Pixar's Issue with Sex/Gender

During our class discussion on tuesday about men and feminism, Pixar's gender/sex issue came up. I am a huuuuuuge Pixar nerd, but I never really thought about how unbalanced their films were in terms of the male to female character ratio.

This article I found really breaks it down into detail, but I'll give you the basics here.

Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, Monsters Inc, Ratatouille (kind of) and Up are all "buddies" movies that focus on two male characters that are friends that have to go on some kind of quest or mission or something. Yes, they do include female characters, but only Toy Story 2 and 3 include a more important female role (Jessie) who has personality and stuff. Ratatouille has Linguini's love interest (blah, boring) and thats about it for female roles in that group.

Finding Nemo is a father/son movie and yes, they've got Dory who is pretty much there for comic relief but thats it.

What's interesting about Bugs Life is that they completely flipped gender roles in the ant world for the sake of the film. All male ants really do is eat and fertilize eggs, while female ants do all the work. What's up with that Pixar? It's similar in Wall-E. Wall-E and EVE are both robots, but why do they even have sex/gender? Why couldn't Wall-E be a feminine character? Why did he have to have a gender at all?

Cars was the worst. The only female characters in cars were the love interest of the main character and the car groupies. I wonder if in Cars 2 it will be different.

The Incredibles did have a few good female characters like Helen (Mr. Incredibles wife) and his daughter too. We also had the quirky E who made costumes and Syndrome's minion girl. But still, the movie focused on Mr. Incredible.


I've read in a few places that Pixar may have made these choices in character because males are seen as the neutral role, while females are "particular". I've also read that Pixar mostly have male writers and that it would be difficult for them to write a compelling female role. Oh please. If you're a good writer, you could write any kind of character no matter what sex/gender they are.

Now, we all know Pixar is coming out with Brave in 2012. We're all thinking, finally a Pixar film with a female lead! Don't get excited too soon. Keep in mind that Brave is also Pixar's first fairy tale which also takes place in mythical Scotland. Gee thanks Pixar. So not only is Pixar being completely unoriginal by making their first female lead in a film be a princess, they are making it take place in a mythical setting. Because having a female lead is so outrageous, people wouldn't see it if it took place in reality. It makes me mad because even though not all Pixar films take place in the "real" world, they still go above and beyond with creativity in terms of filling out their fictional settings to model them like the real world. (see Nemo, Monsters Inc, Cars, Bugs Life). Hopefully they will at least do the same for Brave in "mythical Scotland".

It could be that Pixar is totally aware of their gender/sex issue, but in the end it's about money and maybe the films with male roles just sell better. Which also sucks. When I think about it that way, not only is there negative connotations that go with the word "feminism" but there could be some kind of negative connotations that go with lead female roles in movies as well. Maybe negative is the wrong word, but as I've learned in film studies, people go to the movies and know what to expect depending on the genre of the movie. I mean what would have happened if Finding Nemo was about a mother looking for her daughter? What if Up was about an old woman who's husband died? Would they have been as successful?