Sunday 28 April 2013

Brave Attempts

 
Given my well-known dislike of Scotland and curly-haired redheads, it's hardly surprising I haven't bothered catching up with Brave before now.  Indeed, for the last five or six months, it's been the only Pixar film I'd not seen (excluding sequels). I'm glad I've finally gotten around to watching it, but I don't think in twenty years time people will be talking about it as one of Pixar's greatest efforts.  Even Pixar's lesser offerings - say, for example, Cars - are entirely solid examples of 21st century film-making, and Brave belongs in the same category: it doesn't put much of a foot wrong, but these days that's not really enough, even if the world simply cannot have too many films featuring Kelly MacDonald.

In fact, perhaps the harshest thing I can think to say about the film is that it isn't as interesting as the reaction it sparked.  When details of the project first came out, it was noted that it was a missed opportunity for Pixar to base their first film involving a female protagonist around the story of an unhappy princess.  Where, it was asked, was the kind of imagination that created a world populated by talking cars, a rat with the desire to cook his own food, or the most astonishing impressive feat animation has perhaps ever managed; a heart-breaking assemblage of boxes and wires?

It's an interesting point, but I think it's missing the real issue.  Cars is about the nature of friendship, Ratatouille deals with how we chase our dreams, and Wall-E is... well, that seemed to be a case of starting with a character and building a film out of him, though given the character in question I don't see a problem with that.

Brave, in contrast, is about traditional gender roles.  And if a film is going to focus on that, replacing human characters with sentient vehicles or talking toys actually weakens the point, because unlike many of Pixar's other films, the aim is not to make a point about a universal concept (we all rely on our friends, we all have ambitions others would laugh at us for, we all suffer jealously when confronted by new people our friends seem to like more than us), but to argue against something that shouldn't exist at all. 

This is particularly true because the film makes the point that in the society in which Merida lives is one where her expected role is actually vital in keeping the peace.  To recognise her entirely reasonable desire to live the life she chooses does not mean ignoring the fact that at worst, her rebellion could lead to a civil war.  In the film as is, this makes Merida's mother more than just an obvious antagonist (however well meaning).  Were the film to exist in some clearly fantastical realm (as oppose to one that is almost our own, just with more people turning into bears than you might expect), you run into the problem of creating a world in which you want to talk about gender stereotypes in which you also suggest there might be a point to them.  That is, to say the least, problematic.

None of this is offered as a justification for Pixar's choice.  It's just that any problem that exists stems not from the choice of setting, but from the choice of theme.  The former follows pretty logically from the latter.  And whilst the question "Why did Pixar choose it's first female-led film to explore gender issues" is an interesting one, I think it's less damning than "What, a princess, really?" might suggest.

Indeed, the obvious problem with the film's focus lies elsewhere.  If you're going to put together a film about the difficulties faced by women in a patriarchal society, I think you rather undercut that by focusing on a girl who's unquestionably much, much better off than almost any man could dream of.  How do you think the men rowing their immensely fat chieftains across to the castle would respond to the idea that the child of the king might feel a bit limited in her choices?  You think the man who's stood so long at his post he's fallen asleep (allowing the king's sons to play a mean practical joke upon him) would feel terrible when he learned the richest wife-to-be in the entire realm might not get hitched to someone of her choosing?  What about the guys almost eaten by a giant demon bear because the king didn't choose his picnic ground a bit more carefully?

This is not to suggest we should be unsympathetic to Merida's position.  It's just worth noting that choosing a time period in which class distinction led to such deplorable and gigantic differences in life experience, choosing to focus on the absolute most luckiest girl in the kingdom and asking us to feel bad because her second greatest of all possible options would be better were she a man doesn't really strike me as particularly compelling.

6 comments:

Gooder said...

Also worth noting it was Brenda Chapman who first developed the project and was also set to direct before sharing the responsibility with Mark Andrews.

Chapman developed the idea out of her own relationship with her own daugher and wanted to frame it a tradtional fairytale stlye.

I think those looking to knock it for exploring gender roles when using a central female protagonist for the first time are stretching a bit too hard.

(After all there are plenty of strong female roles in the other films just not as the main central role)

I don't by the arguement that her being a princess (which is key marker of the fairytale style chosen to tell the story in) undermines the concept either. That's like saying someone who has money can never feel depressed. Plainly not true.

Yes, as a film it's not up with Pixar's best work but it's better than both the Cars films.

SpaceSquid said...

That's like saying someone who has money can never feel depressed. Plainly not true.

It's not even remotely like saying that. If we're going to use depression as an analogy, Brave is like a film focussing on how hard it is for a banker to feel satisfied in his job following the financial crash. The choice of setting means there are clearly tens of thousands of people suffering far, far more seriously because their depression intersects with far greater problems in life generally.

I'm not sure that's the perfect analogy, but then I don't think analogy is needed here in any case. If you choose to explore the roles society enforces upon the individual, choosing a person who has almost the least amount of restriction in that society to concentrate on necessarily dilutes the message. "Rich people have problems" is cleary true. "Rich people make a good focus for exploring society's problems" is not.

I'm not sure whether I'd put Brave above Cars. I think the latter is more inventive in its particulars, but on the other hand it had almost nothing to it other than the central idea of talking vehicles. It's the Pixar film that would most clearly be an utterly uninteresting and unoriginal story if it were re-written to be just about human beings.

Gooder said...

"Rich people have problems" is cleary true. "Rich people make a good focus for exploring society's problems" is not.


Why?

Does American Beauty have less value than say Nil By Mouth, because the people in Nil By Mouth are poorer?

What about Up In The Air? Thematically it deals with the ecomomic crisis but it deal with executives rather than the blue collar workers, does that decrease the value of what it has to say?

(And whilst I'm here Cars is by far the weakest of the Pixar films. But them I'm rare in that I put Finding Nemo up with Toy Story above The Incredibles!)

SpaceSquid said...

Why?

Does American Beauty have less value than say Nil By Mouth, because the people in Nil By Mouth are poorer?

What about Up In The Air? Thematically it deals with the ecomomic crisis but it deal with executives rather than the blue collar workers, does that decrease the value of what it has to say?



I haven't seen Up In The Air, so I can't really comment.
I'll grant the phrase you quoted may not have been specific enough, so allow me to try again. I'm not saying there can be no worth in a focus upon the luckiest strata of society; I'm saying any film focusing on the luckiest strata of society and on a problem more keenly felt by every other strata of society has weakened its message, possibly to an extent that renders the film's themes untenable.

That's why I don't think American Beauty particularly works as an example. It's been a while since I last saw it, so I may not recall accurately, but my memory of my reading was that it was about mid-life dissatisfaction and the need to follow your heart. Those are the kind of universal qualities I talked about earlier. They're not something that can clearly be broken down across class lines.

Brutal Snake said...

I really enjoyed Brave. I particularly liked the emphasis on the mother-daughter bond, which is rather lacking in a father and sons obsessed Hollywood.

I will defend the decision to concentrate on the 1% of medieval Scotland, though. Taking into account the harsh realities of the life of a serf would clutter the film narratively, not to mention the added challenge of doing so in a family friendly way. Plus, as Gooder rightly pointed out, there is also the attraction of using the traditional fairytale story frame, which does call for a princess. Plus it feels like a nice dig at teenage self-importance in the metaphor.

I also wonder whether there isn't something a bit more general about the way that (pseudo) historical settings always concentrate on the upper echelons of society in a way that modern (or even sci-fi) doesn't. Nearly every film and book I've seen and read in medieval style setting inevitable ends up following the exploits of the gentry, and I wonder whether a modern audience finds it easier to empathise with that type of character rather than the peasants. Of course this probably just a reflection of the kind of books and film I read/watch.

SpaceSquid said...

Taking into account the harsh realities of the life of a serf would clutter the film narratively, not to mention the added challenge of doing so in a family friendly way.

That's an argument that there's no way to satisfactorily deal with the film's problem; it doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

Plus, as Gooder rightly pointed out, there is also the attraction of using the traditional fairytale story frame, which does call for a princess.

I'm not sure I'd call that an "attraction". Unless you're saying that the film takes an old gender cliche and tries to deconstruct it, or say something new about it. In either case, it's not clear to me that the film succeeds.

Plus it feels like a nice dig at teenage self-importance in the metaphor.

That's an excellent point.