Brave: women take charge of Pixar

Brave opens tomorrow, the first Pixar film starring exclusively by women. We had co-stars as Eve in Wall-E, but still we had not met with a woman without male company guided by the intricacies of the narrative. Not surprisingly, the world of computer animation has traditionally been a man's world, it was the male who was introduced earlier in development studies and founded the first digital animation production. You only need to look at the council of elders of Pixar, led by John Lasseter: there decide to undertake new projects and is composed solely of men.

It is also interesting to note that all Pixar films to date have been directed by men, and of course it shows, indirectly, in the representation of femininity in their works. Brave is the first exception: its implementation was entrusted to Brenda Chapman, the creator of history and famous for working in the direction of The Prince of Egypt (The Prince of Egypt) of DreamWorks Animation. But halfway through the project was the artistic disagreements between management and the director, so he was confined as co-director, and the work would be addressed in tandem for her and Mark Andrews. After completing the project, left Pixar. Still, Brave is a film driven by a team composed primarily of women, and the purpose was the inversion of the archetypes of femininity usually represented in animated films.

Brave is a fairy tale set in medieval Scotland, starring Merida, the rebellious daughter of the King and Queen Elinor Fergur. It is therefore a demystification of the genre of fairy tale, following the trail that opened in the animation Shrek. And a fairy tale based on standardization dynamics of the emergence of supernatural events, so that the characters do not miss the events perceived as beautiful, just as the viewer, who makes a pact with the generic conventions through early presentation of the castle and forest. Brave presentation opens with this archetypal, set in childhood, age out of time, where everything is legendary, so we were fully immersed in this literary genre.

However, the fairy tale genre is a deeply conservative, since the extraordinary events serve to show, by contrast, the desirability of maintaining the law governing the social system at first, as each event is a supernatural keeps breaking ordenBrave of this ideology since the end restores order first, constructing a narrative circle. However, in the film the eruption of the supernatural is not conceived as the eruption of chaos: the novelty is that in Brave, the supernatural is at the service of femininity, allowing a shift in the integration of women in the context social.

This road has several phases, which are affecting different spheres of femininity. Part of Merida, a skilled archer who refuses to marry and to develop women's activities within the Court. The fight against male oppression you start acquiring those skills that, by convention, are the man. Even as their appearance is subversive: it is a redhead, the third color of the hair social, which has never had a fixed connotation as other have told brunettes and blondes. L a redhead is usually the difference, the social division, the outbreak of a color not assimilated by the law inserts a destabilization of the rules. It is also the color of the hair of his father inherits a masculinity through physical traits that naturally assumes.

Faced with a debut of Merida, organized by his mother to catch a husband, she decides to flee to the forest. And there he meets a witch who offers a potion to change the opinion of his mother. It is curious that meeting, it is as if Merida attend the hallucination of her future self, your old self. And is that the archetype of the witch can be explained in fairy tales, as a projection of the ghosts of men over the autonomy of individual women. Women who enjoyed power to decision were imagined as morally corrupt and they laid the features of witchcraft: loneliness, old age (old age causing a worsening moral physics) and supernatural powers, the result of fear that the man is captured by women in the spheres of power. Thus, Merida is looking at what would become if you keep your attitude and indomitable self in a society with a rigid moral men.

But Pixar's films do not end normally, so tragic, so there will be a social transformation that allows the reintegration of women. And it breaks the magic, the supernatural: to take the potion from the witch, the mother becomes a bear, and thereafter suffers social rejection and must flee with her daughter, to the forest. This resource is interesting because it reveals that the classic submissive femininity is only successful in society while holding physical features of femininity to support it. To morph into animals, Elinor can not deploy their strategies submissive woman, because in spite of the favor done to men, no longer meets the object function of look. The eye of man can not assimilate, in the sphere of womanhood, a figure that is beyond the physical traits associated with a woman, so it is expelled from the society.

However, the end shows (and who does not want to know, is preferable to skip a paragraph), again, a certain social conservatism and it reminds me of Shrek. In Shrek, the lover's discourse is only possible with the physical equality between lovers, so that a stable relationship could only occur at the transformation of Fiona in ogre. I would have preferred an ending in which Fiona continue to be human, because it would constitute a sort of social rebellion: it would say that love is possible between the different, as observed in these subversive films of David Cronenberg first. But the ending that has served to support the social conventions that supposedly breaks so transgressive along the length (and notice I like the film, I just dislike the way). Something similar occurs in Brave: Elinor must return to its physical first to rejoin his position as queen, but yes, there is a social change that allows her and her daughter more freedom in their areas daily. But ultimately decide to stay and build up their lives rather than the output, in change, but in conducting excursions to inflate his choking freedom based only travel back and forth.

Brave is an interesting film about the feminist discourse lies in its subtext, and is visually powerful, with great attention to detail and a predominance of green in times of freedom and blue in times of oppression, but the point of care always the beautiful hair of Merida. However, the argument relies largely by this reversal of roles and feminine archetypes, but if you are interested in this idea, it is likely that these worlds añores antimiméticos self-sufficient and that Pixar has built in works such as Toy Story, Wall-E or Up. It lacks an increased risk and a more exalted imagination. Also, the film treats, as the footage progresses, conventions of the genre of adventure, making predictable scenes.

On the other hand, is a deconstruction of the usual role of women in society, but this transformation lie in the king's daughter. Thus the psychological development of the young is to admit that progress is possible only in the upper layers of society: no more daring in terms of social portrait, although it is understood if we accept the conventions of fairy tale. In conclusion, it is an entertaining film and very interesting in the representation of femininity, but fails to generate excitement (something you are adept at Pixar) and uses some conventions that make it a little surprising product.

Photos: Cinema Blend