Is Pixar’s first female lead in “Brave” praise worthy?

The trailer for “Brave” has just just been released. The movie features a defiant heroine who goes against her parents’ wishes and does what is considered to be a man’s job! How progressive! The film is being praised for being Pixar’s first movie with a female lead… but why is this praiseworthy? Welcome to the 1960s. To me this only demonstrates that every other Pixar film to date has been excessively male centric.

Being impressed with such a progressive character is incredibly outdated. Female leads in movies are great, and there are far too few, but praising a studio who hasn’t done this sooner is ludicrous. Pixar is not doing anything that other movies with it’s same target demographic haven’t done. Let’s look at recent Disney movies for comparison. Disney’s latest film, Tangled, had a female lead who was strong, defied convention, did her down thing and even kicked tons of ass, though with a frying pan. Brave seems like little more than a rehash of Mulan, itself from 1998. Are we really breaking new ground 13 years later by doing the exact same thing?

Pixar has made some great movies for sure, but let’s look at the roles of women in them.

Toy Story: A bunch of male toys owned by a boy who go on an incredible adventure. The boy who owns them has a mother.

A Bug’s Life: A male ant who does some crazy crap and pines after a female ant.

Toy Story 2: More fun with male toys, this time introducing female toys like Barbie and a female version of Woody, second string characters.

Monsters Inc.: The story of some real male monsters in a world where women do secretarial work and a young girl is the scared target that they suck power from.

Finding Nemo: The story of a male fish who has a female companion who helps him out quite a bit. Not bad but still not a lead.

The Incredibles: A man who loves adventures gives up being a superhero because his nagging wife wants him to have a family. His son wants to be exceptional while his daughter wants to blend into the background.

Cars: A bunch of male cars drive around and I think there are a few female cars but I don’t know because this movie sucks.

Ratatouille: A male rat and a male chef do some crazy stuff in a kitchen. I have some vague recollection of a woman who couldn’t decide if she was French or Asian.

Wall-E: A male robot falls in love with a female robot who’s actually pretty bad ass and combat ready. Pretty strong female role though again not the lead.

Up: An old man and a young boy fly around in a balloon.

Toy Story 3: More stupid toys.

Cars 2: More stupid cars.

Yes, it’s long overdue that Pixar has a strong female lead, and we should be happy every time it happens, but unlike Disney, a studio that is criticized for it’s portrayal of pretty princesses and such, Pixar joins many studios in the dark ages of filmmaking where strong males are the norm and females are relegated to secondary often stereotypical roles.

The problem of women in movies is a mix of studios and audiences not embracing them. Audiences are less receptive to movies with strong female leads, so studios don’t make them because they only care about money. When they do, they don’t give them the effort they should. They make shitty romantic comedies or dramas that are only made for women. They make sub par action movies of the caliber of Elektra or Catwoman, which audiences hate, which in turn discourages them from making more similar movies.

Keep watching Underworld, Alien, Buffy and things of the type which have women in roles that don’t need to be played by women, but are just good characters, and keep supporting Disney movies because despite the flack they get, they still have a great track record of making movies for girls starring girls who, despite usually pining over a prince of some kind, are well fleshed out characters doing some great things.