I just watched Yogi Bear, the movie, with our five year old daughter. She loved it. Bears, slapstick, what’s not to love. (I on the other hand have some issues — the same issues I usually have about movies for children: one female character, the love interest, who exists only as a ‘prize’ for a shafted male character, who is consistently referred to by Boo Boo not by her name but in dismissive fashion, and is actually listed in dialogue at one point as a kind of prize, along with food items. There.)
I have not yet seen Frozen. I’ve listened to Slate Culture Gabfest talk about Frozen and now I’ve listened to NPR: Pop Culture Happy Hour crew talk about Frozen and there are a couple of reasons I don’t want to pay for box office tickets:
- Frozen is apparently reminiscent of Tangled, of which I am no fan (because it contains the wrong kind of slapstick)
- The lead animator said something dumb about how hard it is to keep girls looking pretty through a range of emotions (and his fans subsequently said he only said that because he was tired and he’s actually a brilliant genius etc)
- Slate’s Dan Snyder has two daughters and didn’t think the sister relationship in Frozen was very well done at all
- Two of the men on NPR’s Pop Cuture Happy Hour said that Frozen just isn’t funny enough.
Which brings me to my main point:
Stories starring girls don’t actually have to be earnest.
Feisty princesses don’t need to improve the world in serious fashion a la Brave. There’s no reason, Pixar et al, why you can’t make a film starring a girl who is genuinely, consistently funny. Where are the stories starring girls in which humour is the main point?
This is not to say that Frozen doesn’t have any funny moments at all. NPR explained that Frozen is a bit different from most similar films in that the jokes are not all jammed into the start — the film does in fact become more funny as the film progresses. However, it’s interesting to note that the men on that podcast didn’t think it was sufficiently funny.
Maybe this is the real reason why boys apparently don’t want to watch films starring girls? (Apparently.)
