Moviemakers' creativity doesn't extend to gender

The Baltimore Sun

On its opening weekend, Pixar's Ratatouille, the story of a rat who finds his true calling in the kitchen of human beings, topped the box office list, making $47.2 million. I do not know if I will see the movie. For one thing, I have had rodents in my home and found the experience revolting, and have not yet decided whether I can stomach seeing a film about vermin, despite its obvious creativity and good reviews.

Something else disturbs me even more about Ratatouille, though. I see a fair number of family movies, and it has become hard not to notice that although those extraordinary minds at Pixar, as with every other major Hollywood animation studio in recent years, can find inspiration in many forms - toys, cars, ogres, rats, bugs and countless other critters - they cannot seem to find inspiration in a female of any species. In all of Pixar's feature films, going back to 1995's Toy Story, there has not been one female central figure.

This trend seems unlikely to change anytime soon; according to a Time magazine profile of Pixar, the company's forthcoming movies will also all feature male leads.

This is not to say there are no strong females in today's animated films; one has only to think of Elastigirl in The Incredibles or Princess Fiona in Shrek. But after all, who's in the center of the poster and who's the sidekick?

Long gone are the days of the legendary Disney heroines, such as Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel and Belle. It isn't that Disney only made movies with girls as central figures. In fact, Disney made at least as many movies with boys (or male animals) at the center. It just seems that way because these female-led stories were possibly the most compelling movies the studio ever produced. So it does not seem that an audience will avoid a terrific movie even if it has a girl in the middle, no matter what ancient media studies or focus groups say about how boys and men will only watch male leads - meaning that's where the money is. It is about what studio heads and writers find interesting, and apparently they cannot think of anything inspiring or exciting that women could also do.

How is this possible, apart from sheer sexism?

Women are now in every hair-raising, exciting profession, from firefighting to the military. Yet much has legitimately been made of the current paucity of women in movies, comedy and other popular entertainment.

Perhaps, you may say, but hasn't this complaint been heard before? Nearly 60 years ago, Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex, "[The subject of women] is not new. Enough ink has been spilled in quarreling over feminism, and perhaps we should say no more about it."

Why does this issue never seem to end? It does not die because it seems that as soon as women's complaints stamp out one wrinkle of inequality, another one springs up in a different place.

Now this quiet little message - that boys don't want to be like girls, but boys are braver, more adventurous and somehow more important - extends even to the ears of young children. It wasn't great when female characters had to be rescued; how much worse it is when they are secondary or invisible.

Perhaps it will seem incredible to the producers at Pixar, but girls (and women) want to see themselves up there too, front and center. Why do these artists, so brilliant in other ways, think only boys want to feel important?

Jodi Liss, a former consultant for UNICEF, writes about culture.

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