Another preview, another sexist joke: check out ‘The Pirates! Band of Misfits’

OMG there look like many, many problems for girl characters in the new animated film FOR KIDS “Pirates! Band of Misfits” including jokes about a female parrot called fat (“No, she’s just big-boned!” ha ha ha) and slutty, belly-button baring pirate girl, one of the few females in this movie and she’s hardly in the preview. I can hardly find any Google images of Cutlass Liz played by Salma Hayek. Is this one for real? With the phallic canon? Seriously???

But I guess I’ll reserve judgement about the whole movie until I see it. For now, I’m just blogging about ANOTHER sexist joke in a preview for an animated kids film. KIDS film.  Laughing at girls. Hilarious. Remember The Lorax’s preview laugh about the ugly woman? Madgascar 3 where the all male penguins are chided for pillow fighting “like a bunch of girls” and now, in Pirates, another ALL MALE GROUP presents itself with this hilarious intro: “Nobody here but us girl scouts.”

Watch the preview here, and make your own list of sexist scenes and statements.

By the way, when I saw The Lorax preview with the ugly woman joke (Before “The Secret World of Arrietty started” I called out “Sexist! Not funny!” My five-year-old daughter though that was pretty hilarious. Try it when you go to the movies, it’s kind of fun and empowering.

12 thoughts on “Another preview, another sexist joke: check out ‘The Pirates! Band of Misfits’

  1. people take things far too seriously!! looking forward to seeing this movie and laughing at the jokes…. light hearted jokes!!! get over yourselves !

    • Hi Angela,

      Would you say that about racist jokes? Marketed to kids? When people complain about sexism, the response is often: get a sense of humor. Portraying females this way, repetitively and incessantly in animated movies for kids isn’t funny.

      MM

  2. Especially disappointing given Ardman was the studio that did “Chicken Run”, which is probably the only animated feature EVER to have mostly female characters.

    I see no reason why the core band of pirates couldn’t have been a mix of men and women. Though I confess to being quite tickled that the “parrot” is actually a dodo.

  3. It is also sexist and degrading to women to call someone ‘slutty.’ It is a pejorative term to degrade women who are perceived to be too sexual. The word slutty tells your daughter that sex and sexual pleasure is for men, and men only. Sex is not evil, and teaching your daughter that her body is shameful is not doing her any favors.

    • Stephanie,

      This makes sense to me! If i call the pirate “slutty” to my daughter (which I wouldn’t do) she would take that as blaming the character. If I call her sexualized (which I wouldn’t do b/c she’s too young but will later) she will understand its the creator.

      MM

  4. I just watched the trailer. I’m so disappointed! It looks like a fun premise, and I adore Aardman’s style of claymation characters. But it is completely and totally undermined by the incredible sexism, and that’s only what we’ve seen in a 2-minute trailer! Fat comments, the “girl scouts” line which sends the message that girls are incapable of posing any kind of threat, and as far as I could tell there are only two female characters – the “sexy” one (not suitable for a children’s movie, and teaching boys to ogle and objectify girls), and the “angry deluded unattractive” one (teaching that women in power are callous, not caring, vindictive, etc).

    And get this – one youtube commenter wrote “I read they’re removing the lepar boat joke over fear it’d cause offence.” Oh really? The leper boat where someone’s arm falls off is offensive, but calling birds fat and stereotyping women into “sexy or shrew” isn’t? Unbelievable!

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