Took the girls to The Muppet Movie. Very cute. (And the world would be a better place if French Vogue really did have a Plus Size Editor.) There were approximately one zillion previews beforehand, and one of them was for Tintin. Let’s discuss.
First of all, that hyperreal motion capture animation is still creepy and unnerving. But more importantly, THERE IS NOT ONE FEMALE FACE OR ONE FEMALE VOICE IN THE ENTIRE 2.5-MINUTE TRAILER, A TRAILER THAT CONTAINS MULTIPLE SETTINGS AND CROWD SCENES. Call me a humorless feminist fuck, but can you even IMAGINE an animated movie being made with the opposite gender deal — no boys at all? Gotta love the unquestioned assumption that girls will have no prob with this trailer (or this movie) that completely fails to include or even NOTICE them.
Meanwhile it takes Pixar one zillion years to make a movie with a female hero, one we ALSO just saw the preview for (a preview with plenty o’males in it, btw — including a scene-setting male narrator, the first voice we hear). And you KNOW that if Brave underperforms, the expert opinion is going to be that it failed (which may just mean it earned less than Toy Story 3) because it was about a girl.
You aren’t over-reacting. Sexism is alive and well in Hollywood, and so many other places. I just read about the 40 under 40 awards which are for people under the age of 40 who have made exceptional contributions to society. Guess how many of them are women?
It’s funny, I’ve been meaning to post about the Entertainment Weekly humor issue, which I missed when it first came out a few weeks ago. (It disappeared into the bowels — sic — of the bathroom and just resurfaced. Ew.) It has Melissa McCarthy on the cover, and a bunch of contributions from various people in comedy. I didn’t exactly count (the way I painstakingly counted white faces in Time Out New York Kids a year or so ago) but I was really stunned — I’d say half the contributors were women. Half! Someone really made an effort, and I should applaud that as loudly as I criticize the folks in entertainment who don’t focus on girls’ perspectives or employ women writers. Maybe I’ll post eventually, since I’m already so out-of-date on this.
It’s my understanding that the creators of the Tintin Movie did try to remain very true to the original stories – and those stories were about boys and for boys. Herge depicted very few females in his stories. Is that fair? No. Do Tintin stories present female characters that deserve respect and admiration? No. They JUST AREN’T THERE. However, I happen to cherish some of these tales and I am glad that someone made a stab at making a film based upon them.