since the theme of Brave<\/em>, which I saw last night, isn\u2019t actually bravery at all.<\/p>\n The Good<\/strong>: It\u2019s so pretty! It\u2019s a gloriously pretty movie, and the grisaille scene where the girl and her horse wander through a fog-hung, thorn-infested woods was chillingly beautiful. The visual humor is also adorable, and visual language is used to convey character really well during the shapeshifting parts.<\/p>\n I also loved the actual theme, which was the mother-daughter bond and its stresses. I haven\u2019t been able to think of another children\u2019s cartoon movie which dealt with this theme. Actually, all three of the key family relationships are warm and relatable: the girl and her mother, the girl and her father, and the mother and father. My vision was mistier than the Highlands during many of the mother-daughter scenes.<\/p>\n There are a couple of very<\/em> scary moments, though I\u2019m enough of a trauma-tot<\/a> that I would have drawn them out longer. They both use the shapeshifting to play on one of the most intense childhood fears.<\/p>\n The Bad<\/strong>: Brave<\/em> is nowhere near as tight and propulsive as Ratatouille<\/em> or Up<\/em>, the other two Pixar flicks I\u2019ve seen, and not as deeply moving as Up<\/em> although I realize that\u2019s a high bar.<\/p>\n There are also a lot of moments where I felt like I could see the scriptwriters yanking on the wheel, pulling the characters just a little too far in one direction and then overcorrecting just a little in the other. (For example, after the princess makes her huge, rash bad decision, she continues to be self-assured and even a bit superior, which set badly with me\u2013and then when she does apologize, twice, I thought it was even a bit groveling!) These were always minor glitches, but just enough to take me out of the story a little.<\/p>\n And finally, I totally agree with the criticism in Stephen Eldridge\u2019s comment here<\/a>\u2013that the purported \u201ccompromise\u201d really isn\u2019t one, at least not that we see, and the reason this problem arises is that the \u201cforced marriage of a little girl\u201d setup was always a bad premise for a plot. (Merida, the hero, is portrayed as very<\/em> young, preadolescent or barely adolescent.) His summary, \u201cAlthough Merida clearly regrets everything she did, it ends up with a lesson more along the lines of \u2018don\u2019t have witches [redacted second-act plot twist!]\u2019 than \u2018sometimes we need to sacrifice our desires for our responsibilities,'\u201d I think gets at the root of the problems with the movie\u2019s resolution.<\/p>\n These are really criticisms of the culture, not the movie<\/strong>: We do not live in a culture in which parental pressure to marry too young is a pressing threat. There\u2019s a lot of self-comforting \u201cfollow your heart\u201d speechifying which did make me roll my eyes a bit. The Greydanus link below offers some complications there, but overall, that\u2019s of course a very conformist line to take today.<\/p>\n And look, I realize this movie will be over-read in every possible direction because it\u2019s The First Pixar Girl Hero Movie (TM). One reason you need multiple voices and examples is that the stereotypes of girl\/black\/gay\/etc characters are often varied enough that it\u2019s impossible for any one<\/em> example to avoid all of them. Pixar avoided many of the biggest pitfalls (Steven Greydanus writes about some of those pitfalls, like the demonization of traditional femininity<\/a>) and most of the others won\u2019t seem like a big deal once we have more Pixar girl heroes.<\/p>\n But\u2026 Merida is both praised by the movie for going against traditional femininity, and given a chance to learn and show competence at various traditionally-masculine pursuits. The only boy in the movie who isn\u2019t good at traditionally-masculine stuff is a mere figure of ridicule.<\/p>\n This is how it almost always goes. Progressive parenting means taking your daughter to softball games\u2026 not taking your son to ballet. (The Last Unicorn<\/em> shows Prince Lir composing a [terrible, but that\u2019s not the point!] poem to win the unicorn\u2019s heart. When was the last time you saw a cartoon hero guy creating art?) Hero girls are brash, but hero boys can\u2019t be gentle. Hero girls are explicitly praised for liking boy stuff more than girl stuff; I dare you to come up with an example in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n The spiritual parallel here is obvious: Christian faith, with its radical surrender, gets outsourced to the womenfolk<\/a>, and women are praised for being gentle and loving rather than men being challenged<\/a> to be the same way.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" since the theme of Brave, which I saw last night, isn\u2019t actually bravery at all. The Good: It\u2019s so pretty! It\u2019s a gloriously pretty movie, and the grisaille scene where the girl and her horse wander through a fog-hung, thorn-infested woods was chillingly beautiful. The visual humor is also adorable, and visual language is used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[88,17,89],"class_list":["post-5924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-as-antony-said-to-cleopatra","tag-children-will-listen","tag-pixar"],"yoast_head":"\n