Fix-It Fridays
Part 2: Up
Up is one of my favorite movies. It's heartfelt yet hilarious, gorgeously animated, and bursting with originality: a house flying by balloon, a bizarre bird who loves chocolate, a blimp full of skeletons, an army of talking dogs; how did Pixarians THINK of all of this?
Because of my love for the movie, I was wary of watching Up with a critical eye. So to keep myself in check, I made a hypothesis before I pressed play.
Up's sexism doesn't present itself through insulting portrayals of female characters (see Monsters Inc.), but rather the sexism of absence, of female characters not being depicted.
To prove or disprove my thesis, it's helpful to split the movie into two categories. City World and Paradise Falls (the majority of the film occurs in Paradise Falls). However, City World contains Up's redeeming female character:
Ellie. I am tearing up right now because OH MY GOD the montage of Ellie and Carl getting married and growing old is a guaranteed admission to Weeping. Ellie's dirty face and uneven teeth and static locks are one of the best images of female childhood Pixar has. Good job, Pixar! We first meet Young Ellie when Young Carl hears her yelling from inside a boarded up house. Ellie has turned the house into a make-shift pretend blimp, like the blimp of her idol, Charles Muntz.
ELLIE
Winds out of the east at ten knots...there's something down there. I will bring it back for SCIENCE. What are you doing? Don't you know this is an exclusive club? Only explorers get in here. Do you think you got what it takes? WELL DO YOU? Alright, you're in. Welcome aboard. What's wrong can't you talk? Hey, I don't bite. You and me we're in a club now.
The cast breakdown of Paradise Falls:
Paradise Falls' male to female ratio is 7:1. And let's not forget that Kevin, the ONLY female in Paradise Falls, cannot speak. (See Boo in Monsters Inc.) So the male to female characters who speak a human language becomes 7:0.
Ellie sets the whole plot in motion by sharing her childhood dream with the silent Carl:
ELLIE
When I get big I'm going where [Charles Muntz is] going: South America. I'm gonna live in Paradise Falls.
And BANG! It's 15 years later and Carl and Ellie are all grown up and getting married and the montage of their quiet, happy, childless life unravels. They put their dreams of reaching Paradise Falls aside as they pay for regular life hang-ups, broken bones, a tree falling on their house. Just when Carl decides they need to move to Paradise Falls now or they're never going to get there, Ellie passes away. Then the bulk of the movie begins.
There are a few other City World moments of ladies:
There are a few other City World moments of ladies:
-one lady in a scary black business suit - no line
-one image of a mother/father/daughter in the reflection of a store window - no lines
-one little girl playing in her room - no line
-Russell's mom waving to him after he gets his Ellie badge - no line
-a female police officer (we don't see her face) BUT SHE HAS A LINE
Carl escapes his one-way trip to the nursing home by filling up enough balloons that they rip the house right off the ground. Pulled upwards by this array of balloons, Carl ekes above the skyscrapers and sails away from City World, and away from Women.
The cast breakdown of Paradise Falls:
PROTAGONIST: Carl. Male.
SIDEKICK: Russell. Male.
BAD GUY: Charles. Male.
GOOD GUY SIDEKICK: Kevin. Female (originally thought to be male)
SWING SIDEKICK: Doug. Male.
BAD GUY'S SIDEKICK: Alpha, Beta, Gamma. Male. Male. Male.
Paradise Falls' male to female ratio is 7:1. And let's not forget that Kevin, the ONLY female in Paradise Falls, cannot speak. (See Boo in Monsters Inc.) So the male to female characters who speak a human language becomes 7:0.
(NOTE: You could argue that Ellie/the house is a character in Paradise Falls. Carl still talks to her. Her small oval portrait near the bay window of the house is often referenced. Is the house a character in Home Alone? Is the Ring a character in Lord of the Rings? If the answer is "yes" then we can raise our cont of male/female character ratio to 7:2. But the ratio of speaking male to female characters in Paradise Falls remains 7:0.)
7:1 or 7:2, or 7:0. Painful odds for one of the best animated films ever written. So how does it happen? How does a group of people setting out to make a family film forget to include an entire half of the population that are so instrumental to the family-making process?
I have a made-up theory. My made up theory is called: Spiral Gender Casting.
It loos like this.
Meet the creators of Up, A and B:
A: I have an amazing idea for a movie, it's about an old man, Carl!
B: We should make Carl's enemy a guy, because we don't want there to be the
possibility of romantic tension between Carl and his enemy.
A: We also need to put a little kid in this movie. And because the bad guy is going to be a guy, we don't want an old man being cruel to a girl, because that's distasteful and could be perceived as sexually predatory so let's make the kid a boy.
B: Great. The bad guy is going to have an army of dogs, but the bad guy will have
created them, and be mean to them, and make them his servants, and it would be
creepy if he had made himself a bunch of girl dogs, so all these dogs will be boys.
A: Awesome, but our comedic relief dog, the kind of dumb, quirky, lovable dog, is going to be picked on by the other dogs. But because all the other dogs are boys, and we don't want to watch the only girl dog get picked on by mean boy dogs, and we also don't want the audience worrying that this comedic dog might have puppies, we should make this dog a boy.
B: Yes. And then we have this bird who is trying to get back to its babies, so thats' obviously going to be a girl.
If male THIS, then male THAT, and if male THAT then male THIS: all spiraling from that first decision of a male protagonist. And most protagonists are male. So according to Made Up Spiral Gender Casting, most supporting casts of most movies are going to be male as well.
7:1 or 7:2, or 7:0. Painful odds for one of the best animated films ever written. So how does it happen? How does a group of people setting out to make a family film forget to include an entire half of the population that are so instrumental to the family-making process?
I have a made-up theory. My made up theory is called: Spiral Gender Casting.
It loos like this.
Meet the creators of Up, A and B:
A: I have an amazing idea for a movie, it's about an old man, Carl!
B: We should make Carl's enemy a guy, because we don't want there to be the
possibility of romantic tension between Carl and his enemy.
A: We also need to put a little kid in this movie. And because the bad guy is going to be a guy, we don't want an old man being cruel to a girl, because that's distasteful and could be perceived as sexually predatory so let's make the kid a boy.
B: Great. The bad guy is going to have an army of dogs, but the bad guy will have
created them, and be mean to them, and make them his servants, and it would be
creepy if he had made himself a bunch of girl dogs, so all these dogs will be boys.
A: Awesome, but our comedic relief dog, the kind of dumb, quirky, lovable dog, is going to be picked on by the other dogs. But because all the other dogs are boys, and we don't want to watch the only girl dog get picked on by mean boy dogs, and we also don't want the audience worrying that this comedic dog might have puppies, we should make this dog a boy.
B: Yes. And then we have this bird who is trying to get back to its babies, so thats' obviously going to be a girl.
If male THIS, then male THAT, and if male THAT then male THIS: all spiraling from that first decision of a male protagonist. And most protagonists are male. So according to Made Up Spiral Gender Casting, most supporting casts of most movies are going to be male as well.
 |
| Look! I put their pictures on a spiral! |
Up has other representational wins for sure. It has a non-white kid. Its main character is a senior citizen. These are people who do not often get their own movies, so yay for Pixar for making those choices.
In total, there are two women with speaking roles. One is Young Ellie, the other is the faceless policewoman Edith. The City World has three speaking male construction workers, one Nature Scout master, two male nurses, and a male announcer.
Final ratio of male to female speaking roles: 14:2.
But unlike Monsters Inc., for Up I don't have a page of notes on offensive stereotypes of secretaries. I just have no notes at all. One cannot take notes on the inequity of roles when there are no roles to look at: sexism in the absence of women. Yay! I proved my thesis.
But I learned that the sexism had a bit more nuance to it.
Women, such as our policewoman Edith, did exist in City World, the realistic space. The animators seemed able to picture women on the streets of a town. But in Paradise Falls, the imaginative space where writers and animators are free to follow whimsy: rare birds, dogs that speak English as well as cook, an old man carrying a house by balloon, a 50-year-old blimp that still flies: Paradise Falls seems like a magical place where almost anything can happen! Anything except women.
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