What came first, the Heels or the Sexism?

Jurassic World

I was pumped to see Jurassic World. Because I love Jurassic Park, special effect monsters and:

But enough male objectification. I actually was pretty pleased in feminist terms while I watched the film--happy that Claire runs the park, that she has a lady assistant, that Claire had a sister and their conversation passed the Bechdel test, and that there were tons of close ups of little girls thrilled to be hanging out with stegosauruses. But when I got home the internet informed me that Jurassic World was really sexist.

The Great Heel Debate

The internet is up in arms about Claire's heels. The heels! How could a woman wear heels that whole time! Running for her life! Unleashing a T-Rex in heels! Nude heels! Heels in the jungle! Heels in the plains. Heels on slick cobblestone. What foolish heels!

I believe the heels are not so much a symbol for sexism as they represent a bunch of unfired Chekovian guns for Claire's character.

Anton Chekhov on writing:

"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

The heels could have been engaged (or "fired") in a couple of ways. 

1. Owen asks Claire if she is really going to wear that outfit, the insensible heels.
...And then to prove that the heels aren't insensible, but helpful:
2. Claire stabs a raptor in the eye with a heel. Or a a bird grabs her by the shoe and by squirming out of the shoe she is able to escape.

OR

1. Owen asks Claire if she's really going to wear the heels. 
...And then to prove that Claire is growing and understanding the power of nature:
2. Claire takes the sneakers off a dead man's feet to replace her heels. Or Claire steals a pair of hilarious light-up dinosaur shoes from one of the wrecked clothing stands. Or while running, Claire takes a moment to kick off her shoes.

OR

1. Owen asks Claire if she's really going to wear the heels. 
...And then to prove that Owen loves Claire:
2. Claire puts on some sneakers, but at the end of the movie Owen gives her the heels back, having carried them secretly the whole film.

OR
1. Owen asks Claire if she is really going to wear the heels. 
...And To make an awesome reference to Jurassic Park:
2. Claire finds a '90s pair of gym shoes when they explore the old park.

OR
1. Owen asks Clarie if she is is really going to wear the heels. 
...And then to prove that women are helpless and stupid for trying to achieve fashion standards.
2. Claire breaks a heel while running and Owen has to pick her up and carry her.

But instead, the writers drew our attention to the heels, but never pulled the heel trigger. And while I rarely argue for meaninglessness of symbols in movies, sometimes a heel is just a heel. If the writers weren't actually trying to say anything, which I don't think they were, and she was just a woman wearing heels, you can argue they were sexist or feminist either way and be correct. 

Unfortunately, the heels weren't the only rifle left unfired. And if the writers had simply followed through on a few of the characteristics they had set up for Claire, she would have seemed less like a "stiff" (Joss Whedon's Twitter description of Claire). 

Claire brought an itinerary to her first date with Owen (before the movie takes place), and it's one of the reasons Owen makes fun of her. Why couldn't Claire later have a useful itinerary to taking down the Idominus Rex? Claire runs Jurassic World. Why couldn't her intimate knowledge of secret tunnels be the key to saving everyone in the park?

Life Force (LF) and the Stiff (S)

Months before the film's release, Joss Whedon took to Twitter with "She's a stiff. He's a life force-really?" And although JW intuited all of that from a Jurassic World clip the movie is full of evidence to prove his case. 


LF Owen has a natural connection to people and animals; he even helps ease a brachiosaurs's passing. 
S Claire can't remember her nephews' ages, isn't sure if she wants kids, and thinks in dollar signs.

LF With just his arms out and a stern look, Owen can control a group of dangerous, cunning, flesh-eating velociraptors.
S Claire fails to run the park with intelligence again and again by underestimating the danger into which Indominus Rex has placed the staff and guests.

LF Owen and his motorcycle are always ready to go off roads.
S She drives her nice car on nicely paved roads.

But being connected to nature and the animals from the start of the film means Owen doesn't learn anything by the time the credits roll.

Which means that Jurassic World is really Claire's story. A protagonist needs to change throughout a movie, to learn. Claire learns to shoot a gun in order to defend the people she loves. She faces death multiple times, even taunting it when she sets *spoiler alert* to lets the T-Rex out of its cage. 

However, I do have to disagree with the argument that Claire's emotional journey is that of a stereotypical "stiff" female. Her path, from not knowing her nephews to having a deep connection with Zach and Gray is an arc identical to Dr. Alan Grant's emotional journey in Jurassic World. And Dr. Grant didn't even run the park, he was just a semi-notable archeologist!  Similarly, is there a more archetypal male movie character than the guy-who-works-too-much-and-takes-a-whole-movie-to-learn-that-family-is-what-counts? The sheer fact that a woman gets to have that discovery is remarkable in and of itself.  

And then the wheel of sexism spins again, and I am left to wonder if female characters only get to be leads when they are etched into male grooves? This is one of the biggest questions of female narratives and frankly, Jurassic World is hardly worthy of it. Instead, here are the:

Sexism Stats

          -The four main characters: Owen, Claire, Zach, and Gray, embody the classic film 3:1 ratio of males to females.

           -The choice to make the two children, Zach and Gray, two boys seems inevitable. Because Jurassic Park's kids were a girl and a boy and Jurassic World needed to make a different choice so the movies weren't exactly the same. But having two girls as sisters would be ridiculous, right?

         -Karen, Zach and Gray's mother, openly weeps when she finds out that her sons aren't with her aunt. If it weren't for the boardroom behind her, she would be the perfect hysterical woman/mother. 

           -Zara, Claire's high-powered, model-esque assistant, endures the ultimate punishment for not keeping track of Zach and Gray by *spoiler alert* getting eaten by a bird who gets eaten by the mammoth water-dinosaur. All this for a woman who was asked to babysit two kids when I'm guessing that wasn't really in the job description.

           -While Zara, Zach and Gray's mother; Claire's right hand woman; and Zach's girlfriend are side characters with distinct voices and purpose, the subplots, the rest of the park, and the speaking roles are dominated by men. Besides Owen, Zach, and Gray we have: The dinosaur feeder? Male. Owen's dinosaur trainer friend? Male. The security guard who gets eaten? Male. The army guy who wants to take the velociraptors? Male. The army guy's assistant? Male. The guy own owns the park?  Male. The guy who runs the lab that created the dinosaur? Male. The other control room operator? Male. The guy who ran the gyro sphere attraction? Male. The guy who is in charge of animal control? Male. The security guard with the bloody hand who warns Claire to escape? Male. The boys also have a dad. He is Male.
(I'm not counting a few computer voices.) 

Total ratio of people I can remember (and memory is faulty) in the film who spoke: 15:5 male to female. Which, hey, look! It's the perfect 3:1 male to female ratio of all films. So it's clear that out of those female role parts which were determinedly set out for women, there wasn't much room for the  daily operations of the park.

But all of this sexism, again, I really didn't see it until after the movie. I was so primed to be pumped about the dinosaurs, I so wanted to have a good time, that my critical eyes grew cataracts. Because Claire didn't have a random scene where she stripped to her bra (Star Trek), or was filmed in a slow pan from her feet to her head while a man described an expensive car (Transformers 3), or whispered silky innuendos into Owen's ear while wearing a barely-there ball gown (every James Bond), I felt Jurassic World was doing great female character work. 

But now, with distance, I see that my standards for summer movie blockbusters are so low, that even a stiff, non-life-force-esque, woman masquerading in the title of "high-powered executive" seems like an amazing role for a female protagonist. 

"Up" Has Got Me Down

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. 

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:

-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. 

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. 

Monsters, Inc.

Fix-it Friday: Part 1
Monsters, Inc.

Pixar is one of the few studios that can boast consistent production of "four quadrant movies," films that entice all four age groups/demographics. These four quadrant films are colorful and action-packed for the kids, and have thematic sophistication and humor to satisfy the adults.  It's a win-win for everyone! Except the ladies who Pixar repeatedly bashes through innumerable counts of exclusion, sexism, and drawing the majority of their female characters with the exact same face. 

I hadn't seen Monsters, Inc. in a decade and was excited to watch. The first scene won me over with its belabored corporate lady monster trying to teach some hopeless new scare recruits. And it's downhill from there. 

The Counts Against 

1. Mike and Sully's Walk to Work (aka World Introduction)

       A. There is, in this entire sequence of store clerks and monster children, a single female monster. A tiny Wife Monster kisses her tiny Husband Monster on the cheek and says "have a good day, at work, honey!" as he flies away. 

2. Enter  Monsters, Inc. and meet...

            A.  Celia: a young, hot, trophy of a receptionist. 

CELIA (to Mike)

Googly bear! 

MIKE

[wishes her a happy birthday]

CELIA

Googly woogly, you remembered. Hey Sully Wully!

    

 B.  Roz: an old, slug-like hag of a receptionist. 

MIKE

Good morning, Roz, my little succulent garden snail. And who would we be scaring today?

ROZ

You didn't file your paperwork last night. 

It's funny because she's an old, fat, ugly snail. 

3. Pixar's insistence that during the few scenes Roz and Celia are in, the focus should be on their appearances. 

             A. When Mike brings Celia to an expensive restaurant for her birthday dinner. 

CELIA

Oh, Michael! I've had a lot of birthdays...well...not a lot of birthdays, but this is the best birthday ever. What are you looking at? 

MIKE

I was thinking about the first time I laid eyes on you. How pretty you looked. 

CELIA (bashfully)

Stop it. 

Thanks, Pixar for complicating the hot receptionist character by making her defensive of her age. 

               B. When Mike hasn't filled out his paperwork and tries to woo Roz again. 

MIKE

Roz, my tender oozing blossom. You look wonderful today. Is that a new haircut? Come on, it's a new haircut, got to be a new haircut. You've had a lift, you've had a tuck. Something has been inserted into your skin to make you look...

Mike trails off because he can't think of anything positive about her appearance. It's funny because she's an old, fat, ugly, snail. 

               C. After work, Mike describes to Sully how excited he is to take Celia out to dinner.

MIKE

What a night of romance. Tonight is about me and Celia. The love boat is going to set sail. Because that face of hers makes my life go--

He bumps into Roz and screams. It's funny because she's an old, fat, ugly snail. 

4. The male and female bodies

Male monsters have all different sorts of anatomies: furry, scaly, many-armed, spiked-heads, rubber-like skin. Male monsters (except for the head suit-wearing spider monster, and the child-catching yellow-ruber-clad swat team) are naked.  There is a single unclothed female monster in the opening Monsters Inc. commercial.   

But Celia is clothed, and in a tight, short little outfit to boot. Roz is wearing a sweater that shows off her saggy boobs although her lower-body is naked and unsexualized--probably partly due to the fact that she is ugly and old, so much easier to posit her as a non-sexual being. 

The combination of naked male monster bodies and clothed female monster bodies perpetuates the infuriating status of male bodies as un-gendered and sexless and female bodies as inherently shameful, derivative, sexual, and in need of policement or clothes.  

The Counts For

1. Boo 

Charming, playful, capable, loving Boo. She is obviously the center of this movie, the catalyst of Sully's change. She also can't really talk (Pixar enjoys this havoc-wreaking, silent-besides-one-word female trope as we'll see in Up). I do like Boo as a character. I really do. I'm glad she's a little girl even though her existence in the Monster world sets up Mike and Sully for a tired men-can't-really-parent cliche. But again, I recognize that Pixar chose to make this third, crucial character a girl because a boy would be just as cute at this toddling, babbling, nonsexualized age. 

2. Roz and Celia help out in the end!

     

      A. Hey look! Celia causes a distraction by making an announcement on the loudspeaker to help Mike find Boo's door!

      B. Oh, wow! It turns out that Roz is the head of the secret investigation looking into Monsters, Inc. But she was just letting the men do all of the onscreen work. So cool! Now her old ugliness is totally validated. 

         Q:  Boo is an awesome female character who balances out two male leads. Why                        isn't Boo enough? 

        A: Sexism is in the details. It's in the subconscious decisions of the writers,                              directors, producers, artists, who draw crowd scenes with 30 male monsters                       and 2 female monsters. It's in the subconscious decisions to make every                               other role besides Boo, Celia, and Roz a male: two leads, two villains, two                             bumbling teenage interns, the special Scaring Monsters task force, the                                 Scaring Monsters' hypemen, the restaurant patients, the monsters interviewed                     on televisions, the monsters on the way to work, the SWAT team, every other                       monster with a line. By showing this absurd ratio of men to women, we                               condition children to believe that men are more visible, vocal, and important                         than women. Men are the majority, the constant, and women the rare                                    exception to male existence. 

FIX-IT

My Suggestions to Pixar 

1. Take the four main monsters, two good monsters, two evil monsters, and make half of them women

          AND/OR

2. Take the two receptions and make one of them a woman

          AND/OR

3. Take the two bumbling teenage interns and make one of them a woman (but without making this character have a huge crush on Sully)

          AND/OR

4. Take all the Scaring Monsters and all their hype men and make half of them women 

         AND/OR

5. Make sure your extra scenes have 50% women in them

        AND/OR

6. Use those huge, f***ing creative brains of yours a little more creatively for women. It mystifies me that the men whose imaginations could create the vibrant, nuanced world of Monsters, Inc. could not imagine a world where female monsters did more than sit behind desks at a big company and take the boss' calls.