One of the cornerstones of America (at least from what I hear from the people on talk radio) is property rights. If I own property then I have the right to do whatever I want with it. Within reason. If I am using my land as a pig farm, thus causing my neighbors to be unable to use their land for breathing air, then we have a problem. This is where property law comes into play. Maybe my right to develop my land is more important than your right to clean air. Or maybe you knew the pig farm was there. Or maybe I suddenly did this overnight. I mean, it's a whole thing you learn in law school. It is very interesting. OK, it is awful.
But I think we all can agree that if you own property you have the right to decide if you want to lease it to someone else.
Say you had title to some waterfront property that had oysters on it. And say that you leased it to someone for 40 years. Now that lease is coming up and you don't want to renew it. Isn't it your right to do that? Don't property rights mean that you can't be forced to lease your land to someone else?
Well then why the heck is the pro-property rights crowd complaining about the Drake's Bay Oyster Farm?
If you just read the story at Agenda21 news you might be confused. Because they talk about the government taking away the private property of the oyster farmers and destroying businesses for fun. But if you go over to an actual news source you'll see that all the government did was decide not to renew a lease. The government OWNS this land. They decided to lease it for 40 years. Then they decided they didn't want to do that anymore. Don't they have that right? Of course. Just because it's the government doesn't mean that they have to continue to lease it out anymore than you should have to lease your land to someone else.
Now, the point of contention here seems to be the why. And this is where we come to the real problem: Administrative Law. Now, I could write for a long time about this topic because it is close to my heart. But it would probably put you all to sleep. So let me give you the quick version.
Administrative agencies have power to make decisions like this. They have been delegated the power from the legislative branch when they were created. In the acts that create them the legislature will often set out the guidelines the agency should use in decision making. If not, the agency may make the guidelines in the process of rulemaking. General policy decisions are often based on the executive branch, since agencies are technically part of the executive.
What about due process? The Supreme Court has looked at that. Turns out that due process doesn't mean a full courtroom hearing. It just means you get to present your side and have the opportunity to correct any misstated facts. That's it. You don't get to have a jury of your peers. You don't get to have a popular vote. You may not even get a neutral party. As long as you have that chance (sometimes even just on a piece of paper that you send to the agency) then you've had your process.
And the Oyster company had their process. They aren't happy. But other people are. I mean, that's the thing about a society with competing interests. Sometimes you don't win. Sometimes the people who want to have tourists and protect the wildlife win. Sorry.
But this isn't taking away any private property rights. It's about not signing a lease. It's about the government deciding to assert their rights. Their rights. Their property. I just don't understand how this is even an issue. You might think their decision is bad, but don't mislabel this an issue of the government usurping property rights. It isn't that at all.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Monday, November 19, 2012
I like to win stuff
And if you like to win stuff too (especially cool old school games) then this is for you. It's a NES prize pack. I know that everyone wants the new and best systems (Wii U) but for me the old school games have bigger replay value. I only use my Wii anymore to play games like Dr. Mario ported from the older systems.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Some People Are More Equal Than Others
Today David Brooks said something dumb. The link there goes to Charlie Pierce's takedown of the article because you don't want to read the actual article. It's pretty much the normal Brooksian ravings about how the rich deserve our gratitude because they are our betters. But it is interesting only because it pretty much captures the way that these people really think.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Why Ladies Love 50 Shades
I am uniquely qualified to talk about 50 Shades of Grey, the best-selling book series based off a Twilight Fanfiction where light BDSM replaces the vampire stuff. Before law school I worked about about a year supplementing my income by writing porn. Erotic stories. Ghost blogging for porn stars.
This work also meant a lot of reading different stories (sometimes I was paid to re-write them, or to add additional scenes to a book). I didn't always do well at this because I can't write passive female characters. In some ways this made writing gay porn easier than the straight stuff because it eliminated the weird baggage people bring to female sexuality.
In female erotica, and 50 Shades, the protagonists are almost always inexperienced virgins. The scene where they lose their virginity is always identical. The guy makes them come with hands or mouth, then penetration happens. There is pain and bleeding, but only for a moment (in that moment the guy will always suggest that he will stop because he is such a nice guy) and then she'll magically get into it and come at the same time as him. It is ALWAYS THE SAME. It is a ritual that happens again and again. So often that the books that don't have it almost seem subversive. Stories with non-virgins in the starring roles, or virgins who don't have their maidenhead, are the minority.
It's all part of the culture that festishizes female virginity as well as denouncing female sexuality. Young teens are shown media figures (Miley, Britney, Lindsay) who are shown in sexually provocative poses and outfits but are also haled as role models because they are virgins. Even if it isn't actually true, the young women can still claim virginity. When they get older, however, the claim no longer can be believed and suddenly they are unlikeable sluts. Does Miley really dress or act differently than she did when she was on Hannah Montana? No, but now the behavior is bad. It was okay when she was doing it because people told her to. It's bad when she starts doing it because she wants it.
Women aren't supposed to WANT sex. And Anastasia in 50 Shades spends pages and pages of the book feeling bad about the fact that she likes kinky (well, the vanilla version of kinky) sex. She talks about her conflicted feelings about sex and ultimately gives in over and over again to the pleasure. Of course, if Ana just openly enjoyed it (or was the one who tried to introduce her male lover to her kink) it would turn off many female readers. Books featuring sexually aware protagonists don't resonate with female readers. Read some of the reviews on Amazon and they focus on not liking the sluts. Women live in a society that tells them that they must walk a balance between being sexually available to men (or risk being labeled frigid or ugly) while also needing to be the moral gatekeepers of sex. Ana walks this balance by spending most of the book talking about the conflict. Seriously. There is more navel gazing in the series than sex.
50 Shades also has one other feature that makes it so popular. The series starts out with Ana being given a no strings attached sexual contract with Christian. But by the second book he loves her. He marries her. She has made him change. How did she do that? TRUE LOVE, I guess. And it is that old idea that a woman can change a man if she just loves him enough. Meet a guy with a huge kink and fucked up issues. Well, if you just stand by him he can change.
But the change is needed for the happy ending. If Ana and Christian didn't live happily ever after then it would be a dark book indeed. Ana would have given up her virginity and her precious sexual innocence for nothing. She'd be left with sex and pleasure, but no husband which would be a terrible fate indeed.
And that's why 50 Shades has been so popular. It is able to tell a story of sexually excitement and introduce a taboo level of kink, but it still fits into the cultural story of how terrible female sexuality is. As for the kink...ugh. It isn't. Handcuffs and ropes and some spanking. Boring. In a world where one of the fastest growing male fantasies is pegging a little light S&M is nothing.
If you couldn't tell I hated 50 Shades. I hated Ana and her constant talking about how conflicted she was about enjoying sex. I hated the fact that we were supposed to believe these two people had true love when they didn't even have very interesting conversations. I hated that the first wildly popular book series in my generation to deal with sex completely reinforces our cultural view of the virgin/whore complex. I wish that 50 Shades was Fear of Flying. I wish that our culture was less repressive than we were in the 1970s.
This work also meant a lot of reading different stories (sometimes I was paid to re-write them, or to add additional scenes to a book). I didn't always do well at this because I can't write passive female characters. In some ways this made writing gay porn easier than the straight stuff because it eliminated the weird baggage people bring to female sexuality.
In female erotica, and 50 Shades, the protagonists are almost always inexperienced virgins. The scene where they lose their virginity is always identical. The guy makes them come with hands or mouth, then penetration happens. There is pain and bleeding, but only for a moment (in that moment the guy will always suggest that he will stop because he is such a nice guy) and then she'll magically get into it and come at the same time as him. It is ALWAYS THE SAME. It is a ritual that happens again and again. So often that the books that don't have it almost seem subversive. Stories with non-virgins in the starring roles, or virgins who don't have their maidenhead, are the minority.
It's all part of the culture that festishizes female virginity as well as denouncing female sexuality. Young teens are shown media figures (Miley, Britney, Lindsay) who are shown in sexually provocative poses and outfits but are also haled as role models because they are virgins. Even if it isn't actually true, the young women can still claim virginity. When they get older, however, the claim no longer can be believed and suddenly they are unlikeable sluts. Does Miley really dress or act differently than she did when she was on Hannah Montana? No, but now the behavior is bad. It was okay when she was doing it because people told her to. It's bad when she starts doing it because she wants it.
Women aren't supposed to WANT sex. And Anastasia in 50 Shades spends pages and pages of the book feeling bad about the fact that she likes kinky (well, the vanilla version of kinky) sex. She talks about her conflicted feelings about sex and ultimately gives in over and over again to the pleasure. Of course, if Ana just openly enjoyed it (or was the one who tried to introduce her male lover to her kink) it would turn off many female readers. Books featuring sexually aware protagonists don't resonate with female readers. Read some of the reviews on Amazon and they focus on not liking the sluts. Women live in a society that tells them that they must walk a balance between being sexually available to men (or risk being labeled frigid or ugly) while also needing to be the moral gatekeepers of sex. Ana walks this balance by spending most of the book talking about the conflict. Seriously. There is more navel gazing in the series than sex.
50 Shades also has one other feature that makes it so popular. The series starts out with Ana being given a no strings attached sexual contract with Christian. But by the second book he loves her. He marries her. She has made him change. How did she do that? TRUE LOVE, I guess. And it is that old idea that a woman can change a man if she just loves him enough. Meet a guy with a huge kink and fucked up issues. Well, if you just stand by him he can change.
But the change is needed for the happy ending. If Ana and Christian didn't live happily ever after then it would be a dark book indeed. Ana would have given up her virginity and her precious sexual innocence for nothing. She'd be left with sex and pleasure, but no husband which would be a terrible fate indeed.
And that's why 50 Shades has been so popular. It is able to tell a story of sexually excitement and introduce a taboo level of kink, but it still fits into the cultural story of how terrible female sexuality is. As for the kink...ugh. It isn't. Handcuffs and ropes and some spanking. Boring. In a world where one of the fastest growing male fantasies is pegging a little light S&M is nothing.
If you couldn't tell I hated 50 Shades. I hated Ana and her constant talking about how conflicted she was about enjoying sex. I hated the fact that we were supposed to believe these two people had true love when they didn't even have very interesting conversations. I hated that the first wildly popular book series in my generation to deal with sex completely reinforces our cultural view of the virgin/whore complex. I wish that 50 Shades was Fear of Flying. I wish that our culture was less repressive than we were in the 1970s.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
What Would Washington Tweet?
One of my pet peeves is seeing how the legal system often times misunderstands technology. So, I think I should give a thumbs up to this decision involving a request for information about tweets from the Occupy Wall Street Protest.
The NYPD has requested Twitter to turn over user information and records of tweets made by
@destructuremal (real name: Malcolm Harris). After a court ruled that Harris could not quash the subpoena because he didn't have standing the microblogging site took up the cause.
Twitter's first argument was that the user should have the right to challenge the subpoena instead of Twitter having to do it. As a practical matter Twitter doesn't want to get involved with these things. If the court found that tweeters had standing to challenge subpoenas it would make life easier for Twitter. If someone was challenging one they would sit back and wait for the court decision. If a user decided not to challenge it then Twitter could hand over the records without looking like they aren't fighting for their users. By making Twitter the person who has to be in court it places the company is a terrible bind. Do they do the easy thing and hand over the data or do they try and argue for protection of this data?
While the court understands this problem, they don't buy it as an argument to create standing. They also don't care much for Twitter's argument that the user has an expectation to privacy in the information they share with them. "There can be no reasonable expectation of privacy in a tweet sent around the world," the court said, distinguishing it from an email, direct chat, or IM. Even though this is new technology, it isn't a new problem. The court compares this case to one where a person yells something at someone else on a street and is overheard by other people. Of course the people overhearing the conversation can testify to it. The fact that it was tweeted instead of yelled doesn't change anything.
So, Twitter has to turn over the tweets. I've already heard some people upset about this from a privacy aspect, but it isn't really an issue. The police could get these tweets either from the account or from one of the many sites that allow you to search deleted tweets. The reason they need it from twitter is so that they can get it into evidence. A printout of a tweet without verification from twitter connecting it to that particular user account (as opposed to something photoshopped) won't be able to make it into evidence. The information was already out there. This just makes is admissible in court.
The final interesting bit from the opinion is this musing on what the founders would think of Twitter.
The NYPD has requested Twitter to turn over user information and records of tweets made by
@destructuremal (real name: Malcolm Harris). After a court ruled that Harris could not quash the subpoena because he didn't have standing the microblogging site took up the cause.
Twitter's first argument was that the user should have the right to challenge the subpoena instead of Twitter having to do it. As a practical matter Twitter doesn't want to get involved with these things. If the court found that tweeters had standing to challenge subpoenas it would make life easier for Twitter. If someone was challenging one they would sit back and wait for the court decision. If a user decided not to challenge it then Twitter could hand over the records without looking like they aren't fighting for their users. By making Twitter the person who has to be in court it places the company is a terrible bind. Do they do the easy thing and hand over the data or do they try and argue for protection of this data?
While the court understands this problem, they don't buy it as an argument to create standing. They also don't care much for Twitter's argument that the user has an expectation to privacy in the information they share with them. "There can be no reasonable expectation of privacy in a tweet sent around the world," the court said, distinguishing it from an email, direct chat, or IM. Even though this is new technology, it isn't a new problem. The court compares this case to one where a person yells something at someone else on a street and is overheard by other people. Of course the people overhearing the conversation can testify to it. The fact that it was tweeted instead of yelled doesn't change anything.
So, Twitter has to turn over the tweets. I've already heard some people upset about this from a privacy aspect, but it isn't really an issue. The police could get these tweets either from the account or from one of the many sites that allow you to search deleted tweets. The reason they need it from twitter is so that they can get it into evidence. A printout of a tweet without verification from twitter connecting it to that particular user account (as opposed to something photoshopped) won't be able to make it into evidence. The information was already out there. This just makes is admissible in court.
The final interesting bit from the opinion is this musing on what the founders would think of Twitter.
Can you just imagine the tweet fight @TheRealBurr would have with @AHam?While the U.S. Constitution clearly did not take into consideration any tweets by our founding fathers, it is probably safe to assume that Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson would have loved to tweet their opinions as much as they loved to write for the newspapers of their day (sometimes under anonymous pseudonyms similar to today’s twitter user names).
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Love and the Apocolypse
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is not the movie it appears from the trailers. It's not a comedy, even though it has some very funny parts. In tone it reminded me of The Invention of Lying, another film that started with a very funny first act based on a high concept and then became a serious philosophical examination in the third act. Lying was a movie that was actually about religion, and even though it was written by an atheist it actually made a good argument that faith in a higher power gave people happiness even if it isn't true. Seeking a Friend is a movie about love, but even more about being alone.
Dying alone is the ultimate fear for most people. Being alone in life is annoying, but the taunt isn't "you're going to spend the weekend alone" it's "you're going to die alone." That when the show is over you will be by yourself with nobody left to mourn and nobody to remember you were ever here. Seeking a Friend gives that fear of dying alone a timetable. The world is ending in 21 days. There is no hope. There is no Bruce Willis to save the day (the movie starts after the action movie heroes who were going to save Earth end up failing- the implication being that as long as that chance of a rescue still existed that people were not ready to deal with the true finality of death). You are going to die, and unless you get into gear, it is going to be alone.
Steve Carell plays Dodge, a guy who has played it safe his entire life. The film starts with his wife leaving him (well, running screaming from him when she hears that the rescue mission has failed on the radio). He wants to love someone and be loved, but he also doesn't really want to put the effort into actually falling in love when they're going to die anyway. He isn't very upset about his wife leaving. He admits he married her because he was afraid of dying alone. He is torn between wanting to have someone to share these last days with and recognizing that the entire thing in pointless.
From there he meets Penny (Kira Knightly doing a good job of being more than just a manic pixie dream girl) and goes in search of his high school sweetheart and reconnects with his past. Look, it's a movie that is pretty good. You should see it. You'll cry for the last 15 minutes of the thing. And then on the drive home.
What I loved about it is Dodge's central dilemma- love takes a lot of time and effort. Is it worth it to go through all that crap when it's going to end anyway? It is an interesting question because it's true even when the world isn't ending. The best possible ending for your love affair is that you both die at the same time. Every other option involves one person leaving the other (either breaking up or dying). When Romeo and Juliet is your happy ending then it shows how fucked up the entire world it. Why even worry about romance when the end is predetermined to be bad?
The reason is because love is great. Being loved is nice, but the greatest joy is in loving someone else. It's going to end. It will probably end badly. The flower is going to die, that doesn't mean it isn't lovely to look at right now.
There's another message in the film. Dodge and Penny have a great love story, but they aren't some perfect couple. If the world didn't end they'd probably just grow apart because they are so different. But they can be the loves of each others lives right now, because they both have decided to just love unconditionally. In this world where internet dating has made finding a mate similar to shopping for shoes. I've been known to read a profile and be thinking the guy is interesting but... The DaVinci Code is your favorite book? Pass.
We all have this idea that if we look long enough and far enough we can find the person who has all the traits we want and who wants all the traits we have. That's a crapshoot. We could also just learn to love people as they are (even if they have terrible taste in books) and be happy with that. Loving someone is as much about our willingness to open our hearts to their flaws as it is about them meeting some checklist of worthiness.
Although, it is much easier to do that when you know that you only have 3 weeks left. It's hard for me to give up on finding a guy who loves old movies and Kurt Vonnegut novels when the end seems so far away. Even though part of me knows that I might be passing on wonderful people in the process.
Dying alone is the ultimate fear for most people. Being alone in life is annoying, but the taunt isn't "you're going to spend the weekend alone" it's "you're going to die alone." That when the show is over you will be by yourself with nobody left to mourn and nobody to remember you were ever here. Seeking a Friend gives that fear of dying alone a timetable. The world is ending in 21 days. There is no hope. There is no Bruce Willis to save the day (the movie starts after the action movie heroes who were going to save Earth end up failing- the implication being that as long as that chance of a rescue still existed that people were not ready to deal with the true finality of death). You are going to die, and unless you get into gear, it is going to be alone.
Steve Carell plays Dodge, a guy who has played it safe his entire life. The film starts with his wife leaving him (well, running screaming from him when she hears that the rescue mission has failed on the radio). He wants to love someone and be loved, but he also doesn't really want to put the effort into actually falling in love when they're going to die anyway. He isn't very upset about his wife leaving. He admits he married her because he was afraid of dying alone. He is torn between wanting to have someone to share these last days with and recognizing that the entire thing in pointless.
From there he meets Penny (Kira Knightly doing a good job of being more than just a manic pixie dream girl) and goes in search of his high school sweetheart and reconnects with his past. Look, it's a movie that is pretty good. You should see it. You'll cry for the last 15 minutes of the thing. And then on the drive home.
What I loved about it is Dodge's central dilemma- love takes a lot of time and effort. Is it worth it to go through all that crap when it's going to end anyway? It is an interesting question because it's true even when the world isn't ending. The best possible ending for your love affair is that you both die at the same time. Every other option involves one person leaving the other (either breaking up or dying). When Romeo and Juliet is your happy ending then it shows how fucked up the entire world it. Why even worry about romance when the end is predetermined to be bad?
The reason is because love is great. Being loved is nice, but the greatest joy is in loving someone else. It's going to end. It will probably end badly. The flower is going to die, that doesn't mean it isn't lovely to look at right now.
There's another message in the film. Dodge and Penny have a great love story, but they aren't some perfect couple. If the world didn't end they'd probably just grow apart because they are so different. But they can be the loves of each others lives right now, because they both have decided to just love unconditionally. In this world where internet dating has made finding a mate similar to shopping for shoes. I've been known to read a profile and be thinking the guy is interesting but... The DaVinci Code is your favorite book? Pass.
We all have this idea that if we look long enough and far enough we can find the person who has all the traits we want and who wants all the traits we have. That's a crapshoot. We could also just learn to love people as they are (even if they have terrible taste in books) and be happy with that. Loving someone is as much about our willingness to open our hearts to their flaws as it is about them meeting some checklist of worthiness.
Although, it is much easier to do that when you know that you only have 3 weeks left. It's hard for me to give up on finding a guy who loves old movies and Kurt Vonnegut novels when the end seems so far away. Even though part of me knows that I might be passing on wonderful people in the process.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Roger Ebert's Brave Review Gives Me a Sad
I love Roger Ebert.
The guy is not just one of the best movie reviewers in modern history, he'd just a hella great guy. Love his books. His interviews. His blog posts. I love the guy.
Which is why his review of the new Pixar movie Brave is extra head desky in the final paragraph.
To which I say... huh?
Let me break down the logic here, LSAT style. Merida rejects her suitors. She seems to be happy without a husband. Therefore- Brave is not dealing with her femaleness.
See, that can't be right. Because for that to be true he would be saying that femaleness is defined by wanting a husband. That's just silly. There are plenty of women who don't want a husband who don't give up their gender in doing so. There are also lots of men who do want a husband who don't suddenly become women when they acquire this desire. I'm not saying that a woman needs a husband like a fish needs a bicycle. The early feminist ideas of defining modern womanhood as a rejection of marriage is just as limiting as a world where womanhood is defined by wanting marriage. A woman can want to get married or not want to get married without it needing to take on some symbolic meaning about her relationship to her gender.
I really am hoping that the Brave review is just some type of editing error. That there is a whole other paragraph that got cut out of it that clarifies how the fact that a pre-teen character doesn't want to get married is related to the movie making her male. I commented on the related facebook post to the review and there is some good discussion going on about it. For the moment I'm going to give Ebert the benefit of the doubt and hope that there is a clarification coming soon.
Because, I am curious about how Pixar is going to deal with its first female lead character. Pixar has a troubling relationship with women in their previous films. Toy Story was a great movie, but it was a film about male friendships. Toy Story 2 got better with Jessie, but the audio commentary for the film has the writers admitting that the original script featured Jessie as being little more than a damsel in distress until Joan Cusack suggested letting her save the day. They hadn't even considered that option when they were writing. I don't think it is that they were sexists, but they were more invested in Buzz and Woody. They hadn't even considered that Jessie could be the hero.
Monster's Inc. is another film that does great with male friendship but places women either as girlfriend, crone, or semi-silent pet. Look. I LOVE Boo. I sometimes just scream "Mike Wazowski" imitating her little voice. But it isn't like a little girl could watch Monster's Inc. and say "yes, I want to be like her." While Sully or Mike have traits to be admired, what did the women really do.
The original opening scene of The Incredibles featured Mrs. Incredible getting into a fight with her new neighbors at a picnic when one of them was dismissive of the fact she was a stay at home Mom. The scene was later cut and the film moved to focus more on the mid-life crisis of Mr. Incredible than on the work/life balance issues of the Mrs. Which makes sense in a narrative sense even though I wish I could have seen the film with a bigger focus on the women. This is just more of Pixar's problematic relationship with women. It isn't that I think the studio is sexist or that they hate women. It's just that they tend to place the focus of the story on men. Maybe it's because that's what most modern films do and you just pick it up as a storytelling device. But it doesn't make it any less upsetting.
Their best treatment of female characters are often when they are barely seen. The opening scene in Up that followed a fearless little girl as she went on an adventure, fell in love, got married, lost a baby, and never gave up on her dreams of the world might have featured Pixar's most fully formed female character. Then she died. (Ask yourself for a moment if the film would have been made any different by having the boy scout who ended up on the adventure be a girl scout. The story would have been as good with the bonus of giving little girls a character they could see themselves in). Eve from Wall-E is also a great female character who just happens to never talk. Cars, for being a film that seems made just for boys who like toys, had its heart in the female character voiced by Bonnie Hunt, a big city gal who gave everything up to live in the place she loved. The female chef in Ratatoulle showed how hard it is to be a woman in a man's world, but still got upstaged by a rat.
Until Brave, Pixar's biggest female character would probably be Dory from Finding Nemo. She's more memorable than Nemo's Dad (I literally can't remember his character's name...never a good sign). She's a good loyal friend who does her best even with a handicap which makes her unable to remember things. She starts off seeming like just a joke, but by the end of the film I didn't really care if Nemo and Albert Brooks were reunited as long as Dory was with people who accepted how awesome she was.
I am worried about what type of female Brave will give us. Will we have a complex character like Dory, Eve, or Mrs. Lou Grant from Up? I wish I could look to the Ebert review for help, but instead he just makes me even more concerned about what the media thinks of my gender.
The guy is not just one of the best movie reviewers in modern history, he'd just a hella great guy. Love his books. His interviews. His blog posts. I love the guy.
Which is why his review of the new Pixar movie Brave is extra head desky in the final paragraph.
But Merida is far from being a typical fairy-tale princess. Having flatly rejected the three suitors proposed by her family, she is apparently prepared to go through life quite happily without a husband, and we can imagine her in later years, a weathered and indomitable Amazon queen, sort of a Boudica for the Scots. "Brave" seems at a loss to deal with her as a girl and makes her a sort of honorary boy.
To which I say... huh?
Let me break down the logic here, LSAT style. Merida rejects her suitors. She seems to be happy without a husband. Therefore- Brave is not dealing with her femaleness.
See, that can't be right. Because for that to be true he would be saying that femaleness is defined by wanting a husband. That's just silly. There are plenty of women who don't want a husband who don't give up their gender in doing so. There are also lots of men who do want a husband who don't suddenly become women when they acquire this desire. I'm not saying that a woman needs a husband like a fish needs a bicycle. The early feminist ideas of defining modern womanhood as a rejection of marriage is just as limiting as a world where womanhood is defined by wanting marriage. A woman can want to get married or not want to get married without it needing to take on some symbolic meaning about her relationship to her gender.
I really am hoping that the Brave review is just some type of editing error. That there is a whole other paragraph that got cut out of it that clarifies how the fact that a pre-teen character doesn't want to get married is related to the movie making her male. I commented on the related facebook post to the review and there is some good discussion going on about it. For the moment I'm going to give Ebert the benefit of the doubt and hope that there is a clarification coming soon.
Because, I am curious about how Pixar is going to deal with its first female lead character. Pixar has a troubling relationship with women in their previous films. Toy Story was a great movie, but it was a film about male friendships. Toy Story 2 got better with Jessie, but the audio commentary for the film has the writers admitting that the original script featured Jessie as being little more than a damsel in distress until Joan Cusack suggested letting her save the day. They hadn't even considered that option when they were writing. I don't think it is that they were sexists, but they were more invested in Buzz and Woody. They hadn't even considered that Jessie could be the hero.
Monster's Inc. is another film that does great with male friendship but places women either as girlfriend, crone, or semi-silent pet. Look. I LOVE Boo. I sometimes just scream "Mike Wazowski" imitating her little voice. But it isn't like a little girl could watch Monster's Inc. and say "yes, I want to be like her." While Sully or Mike have traits to be admired, what did the women really do.
The original opening scene of The Incredibles featured Mrs. Incredible getting into a fight with her new neighbors at a picnic when one of them was dismissive of the fact she was a stay at home Mom. The scene was later cut and the film moved to focus more on the mid-life crisis of Mr. Incredible than on the work/life balance issues of the Mrs. Which makes sense in a narrative sense even though I wish I could have seen the film with a bigger focus on the women. This is just more of Pixar's problematic relationship with women. It isn't that I think the studio is sexist or that they hate women. It's just that they tend to place the focus of the story on men. Maybe it's because that's what most modern films do and you just pick it up as a storytelling device. But it doesn't make it any less upsetting.
Their best treatment of female characters are often when they are barely seen. The opening scene in Up that followed a fearless little girl as she went on an adventure, fell in love, got married, lost a baby, and never gave up on her dreams of the world might have featured Pixar's most fully formed female character. Then she died. (Ask yourself for a moment if the film would have been made any different by having the boy scout who ended up on the adventure be a girl scout. The story would have been as good with the bonus of giving little girls a character they could see themselves in). Eve from Wall-E is also a great female character who just happens to never talk. Cars, for being a film that seems made just for boys who like toys, had its heart in the female character voiced by Bonnie Hunt, a big city gal who gave everything up to live in the place she loved. The female chef in Ratatoulle showed how hard it is to be a woman in a man's world, but still got upstaged by a rat.
Until Brave, Pixar's biggest female character would probably be Dory from Finding Nemo. She's more memorable than Nemo's Dad (I literally can't remember his character's name...never a good sign). She's a good loyal friend who does her best even with a handicap which makes her unable to remember things. She starts off seeming like just a joke, but by the end of the film I didn't really care if Nemo and Albert Brooks were reunited as long as Dory was with people who accepted how awesome she was.
I am worried about what type of female Brave will give us. Will we have a complex character like Dory, Eve, or Mrs. Lou Grant from Up? I wish I could look to the Ebert review for help, but instead he just makes me even more concerned about what the media thinks of my gender.
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