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…
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:
