fear and the gender seesaw

I took Elias to see Brave this week.  He was home sick and when he was better the next day but still home for a follow-up appointment that afternoon, I'd promised him we could see the movie he very much wanted to see as we killed time that day waiting to get the official green light from his doctor to head back to preschool.  It's been on my mind a lot the past few days because of articles like this one, deeming the movie, perhaps, too scary for kids.  Maybe I'm a tad defensive - I did take him to see Mirror, Mirror after all, which I sorta regretted in the end (although I genuinely enjoyed it!). 

Sometimes it's hard to know in advance, especially with PG ratings, and it very much depends on the child.  I've seen one decent G-rated movie with my son - Winnie the Pooh - and while parents seemed to unanimously adore it (it is the poster child for the g-rated movie, after all), my son seemed, frankly, a little bored.  Rio was his first movie-theater movie, which we saw when it came out last spring, shortly before his third birthday.  Don't worry, we did the whole no TV thing the first year or so, and to be honest, we kind of had to train him to sit and watch a show, beginning with short clips on YouTube and eventually graduating to half-hour or less shows like Thomas and Friends.  When he dropped the morning nap, the morning show enabled me to clean up after breakfast and finish getting myself ready for the day.  When he stopped napping altogether shortly after his second birthday (yes, you read that right, he was 2 when he stopped napping), and an hour of "quiet time" in his room resembled a tornado passing through, we started showing him feature length kids' movies instead.  At least he was sitting still and getting some modicum of physical rest every afternoon. 

I should also add that going out to movies is probably the thing Neal and I miss most from our pre-parental lives. We're lucky to have a kid who does pretty well eating out and we've always been on a tight budget anyway, so we're content with a weekly trip to Chipotle or someplace similar where we can all eat for around twenty bucks.  But going to movies is tough. You just can't do it with itty bitty kids (and we can't afford a sitter for these so-called and seemingly essential "date nights").  And even when they are old enough to sit still for an hour and a half, you're extremely limited in your options.  So when a high quality animated flick from the likes of Pixar comes out, you better believe we're going to go see it.  In fact, Neal might take him again this weekend.  And then, as the father in the family, he can decide if this article has any merit. 

I personally think it's problematic, but I'm not a dude. That said, I should qualify that this is coming from the person who in her 20s marveled at the fact that the three guys I shared an apartment with weren't in the least bit offended by the McDonald's commercials that suggested that was the best Dad could do for dinner when Mom was away.  If Brave is in fact "a modern Disney princess story, along the lines of The Little Mermaid," at least there is a biological mother in the story who's neither crazy nor evil? Where the hell is Ariel's mom?  As far as I'm concerned, guys have scores of movies, for adults and children alike, with respectable men/father role models. Girls, on the other hand, are not only served the typical princess fairy tale over and over again, but one where the mother is mysteriously absent and/or replaced by an evil stepmother.  Think about it: Snow White's mom died in childbirth and was replaced, of course, by the evil queen who basically plotted her demise. Pocahantas' mother? Who the hell knows?!  She's only mentioned briefly in the flick, later revealed to have been dead for years.  Of course. Belle's mother in Beauty and the Beast? Dead. Probably during childbirth. Cinderella? Same, with the added bonus of a...you guessed it, evil stepmother. Anyway, you get the point. The only exception that I can think of so far is Tania's mother Eudora in The Princess and the Frog.  And of course, now with Brave (which, I might add, is the first Pixar movie directed by a woman, Brenda Chapman), the relationship between Merida and Ellinor. The GeekDad article states:

The parent-child relationships and the child’s rebellion are all familiar. There is absolutely nothing groundbreaking in the premise of this film. The moments of tension and the conclusion are utterly predictable once the central canard is revealed. (From a marketing point of view, Pixar has been very wise to hide it.) The only real difference between this princess film and other Disney princess films is the lack of a Prince Charming. But this story isn’t about a girl and her prince. It is about a princess and her mother. So the lack of a romance isn’t really that groundbreaking either. This isn’t a romance film.

The only real difference is the lack of a Prince Charming?! Well, yes, but how about the presence of a biological mother? And while she's not perfect, she's not crazy, either, nor evil. That's pretty damn groundbreaking, if you ask me.  And as far as the men in the film being "portrayed as incompetent, uncouth, and ill-mannered" it's set in, like, the Middle Ages or whatever.  The bottom line is it's not real! It's a fictional story set in a make-believe world in a time long, long ago.  Just as kids who see this ought to realize that the scary bear parts aren't real, I'm hoping that most girls who see this film understand that they (well, most of them in the Western world, anyway) won't be betrothed as a teenager to a boy not of their choosing, nor are most men at all like the ones in this highly fictional, animated story.  And if your kids can't grasp that and/or you're unwilling to have a conversation with them about the differences between fiction and reality, then perhaps they aren't ready for the magical world of animated film.

It is true that the stupidity of the dudes in the film is pretty consistent, so I'll give the GeekDad writer that, but I think, from a female perspective at least, that the merits of the film far outweigh the faults. "There was no need to push down on one side of the gender seesaw in order to lift the other side up." Perhaps. But even so, I say, bravo to Brave. Or should I say brava?