Honestly, I am so excited for “Brave.” As you’ve probably heard, the animated film coming out this summer will star Pixar’s first ever (FIRST EVER!!) female protagonist. I also suspect that the movie is based on the book Brave Margaret which I love. But I had to laugh when I saw this by Claire Hummel/ Shoomlah on the blog Animation Anomaly.
Hummel is so right, this scene is so old, so done. I just blogged about the Jean Paul Gaultier show which was all about corsets. Not only is the corset-image tired to see AGAIN in a movie, but Hummel makes another great point: corsets didn’t exist in Medieval times.
I really, really hope that “Brave” is a movie where we can just see a female heroine being brave and powerful, not one who is mainly rebelling and struggling within the confines of the patriarchy (get it? “the corset”) Disney princess style i.e. Jasmine, Mulan, and Belle. I am so starved to see a female being heroic as in “The Hunger Games” where gender is not the main issue. This is fantasy movie; this is animation. Anything is possible, even, yes, gender equality!
I hope that the protag’s main rebellion in “Brave” is not that she actually wants to pick who she marries. (Whoo-hoo! Can you imagine that being the main plot of movie starring a male?) Or that the protag has to pretend to be male in order to have adventures. Why do little girls have to see that so much? “Girls can do anything boys can do!” That is so patronizing. Ugh. Girls don’t even know about sexism yet for God’s sake. When my daughter was four and saw “Mulan,” she was confused and asked me: “Why can’t girls fight?” I had to explain sexism so she could understand the plot of the movie.
Please Pixar, show much more imagination than this tired corset metaphor suggests. I know you will, I know you will, I know you will.