-driven story. I mean, honestly, when was the last time you heard someone complain about the lengths to which Aladdin goes to win over Jasmine? Movies have a limited time to get you from point A to point B, and that often means a lot of tropes are employed to move the narrative along swiftly, including the idea of love at first sight. This works very well for children (I've had plenty of kids tell me that they love me by the end of a 50 minute English class), but may stretch credulity with an older audience.

Now for my part, the complaints against The Little Mermaid have largely come from other women, and I don't typically see a lot of men adopting feminist language to disparage its quality. Bathilda is so right to acknowledge that this forum really is very different when it comes to the nature and quality of the conversation. More often than not, though,  feminist issues in "mainstream" media are largely overlooked, and media for women and girls just isn't taken seriously at all.  I've long been a big fan of romance novels and the sort of paranormal young adult stuff of which Twilight is a part, and I don't remember any of this sort of talk when I was a kid. That may be because, as redxavier points out, kids often take away a different message than their parents. And as much as she hated them, my mother has never asked my why I like romance novels so much, nor bothered to read one herself.

I never finished reading Twilight because it's a very poorly written book. But I have read a lot of poorly written paranormal romance, and I don't think it's a particularly egregious example. I actually got much farther into Twilight than I did The Da Vinci Code or that ridiculous POS Eragon. Much like claims that violent video games turn kids into murderous psychopaths, overall, I think questions of Twilight's manifest evil are greatly exaggerated. Would I prefer that a better book had gotten all of that acclaim? Hell yes! But I promise you, regardless of its dubious quality, there are very few young fans out there planning their future romantic exploits based on the scrawlings of Stephanie Meyers.

With regards to the male point-of-view in a feminist dialogue, I'd probably require a more rigorous argument from a guy, but I like to think I'm willing to listen to all perspectives. Same with race. Prove that you know your stuff, and we'll see where the conversation takes us.

I agree with everything fireproof78 said (other than the being male part).

I think there is an underfilled market for good new fiction for women. See the success of The Fault in Our Stars, both movie and book. The Hunger Games is also pretty good (could be better...especially the ending). I haven't read Divergent so I can't judge it, but the movie was poorly reviewed.

I see Twilight as on the same level as the Michael Bay Transformers. I get that there's a market, but I'm not going to defend either of them from criticism. I refuse to believe that the lousy bits are integral to what makes them popular.

The biggest problem with TFIOS is how contrived the whole romance really seems. I have a feeling it's because Green couldn't help but do something with star-crossed lovers once he hit on the idea of a story about cancer sufferers. Hazel and Augustus fall in love far too quickly, and it doesn't feel natural. Green's Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns are much better in that regard--they have TFIOS's wit and enthusiasm, but deal with characters and relationships that fel far more developed and real.