media consumption
Jul. 4th, 2012 02:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sasha_featherI can't sleep so here are some things!
I saw Brave and mostly I liked it, with some reservations.
It was funny and cute, and I especially liked the horses and Merida's hair, and the archery was neat. I liked that there was a functional family with no missing/dead parent. I liked that it was essentially a relationship story about characters. I laughed quite a bit and had a good time at this movie.
Things that bothered me: We don't know why Merida's mother changed her mind about the need for a political marriage. In turning Merida's mother into a bear, this character gets her voice taken away and can't express herself very well, so we are left out of the loop. The exposition could have been done through flashbacks-- the parents' wedding, for instance, or some other device. It seems like the political marriage must be pretty important to all concerned, but then it's all smoothed over relatively easily.
It's unclear to me why the mother needed to be turned into a bear at all... why put bears into the mix? There seems to be something here about the bear-mother as both protector and threat that I am not quite getting. Something mythic and deep...?
The other main thing that bothers me is the title. There is not much particularly brave about Merida's story. At turns she is willful, playful, stubborn, funny, energetic, underhanded, and many other things, but she has no opportunity here to be particularly brave. My friend suggested the title might be a marketing technique to avoid "The Princess and the Frog" trap of making the movie seem too girly. It would have been nice to see her get a chance to be Brave, though! All she does is stand in front of her father's sword to prevent him from killing the mother-bear. And she helps fight the evil bear.
I maintain that Monsters, Inc is the best Pixar film. I'm not that excited about the sequel, though.
We saw previews for The Hobbit and a couple of animated monster films. The one about Hotel Transylvania, while it looked cute at first-- a male vampire raising a baby!-- quickly went into squick territory because it became about a father trying to control his teenage daughter's sexuality.laceblade looked at each other and snarked.
On Sunday I watched a few episodes of "Push Girls" on a friend's DVR. This is a reality show about women in L.A. who are wheelchair users. Three of them are paraplegic and one is quadraplegic. They are all attractive, middle class, femme women. I found it kind of boring mostly because I am easily bored by reality shows: I like unreality in my entertainment. The main annoyance is that they repeat content in a "Dateline NBC" style, where they show a scene as a teaser, and then show it again a few minutes later as part of the narrative. UGH. The target audience for this show is not, I suspect, radical disability activists like myself, because I already think disability is normal and that people who use wheelchairs can be beautiful, etc.
Autie was my favorite person on the show. She is 42, married, and a dancer. She is funny and says that she comes from a rough background. Her relationship with her husband is super cute. Angela and Tiphany live together. Angela seems like the most emotionally intelligent person of the four, and is trying to restart her modeling career while going through a separation from her husband. Tiphany is bisexual (also she refuses labels) and I don't remember what her job is. Mia has an office job of some kind. I like that some of them are people of color and that Tiphany's relationship with a woman is completely normalized.
In an early episode, Angela hires a photographer to do some head shots or something. This guy is clueless and heinous about disability and says something to the camera like, "She's like an armless man who wants to be a pitcher." My friends and I totally snarked this, saying "Oh, because she's a vampire and her picture won't show on your film!". But Angela was pretty gentle with him and didn't fire him. She patiently explained things to him.
In one episode, Mia's mother visits. Mia's mom is terrible and awful and says all kinds of ableist bullshit. But Mia is brave and patient! Mia confronts her mom about her alcoholism and ableist attitudes. She introduces her to the other push girls. Mom starts to come around a little and see that Mia has things figured out pretty well and that Mia's life really isn't that bad.
I don't think I'll watch any more of this show, mostly because it's boring to me. I don't find it that interesting to watch something where the entire premise is: it's so WEIRD and INTERESTING that conventionally pretty women use wheelchairs and have pretty normal lives!!!
I saw Brave and mostly I liked it, with some reservations.
It was funny and cute, and I especially liked the horses and Merida's hair, and the archery was neat. I liked that there was a functional family with no missing/dead parent. I liked that it was essentially a relationship story about characters. I laughed quite a bit and had a good time at this movie.
Things that bothered me: We don't know why Merida's mother changed her mind about the need for a political marriage. In turning Merida's mother into a bear, this character gets her voice taken away and can't express herself very well, so we are left out of the loop. The exposition could have been done through flashbacks-- the parents' wedding, for instance, or some other device. It seems like the political marriage must be pretty important to all concerned, but then it's all smoothed over relatively easily.
It's unclear to me why the mother needed to be turned into a bear at all... why put bears into the mix? There seems to be something here about the bear-mother as both protector and threat that I am not quite getting. Something mythic and deep...?
The other main thing that bothers me is the title. There is not much particularly brave about Merida's story. At turns she is willful, playful, stubborn, funny, energetic, underhanded, and many other things, but she has no opportunity here to be particularly brave. My friend suggested the title might be a marketing technique to avoid "The Princess and the Frog" trap of making the movie seem too girly. It would have been nice to see her get a chance to be Brave, though! All she does is stand in front of her father's sword to prevent him from killing the mother-bear. And she helps fight the evil bear.
I maintain that Monsters, Inc is the best Pixar film. I'm not that excited about the sequel, though.
We saw previews for The Hobbit and a couple of animated monster films. The one about Hotel Transylvania, while it looked cute at first-- a male vampire raising a baby!-- quickly went into squick territory because it became about a father trying to control his teenage daughter's sexuality.
laceblade looked at each other and snarked. On Sunday I watched a few episodes of "Push Girls" on a friend's DVR. This is a reality show about women in L.A. who are wheelchair users. Three of them are paraplegic and one is quadraplegic. They are all attractive, middle class, femme women. I found it kind of boring mostly because I am easily bored by reality shows: I like unreality in my entertainment. The main annoyance is that they repeat content in a "Dateline NBC" style, where they show a scene as a teaser, and then show it again a few minutes later as part of the narrative. UGH. The target audience for this show is not, I suspect, radical disability activists like myself, because I already think disability is normal and that people who use wheelchairs can be beautiful, etc.
Autie was my favorite person on the show. She is 42, married, and a dancer. She is funny and says that she comes from a rough background. Her relationship with her husband is super cute. Angela and Tiphany live together. Angela seems like the most emotionally intelligent person of the four, and is trying to restart her modeling career while going through a separation from her husband. Tiphany is bisexual (also she refuses labels) and I don't remember what her job is. Mia has an office job of some kind. I like that some of them are people of color and that Tiphany's relationship with a woman is completely normalized.
In an early episode, Angela hires a photographer to do some head shots or something. This guy is clueless and heinous about disability and says something to the camera like, "She's like an armless man who wants to be a pitcher." My friends and I totally snarked this, saying "Oh, because she's a vampire and her picture won't show on your film!". But Angela was pretty gentle with him and didn't fire him. She patiently explained things to him.
In one episode, Mia's mother visits. Mia's mom is terrible and awful and says all kinds of ableist bullshit. But Mia is brave and patient! Mia confronts her mom about her alcoholism and ableist attitudes. She introduces her to the other push girls. Mom starts to come around a little and see that Mia has things figured out pretty well and that Mia's life really isn't that bad.
I don't think I'll watch any more of this show, mostly because it's boring to me. I don't find it that interesting to watch something where the entire premise is: it's so WEIRD and INTERESTING that conventionally pretty women use wheelchairs and have pretty normal lives!!!
no subject
Date: 2012-07-04 11:30 am (UTC)I think the bear-transformation was effective as a kind of role-reversal: Merida becomes the person who has to be in charge and realize how difficult it can be to be responsible for another person, while Elinor has to learn what it's like to be completely unable to fit into a certain role. I think she's realizing that it's just as hard for Merida to act ladylike and go along with the arranged marriage as it is for a bear to eat berries with a fork. And she sees what it's like to have her own self-determination taken away.
That's kind of how I see her changing her mind on the arranged marriage -- that even though the political marriage is incredibly important, she finally realizes that taking away her daughter's self-determination would be even worse than breaking that arrangement. But I agree that they could have done a lot better with explaining that.
I am pessimistic about the Monsters Inc. sequel. Pixar, you make children's movies! Children don't care about college! Childen can't relate to that kind of Animal House narrative! And there was nothing in the trailer that gave much indication of an actual interesting storyline...
no subject
Date: 2012-07-05 03:13 am (UTC)Because the bear witch was the most interesting character in the movie! I'm looking forward to a prequel telling her story, ideally titled The Bear Witch Project.
But seriously, yeah, that movie could have been so much better.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-05 03:46 am (UTC)I did learn one cool thing: one person would help one of the women to transfer to the toilet by doing a "monkey back" carry and then gently lowering her down. That's much easier than a front carry, if you've got the strong back muscles.
The other things that made me want to vomit was that Autie and Tiphany's house was not very accessible for wheelchair users! Two-inch-high thresholds that they have to wheelie over.
Sounds like BRAVE would be a good addition to my Netflix queue.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 04:09 pm (UTC)Also, yeah, the Monsters Inc II trailer was weird. What an odd choice for a sequel. It looked really boring.