Gender Stereotypes – Page 4

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: The Secret of N.I.M.H.

This is a guest post by Katie Roussos.

A rose bush inhabited by genetically modified rats who become murderous sounds more like a horror movie than a children’s story, but that is just one of the ways The Secret of N.I.H.M. breaks the mold.

The plow has come early to the Fitzgibbons farm, a frightening thought for all the animals that live in the fields. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgibbons also happen to have a band of rats living on their farm who were part of an experiment from the National Institute of Mental Health that made them “intelligent.” As Nicodemus, head intelligent rat (who is also a little magic?) tells the audience eerily: “We found out, we could reeead.”

Besides the super rats, there are many animals, from mice, to crows, to wise old owls, and the family cat. As in most children’s films the animals can talk, can communicate across species, and have traits, clothes, and social institutions that mimic humans. It is the classic story of mouse meets mouse, mouse falls in love, gets married, builds tiny house with tiny beds and tiny tables, has children that wear gender appropriate clothing, has local shrew babysit. Yes, there is a character called Aunty Shrew, an actual shrew, and yes, she is portrayed as “shrewish”–annoying, controlling, and, mysteriously, British.

So no, the The Secret of N.I.M.H. is not free from gender stereotypes or tired portrayals of women. But The Secret of N.I.M.H. has one thing that many children’s films don’t have, a female protagonist. A main character who is a hero because of her strong will, intelligence, and heart (not accidentally a hero because of her knowledge of beauty products a la Elle Woods).

Mrs. Brisby is a single mother known only by her husband’s name in the film. And time and again that name gets her help from the other characters in the movie who remember her husband, Jonathan, fondly. However, it is not just the name that gets Mrs. Brisby’s tiny house moved out of the way of the plow and keeps her children from impeding doom. She shows fear and dread, she takes risks and shakes and cries. Yet she presses on. She is not a female hero full of bravado and stereotypically male characteristics. She is a mother who will face even a large owl (owls eat mice) to find out how to save her family.

She humbly says to the great owl, “I don’t understand what you mean, but I will do as you say.” This is not subservience–it is smarts. When a large owl who could eat you and has lived longer than your mouse body is capable of gives you advice about the farm you live on, you take it. Especially when there is no other option. Points for Mrs. Brisby for being able to take a leap of faith and admit it when she doesn’t know what to do!

Brisby also has to face an almost completely male world. Aside from the shrew and her daughters, there are no other prominent female characters. There are however many males, who do their best to either help or hurt her.

Justin is the handsome rat who, at one mention of Brisby’s dead hubby, is committed to helping her move her house to avoid the plow. Jenner is the power hungry rat who wants to take over for the aging Nicodemus, by killing him. The crow Jeremy is love sick and bumbling but tries to help her after she saves him from the family cat. (If there is any meaning behind all the “J” names I haven’t figured it out.) And then there is Mr. Ages, the only surviving mouse who has had the shot that turns animals into reading machines. He’s not the grandfatherly type, but the old cynic, who’s it-can’t-be-done attitude is a good juxtaposition for Mrs. Brisby’s heart. The movie manages to balance cute camp and is genuinely scary. (See the theatrical release poster, which is mostly just scary…) While their mother is getting chased by a large and silent rat with a steel spear, the Brisby kids are tying up Jeremy, who was sent to babysit them, and accusing him of being a spy. A spy for what is unclear. The film ends with a love song and Jeremy finding his perfect female counterpart (blah). Even though Nicodemus is actually murdered and two other rats die in a fight after moving the Brisby home, there is a happy ending. Not too happy though. Brisby does not end up with Justin, despite the rather nauseating flirting that goes on at their first meeting.

Through it all Brisby avoids being the type of female character that make me cringe. A few more points that make her awesome:

No fur boobs: the tendency to sexualize animals’ bodies to make them look more human might have its place in comic books (or not), but luckily the 1980s illustrators of Secret did little to feminize Mrs. Brisby. She has long lashes and a small red cape, but no busting chest, long legs, or human-shaped butt.

She can read too!: She didn’t get experimented on and yet she can read. She was taught. Amazingly, all those male rats have used their smarts to steal electricity. Jonathan Brisby taught his wife to read. And guess what, it worked and did not require a big painful shot.

Her ultimate goal has nothing to do with finding a husband: At no point in the film is her lack of a husband an actual hurdle. Sure, Mrs. Brisby misses Jonathan, but the film takes for granted that she is making it alone in this crazy rat-filled world. And, as I already pointed out, she doesn’t marry Justin!

I can’t deny that parts of this movie are problematic. We never even learn the main character’s name. Brisby asks Jeremy, a decided clutz to babysit because “she needs a big strong male to watch the children,” and he jumps at the chance to play “domestic.” And yet The Secret of N.I.M.H. doesn’t belong with the worst offenders in children’s movies that teach little girls early how to be less than little boys. Maybe it is because I have been watching this movie since I was four, but Mrs. Brisby inspires me. If raising a cement block out of the mud with only the power of love and a ruby necklace to save your four kids is not worthy of respect, then I don’t know what is.

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Katie Roussos is a labor organizer living in New York City. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a degree in Comparative Literature and has not stopped writing, despite the fact that she is not working in the literary field. This is her first submission to Bitch Flicks, but she is a lover of feminist blogs and hopes to submit to others in the future.

Cracked.com Makes Obnoxious Assumptions While Critiquing Hollywood’s Obnoxious Assumptions

Last week, I somehow ended up on Cracked.com reading a post called, “6 Obnoxious Assumptions Hollywood Makes About Women.” It’s no surprise that I ended up there, given that I write for Bitch Flicks and have a vested interest in Hollywood’s Obnoxious Assumptions, of which there are many. But. Cracked.com seriously failed with a couple of items in this piece. I considered not even writing about it, but then I realized it had more than a million page views, at least two thousand comments, and more than nine thousand Facebook shares. (Kind of like the readership we get at Bitch Flicks. Wait … no … that’s not quite right … ). With so many people out there reading such a well-intentioned yet problematic piece, I believe it deserves some analysis here.* I know Cracked.com promotes itself as a humor site, and—as hard as this is to believe coming from a feminist—I love humor. Honestly. Ask anyone who knows me—I promise I’m the most hilarious person everyone knows. Humor, however, or the attempt at humor, doesn’t give someone license to say offensive shit under the guise of hilarity. I will say that I agree with most of the Obnoxious Assumptions on the list; my issue resides with the ways in which the author attempts to critique two of those assumptions in particular.

The piece begins with an introduction citing a classic in Hollywood cinema: the sexual objectification of women. Yay, good point! Wait, no. Because after that acknowledgment, we immediately get, “That’s annoying, but it least it makes sense. They’re pandering to men, or they’re sexist, or whatever.” I felt myself cringe a little there, considering objectification of women on screen triggers more than mere “annoyance” for me and exists as one of the main reasons women in general still deal with an assload of inequality—it’s hard to see a woman portrayed as someone who only exists for your pleasure (be it visual or otherwise) as your equal, right? But, red flag aside, I decided to give the author the benefit of the doubt; her main point after all is that Hollywood screenwriters try to make up for the stuff that’s “just for the guys” (like naked women) by giving women something they want—an “everywoman” character who’s just like them! I’m still trying to figure out where women who aren’t white and heterosexual fit into all this.

You can check out the article on Cracked.com if you want to see the list in its entirety, but I’m only focusing on the two most offensive instances here.

Worrying About Being Fat When You’re Not

I’m 100% with the author on this one (at first). She uses perfect examples—like, we’re really supposed to identify with Julia Roberts as “fat” in Eat Pray Love? Or with Toni Collette as the “fat, ugly sister” in In Her Shoes? It’s offensive and ridiculous and, yes, I’m in agreement! But then, we get this: “Look, I totally get it that nobody wants to see actual fat people on a screen for two hours and Hollywood has to trot out skinny actresses because that’s what the audience wants.” Oh, really? That’s an interesting and Obnoxious Assumption. In fact, I don’t think I’d mind at all seeing Actual Fat Women on screen. That might—what?—start to maybe challenge Obnoxious Assumptions About Fat Women? Because the author didn’t mean “Actual Fat People,” did she; she meant “Actual Fat Women.” Fat men are all over the damned screen, and they’re all sleeping with Kristen Bell and Elizabeth Banks and Kali Hawk and Katherine Heigl and Reese Witherspoon and Julia Roberts and Halle Berry. Cracked.com’s Obnoxious Assumption? No One Wants to See Fat Women in Movies

Getting Angry For No Reason

Okay, no. I don’t know how something that starts off only mildly offensive manages to derail so … impressively in a matter of a few sentences. I have no doubt, again, that this Obnoxious Hollywood Assumption probably does exist. The author’s take, paraphrased: movies often rely on the idea that in order to showcase a woman as strong and independent, the script must call for her to flip out on men at random, without sufficient motivation. In all honesty, I haven’t thought much about this. I’m sure if I did, I could come up with a few examples of very anti-feminist films and Straw Feminist characters that fall into that trap, but the examples the author uses here—that Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Jennifer Garner in Daredevil physically attack men for no reason—don’t seem to take into account the fact that Kevin Costner and Ben Affleck were both behaving like fucking stalkers, in which case I’d hardly call their ass-beatings unprovoked. The author then hypothesizes about the writers of these films, guessing that “Their only picture of a ‘tough’ woman is of a bitchy militant feminist who will scream at you for saying ‘Congressman’ instead of ‘Congressperson.’” That, naturally, is accompanied by a photo of a woman beating a man with flowers, and the caption: “Did you just say hi to me? RAPIST! RAPIST!!!”

Hilarious.

In fairness to the author, I think she’s trying to critique the assumption that women aren’t, you know, insane by virtue of being women (the way Hollywood often portrays us), and I agree wholeheartedly with that; but the critique, regardless of the author’s actual intent, ultimately comes across as, “Look, not all women behave like those militant feminists who think all men want to rape them, so I wish Hollywood would stop making that Obnoxious Assumption,” which is just Cracked.com’s Obnoxious Assumption About Feminists. All in all, no.

*So let me just get this over with: This Is Important. I almost didn’t write my analysis because the instinct for many readers is to say: “Why can’t you focus on Real things like Real issues that Real feminists focus on?” So I’ll say it again: This Is Important. This “minor stuff” illustrates a huge problem with why the “Real issues” take such a long fucking time to eradicate. The “we’ve got bigger fish to fry” argument doesn’t work with social activism (and I very much consider what we do here to be social activism) because “Real issues” for women, like rape and physical abuse, exist precisely because the “minor stuff” makes up their core. I can’t talk about rape and physical abuse without talking about media portrayals of women, whether they be in the form of offensive articles (see above), sexist film advertisements that degrade women sexually, or seemingly “harmless” movie trailers that linger a little too long on women’s breasts and backsides, just as I can’t talk about those things without also discussing the larger impact they have on women’s safety, self-esteem, and individual agency. They’re interconnected, and it works the same way for all forms of oppression. So, when more than a million people possibly uncritically read a piece that flaunts fat hatred and plays rape for laughs—believe me, that shit perpetuates fat hatred and rape culture in a very Real way. That’s why I called attention to this. Thanks for reading.

Reader Question: Finding movies for girls

Perhaps in response to our Quote of the Day from Geena Davis, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, a reader asks:

As the father of a nearly year-old daughter, I’d be interested in getting some informed takes on children’s movies. We’ll undoubtedly be watching many in the next few years. Can we apply this Bechdel test to some of the classics of the genre or are there more complex forces at …work? If there are other considerations, what would they be?

While the Bechdel test is certainly a great place to start–seeing whether girls talk to each other about something other than boys–it’s not the end-all of determining feminist media. Female characters with true agency represent real role models for girls. So…avoid Disney? Certainly someone can offer better advice.

Help us out: What specific movies/television programs would you recommend for young girls?