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Animated Children’s Films: Despite an Intelligent Heroine, Sexism Taints Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’

This guest review by Megan Kearns appears as part of our theme week on Animated Children’s Films.

An intelligent, strong-willed, female protagonist. Who reads books. And seeks adventure. With a heroine like Belle, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, must be a feminist-minded film. Right?? At first, I thought so too. But appearances can be deceiving…

Hailed by critics as a touching romance and one of the greatest animated films ever made, Beauty and the Beast became the first animated movie to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. When I watched it in the theatre years ago, I too fell under its spell, seduced by its lush animation, whimsical tunes and of course Belle.

It felt refreshing to see an intelligent, outspoken, animated heroine who loved to read. Outspoken and loved books? I was outspoken and loved books! I saw myself in Belle. She was a misunderstood misfit, wanting “more than this provincial life” to which she had been born. I too felt like an outcast, yearning for adventure and freedom. We were kindred spirits.

But it wasn’t until years later that I saw the crack in the veneer. As I got older and embraced myself as a feminist, I began to question things more diligently. Once you start to see sexism, you can’t NOT see it. Sadly, it’s everywhere, including children’s films. Actually it’s possibly most prevalent in children’s films, which often reinforce tired and oppressive gender roles and stereotypes.

 Yes, Belle is intelligent, courageous, curious, opinionated…all the things I admire in female protagonists. Disney was painfully aware of the criticism against The Little Mermaid’s Ariel giving up her family, her life, hell even her voice all for a stupid prince. Linda Woolverton, Beauty and the Beast’s screenwriter, drew inspiration for Belle from tomboyish, book-loving, outspoken Jo in Little Women. Belle’s feisty independence heralded a new kind of Disney heroine, paving the way for Jasmine, Pocahontas and Mulan. And yes, we often see the world from her vantage point, another plus. Although the film begins and ends with the Beast, who also happens to go through the biggest transformation (literally and figuratively) in the film. Despite her awesomeness, there’s still a huge problem with Belle.

Even though Belle possesses admirable traits, her merit still comes down to her looks. The Beast, Gaston, the villagers and the enchanted servants all exclaim she’s beautiful, gorgeous, pretty and “her looks have no parallel.” Girls and women should be valued for their intellect, skills and kindness. But no one in the movie is raving about Belle’s inner beauty. Not only is Belle stunning, which of course all Disney “princesses” must be, and white and thin (god we need some diversity in films). It’s her name. Her fucking name is “BELLE,” which in French means “beautiful!” Despite her intelligence and bibliophile ways, even her fucking name revolves around her looks. Once again, women are subjugated and reduced to their appearances. Disney says sure, it’s okay to be smart, bookish, even a weird outcast…as long as you’re pretty. Ugh.

 In fact, the whole goddamn movie revolves around beauty. Symbols of beauty (mirrors and roses), permeate the film. Ironic since the intended moral of the fairy tale is looking past appearances to seek true inner beauty. But here’s the kicker. Beauty and the Beast would never have been made with a woman as a beast. Again reinforcing that yep, beauty is only skin deep…if you’re a dude. If you’re a woman, you’d best be gorgeous.

The only other female characters in the movie are Mrs. Potts (I heart Angela Lansbury!), the wardrobe (who has no personality) and the French maid feather duster. A grandmotherly type and a sexpot. Of course Disney does their notorious matricide in the form of the protagonist’s mother either dead or non-existent. They demonize stepmothers and solely focus on both daughters’ and sons’ relationships with their fathers. Seriously, Disney, what the hell have you got against mothers?? And yep, I’m aware Mrs. Potts is Chips’s mother. Doesn’t count. Not only is she not Belle’s mother, she’s a fucking teapot for most of the film. Belle has no female friends, no mother, no sister, no female role model. The importance of female camaraderie and sisterly bonding remain absent from the film.

Unlike many female characters in animated films (or annoying rom-coms for that matter), Belle isn’t looking to be rescued or waiting around for her prince. Two reasons that make Belle a feminist in Woolverton’s eyes. Belle rejects the sexist chauvinist Gaston and his numerous marriage proposals, finding him “boorish” and “brainless.” She wants more out of life than shining that jerk’s boots and popping out his babies. But Belle rebuffs one dysfunctional suitor for another.

 A cursed spoiled prince, the Beast imprisons Belle’s father, Maurice, for trespassing. When Belle comes to his rescue, she sacrifices her cherished freedom, for his release. As a “guest” prisoner in the castle, the Beast demands Belle attend dinner with him and forbids her from the West Wing. He screams and throws things at her, his selfish temper raging out of control. Oh, I forgot…the Beast is a romanticized tortured soul. So it’s okay if he’s an abrasive douchebag!

Sure, the sympathetic Beast eventually becomes nicer, giving Belle access to his library and letting birds treat him like a bird feeder. And I do like that Belle and the Beast become friends first before falling in love, which rarely happens in fairy tales. Except for one teeny tiny thing. He’s her captor. Falling in love with the guy who imprisons you, holds you hostage, tells you when to eat, where to go and doesn’t let you see your family?! That’s not love. That’s Stockholm Syndrome, sweetie.

 Poisonous messages about love and relationships plague Beauty and the Beast. Don’t worry, ladies…if you suffer and stick by him long enough, your man will change. Just be patient with a guy who’s controlling or abusive. In her lifetime, 1 in 4 women will suffer domestic violence. More and more teenage girls contend with dating violence. Love should not hurt. Ever. But this movie (and sooooo many others) insidiously tells girls that when they grow up, they should stand by their man. Even if he treats you like shit.

I’ll admit Belle as a female character is a step in the right direction. She’s smart, stubborn, kind and ambitious. But Belle gives up her entire life to live forever in a castle with an asshat prince. What about her goals? Her dreams?? Oh that’s right. She becomes a princess! Yet another princess in the pantheon of princesses clogging up girlie-girl media.

Films and books reinforce gender roles and with a lack of female characters, imply that girls and women don’t count. Out of Disney’s 51 theatrically-released animated movies, only 13 feature a female character as a protagonist (16 if you count co-protagonists), most of them princesses. Princesses only care about their clothes and hair. Their looks matter more than their personalities. It seems society would rather teach girls to obsess over their appearance and how to snag a man.

Couldn’t Belle have opened up a bookshop/café or started a book drive or something?? When Belle sang about wanting “more than this provincial life,” I simply refuse to believe twirling around a ballroom in a pretty gown is what she had in mind.

People might think I’m being silly or overreacting about a Disney movie. Fair enough. But I call bullshit. Listen, when we’re young, books, music, movies, TV shows, advertisements and even toys teach us gender roles and identity. Little boys pretend they’re kings or aspire to be president while little girls yearn not to lead like queens, but to be passive princesses. One film probably won’t have much impact. But when the same sexist messages repeat over and over and over and over…well, then it seeps in.

I’m not going to lie. I still watch Beauty and the Beast, singing along to the songs. When I discovered Disney World was building a Beauty and the Beast themed restaurant and attraction, I admit I felt giddy with excitement. But look beyond the gorgeous animation, catchy show tunes and unique heroine.

Sadly, you’ll see yet another fabulous film tainted by sexism, spreading toxic messages that reinforce damaging beauty norms, violence against women, and suffocating gender stereotypes.

Not all that glitters is gold. Unwrapping the beautiful package can sometimes yield an ugly core.

Megan Kearns is a feminist vegan blogger, freelance writer and activist. She blogs at The Opinioness of the World, where she shares her opinions on gender equality, living cruelty-free, Ellen Ripley and delish vegan cupcakes. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Fem2pt0, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned a B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime.

Megan contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), The Reader (for our 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), Mad Men (for our Mad Men Week), Game of Thrones and The Killing (for our Emmy Week 2011), Alien/Aliens (for our Women in Horror Week 2011), and I Came to Testify, Pray the Devil Back to Hell and Peace Unveiled in Women, War & Peace series. She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor. 

Animated Children’s Films: The Evolution of the Disney Villainess

The Wicked Queen

This is a guest review by Rebecca Cohen. 

I’m not the first to note that the female protagonists of Disney animated features tend not to have mothers. When adult women do appear, they are evil wicked stepmothers, as in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella, or evil sorceresses, as in Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid. Indeed, it almost seems as if Disney “princess” movies simply don’t have room for two sexually mature women to coexist. The benevolent maternal figures, like Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother and Aurora’s three fairy guardians, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, are post-menopausal, grandmotherly – certainly not in sexual competition with the heroines. Other than those kindly figures, the only women around are usually powerful adult women who must be destroyed in order for the princess to take her place at her prince’s side. 
Yet all these wicked women are not all exactly the same. The role of the Disney princess’ adversary has changed over time in interesting ways. 
Let’s start with the Wicked Queen in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Queen is in direct sexual competition with her stepdaughter. Her explicit goal is to be “the fairest in the land,” and her aim to destroy the younger woman is entirely in service of that goal. She is willing to risk everything to preserve her status as “fairest.” Her cold, angular beauty is contrasted with Snow White’s child-like, soft appearance. (Personally, I always thought the Queen was far prettier than Snow White.) The Queen is a mature, worldly, strong woman who stands in the way of Snow White’s ascension to marriage and adulthood. 
Lady Tremaine
The Disney Studio tried to recreate some of the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with the release of Cinderella in 1950. Cinderella contains many of the prominent elements of Snow White, including an evil stepmother and a protagonist forced to wear rags and perform domestic labor. Notably, the wicked stepmother in Cinderella, Lady Tremaine, is not vain and sexually competitive with her stepdaughter. Instead, Lady Tremaine aspires to wealth and status, and views Cinderella as a threat to that ambition. In a way, this villainess’ objectives have expanded beyond a shallow beauty contest. There is money and position on the line. Although Cinderella herself desires the exact same thing as her stepmother – to escape her present circumstances and live in the castle – the movie couches her ambition as hopeful dreaming, while Lady Tremaine’s desires are conniving and greedy. The wicked stepmother, being past marriageable age, doesn’t enter herself into direct rivalry for the princely prize. Instead she uses her daughters, Cinderella’s stepsisters, as proxies. The stepsisters are flat-chested and bratty, lacking the gentle curves that demonstrate Cinderella’s readiness for marriage. Yes, their appearance and behavior is designed to highlight their “ugliness,” but they also come across as juvenile. They are never real threats to Cinderella’s ascension to sexual maturity. They are only extensions of their scheming mother, who like Snow White’s Wicked Queen, sees the heroine’s inevitable eventual marriage as a personal threat. In the worlds of Snow White and Cinderella, princes are a finite resource and women will naturally compete for them. But only one can prevail. 
Maleficent
1959’s Sleeping Beauty breaks from the wicked stepmother mold. In fact, Princess Aurora actually has both a mother and a father, both of whom are on the side of good. But the king is a peripheral character and the queen, while lovely, barely speaks. They are both marginal to the story. The adversary in this case is Maleficent, a powerful sorceress. Maleficent does not view Aurora as a threat to her own ambitions, so much as a tool for revenge against Aurora’s parents. What exactly does Maleficent want? She was not invited to celebration of the princess’ birth, and she takes it as an affront and curses the child. The implication is not that the sorceress is truly that petty, but rather that she wants to instill fear and deference in the monarchs. Maleficent’s role in the kingdom is a little bit vague. She lives on the Forbidden Mountain, in her own castle, commanding her own small army of minions. She is clearly powerful, but she expresses no specific aspiration for more influence. In her own way, she just wants respect. But in the world of Sleeping Beauty, she is a mature adult woman with authority and agency. Naturally she must be destroyed before Aurora can become an adult herself (i.e., marry the prince). 
Ursula
The next “princess” movie to come out of the Disney studio was The Little Mermaid in 1989. In The Little Mermaid, it’s not a woman holding the heroine back from adulthood, but rather an overprotective father. It’s hard to imagine a more obvious metaphor for sexual immaturity than being a mermaid. Ariel dreams of having legs, and if it weren’t clear that that means becoming sexually mature, her ambition to be human crystallizes in her desire to marry Prince Eric. The villain in this case is Ursula, “the sea witch.” Like the other villainesses before her, Ursula is a mature woman. She is a very sexual creature, with heavily lidded eyes, big red lips, prominent boobs, and lots of tentacles – down there. Yet she is to be understood as not sexy; she is heavy, and older. Unlike Snow White’s evil queen and Cinderella’s stepmother, Ursula doesn’t see the young princess herself as a threat, but as a tool to another end. But unlike Maleficent, she does have very specific designs on power. Ursula wants to rule the sea in place of King Triton, and Ariel’s campaign to be human (adult) provides a convenient lever for her to achieve this. Ursula is a sorceress, and therefore powerful, but apparently her strength cannot compare to that of King Triton’s mighty trident (ahem). Ursula’s perverse sexuality is of a piece with her perverse power aspirations. How un-subtle that she meets her end being impaled by the prow of a sunken ship piloted by Prince Eric. Once again the only sexually mature woman in sight must be defeated in order for the princess to become available for marriage. And in this case, the ambitious woman who wants more for herself than marriage must give way to the less worldly girl who wants only to land her man. 
Ursula was the last Disney villainess I can think of. With Beauty and the Beast in 1991, the studio abandoned the narrative of female competition in favor of an explicit male sexual threat – although it’s still notable that the only other woman in Belle’s world is a teapot. Since then, and probably in response to a fair amount of criticism, the studio has increasingly struggled to incorporate more progressive ideas about gender into their animated features, with varying levels of success. The image of a powerful adult woman in competition with an innocent girl on the cusp of maturity was an intrinsic element of the princess narrative for over 50 years. It continues to resonate in the imaginations of girls to this day, informing and possibly limiting their perspective on gender roles, relationships between women and the nature of feminine ambition.
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Rebecca Cohen is the creator of the webcomic “The Adventures of Gyno-Star,” the world’s first (and possibly only) explicitly feminist superhero comic.

Animated Children’s Films: Third Time Still Not the Charm for Toy Story’s Female Characters



This guest review by Natalie Wilson first appeared at Bitch Flicks in January 2011.
 
Toy Story 3 opens on a woman-empowerment high, with Mrs. Potato-Head displaying mad train-robbing skills and cowgirl Jessie skillfully steering her faithful horse Bullseye in the ensuing chase. And that’s the end of that: From there on, the film displays the same careless sexism as its predecessors.

Out of seven new toy characters at the daycare where the majority of the narrative takes place, only one is female–the purple octopus whose scant dialogue is voiced by Whoopi Goldberg. Although two of the toys in the framing scenes with Bonnie, the girl who ultimately becomes the toys’ new owner, are female, the ratio is still far worse than the average in children’s media of one-female-to-every-three-males (documented by The Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media). And these ratios have a real effect: Decades of research shows that kids who grow up watching sexist shows are more likely to internalize stereotypical ideas of what men and women are supposed to be like.

Toy Story’s latest installment revolves around now-17-year-old Andy leaving college. His mom (who has yet to be given a name) insists (in rather nagging fashion) that he store or get rid of all his “junk.” The bag of toys mistakenly ends up in the trash, resulting in the toys landing in a prison-like daycare (way to turn the knife on working parent guilt).

In typical Pixar fashion, male characters dominate the film. Though it ends with young Bonnie as the happy new owner of the toys, making way for more sequels, Woody would have to become Wanda, and Buzz become Betty, in order for the series to break Pixar’s male-only protagonist tradition (think Wall-E, A Bug’s Life, Cars, Monster, Inc, The Incredibles).

Bo Peep is inexplicably missing in this third installment, leaving even fewer female figures. Barbie has a larger role this time around though, as an overly emotional, often crying girlie-girl. She is also a traitor of sorts, breaking away from the gang to go live with Ken in his dream house.

As for Ken, he is depicted as a closeted gay fashionista with a fondness for writing in sparkly purple ink with curly-Q flourishes. Played for adult in-jokes, Ken huffily insists, “I am not a girl toy, I am not!” when an uber-masculine robot toy suggests so during a heated poker match. Pairing homophobia with misogyny, the jokes about Ken suggest that the worst things a boy can be are either a girl or a homosexual.

Barbie ultimately rejects Ken and is instrumental in Woody and company’s escape, but her hyper-feminine presentation, coupled with Ken’s not-yet-out-of-the-toy-cupboard persona, make this yet another family movie that perpetuates damaging gender and sexuality norms.

While the girls in the audience are given the funny and adventurous Jessie, they are also taught women talk too much: Flirty Mrs. Potato-Head, according to new character Lotso, needs her mouth taken off. Another lesson is that when women do say something smart, it’s so rare as to be funny (laughter ensues when Barbie says “authority should derive from the consent of the governed”), and that even when they are smart and adventurous, what they really care about is nabbing themselves a macho toy to love (as when Jessie falls for the Latino version of Buzz–a storyline, that, yes, also plays on the “Latin machismo lover” stereotype).

As for non-heterosexual audience members, they learn that being gay is so funny that the best thing to do is hide one’s sexuality by playing heterosexual, and to laugh along when others mock homosexuality or non-normative masculinity.

Yes, the film is funny and clever. Yes, it is enjoyable and fresh. Yes, it contains the typical blend of witty dialogue as well as a visual feast-for-the-eyes. But, no, Pixar has not left its male-heterocentric scripts behind. Nor has it moved beyond the “everyone is white and middle class” suburban view of the world. Perhaps we should expect no more from Pixar, especially now that Disney, the animated instiller of gender and other norms (a great documentary on this is Mickey Mouse Monopoly), now owns the studio. Sadly, Toy Story 3 indicates that animated films from Pixar will not be giving us a “whole new world,” at least when it comes to gender norms, anytime soon.

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Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate. Her other guest posts at Bitch Flicks include Let Me In, Lost, Nurse Jackie, and The United States of Tara.

Animated Children’s Films: Monsters vs. Aliens: Animation Finds Girl Power

This is a guest review by Amanda Krauss.

Note: This is adapted from a review I wrote on March 28, 2009, after seeing the movie when it first came out.

Although this was the fist movie to be fully produced in 3D, I didn’t see the 3-D/IMAX version. Nor had I seen the original, nor am I a dyed-in-the-wool animation fiend. A friend and I were just looking for a fun movie on a rainy afternoon. We were not disappointed, and neither were the kids filling the rest of the theater.

Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is about to marry her dream man, Derek (Paul Rudd), when the wedding is interrupted by a mysterious, quantonium-spewing meteor. The quantonium turns Susan into a giantess and she is whisked away to a secret government facility where monsters are kept. After being informed her name is now Ginormica, she is imprisoned with fellow monsters B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), Link (Will Arnett) and Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), despite her refusal to accept that she is really a “monster.” When the evil alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) attacks earth, however, the monsters are set free to save the world.

Dreamworks has a reputation for entertaining adults as well as kids (a la Shrek), and this movie is no exception. References to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and eighties music abound. Most surprisingly, there is lot of Dr. Strangelove here — you’ll be astounded at how much Kiefer Sutherland’s General W. R. Monger sounds like George C. Scott — as well as some modern political commentary (Stephen Colbert’s pro-war President Hathaway, for example). And of course, if you’re a monster movie fan, you’ll get all the references to The Blob, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, and even The Thing.

The biggest innovation in this movie is its (fairly successful) attempt to be girl-friendly. After she saves San Francisco, Susan returns home to fine that her career-obsessed fiancé can’t handle the potential threat to his own fame and leaves her. Eventually, she decides that’s fine. Besides, she has other fish to fry: in the second half of the movie, Susan and the monsters must battle Gallaxhar on his spaceship, and through various quantonium-sucking plot machinations Susan is briefly returned to her normal size. Importantly, she chooses to suffer re-giantization in order to save her monster friends. Safely back on earth, Susan rejects Derek’s offer to take her back, which allows Susan to effectively dump him — deservedly, as he’s been revealed as self-obsessed coward and general louse.

Overall, I thought the movie successfully communicated that it was OK to be strong, independent, and even (gasp!) single. I liked that Susan was making her own choices, ones that didn’t revolve around getting a man, and that she saved the world herself rather than being saved. If I were feeling poetic, I might find a deeper meaning in her choice to be exceptional, but even if you don’t want to go that deep, the deliberate gender reversals in the movie (watch for the making out couple) are a nice Disney antidote. My only complaint is that Susan/Ginormica’s proportions veer a little towards the Barbie-ish, or at least super-model-ish –but even as a giantess, she’s still not as distorted as Disney’s cartoon women, and to be honest I’m more forgiving of animation than of airbrushed and distorted photos purporting to be real women.

It couldn’t have hurt that here was an award-winning woman screenwriter, Maya Forbes, involved. Amazing the difference that can make, although we could get ourselves into a tizzy by comparing the overall review percentages (hovering around 60ish) with those of, say, traditionally-oriented movies like Toy Story (batting 100, literally) — somehow, these newfangled non-traditional roles don’t seem to go over very well, whether they’re animated or not. But what can you do?

The supporting cast of monsters is just plain funny, as is to be expected with a talented cast like this one. Literally brainless but likeble B.O.B. must constantly be reminded who he is and how to breathe. The Missing Link is humorously macho, while Dr. Cockroach is an amusingly mad scientist. Rainn Wilson, too, gets a lot of chuckles from his evil alien role. These shenanigans keep the movie’s pace moving quickly between plot points. The animation is amazing, and so real at times that I have to wonder if little ones will be a freaked out by seeing San Francisco destroyed by a robot, since they won’t have the background to understand that this is a Godzilla commonplace. But perhaps I am out of touch with today’s kids. Other than that caveat, I highly recommend the movie for kids and parents alike, especially since it has an effective girl-power message. 

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Amanda Krauss is a former professor and current writer/speaker/humor theorist. From 2005-2010 she taught courses on gender, culture, and the history of comedy at Vanderbilt University, and in 2010 was invited to present a course entitled “Humor, Ancient to Modern” at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. While she is focusing on her current blog (Worst Professor Ever, which satirically chronicles issues of education and lifelong learning) some of her theoretical archives can be found at risatrix.com.

Animated Children’s Films: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

This is a guest review by Caitlin Moran. 

Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris is not the sort of book I would even remotely consider turning into a children’s movie, so I give the Disney studios credit for trying. Whoever read that dark, unsentimental tale of attempted rape, torture, lust, revenge, kidnapping and execution, and decided, “Yes, this would make a swell children’s movie” has a greater imagination than I do. Much of the book’s R-rated material has been watered down or removed, but the grim core remains in Hunchback of Notre Dame, making this the darkest film of the 1990s Disney Renaissance.

Hunchback follows the lonely life of the titular hunchback, Quasimodo, who was forcibly taken from his mother and ensconced in Notre Dame by Frollo, a sanctimonious, scheming, positively vile judge (he adds “lecherous” to that litany by the end of the movie) whose sole purpose in life is to wipe the gypsy population of Paris out of existence. Quasi is tender and kind despite his exterior (which, while it is decried as hideous multiple times, is at worst a little disproportional and at best kind of cute), and longs for a life outside the cathedral. He gets his wish, of course, and ends up teaming up with Esmeralda, a gypsy, and Phoebus, a pretty-boy soldier hunk to save the gypsies from Frollo and Notre Dame from destruction.

Like most Disney movies, Hunchback only gives us one female character with anything to do: Esmeralda, the smokin’ hot gypsy dancer who seduces every man who so much as looks at her. (Full disclosure: I had not one but two full Esmeralda costumes as a child, an Esmeralda action figure and an Esmeralda Barbie doll). Esmeralda may be the only hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold to ever appear in a Disney movie. She gives a rousing Medieval pole-dance at the Festival of Fools, but is the only onlooker moved by Quasimodo’s brutal humiliation after he is turned on by the crowd (she also follows up a stirring call for social justice by beating the crap out of Frollo’s soldiers). She dances in the street for money, but gives the most humble, heartfelt prayer for her people out of all the worshipers in Notre Dame, who only pray for money or fame, during the lovely “God Help the Outcast.”

And unlike Ariel in The Little Mermaid, whose tribulations are almost exclusively caused by her own narrow-minded pursuit of a dreamboat she’s never spoken to, Esmeralda is street-smart and clever; her eventual capture is facilitated accidentally by Phoebus and Quasimodo, who both see themselves as her male protector and likewise rush to save her, though she was doing perfectly well on her own, thank you very much.

So did Disney finally break away from the flimsy, strong-but-need-a-man-to-save-me heroines so ensconced in their tradition? Not quite. Because never before has a Disney heroine been so objectified as a symbol of lust. In fact, Disney gives Frollo an entire song, “Hellfire,” to explore how much he wants to bang her, complete with a giant blazing fireplace and hooded harbingers of damnation. I remember sitting in the theater as a seven-year-old with my mom, a Sour Patch Kid frozen halfway to my mouth. At the time my only thought was “They’re saying Hell in a Disney movie! Cool!” but upon rewatching the movie in high school I could only marvel at how much “Hellfire” serves as the most perfect rape apologia in all of animated film. “It’s not my fault,” Frollo sings, “I’m not to blame. It is the gypsy girl, the witch who set this flame.”

Dear God.

This is the fundamental problem with the movie, which purports to leave us with the message that what is on the inside is more important than what’s on the outside, but can’t resist having a sexpot heroine whose fundamental awesomeness (she crowd surfs! she wears a knife in her garter! she vanishes in puffs of smoke!) is overshadowed by fact that she’s a 15th century pin-up who ultimately needs to be saved (twice) by the men in her life.

Esmeralda, girl, you deserved better.

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Caitlin Moran is a recent graduate of Boston College. She lives in New York with her cat and a mini-donut maker. Oh, and a human roommate. She’s pretty cool too. 

Animated Children’s Films: Aladdin

This is an anonymous guest review. 

This movie is about a princess and a “street rat” who fall in love and must overcome the evil Jafar to get married. This movie is also about generalizing non-Western cultures (mainly Middle Eastern cultures) and perpetuating cartoonish stereotypes of Arabic peoples. As an added bonus, this movie masquerades as a girl power film when in fact, it enforces the traditional gender role of men as active/women as passive.

The first time I saw this children’s movie was over this past summer, when I was the assistant director of a summer production of the musical Disney’s Aladdin. I was the only person involved in the production that had not seen Aladdin when I was a child. Every single one of the children (almost entirely girls, ages 9-12 with one 7 year old) came in with ideas of what the show would look like, because they had all seen the movie and they knew every single song. Because they knew the music, we had more time to work on choreography. For a marketplace scene, I asked the kids to strike a pose to freeze in during dialogue. I was looking for marketplace-y poses: two people talking, maybe gesturing to another person, walking poses, etc. They immediately put their arms up with their palms together so that their arms framed their face and their necks were moved to one side (a pose associated with “Arabia” in pop-culture). They all wanted to do their hair in the “I Dream of Jeannie” hairdo, because it was “so Arabian”. I wondered, where did they get such a stereotypical view of the Middle East? And then I saw the movie and all of those questions were answered.

 

My director thought that this was a girl power movie. Look! At the end, the Sultan declares that Jasmine can marry whomever she chooses, when she chooses! And she rejects all of those suitors because she’s “not a prize to be won”! Girl power yeah! No. This movie is producing yet another hetero-romantic story where women sit there and men pursue them. She was naïve before Aladdin shows her a “whole new world”—she is the passive learner while he is the active teacher. How does she help with the defeat of Jafar? She kisses him—using her body to be attractive to men—the rest of the time she just kind of stands there while Aladdin fights Jafar. Again, she stands there lookin’ sexy and being passive, he fights actively. Even their body stance around each other assumes a dominant/submissive look—Aladdin’s body is tall and upright, Jasmine is leaning into him or sitting behind him or being held in his arms. He is also physically larger, aside from her hair (her ponytail is thicker than her waist), she is extremely thin and takes up very little space when compared to Aladdin’s broad shoulders and muscular body. And of course, what other characters in this movie are women? Oh that’s right, they are all men. Because women can only be in stories to be the object of men’s affections, not to fill other roles. There are some background women in the dance scenes, but those are the “harem girls” and other sexualized women (because foreign=exotic and sexy!)
Essentially, all of the women are defined by their attractiveness to men. “Ugly” women, then, are used as comic relief. In one of the first scenes, when a woman opens the door and says of Aladdin, “Still I think he’s rather tasty!”, everybody in the audience is supposed to laugh. Aladdin looks at the woman (who is quite large) and jumps in surprise and disgust. Oh, silly fat woman, you can’t have feelings because you’re ugly! We’re supposed to laugh at how ridiculous her thinking Aladdin is “tasty” is—because fat women and ugly women are not supposed to have sexual desires. Only when the sexy women do this is it okay—nobody is laughing at Jasmine’s proclamations of love for Aladdin, because it doesn’t seem ridiculous now. Aladdin is attractive, she is attractive, so they can be in love.

 

So doing this story where every single role had to be filled by a girl made this an interesting production. Some girls told us they didn’t want to be a male character. Some girls who were cast into men’s roles started acting like men—they lowered their voices and changed their body language to reflect a stereotypical man. Some girls who were cast into men’s roles adopted them to be women’s roles—the girl playing Jafar, for example, had no issue with being a female Jafar. The girl who played Aladdin, the title character, made it clear that she was acting like a man—I, personally, thought that it would have been fine for her to be a female Aladdin (but the lesbian love story was not an idea that they particularly were comfortable with, which is interesting given how comfortable they were with heterosexual love stories).
In fact, I think it would have made the movie better if Aladdin was a girl (and if all the racism was taken out). Suddenly, “A Whole New World” takes on a whole new meaning—but these movies with antiquated gender roles would not have been as widely accepted into culture if the relationship it portrayed was queer.

When watching this movie, it’s hard to not get depressed about the fact that this is what little girls are told to aspire to. Watch something else instead.

This is an anonymous review.

Animated Children’s Films: The Land Before Time

This is a guest review by Juniper Russo.

My three-year-old daughter is a short-haired, bluejean-wearing feminist who will eschews the princess genre as “impractical and silly” and views “dinosaur movies” as the zenith of modern cinematography. “We’re Back” and “Fantasia” get honorable mentions in her book, but her favorite film by far is “The Land Before Time.”

And why wouldn’t it be? As much as I look for some reason to find my daughter’s favorite film objectionable, it’s one of the few kids’ movies that gets this feminist mama’s stamp of approval. The film’s subtle-but-present feminist message is evident from the animation alone. The protaganist Littlefoot, who is a male apatosaurus, is purple with long eyelashes, while his friend Cera the triceratops dons masculine features, a proud gait, and (both literally and physically) thick skin.

Although Cera is unfriendly something of a bully, I find myself viewing her as strong female character for this very reason. She has her flaws, but weakness and vanity are not among them. Nowhere in the film does this tough, fiercely indepentent reptile worry about her appearance or the pursuit of romance. Cera’s excessive independence and hubris do land her in trouble– just as the same features have harmed Lightning McQueen, Simba, and other male protagonists. Yet, while she eventually understands the importance of accepting others and working together, she never loses her admirable and independent spunk.

Parasaurolophus Ducky, the other female child-character, does bring a touch of toddler-like giddiness to the prehistoric table, but it seems to be reflective of character development and irrelevant to her gender. Similar traits are seen in male characters, including Petrie.

Although, like many films, this 1988 classic has a male protaganist, Littlefoot defies stereotypes of masculinity. He is sensitive, crying at several points in the film, and plays an almost maternal-role to the younger, less experienced members of the gang. Petrie the pteranodon and Spike the stegosaurus also defy all stereotypes associated with male heroes– Petrie is awkward and not particularly bright; Spike is cumbersome and strangely mute.

The anti-racist tones of this film are fairly subtle, but clear enough for children to pick up on. My daughter was quick to observe that “Sometimes grown-ups are wrong,” and that Cera’s domineering father is wrong for teaching his child to only socialize with other “three-horns.” Tolerance for diversity– in appearance, personality, philosophy and ability– are positively central to the story’s message. 

Of course, there’s no way to discuss the feminist implications of “Land Before Time” without bringing up the heartbreaking scene in which Littlefoot’s mother dies. In that classic scene of parental martyrdom, preceded by “Bambi” and later echoed by the “Lion King,” Littlefoot’s mother fights a tyrannosaurus rex to defend her son and Cera. The battle is intense and the death scene is heartbreaking– and, if you don’t choke up just a little while watching it, you’re probably either a robot or Glenn Beck.

Although I feel hesitant to give my feminist stamp of approval to a film that characteristically employs martyrdom, I didn’t find anything about Littlefoot’s mother’s character sexist. Littlefoot is born to a dwindling herd comprised of his mother, grandfather and grandmother. No ado is made about the fact that he has no father, and his mother is clearly a competent caregiver. Unlike Bambi’s mother, who dies running, Littlefoot’s mom puts up a brave and ferocious fight, hurling the predator into a chasm. She dies not of weakness, but of bravery– in a display of “Don’t mess with my kid!” that is universally parental– and not grounded in patriarchal stereotypes.

Littlefoot’s mother comes back, as a ghost or a grief-induced hallucination, at two other points in the film to guide Littlefoot to the Great Valley, a promised-land free of predators and overflowing with food and water. It is here that the next several films of the series are set. Interestingly, the happily-ever-after doesn’t involve a descent into a patriarchal nuclear family structure. Within the almost-socialist structure of the Great Valley, Cera goes on to be raised by her single dad, Spike is adopted into a biologically unrelated parasaurolophus family, Petrie returns to his single mom, and Littlefoot is raised by his grandparents. No family is presented as any more or less ideal than any other.

That’s why this movie, which was such a staple to me in my own childhood, remains on my A-OK list of feminist-friendly kids’ movies. And, just as importantly, my dinosaur-loving, patriarchy-smashing kiddo finds the film both entertaining and educational.

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Juniper Russo is a freelance writer, activist, and dedicated mama. When she’s not busy raising her fantastically independent feminist daughter, she’s writing about topics including parenting, gender, queer rights, animal welfare, holistic health and green living. Juniper writes regularly for Yahoo! Shine, Cracked.com, Livestrong.com, Associated Content and Animal Wellness magazine.

Animated Children’s Films: The Tale of Despereaux

This is a guest review by Robert Poteete.

Out the gate, this movie shows a lot of promise with great animated sequences. There were plenty of visually interesting scenes, such as a giant soup-making Rube Goldberg machine, and an advisor spirit composed of vegetables. The movie also features a rat protagonist who breaks the stereotype of ‘rats are evil,’ and features a mouse protagonist who breaks the stereotype of ‘mice are cowardly.’ And Sigourney Weaver narrates.

But…

The story centers on rescuing a princess, and in a fairly banal way—there is no self-conscious humor at the fact that the passive princess isn’t much of a character, but rather an object of rescue. Oddly, while the princess-rescuing contains the climax, the central conflict of the story resolves through largely unrelated means. This begs the question as to why have a rescue the princess plot at all.

In summary of a convoluted plot, with liberal spoilers: The good rat Roscuro falls into the queen’s sacred soup, which apparently gives her a fatal heart attack. The king then falls into melancholy, which leads the kingdom to suffer bad weather, Fisher King style. The king’s daughter, a Princess named Pea (in the credits, but if she referred by any name other than Princess in the movie I must have missed it), helplessly complains about her father’s melancholy and the weather. Meanwhile, a brave mouse named Despereaux is born, and he chafes against a mouse society which prizes meekness and cowardice. We are also introduced to an overweight swineherd turned servant girl, Miggory Sow, who dreams of being a princess.

By reading forbidden books, Despereaux learns tales of chivalric knighthood and fancies himself a ‘gentleman.’ He meets the princess and falls in love with her beauty. He gets himself in trouble with his mouse society, gets banished from the mouse town, and ends up with the good rat Roscuro. Roscuro tries to emulate Despereaux’s bravery, fails, turns evil, and ropes Miggory Sow into a scheme to kidnap the Princess. Despereaux manages to save the princess, with the help of a reformed Roscuro. And in a largely unrelated subplot, a chef manages to recreate the sacred soup and make the king happy again.

If the plot sounds banal, the dialogue adds nothing. The writers follow the school of “tell, don’t show,” and so we hear about five times through narration how Despereaux the brave mouse believes in honor, truth, chivalry, etc., I suppose in case we forget. (I may watch it again, muted, to test the theory that the dialogue adds nothing, and I encourage the reader to try this as well if so inclined). On other occasions the narrator tells us how Despereaux teaches others the virtues of honor, truth, chivalry etc., and we the audience are likewise left out of how exactly he manages to do this.

The movie DOES pass the Bechdel Test, barely. In one scene the Princess spouts some platitudes at a servant seamstress (no name given). And the female protagonist, Miggory Sow, has some dialogue with the Princess. 

On the subject of that female protagonist, because she deserves emphasis: the narrator tells us that Miggory Sow wants to be a princess. The animators decided to make Miggory ugly and identify her with pigs. It’s even in her name! Plus, she gets easily swayed into committing evil acts, because in ‘The Tale of Despereaux,’ ugly correlates with evil and propensity for evil. Have the writers not learned the supposed lesson of ‘Shrek,’ wherein ugliness is not a reflection of virtue?

A muddled moral at the end of the film purports to teach the value of forgiveness, because Roscuro the rat forgives the Princess (or vice versa? The movie makes it unclear), and this turns Roscuro back into a good guy after his brief and wildly successful stint of villainy. And the movie has a strange subplot involving a chef who can summon a magical vegetable-spirit, but this subplot does not get much development despite the fact that it resolves the central conflict of the film. How did the chef learn to summon a magical vegetable-spirit? The movie does not say.

The redeeming point of the movie is its lesson against fear. The heroic protagonist, the titular Despereaux, does not feel fear despite the traditions of his mouse society. That same mouse society does not understand his lack of fear, and labels him a threat to their social order. Despereaux is persecuted and punished, but in the end triumphs because of his courage, and returns to his society to teach them his ways.

But another disturbing trope abused by the movie is that while the ostensibly good-guy Mousetown is visually characterized as European, the evil Rat society is cast as strange and dark and cringingly “Oriental,” with a rat snake charmer, a fat rat borne in a litter (made from a skull!), and rat-odalisques serving disgusting food to lounging rat-satraps. (My partner, who watched the movie with me, argues that the rats represent a thinly-veiled parody of Communist Chinese society.)

Overall the movie contains heroic journeys for the three protagonists. By the end, of course, the inherent courage of the mouse and the reluctant goodness of the rat save the princess, but the actions of the peasant girl do not avail her at all. By accident, Miggory’s long-lost father rediscovers her, and she lives a happier peasant life after that, but she lacks any instrumental effect on the plot other than helping the rats kidnap the princess. 

Considering ‘The Tale of Despereaux’ with the lens of how it presents sex/gender stereotypes to kids, it is pretty awful. The women are passive victims: male Roscuro tricks female Miggory into evil, she kidnaps the princess only through Roscuro’s direction, and then herself gets captured through trickery. (Miggory later gets saved… by her father. I see a pattern!). The princess’s virtue constantly conflates with her beauty, just as Miggory’s wickedness correlates with her ugliness. The male characters, on the other hand, act and are capable of heroism, and the movie defines them by their deeds.
On reflection, the movie could have easily avoided a large chunk of its offensive usage of sex/gender stereotypes. The titular hero Despereaux could have been female. A female character insisting on herself as a knight would have been more meaningful, as would her bucking a repressive society insisting on her meekness and cowardice. A female Despereaux would have worked better and been more convincing as an allegory for courage.

But I suppose the most damning criticism of the movie, shared by the children of a friend, is that it is boring. Chivalry really is dead! Thankfully.

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Robert Poteete lives in Los Angeles with his partner. He is a lawyer, and tries very hard to be honest about it. He loves comics and animation but cannot draw to save his life.

Animated Children’s Films: Ferngully: Last Rainforest and Great Gender Equalizer?

This is a guest post by Emma Kat Richardson.

If you’re the parent of a child who has outgrown mindless fare like the Teletubbies but not quite ripened toward Harry Potter levels of sophistication, stumbling upon a film like Ferngully: The Last Rainforest to share with your family must be nothing short of an epic “Eureka!” moment. Released in 1992, this movie has managed to simultaneously entertain and educate young minds for close to 20 years. It upholds within the Western film canon something of a timeless, iconic quality for those in the age group most likely to become Wall Street Occupiers. Indeed, a trip beneath the leafy canopy of Ferngully, a lush, fictitious rainforest set in the Australian outback, always proves a nostalgic harkening back to that brief period in animated film history when female protagonists were front and center, relative to the action. At the same, its the sort of film that presents an upbeat outlook for young viewers, regarding the many ways that a world stripped of suffocating gender norms could help build an egalitarian playing field.

At such an empowering crossroads do we find Ferngully, a stunningly animated early ‘90s classic that preaches an important lesson on environmental protection in the simplified language of children. Leading the charge is Crysta, a spunky, quasi-adolescent forest fairy who begins the film frivolous and carefree, but finishes it as a respected leader among the forest sprite community. Alongside her mentor Magi Lune, the two flit about Ferngully’s dense and lovely layers of vegetation, using their combined magical powers to conjure up the forces of nature and help all sorts of exotic plants grow. Things turn problematic, however, when an evil, primordial force of destruction – a demonic smog cloud called Hexxus, voiced by Tim Curry in always reliably flamboyant Dr. Frank mode – is released from his tree prison, trapped there generations earlier by Magi, to wreak havoc on the serene oasis of Ferngully. Its perhaps no coincidence that the moniker “Hexxus” sounds like it could double as a brand name for a major chain of gas stations, seeing as how the villain spends the bulk of his time on screen sucking down human produced poisons and plotting how best to capitalize on manmade machinery, to aide in Operation: Rain Terror. (And acid rain.) Assisting Crysta and co in the struggle against Hexxus are Batty Koda, a fruit bat who has been experimented on by humans and has the voice of Robin Williams, among other afflictions, and Zak Young, a hunky human forester whom Crysta accidentally shrinks down to fairy size while trying to protect him from a rapidly falling tree aimed at his head. (Obviously, shouting “timber!” is not a phrase found in fairy vernacular.) And of course, there’s the aforementioned Magi Lune, whose flowing, matronly robes provide an early contrast to Crysta’s biker chick meets lady Tarzan look.

But, in spite of their differences, the movie’s climactic sequence finds the two female protagonists dovetailing in strength of character, each embarking upon a courageous suicide mission of self-sacrifice for the benefit of all. In Magi’s own parting words, “We all have a power and it grows when it’s shared,” the sort of sentiment that lends vocal credence to one of Ferngully’s most prominent tropes: we all have the ability to make positive change, but that power multiplies when there is community cooperation readily at hand.

Through it all, the film presents a very positive perception of female role models, set amidst a piece of media targeting an impressionable audience. In classical tradition, coming of age quests don’t often revolve around a heroine, preferring instead to linger in strict hero territory. (Here’s looking at you, J.R.R.) But Crysta, she of the spunky, tomboyish haircut and quick giggle, does just that – growing from a lackadaisical teen to a noble warrior, willing to die for the sake of protecting the forest community. And the fairies themselves, in a number of ways, appear to be a genderless society: over the course of the movie’s scant 75 minutes, there is no talk of getting serious about marriage, children, or domestic obligations. There is only the reinforcement of protecting one’s home and working for the benefit the place you call home. Perhaps the message here could even be interpreted thusly: free from the confines of limiting gender roles, the forest fairies are better able to practice magic and serve the planet.

Probably the worst you could say about Ferngully’s representation of gender is that its main motif gently reiterates some stereotypes about the nurturing quality of women and and the rough, aggressive nature of men, but, in my view, the use of female characters as the plot’s central exemplars more than compensates for this small fact. Ferngully is where good environmental stewardship and positive female role models meet. It’s a film that surely has more uplifting things to say about approaching the working world than any lesser, gender norm promoting contemporaries might.

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Emma Kat Richardson is a Detroit-reared freelance writer living in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in Bitch, Laugh Spin Magazine, 944, Alternative Press, Real Detroit Weekly, and on Bust.com.

Animated Children’s Films: The Two Leading Women of the Muppets Movie

 

This is a guest review by J. Lee Milliren.
I, like many other Americans, grew up with the Muppets. My personal favorite Muppet was always the zany Gonzo; I loved his ridiculous antics. Although what I really wanted from the Muppets was for there to be more female characters because I could never relate to Miss Piggy. I know that must sound so shocking to hear that a little girl could have a completely different personality than the one female cast member of a group.
But that was then and this is now.
For the Muppets Movie I’m going to try to give a brief summary of the plot, and I’ll try to avoid as many spoilers as possible. The movie begins with a new muppet, named Walter, growing up with his human brother, Gary, in a small town. As he grows, up he realizes he’s different from Gary and discovers the Muppet Show. Walter becomes the biggest fan of the Muppet Show while his brother is just happy to spend time with Walter.
Years later, Walter is still a big fan of the Muppets while Gary has been in a relationship with Mary for ten years. To celebrate their ten years together, Gary takes Mary to see California for the first time. He also invites Walter to come along, just so he can visit the Muppet Theater. When Walter tours the Theater he sees that it is falling apart, and he accidentally overhears the evil scheming of our villian, Tex Richman. Richman’s plan is to tear down the theater and drill the land for oil. This makes Walter run out of the theater, screaming in panic for several hours.
With the help of Gary and Mary, Walter is able to meet up with Kermit the Frog and tell him what he overheard. Kermit says that they might be able to save their theater if he could get the whole gang back together, but they haven’t seen each other in years. But through the power of hilarious montages he’s able to gather the whole gang back together except for Miss Piggy. Miss Piggy is now working with Vogue in Paris and doesn’t want to return to the old gang because of her breakup with Kermit.
Now right off the bat, I have to say this movie was amazing. I laughed nonstop throughout it; I loved almost every second of it, and I recommend that everyone get into your cars and go and see it right now.

But.
My issue with this movie comes down to our two leading ladies: Miss Piggy and Mary, who I feel are almost the same character.
Now when I say this, I don’t mean that they act the same, but they do have the same goals and motivations throughout the movie. Which is–marry the man…….or the frog.
Miss Piggy originally refuses to leave Paris because she has a new successful life there. And (spoiler!) when she does return to save the theater, she says she’s not doing it for Kermit but for the theater itself. She also sais that she WILL go back to Paris, the moment their last show is done.
Throughout this movie, it is pretty clear that Miss Piggy still has feelings for Kermit and vice versa. And that Miss Piggy does want to be with Kermit. Which isn’t a really bad motivation for the character, except it seems to be her only motivation. The Miss Piggy I knew would have come back completely for herself and not for anyone else. The Miss Piggy I knew would have come back just so she could “hog” the center stage once more. But that original goal and motivation for who she was doesn’t seem to be there anymore.
Mary is our other leading lady who has been in a relationship with Gary for ten years, and she really wants to marry him. She even goes into a song and dance about it. Of course, I’m sitting there wondering, “Why don’t you ask him to marry you, Mary?”
This is taking place in modern time after all, where you know, it isn’t weird for the chick to ask the dude. ( I swear, I won’t think you’re weird if you do pop the question to him, Mary.)
But Noooo. If she wants a ring, he needs to give her one.
One of my biggest issues with these two having the same motivation is that they both only have One motivation and goal. All the other (male) characters have more than one goal and motivation throughout the movie. Walter wants to save the theater, reunite the Muppets, and find his place. Gary wants to be with Mary, and he wants his brother to be happy but struggles with maybe having to let go of him. Kermit wants to save the theater, be with the family that is the Muppets and re-kindle his relationship with Miss Piggy. Even Animal has two goals: wanting to save the theater AND to control his wild side.

I never felt like Miss Piggy truly wanted to save the theater like all the other characters, so I really do think she had only one goal in the movie, and that is to be with Kermit. And our one other leading lady wants only to be married to Gary. I also want to point out that these two ladies never conversed; there is a song where they’re both singing about being alone, but they’re doing it in separate rooms. So this movie does fail the Bechdel test.
Again, this movie was amazing. I personally loved it. But, I’m also very sad that there still isn’t more to the female characters. When a movie is this good and this amazing to watch, I’m personally disheartened when a little bit more effort wasn’t given to flesh out the leading women. What kind of message is this sending to a whole new batch of little girls who are meeting the Muppets for the first time, when there are only two leading ladies in a BIG cast … who both want to be married?

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J. Lee Milliren is an active feminist currently in her last year at the Art Institutes International Minnesota where she will earn her bachelor degree in Media Arts and Animation. She takes a critical eye to how characters are portrayed in films.

Animated Children’s Films: From the Archive: Howl’s Moving Castle and Male Adaptations of Female Work

The first time I saw Howl’s Moving Castle, five or six years ago, I was delighted. I’d seen Spirited Away, but other than that I’d never seen any Miyazaki films, and as far as Miyazaki films go, HMC is a tad more accessible to Western audiences. Plus, they dubbed the animation so well that a friend convinced me the film was not, in fact, a translation, but that it had originally been done in English.
Well, that wasn’t true. It’s definitely a dubbed film. But I was surprised, a month ago, when my older sister handed me a copy of the book Howl’s Moving Castle and recommended I read it. She said it was a little like The Princess Bride, in that the book was different from the movie but still delightful. And delightful it was – but I was surprised by the ways the story and characters changed when it was transferred from a Welsh novel written by a woman, to a Japanese film directed by a man. Miyazaki did a fantastic job with the film, and I still love it, but his adaptation places more focus on male characters and all but strips Sophie of her power. On the flip side, the film complicates age and evil witches in a really interesting way. I want to make it clear up front that I don’t know enough about Japanese culture and Welsh culture to comment on how culture has impacted this transition. In fact, I haven’t even seen the movie undubbed. Accordingly, this review will compare a book that was published in English, to a version of the film that was released in English though Disney, and which was marketed to an American audience.
First of all, in the movie, Howl is the main event. He’s dashing and pretty, and he swoops into Sophie’s boring life to save her from the soldiers who are flirting with her. Yes, Sophie doesn’t really need saving from those men, and Howl in fact puts her into more danger when the Witch of the Waste sees him with her and decides to put a curse on her, but there’s still something heroic in the gesture. These heroics don’t show up so soon in the book – instead of scaring off unwanted suitors, Howl is the unwanted suitor. Sophie gets nervous when he tries to buy her a drink, so he chuckles, offers to escort her wherever she’s going, and backs off when she doesn’t want him to. And the Witch of the Waste doesn’t curse her because she’s seen with Howl – she curses her because of a misunderstanding and a mistaken identity. I can see why Miyazaki simplified the witch’s motivations here, mind you.
The Witch of the Waste is a complicated character in the book, in ways I won’t fully describe here, since I hope you’ll all read the book for yourselves. But I will say this: while the film complicates the idea of witches by turning the Witch of the Waste into a victim you can sympathize with, who is ultimately an ally, the book complicates the idea of witches in other ways by making Howl’s struggle into one where he’s trying to avoid becoming like the witch. She isn’t evil by virtue of being a powerful woman, (and every powerful woman in the movie is, in fact, evil – even the witch only turns good after losing her powers). She has turned evil over time because she made the same choice Howl made, and his only hope is to undo that choice before it hurts him like it hurt her.
And gaining power in the book doesn’t corrupt all female characters. While the movie carries a warning to all magical beings – all the other wizards and witches in the land are losing their humanity to war – the only witches we meet (Madam Suliman and The Witch of the Waste) use their power for evil, while the wizards we meet (Howl and his apprentice) use their magic to help people/ to hide. In the book, however, we meet several witches who are good, including Howl’s teacher, a woman who teaches magic to Sophie’s sister, and Sophie herself. Yeah, that’s right, Sophie herself has magical powers in the book. In fact, in the book Sophie is able to save Howl because of her magical powers, not because they’re in love – although they are.
And that last point transitions nicely into my last critique of the movie – the movie is more a love story, where the book is more a coming of age story. Accordingly, it follows traditional patterns of love stories in ways that downplay how powerful women are and play up how powerful men are, while also reinforcing the Beauty and the Beast myth that a virtuous woman can save a dark, brooding man from his animalistic nature. In the book, Sophie plays a huge role in defeating the evil force they fight toward the end. In the movie, it’s mostly Howl, and Sophie’s role pertains mostly to Howl’s heart, which, remember, she is moving through their emotional connection and not through her own power. To reiterate: in the movie, her power and influence are defined in relation to Howl, but in the book she has her own power. 
Still, there’s a silver lining to all this: the movie and the book are both about a young woman who only finds herself after losing her youth. How feminawesome is that?? Also, the characters are interesting and fleshed out in both mediums, and the movie’s approach to war is interesting. And the animation and music – just incredible. So if you love the movie, I hope you keep on loving it. But take the time to read the book too so you can appreciate the powerful side to Sophie’s nature.
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Emily Belanger currently lives in Utah, where she’s completing an MFA in creative writing. When she isn’t writing fiction or teaching, she co-edits Not Another Wave, a feminist blog with an inclusive angle, and writes for Go Girl Magazine, a travel magazine for and by women. She’s originally from rural New Hampshire and misses the humidity very much.

Animated Children’s Films: Anthropomorphism and Sexism in Disney’s The Aristocats*

This is a guest post by Rhea Daniel.
Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, a wealthy retired opera singer, lives in Paris with her cat Duchess and her three kittens Marie, Toulouse and Berlioz. Edgar the butler is surprised to learn that Madame, with no living relatives, plans to bequeath her entire estate to her cats and he is only second in line, all this after his service to her over so many years. Now that is a little unfair, but since the audience’s loyalty would be with the cute set of Aristocats, he becomes the villain when he decides to get rid of cat and kittens at the outset, drugging them and depositing them somewhere outside Paris. Edgar, compared to De Vil, is a bit of diluted villain, so his undoing offers little entertainment. The fun part begins when the Aristocats meet Thomas, a self-professed cat of the free world and make their way back to Paris with his help, meeting many a quirky character on the way.

But (and it’s a big one) in spite of having my undying admiration, Disney almost always manages to do something wrong. Disney’s humanizing its animals is part of its charm, but with that comes the inevitable pressing of human laws of behavior on to the jungle world—take Colonel Hathi bellowing, “A female leading my herd? Utterly preposterous!” in The Jungle Book (1967). Alright, so the Aristocats are household pets, they ought to have absorbed some of the human characteristics of their owners, but then Disney has always been unapologetically sexist, telling from its girls-can’t-draw-but-girls-can-trace rejection letters to aspiring female animators in its early years. The Aristocats aren’t far out of reach of this Disney cliché either. In recent times they’ve been trying to right several wrongs, but they’re still in the process. So, on the insistence that some things are just because, anthropomorphism in Disney cartoons is, safe to say, not just a reflection of the human world but also a reflection of Disney’s sexism.
In the original idea, Duchess isn’t denied agency and protects her children by moving from house to house to escape the villains. But true to Disney law, Duchess does little in The Aristocats beyond flapping her paws and calling “Marie! Toulouse! Berlioz!” every time they get into trouble. Perhaps she’s not used to the rough and tumble of the world outside, being an Aristocat and everything, but do her natural instincts emerge over time? No. Thomas comes along to do most of the work. Though Duchess is curious about Thomas’ world, she is incapable of getting her Aristocatic paws dirty, even if it is to save her children.

At this part when Thomas makes his entrance, though Duchess responds positively to his flirtation, I find his serenading and circling and gawking a tad creepy. I’m unaware if this is a cat ritual, but it so closely resembles human ones that I can’t help but judge Thomas as a bit of a creep. Duchess welcomes the attention with eye contact and by washing herself and giving that trademark Disney lowered eyelashes look. I notice that while her motherly instincts are conspicuously missing (aside from a few gentle admonishments) her sexual ones are intact, especially with her kids nearby. It would all be okay if little Marie didn’t think it was all terribly romantic. It’s cute and harmless when Marie is trying to be like her mother, but not when it’s a child made to imitate adult artifice with no idea of the consequences. We see the same behavior with Shanti in The Jungle Book (1967), pretending to drop her pot as Mowgli is ‘lured’ by her into the Man Village. In the making-of documentary it is revealed that it was what Walt, who took active interest in the making of The Jungle Book before his death, required**. The Aristocats was made after his death but wasn’t too far from his influence, so I take it that this recurring female characteristic is Walt’s legacy. I was a fan of Disney well into my late teens, a large poster of The Little Mermaid (1989) adorning the wall of my room, but as an adult I couldn’t bear to watch it. What changed? Could it possibly the cult built around the Disney Princess, that virginal but seductive monument to girlhood that always seemed unattainable? It seems Disney in 1970 was oblivious to the second-wave feminist movement, still upholding the image of the nymphet. Now that we’ve been screaming it off the rooftops at every opportunity, hopefully they’ve got wind of it.
Which brings me to the second annoying aspect of the movie—Marie. As I watch Marie reinforce her weakness again and again, falling off an automobile, falling into the water, I feel it necessary to point out that her brothers are as the same level of maturity and motor-skill development, so it’s obvious that Marie is chosen to be the weakest link—an essential quality for the lady-in-training. I feel some relief as Marie stands her ground against her brothers when she becomes an object of their derision. Could it be, that in spite of the popular notion that little girls ought to primp, preen and be weak, Marie’s creators have managed to let a bit of spirit trickle into her? They fail again, for if the incorrigible little girl is loud and defensive, it is because she is spoilt, and the adorable Marie, being an aristocat, is definitely spoilt. I ponder a bit longer and look for some respite, but notice a conspicuous lack of female alley cats in that ode to Cathood, Everybody wants to be a Cat. In the real world, an ever-lovin’ female cat of the free world, living off scraps is a troublesome character to deal with. Taking anthropomorphism in all seriousness, she would probably be unkempt, pregnant, a prostitute, or all–not very good kiddy-toon material. If a romanticized feral female feline managed to make it through to the final edit, she would pose, and this I say only within popular notions of how females function, a threat to Duchess. I only consider this briefly as Duchess is regarded with a worshipful gaze yet again and there is no other female to disrupt the feline brotherhood.

Thomas is a wonderful father and the British geese add an entertaining subplot, but as you can see, I had issues with this film, perhaps a bit much? It is after all, a cartoon, an oldish one, reeking of the biases of a now dead dude whose work I can’t help but admire. I’ll justify this with a quote from Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr.)***:
“Consider how odd it would be if all we knew about elephants had been written by elephants. Would we recognise one? What elephant author would describe — or perhaps even perceive — the features which are common to all elephants? We would find ourselves detecting these from indirect clues; for instance, elephant-naturalists would surely tell us that all other animals suffer from noselessness, which obliges them to use their paws in an unnatural way. […] So when the human male describes his world he maps its distances from his unspoken natural center of reference, himself. He calls a swamp “impenetrable,” a dog “loyal” and a woman “short.””

*I’ve deliberately left out the racist stereotyping in The Aristocats because it’s already been addressed in several reviews.
** But the general opinion is that it was tastefully done, so it’s a non-issue.
*** Stolen from here
Rhea got to see a lot of movies as a kid because her family members were obsessive movie-watchers. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. Meanwhile she is trying to be a better writer and artist and you can find her at http://rheadaniel.blogspot.com/