The Oscars post.

[nenena]

I don't want to be one of those people who complains about the Oscars every year. But I've actually NEVER complained about the Oscars on my blog before, so I think it's about time I cashed in some of that restraint and indulged myself in a little Armchair Quarterback Kvetching this year. Because everybody needs to get a little bit of Armchair Quarterback Kvetching out of their system every once in a while.

To wit:

Seth McFarlane was boring at best, unfunny most of the time, misogynist at worst.

The media's treatment of Quvenzhané Wallis was horrid. I expected some level of badness, since she's black, female, and a child nominated in the Best Actress category, but I was totally unprepared for "I'll just call you Annie" and the Onion's twitter actually calling her a c*nt. Holy shit people. Is this really 2013? And this on top of everybody saying that she wasn't "really acting" in Beasts of the Southern Wild. Because children can't act or something. I suspect that at least half the people criticizing her for "not acting" never even saw Beasts of the Southern Wild in the first place.

Argo was the only one of the Best Picture nominees that I felt didn't deserve to be nominated, so of course it won.

And goddamit, I really did enjoy Brave on a lot of levels, but Wreck-It Ralph was a superior film in nearly every way. Including from a feminist perspective. And that is really saying something.

I think I would have liked Brave a heckuva lot more if it hadn't been marketed and praised as some great feminist film or whatever. As a beautiful piece of animation it's great, and as an adventure story it's great, but as a feminist narrative it just falls right the fuck apart if you really start to think about it, and with that on top of all of the sexism that went on behind the scenes it's just ugh. I'm tired of "feminist" stories that denigrate femininity and (intentionally or not) enforce the idea that the only way for women to be strong/free/happy is for them to be more like men because things like bravery and bodily autonomy and wanting to change your fate are somehow inherently masculine. Somehow.

Welp. Glad I got that out of my system.

Comments

[imorca]

I haven't seen BRAVE, but I'm wondering if I've seen an example that was able to tell a story that didn't tip this balance either one way or the other - reinforcing masculine and feminine as a binary that works as a zero-sum game, one always wins at the loss of the other. And especially if we are talking about models for femininity. I'm not sure the I've ever been satisfied with a mainstream film portrayal that didn't either alienate those women who might orient themselves more closely with "traditionally" feminine qualities/values, or alienate those women who might orient themselves more close with "traditionally" masculine qualities/values - and just confuse or not relate to a whole bunch of people in between. This might have to do with my age setting my sensitivities, but I still perceive that I get many more messages that tell me my strengths, interests, talents, and choices make me not-woman than messages that tell me that traditional femininity is oppressive. (To be clear, I certainly don't think culture is some kind of % game we calculate. It's just an observation, as I said, that may be revealing about the difference in how things like age influence the differences between feminists' perspectives.)

[nenena]

The best way to avoid the "this female character is presented as either explicitly feminine or explicitly masculine" trap is for a given narrative to have more than one important female character, have said female characters represent a diversity of personality types, and have all of their personalities/characteristics/interests are valued by the narrative. Brave fulfilled the former but not the latter requirement.

For a contemporary example of doing it right: My Little Pony. Does a goddamn better job at being a feminist narrative than 99.9% of media for adults. And it accomplishes this by having six lead female characters who have varied personality types and who care about different things. That's all! It also helps that the show doesn't label anything as being explicitly masculine or feminine; even Rainbow Dash, the athletic and hyper-competitive pony with the deepest voice, is never labeled anywhere in the show as being "masculine" or even "tomboyish" in any way. (The fandom frequently describes her with that label, but then again, the fandom sucks.)

Hell, even Wreck-It Ralph managed to do that with only two lead female characters. Neither was ever presented as explicitly "masculine" or "feminine."

I realize that Brave had to be pretty explicit in labeling its gender roles, due to the setting of the story, but it still could have shown that some of things that Eleanor cared about were valuable. That would have sidestepped the feminine-bad, masculine-good binary that the film ends up unintentionally broadcasting. For a movie that was supposed to be about a daughter and a mother learning to understand each other, it really falls apart when it ends with the mother learning to understand and appreciate everything that her daughter cares about (freedom! adventure! horseback riding! using weapons!) and no reciprocal understanding/appreciation ever shown from Merrida learning to appreciate what her mother values. Yeah Merrida learned the value of telling stories, but the things that were REALLY important to her mom - leadership, responsibility, and the arts - are either just tossed aside by the narrative or explicitly shown to be BORING AND OPPRESSIVE OMG and therefore bad.

[imorca]

Sure. I wouldn't disagree with any of the general premises of your description. WiR is probably the better comparison, in terms of the possibilities of storytelling, because it has the same limitations of medium that Brave did - both are films. MLP has the seriality and duration of a television series over which to demonstrate and develop so many characters, and thus can spread out and diversify in different ways. There is also an interesting parallel, again, to age that runs in the description between mother and daughter characters as you describe them. I'm not trying to make any specific point, since of course I haven't seen it. I just found it interesting that it showed up, and thought it might be potentially thought provoking.

(Just as a note, I figured you might use MLP as your "alternative" example ^_^. Also as a side note, I'm watching my DVR'd episode of The Following right now. hehehe.)

[nenena]

Ack! I haven't watched this week's The Following yet. Off to Hulu.

But first, one thing I wanted to quibble with:

MLP has the seriality and duration of a television series over which to demonstrate and develop so many characters, and thus can spread out and diversify in different ways.

True, but then again, there are plenty of films that have a cast of six, seven, or eight lead characters that manage to introduce and develop all of them in the space of 1.5 or 2 hours. (Like Ocean's Eleven, Inglorious Basterds, The Expendables, etc.) There's no reason why more films can't have more female lead characters representing more diversity in terms of personality types. Since there are plenty of examples of films that successfully juggle a large cast of male characters, after all. And My Little Pony managed to introduce and develop its six lead characters in the very first two-part episode, which lasted only forty minutes total.

[imorca]

Quibble is one of the BEST words. Ever.