Kottke pointed this thesis out to us earlier in the week, and we can’t seem to stop debating it with friends: should it trouble us that Pixar doesn’t seem to have any good women characters? The blog that Kottke linked to, while a few months old, makes a still-relevant argument: from Toy Story to Ratatouille and Finding Nemo to A Bug’s Life, there are simply no strong female leads that stand out. But we think this is just a superficial reading of the films, and a too-easy feminist critique that misses out on the more complex gender relations in Pixar works.
We immediately thought of Eve, who, even though she is not the film’s namesake, is the epitome of the strong feminist woman. She puts her career above her love life, and teams up with Wall-E to save the world before she even has time to notice she’s in love with him. Sure, at first glance it may seem like she’s another example of the girl only being the “love interest,” but that’s ignoring all the other aspects of her character. For Pixar to have a gender “problem,” it would have to systematically place women in subservient roles and make the male superior — something which none of the films actually do.
Pixar films almost never have leads — they have duos, teams, and families. The Incredibles are a unit of male and female characters that interact to do good, and combine their powers. In A Bug’s Life, the insects work together, and in Finding Nemo, friends help each other out — regardless of whether there’s an imbalance between the number of male and female characters, the relationships are not divided among those lines. We think that’s far more inclusive than just adding more girly names in there. And sure, while it would be nice if the fish or the rat had been female, we don’t think it’s something to be outraged about.
We grew up watching the Disney princess movies, and in contrast, we think the Pixar catalogue is a sign of progressive gender relations that were all but nonexistent in the movies we had as kids. To bring an outdated critique such as “There are no women in lead roles, which means Pixar is sexist” is to miss the point. Pixar actually breaks the mold in that it doesn’t design films for young girls and young boys whose protagonists are different genders — Pixar films are equally as popular with boys and girls, regardless of the whether the fish or the rat is male or female. If that’s not un-sexist, we don’t know what is.
But we may just be biased because we think Eve kicks serious ass–do you think there’s a gender problem in the Pixar catalogue?
[correction: "Ants" is not a movie. Let alone a Pixar one. I was thinking of A Bug's Life. This has been fixed.]
Comments (6)
I thought Elastic-girl or whatever her name was in the Incredibles was a great female character. C'mon! She doesn't even get a mention because she has a family? It was about a 2/5 split story between her and Mr. I.
what about Colette in Ratatouille? She was kind of bad ass. And she had a heart. And what about Pixar's strong collaborations with Hayao Miyazaki? Miyazaki is renowned for his strong female roles in his animated works and he and Pixar have worked together countless times. It's like art history. are you going to call an art history teacher sexist because they only talk about great male artists from the renaissance. i mean come on people.
Probably the most (unjustly) overlooked Pixar film is Toy Story 2, which was different from the first mainly in its addition of Jessie the cowgirl as a central character. A majority of Pixar fans probably skipped this movie, but nobody who watched it could argue that Pixar has never structured one of its films around a strong female lead. Decked out in boots and pigtails and voiced by Joan Cusack, Jesse had more of a storyline and more of a personality than any other character in TS2, and definitely did more to actively provide a healthy female role model for young girls than almost any animated picture before or since.
That being said, your point about Pixar being a post-gender movie studio is more of a rule with the rest of their films, and is definitely well-taken.
I wholeheartedly agree…when was she ever portrayed as weak? She spent almost all of that movie being a strong woman, a great and loving mother, and kicking the ass of anyone who got in her way.
Putting your career above your love life doesn’t make one a feminist. Feminism = equality between men and women.
The problem here, it seems to me, is that Pixar seems to default to the male gender for characters that don’t lend themselves to being either male or female. This is not at all unique to Pixar; it’s pretty much Hollywood all over.
Pixar is sexist. When they finally deliver a strong, central female character in Brave, (it only took them 13 films and 25 years!) she is still a princess. Sure, she uses a bow and arrow and fights things, but I find it concerning how the theme of the film (at least from the trailers) is how a woman must be strong by setting aside all things feminine and embrace masculinity. Pixar has even called the film an “anti princess” movie. This only teaches girls to act more like macho boys in order to be successful in life. Also, all the “fun” characters in the film are all male, and the only other female character is Merrida’s bitchy other (i.e., not appealing to look at or listen to.)
I’d rather have something like the recent “Arrietty,” in which a girl is portrayed as being strong-willed AND clearly feminine. How hard is that, sexist Pixar/Hollywood?
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