Over the past decades, Pixar has
earned its reputation as the premier animation studio in the United
States. It took digital animation from
being a quaint curiosity to being the most popular and accepted form of
animation in the modern American cinema.
Rather than accepting animation as the realm of children and allowing it
to fall into a simplistic, shoddy abyss, Pixar has fought to show that Walt
Disney was right that animation was “the most versatile and explicit means of
communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.” When other cartoons were focused on
simplistic entertainment, Pixar took on society’s tendency to hate the
exceptional with The Incredibles, the
question of being human with WALL-E,
and the question of true love, generative living, and adventure with Up.
I am a huge Pixar fan. Not all of Pixar’s films have resonated for
me, but I find the studio’s handling of story and their dedication to deep
literary and human themes admirable in an industry where pandering for profit
far too often outweighs quality. Because
of that respect for Pixar and my unabashed love of princesses, fairy tales, and
fantasy, I was giddy when I heard about Brave. Pixar doing a princess fairy tale with a
fantasized historical backdrop of Twelfth Century Scotland? Oh yes, please! I’m a humanities teacher, so
history is close to my heart, and I’ve taught courses on myth, fairy and folk
tales. I’m familiar with the work of Propp, Bettelheim, Zipes, and Campbell,
and I knew that with Pixar’s dedication to theme and detail they would be too. I was psyched.
The initial marketing for the film
fanned the flames of my enthusiasm.
Merida’s character design, with its moon-face and medusa hair didn’t
thrill me, but the will-o-the wisp lights and the sweeping vistas promised
wonder galore. And, of course, the tag line of changing your fate resonated –
it fit in with the themes of classic myth and Campbell’s hero journey.
Then I saw the archery trailer,
and my hopes fell. Where many other
viewers thrilled to Merida as a strong, liberated heroine standing up against
patriarchal values, I saw an homage to the increasingly accepted modern
viewpoint that strong women have to be divas, brats or “bitches.” It wasn’t Merida’s defiance; it wasn’t her
desire to break free of her “princess” role; it was the fact that she chose to
act publicly with open insolence against her mother in front of the whole
kingdom. It was a choice I saw not as
being about liberation but about humiliation, and it made me lose a little
respect for Merida.
