The Gender Politics of WALL-E

Yes indeed, my son and I whooped with joy and relief last night when WALL-E was awarded the Academy Award for Best Animated Film (beating the Annie winner, Kung Fu Panda), and sighed a bit when it didn’t take home any others. I do believe the merits of this film will hold up over time, and are of interest not only to students of animation, but also to those who study sexual orientation and gender. The Oh! Industry blog has a great queer studies analysis I’ve linked to before, and now I’ve added my own two cents in last week’s Jentasmic! column at Studios Central. Here’s just one of the many reasons why this old crusty feminist loves WALL-E:

Shared parenting supports women’s full participation in society, and WALL-E is a great dad. Think back to the moment that EVE takes the plant into her body, and then shuts herself off from the world, focusing only on protection of the life within her. Sound familiar to any of you who’ve been pregnant, or whose partners have been? While WALL-E is heartbroken by her withdrawal, he protects her carefully, lovingly, with great dedication. Lightning strikes his umbrella? No problem, he’s got another. (And yes, it’s also borderline creepy when he takes her for the romantic canoe ride…but comedy returns when he tries to hold her hand watching the sunset.)

The current episode of the Those Darn Cats Podcast also has some discussion of WALL-E, and the Oscars in general….including some super-fun red-carpet commentary from Lisa. And for those of you who aren’t already subscribed to the podcast, we’ve got a handy-dandy past shows archive page, from which you can download shows on topics ranging from remembering Eartha Kitt (podcast), to feminist analysis of Minnie’s Country Home (podcast), to Disney Cruise Line (podcasts part one and two). You can also check us out on iTunes.

Jentasmic!: Ryan, Race and the Red Kilt

One might not expect a simple shopping expedition for High School Musical merchandise to require discourse on race and childrearing. But nonetheless, it does. I explore all this and more in last week’s Jentasmic! column at StudiosCentral.com. Here is how our journey begins:

I’ve learned a bit about our world in December, while shopping for High School Musical merchandise.

The first thing I’ve learned is that America might not be ready for a boy doll in a skirt. At least, that’s the only plausible explanation for the fact that no matter how many brick-and-mortar stores I check, I can’t find the HSM3 Ryan Graduation doll, in which our young hero is inexplicably dressed in a kilt and schoolgirl-style knee socks. (I would think this was some sort of strange interweb hoax, were it not for the  pictures of that same doll featured on the back of the other HSM3 Graduation dolls, which I did in fact find everywhere.)  And no, Ryan doesn’t wear that outfit at any point in the film; I watched carefully, both times.

[update 12/17/09: Since the original column is no longer online at StudiosCentral, I’m reproducing the whole column below:]

Ryan, Race, and the Red Kilt

I’ve learned a bit about our world in December, while shopping for High School Musical merchandise.

The first thing I’ve learned is that America might not be ready for a boy doll in a skirt. At least, that’s the only plausible explanation for the fact that no matter how many brick-and-mortar stores I check, I can’t find the HSM3 Ryan Graduation doll, in which our young hero is inexplicably dressed in a kilt and schoolgirl-style knee socks. (I would think this was some sort of strange interweb hoax, were it not for the  pictures of that same doll featured on the back of the other HSM3 Graduation dolls, which I did in fact find everywhere.)  And no, Ryan doesn’t wear that outfit at any point in the film; I watched carefully, both times.

I scoured stores at Walt Disney World for days, looking for Ryan in a kilt, until a friend suggested that perhaps the stores weren’t stocking these dolls because they just couldn’t explain why he was wearing a skirt, since he never wears that outfit in the movie (and, she added, if he were going to wear a kilt it would be a far more fashionably-cut piece, perhaps by Gauthier or D&G rather than the JC Penney look he’s sporting). It had never occurred to me that stores might not be stocking it because they couldn’t explain it….but it is much likelier than imagining that they’ve simply sold out. And somehow I can’t bear the notion that they might have pulled the dolls from the shelves, so let’s not even go there.

I learned, too, that the sales staff even at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is not likely to know HSM3 as well as the aforementioned friend and I. A charming and helpful Cast Member looked for a Ryan doll, and it quickly became clear that not only was he unfamiliar with Ryan, he could not differentiate between Chad and Zeke, even when said dolls were packaged along with their prom dates (Taylor and Sharpay, respectively). After we showed him a picture of Ryan in the kilt, he speculated that perhaps the boy’s “just really in touch with his culture.” I don’t think he meant that Ryan was Scottish, so I agreed.

But those Zeke and Sharpay dolls bring me to the second thing I’ve learned: While racism in America is far from over, there may be hope for us yet, and I’m not just talking about our next President. You see, Sharpay is white, and her prom date Zeke is African-American, and shoppers don’t seem to be batting an eye. I’m only 42 years old, but I do believe that in my entire life I have never seen an interracial couple packaged for mass consumption in this way. It was always assumed that white Barbie would go to prom with white Ken, and that their African-American counterparts would not only date amongst themselves, but also lack name recognition. After a lifetime of this mono-racial imagery, seeing Sharpay and Zeke together on the shelf is a very small thing, but it gives me hope. (I also find it interesting that my spellchecker has no problem with biracial, but none of the references I checked could find me an antonym, so I had to cobble one together myself.)

The toys we as a society choose to produce, and in turn the toys we as individuals choose to put in our children’s hands, tell our children what they should expect the world to be. A mother recently wrote into the Boston Globe to say how grateful she is that her 5-year-old son will grow up taking it for granted that an African-American man can be President of the United States. I hope my kid takes it for granted that he can date whomever his heart chooses, and select his wardrobe with similar freedoms. And if he wants to wear a kilt, I just pray it’s not from JC Penney.

Confessions of a Guilty, Traveling Mom

I’m not sure whether this week’s Jentasmic! is an actual column, or a personal journal entry that I feel somehow compelled to share with the interwebs. I don’t think it’s a TMI situation though…it’s just a discussion of my MouseFest dilemna: I am a working, business-traveling mom, and I feel deeply conflicted about traveling to Disney without my kid.

Starting with our first mother/son trip in 2003, Walt Disney World (and whatever other Disney Parks we can get to) has been a place for us to reconnect, spend some seriously concentrated time together, usually just the two of us. As action-packed as our vacations are, they’re definitely concentrated time together – a luxury we don’t have during the work/school week. We have long conversations as we wait for overdue buses. We entertain each other in airports and airplanes with stories from school or work. We make new memories as we enjoy the Disney attractions, check out new restaurants, get together with friends old and new. We wail together over cancelled flights, and rejoice together when a new attraction or celebrity meet-and-greet is truly spectacular.

In fact, that very first mother/son trip was planned because I’d been on the road an awful lot that year, sometimes out of town for as long as 12 days. My business travel schedule has trailed off a bit recently, but it’s still not nothing. So, given how much time I spend away from my child already, it’s hard for me to consider spending any of my precious vacation time away from him. In fact, I’ve only gone on two solo leisure trips since he was born, and both were weekend getaways (most recently, a jaunt to MagicMeets).

As I re-read my own words, I reflect that these are the “problems” of privilege. I’m very fortunate to have a challenging and interesting job, to have a kid who I truly enjoy spending time with, to have the resources to travel frequently both for business and pleasure. It is truly a luxury to be able to “worry” about these things, and remembering this helps me to keep it all in perspective. These are, in fact, the worries of a mom who doesn’t (at the moment) have to worry too much about serious things, such as how to keep her family in health insurance, or how to pay the mortgage/rent this month. Or what the neurosurgeon might say.

Nonetheless, these privileged worries are still, for today, my worries. My BFF has promised to remind me in December that I did in fact have a great time at MagicMeets, and that it’s good even for working, business-traveling moms to get away on their own from time to time. But hey, it might take a village here, people…so if you see me at MouseFest, come chat with me and distract me from my self-absorbed mind!