Gender and equality: Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph messes with the program

Last month, I went to see Disney’s latest animated feature Wreck-It Ralph. I was, on the whole, impressed and entertained. In a review which I wrote for STYLEetc I described it as “a wildly inventive, innovative thrill-ride – a love letter to retro-gaming that sees Disney return to the top of its own game”.

But when the final credits rolled, I reflected that it was more than this. For me, one of the most compelling and praiseworthy aspects of the film was its positive and progressive portrayal of gender.

Gender inequality in cinema is well documented, both behind the camera and in front of it. Still, too often in the narratives which flood our screens, the masculine is considered universal and general, the feminine specific and other. Harmful stereotypes survive and flourish, and there is a significant gap between the number, variety and depth of roles available to men and those available to women.

It is an issue which is even more apparent in the narratives which are aimed at children. Concerned by the media her own daughter was consuming, actress Geena Davis decided to tackle the issue head on, founding the “Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media” and her own programming arm “See Jane”.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, she explained the kind of issues that her research revealed:

“What we found was that in G-rated movies, for every one female character, there were three male characters. If it was a group scene, it would change to five to one, male to female.

Of the female characters that existed, the majority are highly stereotyped and/or hypersexualized. To me, the most disturbing thing was that the female characters in G-rated movies wear the same amount of sexually revealing clothing as the female characters in R-rated movies.

And then we looked at aspirations and occupations and things like that. Pretty much the only aspiration for female characters was finding romance, whereas there are practically no male characters whose ultimate goal is finding romance. The No. 1 occupation was royalty. Nice gig, if you can get it. And we found that the majority of female characters in animated movies have a body type that can't exist in real life. So, the question you can think of from all this is: What message are we sending to kids?”

Interesting and, quite frankly, a little depressing. So it’s really refreshing to see a film – and a Disney film at that – make some pretty decent inroads into redressing the balance of gender bias and gender stereotyping.

Let’s look at how it does this in a little more detail.

[WARNING: spoilers contained within.]

The main narrative

The film’s title suggests that the main character is a man called Ralph. But really, the film is about two characters whose shared battle is against their programming.

Wreck-It Ralph, as his moniker suggests, is programmed to destroy things – to be the bad guy. But even when the game’s over and everyone clocks off for the day, his notoriety clings to him like a bad smell.

Unfortunately for Ralph, his reputation precedes him. Blinds go down as he walks past, gazes are averted. No-one ever invites him inside for cocktails and cake. His only friends are the fellow baddies he sees at his weekly “Bad-Anon” Bad Guys Anonymous meetings.

As Zangief tells him: “Ralph, you are Bad Guy… but this does not mean you are... bad guy?”

After 30 years of punching through walls and terrorising the town, he finally decides he’s had enough.

Elsewhere, in the candy-coated racing-game “Sugar Rush”, Vanellope von Schweetz is a young girl who is victim to faulty programming – she’s a bit of a misfit, a “glitch”, and because of her occasional tendency to malfunction, she is shunned by the other girls (who are uniformly pink and bitchy) and not allowed to take part in the race (note neat “race is life” metaphor).

Both characters operate on the fringes of their respective societies. They are not well-liked. They are different. Their otherness isolates them and they are both forced to live alone; cast-offs, surrounded by garbage.

Ralph just wants a chance to win a medal – be the hero. Vanellope just wants a chance to race – be the winner. Both characters want recognition and acceptance from their peers.

Ultimately, both Ralph and Vanellope express a universally relatable and understandable motivation that crosses both gender and generational boundaries.

I gotta say, I thought that was pretty awesome.

But wait, that’s not all…

The relationship between the two main characters

Ralph and Vanellope do not get off to the best start – their first meeting (the “meet cute” minus the romance) is combative, antagonistic – but when they realise their similarities, and that, actually, they might be able to help each other (and in so doing, help themselves) they eventually become friends.

Admittedly this, in itself, is not hugely surprising. One might say that if there’s one type of programming Ralph and Vanellope cannot battle against it’s the narrative programming of the movie-makers – their eventual friendship-through-hardship and consequent personal growth is as inevitable as the happy ending.

But the great thing is that their friendship, like their motivations, also crosses gender and generational boundaries.

I don’t think the significance of this should be underestimated or underplayed. For one, Disney is most renowned for its traditional fairy tale romances of princes and princesses of the boy-meets-girl, boy-or-girl-encounters-obstacle, boy-marries-girl variety.

There have been notable variations on this theme with the more recent Enchanted, The Princess and the Frog and Tangled, but on the whole, romantic heterosexual love ending in marriage is the most common narrative thread: pretty conventional and, ultimately, not very interesting. (I wonder if this is part of the reason why The Lion King is my favourite Disney film.)

Now, Disney’s cooler, more critically-acclaimed subsidiary Pixar has plenty of examples of solid friendships or other non-romantic love relationships taking centre stage in its films, but these are mostly male-centric: e.g. the central relationship in Toy Story is arguably between Buzz and Woody and/or Woody and Andy; Finding Nemo is about a father and son; Ratatouille crosses species but the central relationship is between Remy (male rat) and Linguini (young man), running alongside Remy’s conflicted relationship with his brother and father and Linguini’s romantic relationship with Colette.

Up is more unconventional in that the central friendship is cross-generational but it’s still between a young boy and an old man. Most recently, Brave sought to redress the balance by making the central relationship between mother and daughter, but not one of the films mentioned above had a platonic male-female friendship at the front and centre of the film.

I also remember thinking in the cinema that if Wreck-It Ralph were a live-action film, then Vanellope would almost certainly be the “manic pixie dream girl” character whose primary purpose, other than being a bit kooky and lovable, is to help the hero realise his own destiny and complete his journey – win the medal (metaphorical or otherwise), grow as a person, then return home a changed man with renewed optimism and purpose in life.

But guess what? She’s not. What I found wonderfully refreshing is that, when Ralph tumbles into “Sugar Rush” and meets Vanellope, she isn’t immediately doomed to the fate of being sidekick. The fact is, she has her own agenda, her own hopes and desires, her own backstory and her own plotline. Because “Sugar Rush” is her game. That’s why she fights Ralph for his medal – because she needs it just as much as he does.

And so, once their lives become entangled, they continue the film as equals, helping each other to achieve their own respective goals, and learning the vital lesson that working together is better than fighting one another and going it alone. In so doing, they grow to love one another – as friends. No romance (though that would be icky and wrong given the age gap). It’s also played with just the right amount of sentiment – sweet and believable, but not cloying.   

I am all for more of this kind of representation in films which are primarily targeted to children. Too often, these same children are marketed to in other areas in an aggressively binary way: blue vs. pink; guns vs. dolls; fighting vs. talking. [For more on this, the two-part Feminist Frequency video on LEGO & Gender makes for fascinating and infuriating viewing.]

The fact is, toy companies benefit from emphasising and exaggerating gender differences because their margins profit a lot more from being able to market toys specifically to boys and girls separately than marketing to them together. It’s classic divide and conquer. And as an aside, can you think of a toy that simultaneously advertises to boys and girls whose promotional material features boys and girls playing together?

Stop the harmful gender enclaves, I say. More platonic boy-girl friendships on screen, please.

Our link to the human world outside the game

Another area in which the film succeeds in its positive, progressive portrayal of gender is in our link to the human world.

The action of the film takes place mainly within the arcade, inside the individual game machines – this is the “game world” which the main characters inhabit.

Occasionally, however, we cross over into the “real world”, where Out of Order signs are absently slapped onto screens – these signify little more than a minor inconvenience in our world, but constitute a looming, terrifying death-knell in the game world.

Our link between the two worlds is a child – a regular arcade-goer who switches between the three main games that feature in the film.

But, to steal a Shakespearean phrase, here’s the rub. This child just happens to be a girl. Yep. A glasses-wearing girl who is just as happy playing action-heavy, bombastic, sci-fi First Person Shooter “Hero’s Duty” as she is old-school “Fix-It Felix”.

At one point she wants to play “Sugar Rush” (a girl-populated, saccharine, manga-inspired candy land) but is edged out by a pair of surly teenage boys (HA!) who have monopolised the game with their stack of quarters.

This is, quite simply, awesome. The filmmakers could have easily made the gamer a boy, but they didn’t. They chose to make her a girl. And a girl who not only likes playing games, but games that span a range of different styles and genres.

Given the already complex relationship between women and video games, this is an excellent and savvy creative choice which, though small, feels very significant. I very much doubt it was accidental.

The ending

The final gender-related masterstroke comes in the film’s closing scenes.

Needless to say, both the main characters have a happy ending. Ralph returns to his game a hero. He may still be the “Bad Guy” during office house, but the inhabitants of Nice Land have a newfound appreciation and respect for him, and he is no longer on the outside looking in. Vanellope, meanwhile, is restored to her rightful place as Princess of Sugar Rush. So far, so conventional, right?

Well, not quite.

The first interesting thing to note is the nature of Vanellope’s usurpation. The film’s baddie, the dastardly King Candy, had basically infiltrated a female-only society/gamescape, usurped its ruler, wiped everyone’s memories and set himself up as King. You could say he imposed an insidious patriarchy on the land of Sugar Rush, only to be ousted at the end. You may think I’m reading too much into it, but it’s still worth mulling over.

Secondly, Vanellope may be revealed to be a princess but she is very quick to reject the trappings of her role. For one thing, she’s hardly joyful at the pink meringue monstrosity she’s suddenly forced to wear. It’s just not very her. So she takes it off. (Gasp.)

Then, once she’s back in her familiar green hoodie, skirt, stripey tights and black boots, she says: “Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of a constitutional democracy.” Turns out she prefers the title President to Princess – and why shouldn’t she? I know I do.

Sly, Disney. You had to have your Princess in there somewhere but it’s nice to see you put a little (political!) twist on it.

*

I could go on. The film’s secondary storyline with the romance between the more conventionally attractive, leather-clad, ass-kicking Sergeant Calhoun (voiced with gleeful, gruff badassery by Jane Lynch) and all-round nice guy Fix-it Felix (Jack McBrayer) bucks convention in its own ways, but I’ve tried to outline above the major ways in which Wreck-It Ralph “messes with the program” of its narrative ancestry and the more traditional gender roles which have preceded it.

If this marks Disney striking out in a new direction then I am genuinely excited for what other feminist-friendly stories they have up their sleeves – stories where the female characters have just as much prominence, importance and agency as the male characters and where they are not limited to romantic interest, eye-candy or sidekick. I join Vanellope in ditching the foo-foo pink dress of conformity. Bring on the revolution.

*

On a final note, I only hope that the new live-action feature Oz the Great and Powerful can rise above and beyond its gag-reflex inducing trailer. As far as I can tell, it tells the story of a vain, shallow, feckless man thrust into the midst of a bunch of spirited, intelligent, yet ultimately helpless women who just need a Really Great Man to save them. Ugh. It’s basically Chicken Run with witches.

Seriously, just watch this trailer and count how many times a female character says something along the lines of “You’re the chosen one” and “We’ve waited for you to come save us” and tell me you don’t want to reach for the nearest bucket:

http://www.youtube.com/user/WaltDisneyStudiosUK?v=DylgNj4YQVc

On silly atheists and a complete English Literature fail

Yes, it’s that time again. Rant time! Huzzah! What is it now, I hear you ask, what’s she gone and got her knickers in a twist over this time? No, it’s not all the slow people in the street getting in my way (though they still cause me spasms of rage, it’s true)…. Nor is it the man on the MTR the other day who, when the train arrived, decided to walk *around* me, as I was politely queuing and standing near the front of one of the four legitimate ‘channels’ on either side of the train doors, in some ill-advised attempt to get on the train first, during the peak of rush hour, onto a Tsuen Wan line train at Mong Kok, where the only victory he achieved was about a few pathetic centimetres of distance in front of me and the dubious honour of blocking the path of EVERY single one of the horde of about twenty people trying to get off the train so the rest of us – who were politely queuing to the side – could get on. OH no. It’s not about that. (But that was also very annoying.)

I want to rant about something which my good friend Tilda recently ranted about in a Facebook note. I read her note, and it annoyed me. I read it again and it annoyed me even more. In fact, in annoyed me so much that I even had a totally lame waking dream about it the next day, in which I was telling Tilda in person how much reading her note really annoyed me. (See? LAME.)

Here’s the original note for those who are interested:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150424455985751

For those who can’t read the note or can’t be bothered, it’s about a teacher training workshop Tilda led at a HK secondary school which was about using drama and storytelling to teach English. As part of this session, Tilda gave the teachers an unseen poem, with no introduction or instruction, to discuss and analyse in groups in preparation for a drama exercise. The poem was “Blessing” by Imtiaz Dharker (http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english/poemscult/blessingrev2.shtml) – those of who you did the AQA English Language GCSE and studied “Poems from Other Cultures” (or “Poems from Different Cultures”, as it is now titled) may be familiar with it.

The poem is a simple one, told in free verse and split into four stanzas, and in it, Dharker narrates an incident where, in the vast, sprawling slum of Dharavi in Mumbai, in the midst of a relentlessly hot and dry summer, a municipal water pipe bursts and brings great joy to the inhabitants.

Like Tilda, I like this poem. I find it moving in its simplicity, and the final image of the “naked children” – standing apart from the “frantic hands” of the others collecting the precious drops of water, and “screaming in the liquid sun, their highlights polished to perfection, flashing light, as the blessing sings over their small bones” – always stuck with me. It simultaneously inspires dual feelings of happiness and sadness – happiness at the unrestrained excitement and joy and innocence of the children, and sadness at the fragility hinted at in the mention of their malnourished, tiny bodies, their “small bones.”

Ultimately though, this is a poem of celebration. Water is portrayed as precious (“suddenly, the sudden rush of fortune” / “silver crashes to the ground”) and a gift. The latter meaning is mainly conveyed through a series of religious images and references – the title “Blessing” and the use of the same word as metaphor in the last stanza; the metaphor of the imagined drop of water as “the voice of a kindly god”; and the description of the crowd of people gathered around the pipe as a “congregation”. Tilda already mentions in her note the fact that no ‘God’ is mentioned – it is perhaps significant that the only appearance of the word ‘god’ has a lowercase ‘g’. This merely suggests that the water is so special that it can be compared to a god – and given its life-giving qualities, that’s hardly surprising.  As for the words “blessing” and “congregation”, which have both secular and religious meanings, these simply reinforce the twin ideas of worship and celebration. The water is a precious gift that brings joy and solace to the people who, previously, had to endure unspeakably harsh conditions where “the skin cracks like a pod”.

I realise I went off on a bit of an English Lit commentary and analysis tangent there, but there’s a reason for that, as you’ll soon see.

Basically, Tilda (and later I) got annoyed at the response of one of the teachers to this poem – the only Native English Teacher at the school, a British man in his 30s from Norwich.

This is what Tilda overheard him say:

“Well it's got religious overtones and talks about 'god' and 'blessings' more than once. As an atheist, I don't think it's right. I don't agree.”

Apparently his tone when speaking these words was very negative and disgruntled.

Wow.

Seriously?

“As an atheist, I don’t think it’s right. I don’t agree.”?

…

What kind of lunacy is this? If somebody wrote that in their GCSE exam when asked to analyse and comment on religious imagery or the significance/portrayal of water in the poem “Blessing”, they would FAIL, I’m pretty sure of it.

I don’t know what annoys me more. Is it the idiotic hypersensitivity of a self-proclaimed atheist who rankles at the slightest mention of anything to do with religion, regardless- no, in spite of the context? What does he do when he overhears someone say “Oh my God!” on the street? Go over to them and say, “Oh, excuse me, your invocation of a superfluous, false deity and your consequent irrational belief in something which has no scientific basis in fact OFFENDS me. As an atheist, I don’t think it’s right. I don’t agree.”?

I bet you he’s not a pet person. Can you imagine? “Yeah I don’t like cats so much. The Egyptians used to worship them as gods, didn’t they? Oh, but I dislike dogs more, though. 'Cos, you know, dog is ‘god’ spelt backwards, and frankly, as an atheist, I don’t think it’s right. I don’t agree.”

I know that’s a bit ‘reductio ad absurdum’, but I am honestly baffled. It’s the sort of completely irrational knee-jerk reaction that I’m sure he, ironically, finds so offensive in so many religious people whom he no doubt looks down upon with sniffy, snooty disapproval and derision.

It also shows a complete failure to appreciate and understand the poem, and therefore, by extension, literature in general. All it does show is his own extremely petty and narrow prejudices – and if that is a reflection of his general attitude in life, I hate to think how that kind of negativity impacts on his English teaching and his students.

I am not religious. I would probably describe myself as an areligious agnostic – I don’t believe in or subscribe to any particular religion, but I also don’t believe that such a thing as God does not exist, because you cannot prove He/She/It does not exist any more conclusively than you can prove that He/She/It does exist. And we’re only human and we have small brains and there is, no doubt, much in this wonderful, magical universe of ours that we cannot even begin to comprehend.

Granted, I do have quite a bit of distrust of organised religion, mostly because of the myriad nincompoops who give religion a bad name by using it to assert control and their perceived superiority over others. And let’s face it, so many world religions just seem to be engaged in a hugely unattractive, thousand-year pissing contest with each other (MY God is the best. MY God is the One True God. YOURS is false and WRONG and pants. I’M going to heaven and YOU are not. BURN IN HELL, INFIDELS!! etc.).

BUT. And this is a big but. The main problem I have with religion is crazy religious people, and the problem I have with them is their craziness, not their religion. Crazy religious people bear all the hallmarks of stupid people. You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re the ones who are arrogant, judgemental, preachy, small-minded, irrational and annoying. The ones who think we should ‘burn the gays’. The ones who prevent or actively sabotage distribution of condoms in countries where AIDS is endemic and killing thousands of people, and where prevention really could be the cure. The so-called family friends who publically decided to boycott my sister’s wedding because they believed it was ‘not legal in the eyes of Allah’ and therefore not real or acceptable. (Oh, Bengali “community”, you do yourself no favours when it comes to making me respect you or listen to you in any way).

And I think this is the crux of why this teacher and his comments really got under my skin. He says he’s an atheist. But he’s also clearly a bit crazy and irrational. And the fact is, small-mindedness and ignorance are ugly wherever they are found. Especially in English teachers. (:P)

A rant about 'rape'

Earlier today I posted a status update on the Book of Face which was a mini rant about being shoved on the train during my commute to work. It was quite amusing really. This small, Chinese lady dressed all in pink battery-rammed me out of the way with her stupidly large pink handbag, and all because the girls in front of me didn’t move into the carriage fast enough. (Dawdlers are a common source of rage to me in this city, but it’s fun ‘cos I get to mine the comic potential from the rage that festers deep within my soul.) Anyway, a friend then replied saying that being at Admiralty station during rush hour is how they ‘imagine it feels to be gang-raped’.

My response was something along the lines of: o.0

We then exchanged a couple of additional comments where he apologised for going too far and I apologised for my sense of humour fail. No hard feelings, and all was well again. But it got me thinking. This isn’t the first time I’ve felt uncomfortable or even disapproved of a male (and I've found it usually is a male, not a female) using the word ‘rape’ in an unexpected context. You know, like, “I got totally ass-raped at work today”. Mostly though, I’ve noticed, it comes up in relation to gaming. A synonym could perhaps be ‘owned’, or ‘pwned’, or ‘destroyed’.

I guess the main point of this post is to help me unpick just why this bothers me so much. Firstly, ‘rape’ is one of those words which kinda gives me the heebie jeebies. The connotations for me (arising from its actual, primary meaning) are fear, horror, pity, revulsion. So first, what is rape? Without looking up a formal definition, I would probably say that rape is primarily a form of sexualised violence. It happens to both men and women but I don’t think I need to look up any statistics to back up the assumption that it happens mostly to women. It is not only a sexual act but an act of power, of dominance, of subjugation, of humiliation. Besides murder and child abuse, it is also theft of the most invasive, psychologically damaging kind. The rapist takes what he or she wants from their victim, and then leaves. If someone breaks into your house and steals your shit, you might feel sad, angry, shaken up, scared. But eventually you move on. You install some new locks. You grieve the old shit. You possibly buy new shit to replace the old shit. But rape? God forbid, but if it were ever to happen to me, then it might take me a lifetime re-learning how to ever trust another human being again.

There are other forms of horrendous violence and violent acts committed by those with power against those who have little, or none. But we don’t hear those appropriated for the sake of jokey lad banter. People don’t go around saying, “Aw man, did you see that? I got totally gas-chambered.” Or, “Dude, that was the worst exam I’ve ever done, it molested the child out of me.” Or, “Shit man, you fucking KKK’d my black ass.”

And maybe that’s why it pisses me off so much. Because for a guy to use the word ‘rape’ in a stupid, jokey, gaming context, whether that’s in reference to football or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or whatever (which is a GAME and therefore in the realm of FANTASY and therefore NOT REAL) is like me wandering into Bangladesh during the middle of a famine complaining about how I was totally FOIE-GRAS’ED in First Class on the plane journey on the way there. “Oh God, yeah, the food just kept coming, it was MENTAL. How many courses was it? 4? No, it was 5, or 8 if you include all the littleamuse bouches… and the champagne! There were positively rivers of it, seriously. Oh my GOD I think I need to undo my trousers, I’m not sure I can ever eat again. If someone were to put a gun to my head right now and tell me that if I didn’t eat a plate of steak or roast dinner or my mum’s lamb biriyani or whatever I think I’d just ask them to shoot me.”

What a wanker! :P But yeah, it’s that kind of nonsensical, ridiculous, insensitive, knobby ignorance of privilege – the boys who talk flippantly about ‘being raped’ probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking or worrying about being actually raped in real life, just as both the fictional, obnoxious version, and the real version of me don’t spend a lot of time thinking or worrying about how famine would affect me in real life. I’m privileged enough not to have to worry about it, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t. Real people do suffer from famine. And real people get raped.

These jokey-lad-banter-boys probably don’t wonder whether they should pop that rape alarm their dad gave them in their pocket before they go on a night out in case they need it on the way home, or worry about what randoms might try to approach them or follow them or harass them as they try to walk down the street, wishing that they could disappear into themselves or somehow become invisible. I feel my heart rate rise every time I see an Indian man in the street, or in a shop, or in a bar, because I don’t want to have to deal with their unwanted stares, or whistles, or leery hellos, or feeble attempts to make conversation, or thinly-veiled attempts to connect with ‘another fellow Asian’. Mostly because I can’t be arsed with the annoyance, but a lot because I’ve had so many bad experiences before that it just becomes utterly disheartening and demoralising to have these encounters, however brief, with these men who give you every signal imaginable to indicate that you are merely there, that you exist, purely for their diversion/enjoyment/pleasure, and that whether you actually want their attention or not is completely irrelevant, because you are a woman, and your job is to look pretty and make them happy and do what they want you to do, and you could not possibly have thoughts or feelings or opinions of your own that do not align with that narrow, pathetic world-view. Or if you do, they just don’t give a fuck. You say no, you say you’re not interested, you say you already have a boyfriend, you even say ‘Look, you are making me feel very uncomfortable,’ but the advances still keep coming. Because secretly the answer is yes, they just have to be patient enough for you to say it. Newsflash, morons: the answer is always, and will always be, no. But every time you keep asking you demean me and belittle me and ruin my day/evening/night. So thanks for that.

And for anyone who is thinking at this point (and I genuinely hope no-one reading this does) that I ought to ‘loosen up’ and ‘get a sense of humour’ I’d kindly request you punch yourself in the face so I don’t have to. Go join those Indian men in the corner, I’m sure you’ll get on handsomely (or greasily, rather).

Wow, that became a completely different rant! Or did it…?

Oh dear. I did not intend this to be a man-hating rant. Nor am I pointing fingers at those jokey-bantery-boys… well, I am a bit, but not in a jabby eye-stabby sort of way. I’m sure many of my male friends, who I love and respect, are guilty of questionable rape similes just as much as I and some of my girl friends are guilty of questionable gay similes (e.g. “Twilight is so gay” i.e. lame). I do that. But I guess the point is I/we should know better.