Strong Female Characters and Lots of Questions

Something tells me that this blog post might get me into a lot of trouble.

I know that you, kind blog readers, certainly would not just start yelling at me, so I must hope that I am right when it comes to the general population of the internet. I've been mulling over a lot of these questions for the past few days and I would like to discuss them with you. I want your opinions, and I want to try and figure out my own by writing them down. So here goes.

As you know, I am a big fan of strong lady characters. I like nothing more than girls who can hold their own, whether that means in a swordfight or in a conversation.

I also like Disney movies. A lot. Like really a lot.

I was having a conversation with the lovely and talented Leigh Ann Kopans on Twitter the other day. (Seriously guys she's the best. She writes SUCH GOOD BOOKS. *fingers crossed for Leigh Ann and her books*) We were talking about Tangled and what a wonderful movie it is, and I said that it's the best Disney movie since the 90s. And then Leigh Ann said that she didn't like those much because of a lack of strong female characters. I didn't say much about it at the time, because the arguments are my least favorite things ever and usually I prefer to do the "oh, okay, different opinion. Fine. Cool. Good stuff. Moving on" thing. Leigh Ann is really really great and it was morning and I was tired and didn't feel like expanding upon this thought. But I've been mulling it over in the past few days and... I just don't see the problem.

No, the female Disney characters of the 90s are not Katniss. I've heard many an argument from my aunt to my classmates to the General People of the Internet that these movies are inherently bad for feminism... and I feel like I'm missing their point.

Granted, 90s Disney movies are the essence of my media consumption as a child (along with Bill Nye the Science Guy and Kratts Kreatures, but you get the point) so I am very much biased in their favor. But I also just don't see how those girls are huge red flags. Maybe they could be better, but are they as bad as all that, really?

See, I told you this was going to get me in trouble. I am NOT advocating for a lack of strong female characters! Hear me out here, please.

Beauty and the Beast is extremely high on my favorite-movies-of-all-time list. Top three, if not in the number one spot (I'm 21 years old, this may be problematic...). For one thing, the music is gorgeous. I love the animation. And I've always secretly (or not-so-secretly) wanted to be Belle. I don't think that she's actually dumb, or because the Beast saves her that one time it makes her incompetent. Yeah, she runs out of the castle in the middle of the night in the snow. I would be pretty freaked out in her situation too! A giant guy with claws is throwing furniture and screaming! I'd be out of there! But she knows where she's going, since she found the castle in the first place. And when the wolves show up, she doesn't panic or anything - she tries to outride them, then starts hitting them with a stick. She's eventually overwhelmed, yeah, but there are a LOT OF THEM. I always sort of saw this as understandable.

And yes, the Beast saves her, but in the end, doesn't she save him? In a less dramatic fashion, sure, but she does. She brings him back to life, essentially. And she doesn't do that really annoying "I'm going to change the bad boy" thing. She doesn't fall in love with him at the start (she doesn't like Gaston - why would she fall for another jerk?); she falls in love with him later because he turns into a nice person, for her.

I fail to see how needing to be rescued turns a girl into an instantly incapable character. Doesn't everybody need to be rescued sometimes? Girls, guys, everybody. Sometimes there are just too many wolves for you to take out on your own and you need a little help. Isn't that fair?

I'm also uncertain as to how this makes an entire movie unlikable. I LOVE The Princess Bride. It is an amazing movie. I've yet to read the book (I know, I know) but that movie is just so brilliant. And Princess Buttercup? Is the wimpiest female character EVER. She just stands there when Westley is getting attacked by the Rodent of Unusual Size. She nearly kills herself instead of trying to escape Humperdinck. She's completely pathetic. I acknowledge that. I love the movie anyway. Does that make me a bad person somehow? Because I am willing to overlook Buttercup's complete ineptitude to enjoy the jokes and adventuring of all the male characters in that movie, have I somehow failed at Being a Girl?

Another example: The Lion King. There are all of two female characters in that movie (which the musical attempts to rectify by making Rafiki a woman's part. It's awesome): Nala and Sarabi. If we're going off the "Lion King is actually Hamlet" theory, Nala and Sarabi are, I would argue, far stronger characters than Ophelia and Gertrude ever dreamed of being. After all, I'm pretty sure Nala could beat Simba up at any time if she felt like it, especially when they were kids. But, just like their Shakespearean counterparts, they are minor characters. They don't get large chunks of screen time. Nala is The Love Interest; Sarabi is The Mom. This has never made me love that movie any less. In fact, the Lion King soundtrack is my music of choice whenever I am buried in stress and need to not freak out so much. It never bothered me that Simba was the main character, and that most of the characters in that movie are male. I just think it's a good movie.

I am concerned, lovely blog readers. I am concerned for a lot of different and very conflicting reasons. There has been a bit of a media circus lately about how many women write YA and how many female characters there are and how many girls and women read it and how many boys don't. Those articles usually send me in search of something to bang my head against. So it's obvious that we haven't "gotten there" yet, in terms of being on a completely equal playing field. We NEED strong female characters. We NEED more of them.

We need movies like Brave, where Merida is a very skilled archer and wants to make her own way in the world, and her mother, I have to say, is just awesome (I can't tell you why without spoilers. Just trust me). We need movies like Tangled, where Rapunzel threatens people with frying pans and makes her realizations on her own.

But I think sometimes we get to be a bit overzealous. I think sometimes we are so intent on creating female characters who can be good strong role models that we forget to make them human.

Everyone needs to be rescued.

Everyone needs a good cry sometimes.

Everyone sometimes wants other people to make their decisions for them.

Everyone does stupid things sometimes.

Girls are people too. We should allow our characters to reflect that.

There are a lot of issues that get wrapped up in this. There's the issue of boys not reading books about girls whereas girls have little choice but to read about boys. There's the issue of girl characters being Bella Swan types with absolutely no decision making power of their own. There's the issue of marketing and pink covers and frilly titles for books written by women. There's the issue of boy characters being adventurous or smart while girl characters just like sparkly things. All of these things are significant problems in movies, television, literature, society... And none of these things have easy solutions. It's hard to even know where to start.

But I think a good place to start is to have a discussion about these issues. I want to know what you think of all this, dear blog readers. Tell me if you think I'm wrong about it, and why.

And I think we need to tell stories with the most human characters we can, both male and female. I want to see a book about a prince getting rescued. I want to see more books and movies about friendships rather than romances. And I want to see more strong female characters of course.

Being a strong character, male or female, shouldn't mean having to go it alone, though. Sometimes the hardest thing a person can do is to ask for help.

Review: Pixar's BRAVE (No Spoilers)

I don't think that I've ever reviewed a film on the blog before, but I will happily start out by reviewing a movie I saw yesterday.

It is a well-known fact that I'm a little obsessed with Disney movies. I have lots of the soundtracks, have watched Beauty and the Beast probably more times than is strictly healthy, and have more "kids' movies" than "proper adult movies" in my DVD collection. Maybe it's because I write young adult? 

Whatever the reasons for my love of animated films, I have been wanting to see Brave for over a year now, ever since my illustration-major best friend went on a trip to San Fransisco (and thus Pixar Animation Studios) last spring break and she told me that they were working on a mother-daughter story. Finally going to see it yesterday, I was a little worried that I would be disappointed, since I'd been so excited for so long.

I was not disappointed in the slightest. I laughed a lot. I cried a little (although I don't think my sister or my friend noticed, so, WIN). It was absolutely everything I could wish for in a new fairytale.

As I'm sure you've noticed from the posters and the trailer, the animation is stunning. The landscapes look almost like photographs (it made me want to go right back to Scotland) and the details are positively amazing. Angus, Merida's Clydesdale horse, moves like a real horse (which I have seen done very poorly in a lot of animation before, it's HARD) and he doesn't have the cartoonish face of earlier Disney equine companions. And Merida's hair is kind of awesome. It moves and bounces like curly hair really does; the curls aren't all uniform, like real hair - they even get it WET at one point and it still looks realistic. And the color scheme of the whole movie is great - lots of soft blues and greens that all contrast really nicely with that bright red hair. Bravo, animation team, bravo.

Of course, beautiful animation does not a good movie make (don't get me started on The Princess and the Frog. Just don't). I don't want to say too much about the story here, because I think it's quite spoil-able and I was quite happy to see the story unfold instead of knowing it ahead of time. It's a very simple story, but I don't think it needs anything more. The magic makes sense; the character relationships make sense; the plot makes sense, and it carries the action and humor very well. From the trailers, we can see that Merida is determined to do things her own way, and she decides that she is going to take charge of her own fate instead of letting tradition dictate that she be betrothed to someone she does not love when she is not ready to get married. What she does to change her fate - and then what she must do to fix her mistakes - was something that I was not necessarily expecting, but it worked out very well. All of the elements tied together very nicely.

Some other things that I liked: Merida is not a typical princess, not only in that she wants to have adventures, but in that she doesn't think "I hate being a princess, my life isn't fair!" That's not what she thinks at all - she simply wants enough freedom to make her own path in life, rather than having it chosen for her by others. She does not want to be somebody else, and that was refreshing. It was amazing to see a Disney character with a complete family - father, mother, three hilarious little brothers. And I loved - LOVED - that it was a mother-daughter story. Merida and Elinor are both incredibly strong characters, and they play off each other very well. Disney, why have you not done this before?! I know that there are a lot of doubts about the marketability of this film, but I see absolutely NO reason why this movie would not appeal to boys. There's a lot of action and adventure, there is some great magic, and a good bit of fighting. It just happens to have a female protagonist. I think this is exactly the sort of movie that will be great for bridging the gap between what people think boys want to see and what they think girls want to see.

I loved Brave, it was exactly the kind of movie I was hoping it would be. I can't wait for my aforementioned illustration-major best friend to be back in town so I can go see it again.

Have you seen Brave? Let me know what you thought of it! And if not... what are you waiting for? Go see it!!

Book-to-Movie Adaptations

With all this excitement about the last Harry Potter movie coming out, I've been thinking a lot about movie adaptations of books. Obviously, there are some that do it better than others (for the most part, the Harry Potter movies are not my favorite adaptations, although there have been things I've enjoyed about them, and I liked 6 and both halves of 7).

But I don't want to talk about adaptations that went poorly; I want to talk about adaptations I enjoy. Interestingly enough, for probably all of the book-to-movie adaptations I really like, I saw the movie first, whether because I didn't know it was a book or simply hadn't gotten around to it yet. This approach makes me far less likely to throw things at the screen and far more likely to sit back and enjoy. For some reason, I'm far more reasonable about changes made in adaptations when I see the movie first; then I can simply compare it to the real thing in the books and go "oh, I see why they did that."

On to the movies!



Bet you were expecting this one, right? Well, Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS films are probably the only example of book-to-movie adaptations where I prefer the movie to the book. *ducks flying objects and cries of blasphemy!* Yes, I know that probably makes me a terrible fantasy fan. But these movies were just adapted SO WELL. These films took a classic fantasy epic of grand proportions and made it human. I think so many of the characters really shine in the films. For example, Aragorn is actually given a character arc, and he becomes a relateable, human character instead of a heroic archetype. I love these films and have watched them dozens of times. The casting is superb, the music wonderful, the detail that went into every aspect of filming amazing. All I can say is that I cannot WAIT for The Hobbit.



I love love love love this adaptation of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. I use it as a writing soundtrack. I put it on as background noise while doing homework. I've put it on to fall asleep to. The casting is excellent. I've read the book four or five times now (and am currently rereading it) and I can't read it without hearing these actors' voices in my head. I don't care for the new adaptation for a couple of reasons, but like I said, not going to talk about the ones I don't like. This one I do like. If THE LORD OF THE RINGS is an example of how to make changes and do it properly, this adaptation of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is an example of how to put a book on screen.

Plus, who doesn't love Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy? Yeah. I thought so. :P



If I didn't like Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet, I loved her in ATONEMENT. This seems like the perfect book to adapt for film to me; they do so much in this movie with multiple points of view, and it illustrates the point of the book beautifully. It's very easy to see what is really happening versus what Briony thinks is happening, and the dramatic irony is just done perfectly. It's also another movie with an amazing soundtrack (I just realized that all for all four of the movies I'm going to talk about, I own the soundtrack. Hmm). I like how they did the ending as well; it's different from the book, but we still get the same punch from it (and what a punch!).



I love STARDUST. The way this differs from the book is mostly in tone; the book is much darker and creepier, typical Neil Gaiman style, while the movie takes all the lighthearted parts and brings them to the front. The result is a fun and absolutely adorable movie that's definitely good for warm fuzzies. (Conversely I finished the book on a bus and felt a little bit like crying.) The book and the movie are like mirror images of each other - one dark and one light, the same but different. (This is not to say that the book is wholly dark and scary; it's Neil Gaiman, the current British master of mixing the creepy with the subtly funny and sarcastic.) I adore the book and the movie equally, but for different reasons. Again, another example of how to make changes in an adaptation and do it properly.

Those are my top favorite book-to-movie adaptations. I do have a few other favorite movies that were once books, such as THE PRINCESS BRIDE and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON... but I've never actually read those, so they don't go in the post. Heh.

What are your favorite adaptations of books? What books do you think should be adapted to film?