Empowerment: You are Doing it Wrong

[rinue]

If anyone's curious, here are some snapshots of my window herb garden.

We spent yesterday hanging out with Merlin, eating barbecue chicken and mangoes and watching movies. I continue to be impressed by Tremors, which is part of why I'm critical of a lot of blockbusters. Movies like Tremors, Back to the Future, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade manage to be pulpy and intelligent at the same time; it's clearly possible.

We also watched Disney's new outing, The Princess and the Frog. I'm glad to see a return to hand animation, but the story was god awful. The musical numbers seemed shoed-in at best, and a lot of the plot was no more than a way to eat up time. The characters stayed the same and the same and the same and then suddenly they all changed their minds for some reason? It's dead obvious the whole thing was written and conceived exclusively by men, and I would guess white men. Otherwise, I don't think they'd be so casual about making all of the black characters (except the heroine and her family) nasty, backbiting people who think it's idiotic to work hard or have dreams.

I can't stand the meta-message that being a woman who works hard to accomplish something is meaningless unless a man loves you, particularly when that man is a real jerk whose main contribution to your life is telling you that you should lighten up and that you're a good cook. It's a total inversion of Cinderella, where because she works hard and is a kind person, she gets a happy ending, or Pinocchio, where he is loving and brave and learns from his mistakes to become whole. Nope. In The Princess and the Frog, working hard gets you nothing and you need to fall in love with somebody who screws around and has no skills but who makes you dance when you say you don't want to. He'll totally transform you! Happy ending!

Comments

[oddment.livejournal.com]

I have a hard time trying not to imagine your herb garden in some sort of automatic herb garden melodrama, given the names. It seems like it would be difficult not to treat the windowsill as a puppet stage. Also we've got the same ironing board situation going at the moment, for the same reason, and because the internet is weird I find it almost as touching as I would if one of us were in space or on Mars.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

They are so much bigger now, even. I took that photo a couple of days ago, and they are already inches taller. I don't know how they can do that. I can't grow (or shrink) that fast. Aliens?

[valancy.livejournal.com]

Oddment, I totally hear what you're saying.

Also: Frog: Horrors. The additional tragedy - or maybe simply "do you want to know why this is even more pathetic than you think" note - is they have delayed this movie for years re-writing and re-vamping the characters to make it PC. Sounds like they failed utterly.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. It's appalling. They're some of the flattest characters I've ever seen. The thing is, there's a pretty cool best friend who has some complexity and humor, and it's not clear to me why she doesn't save the day instead of the prince. Like there could have been this whole story about this tough chick trying to get things done on her own terms and what she finally learns is to ask for help sometimes. The prince would be extraneous except for triggering that realization.

[valancy.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. That's just...sigh. Sometimes I wish they'd just let Robin McKinley write a Disney movie. This is how to get women right, people.