Some furor has been raised over Disney's manipulation of Pixar character Merida. The headstrong tomboy in Brave has been given a makeover, rendering her more Disney-feminine. The aesthetic formula at play seems to work something like this: Fancy Strapless Shoulder-Baring Gown (+) Shiny Buckle (–) One or Two Ribs (–) Signature Weaponry (=) Pretty Princess.
My
first reaction was surprise at how deftly both Disney and Brenda
Chapman, Brave's
creator, capitalized on the moment. Brave was
a fair-to-middling Pixar product that garnered fair-to-middling box office results (in league with How To Train Your Dragon and
Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
but nowhere close to Toy Story 3).
As the parent of daughters I applauded the attempt at a female lead
impelled by passions unrelated to Finding True Love, even if I (and
my daughters) finally found the emotional content underwhelming.
But
with regards to the controversy of Disney's Body Image Problem, I
have to admit — it is a
problem. That Disney attends to the aesthetics of sexual attraction*
doesn't bother me: if their characters didn't have some
sexual appeal, Disney's standard storyline would be entirely without
interest. Still, as a hetero dad who's endured a parade of Disney
cheesecake, I find it remarkable how aesthetically forgettable most
Disney heroines are — forgettable because they're interchangeable.
The Little Mermaid, Jasmine, Belle, Tiana — what's the difference,
and who cares? If a straight fella (who enjoys a little lewd cartoonery ) ain't piqued by the Disney figurine, I have to conclude
the artists are banking on the age-old absurdity of fashioning heroines who are
aesthetically attractive to girls.
That
Disney apes Vogue in
this regard is hardly a surprise: Disney has commodities galore it
intends to sell, to as many children and parents as possible. Whether
Disney has a larger interest in expanding its aesthetic is finally
for the market to determine. The Merida Makeover is their canary in
the coalmine.
Anyway,
as I mused over the past decade-plus, I realized there is exactly one
(1) Disney heroine whose desirability factor stands
head-and-shoulders — or hips-thighs-calves-and-feet — above this
parade: Lilo & Stitch's
Nani Pelekai.
Nani, on right. |
Here
she stands in contrast to a “Pamela Lee Anderson” figure —
another body-type we don't see much of in Disney movies:
I
won't say I find the latter body-type unattractive,
what with its sweeping hips, the supple shoulders supporting an
ample, but not grotesque, decolletage, and of course those arms and the cut of the . . . uh . . . where was I? Right: let's not replace one culturally
predominant unrealistic body “ideal” with another. Perhaps it is
best to note Nani's posture and facial expression, which indicate Our
Hero is in a supplicant relationship to the curvier (white) woman.
(The scene ends badly.)
Still,
Nani, as drawn by Chris
Sanders, is a figure of
considerable power, thanks chiefly to her muscular, almost chunky,
base — more than a little reminiscent of Robert
Crumb's favoured
proportions, on display here . . .
. . .
and more explicitly here (NSFW, I suppose — there's none of Crumb's
unhinged sexual hi-jinx, but, y'know, she is
nude).
I
Googled for more Chris Sanders, curious to see where Nani fit in with
his overall aesthetic. When it comes to his pin-up art, Sanders does
indeed have a fetish for sturdier bases . . .
"Where's Spring Breakers playing, again?" |
It may
be that Nani's singular appeal relies on her sharp aesthetic contrast
to the Disney template. But as bold a departure as her curvature is,
the power of her story also contributes — greatly — to her
appeal. She is perhaps Disney's most fully-realized female character.
A
single young woman who becomes the sole guardian of her little sister
after their parents are killed in a car-wreck, Nani finds she cannot
manage the physical, never mind the complex emotional needs of the
grief-struck child. She gets considerable support from David, with
whom she seems to have had something going on, prior to the tragedy.
You can see he's crazy about her, and that she cares deeply for him.
But theirs is a relationship that has, understandably, been put on
hold while Nani seeks to secure physical and emotional shelter for
her sister.
Say,
he's pretty hot too, isn't he?
Lilo
and her “pet” Stitch form the nexus for the movie's action, but
the deeper revelations all belong to, and are embodied by, Nani. One
of the “lessons” a viewer innately gathers through Nani is how
the terrible events that accrue in any life can either drive people
into a larger concept of family — or into crippling isolation. This
makes Lilo & Stitch Disney's
most visceral movie since Dumbo, and
it has certainly earned an emotional connection with me. I can't even
write about it without choking up.
Weirdly
enough, here, too, I'm reminded of Crumb. It ain't just the
cross-hatching and stippling that sets his pin-ups and other work
apart from the Timms and Yeagles and Sanderses of this world. For
those who can stomach it, it's Crumb's candour and never-ending
internal conflict being brought into play against hapless Others that
make his work work.
Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing — and absolutely necessary to
the erotic imperative.
So, to
Disney or anyone else out there in the business of crafting pin-ups: more of that,
please, and I for one will buy
it.
*Sexual
desire is a motivation Pixar mines, if at all, as a very distant
secondary concern — with one exception, which adroitly dodges the issue of body-image aesthetics altogether.
4 comments:
Tangentially related--Disney has a long history of sometimes working some not so subtle sex appeal into their female characters.
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/tinkerbell.asp
Yeah, Tinker Bell is pretty obvious. I have to wonder if Disney's characterization isn't responsible for the whole "faerie smut" genre.
Years ago I heard an interview with a surviving animator from the Snow White days. He was pretty frank about what a rowdy crew they were -- Mad Men could have been inspired by this guy. I don't know if he was telling tales out of school, but he claimed Walt reassigned one animator to do "Prince" duty because his advances on the "Snow White" model were way out of line, even by these reprobates' standards. If true, that would have been Grim Natwick, the guy who gave us Betty Boop. The "Snow White" model was Marge Champion who was 14 at the time. She doesn't mention any of this in interviews (nor is she asked). It is curious to see, in that last link, that apparently someone wore the costume before she did, but didn't stick around for the long haul.
BTW, Carl Barks is one of the artists in that Clean Cartoonists' Dirty Drawings book. If you go through the slide-show you'll find a nude he drew in the '30s. She bears a striking resemblance to Garé, his third wife (the one that "took").
Provoked me to watch Zwigoff's movie. I've never been drawn to Crumb's work or interested in knowing about the man, and can't say my interest is much increased now for knowing what the film had to tell. (Greater, wholer concept of a family is hardly what we're tracking along toward with the characters in that story.) BUT — the thought of Crumb's being able more or less alone to anchor this contrary vocabulary of the girl-for-looking-at in the visual culture, against what was (and is, of course) strongly enforced in movies, advertising, comics, and all the rest, is pretty interesting. Disney's turning eventually to adapt & sanitize his model for their use is very interesting too. Certainly something I'll be thinking about.
I'd be curious to hear from the sisters. Zwigoff's DVD commentary is somewhat interesting (Roger Ebert shepherds him along a bit -- hardly Ebert's best commentary, but I think he did it as a favour to Zwigoff). Zwigoff discloses at length his disappointments with the film. He despises the photo-shoot, for instance.
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