Toy Story 3 Is Sexist? No, Somebody Took Their Stupid Pills
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Here is something dumb.
It has won rave reviews and topped the US box office, but the computer-animated film Toy Story 3 has not impressed everyone. Feminists are complaining that the 3D family film is sexist, citing the prevalence of male characters – a ratio of seven males to one female – and negative depictions of women in the film: from Andy’s ‘nagging’ mother to the ‘hyper-feminine’ and ‘overly emotional’ Barbie.
The long-standing US feminist magazine Ms has accused the film of ‘careless sexism’, with the writer Natalie Wilson arguing that the film may damage children.
‘Kids who grow up watching sexist shows are more likely to grow up internalising stereotypical ideas of what men and women are supposed to be like,’ she writes.
The article also argues that the film is homophobic in its depiction of the doll Ken as a ‘closeted gay fashionista with a fondness for writing in sparkly purple ink’, stating that: ‘Pairing homophobia with misogyny, the jokes about Ken suggest that the worst things a boy can be are either a girl or a homosexual.’
Ridiculous. Simply ridiculous. Why are there more boy toys than women? Because ANDY IS A BOY. Where Toy Story makes a concession that’s sort of unrealistic is the amount of girlish toys Andy has. The percentage of boys who would really have a cowgirl Jessie or Mrs. Potato Head can probably be counted in the single digits. The characters fit, but it’s a stretch that a boy interested in spacemen (Buzz) and cowboys (Woody) would have those two as well.
Nagging mom? She’s the mother of a teenager on his way to college. She’s not doing her job if she’s not nagging. It’s what moms do.
Barbie is Barbie, the toy that is all about girls playing dress-up. That’s the point of Barbie, and even so her character has a moment of strength that is key to the plot. Barbie comes off great, while Ken has an interesting emotional arc and I was surprised he was written as heterosexual as he is (he falls in love with Barbie at first sight). Ken, like Barbie, is all about dress up. He’s a clothes horse because that’s what Ken does.
When people write these things, they’re just trolling for attention or trying to hitch political significance to a pop culture phenom that isn’t there.
Toy Story isn’t about extending the dominance of the patriarchy or keeping women barefoot and pregnant. It’s about a boy’s journey to maturity along with his childhood toys. It’s also a great freaking movie.
36 Responses to “Toy Story 3 Is Sexist? No, Somebody Took Their Stupid Pills”
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I love it that Joss Whedon was called in on the first one and wanted to have Barbie rescue Buzz and Woody.
I can agree with you on the feminist overreaction to this movie. It does seem a little over the top. But I draw the line at calling Toy Story 3 a good movie. Young man, you have bad taste in movies. Shame, shame, shame.
Kids these days are weak and easily frightened. Here’s a REAL kids movie! Le Horde (2009), a French zombie movie that will hair onto the chest of the weak-willed youth. Let’s see the Feminists complain about THAT!
I’m a little more sympathetic to their point, although I’d say it is more Pixar than this individual movie that is carelessly sexist.
Yes, it is a story about a boy, so there are more boy toys than girl toys. The problem? It’s almost always a story about a boy. Up. Wall-E. Ratatouille. Cars. Finding Nemo. A bug’s life.
That leaves Monsters, Inc, where the two main monsters are male, while Boo is a girl, and the Incredibles, a family of four. I saw only the former and can’t really remember it too well, so I can’t really say who is focused on more, the male or female characters.
Oliver, she’s not trolling for attention, she’s just hyper-sensitive about anything being even remotely sexist. There are many minorities that see racism in well, EVERYTHING.
Where this woman gets into trouble (and a lot of “feminists” do as well), is when she lives in the fantasy world where men and women are “the same” and should always be represented “equally”. In other words, women in movies, tv and literature should just be men with breasts. She actually anti-femininity. There must be the same number of men as women. The woman can never be the victim. The woman can never be “rescued”. The women must be in charge. If things are not in this way, then the movie is “sexist”.
And tim, Pixar is made up primarily of males. This my point. It’s sexist when a bunch of guys sit around and make movies starring boys? And if you actually WATCH their movies , their female characters are ALWAYS outstanding examples of the “strong woman”. ElasticGirl? E.V.E? Carl Fredickseon’s wife? And wasn’t Doris the actual BEST part of Finding Nemo? I find this “everything is sexist” crap tiring.
It kind of dilutes the case where there is CLEAR feminism when EVERYTHING is seen as sexist.
Bad taste? Um, Toy Story 3 is awesome. The best movie this year so far, by leaps and bounds.
“It’s sexist when a bunch of guys sit around and make movies starring boys?”
Uh, yeah, actually. That is like a perfect textbook case of structural/institutional sexism. If you can’t figure that one out I can’t really take your analysis of what is sexist or not seriously.
Yes and yes. If Pixar was the lone movie company ran by a bunch of guys that’d be fine. But all the movie companies are run mostly by men, and we get movies mostly about men. Not about men? Chick-flick. Yeah, that’s not sexist at all.
The most sympathetic human being in the movie is the little girl who inherits Andy’s toys.
Here’s the thing about PIXAR in particular–it’s not sexism in terms of the movie business, it’s sexism in terms of computer science. PIXAR was founded by men because the fields of computer animation were most open and encouraged to men in 1986, when PIXAR first released Luxor, Jr..
Blaming PIXAR for having been founded by men in the first place is a bit like blaming America for having been founded by men.
Still, using the content of their stories as evidence that PIXAR is inherently sexist is weak tea, especially since many of their female characters have been strong, well-written, and multi-dimensional. (Elastigirl and Edna Mode are easily the most interesting characters in The Incredibles, a story that would by all rights be boy-centered).
Excellent points.
I am guessing the “Ms.” blogger was too busy counting the characters and their lines, that she missed the Bonnie character altogether.
Bonnie is depicted as having an imagination and playfulness equal to that of Andy in the first movie.
I guess it’s too hard to see the forest when you are mowing down all the trees.
On the other hand, Edna Mode is voiced by Brad Bird, the man who wrote and directed The Incredibles.
I have nothing to offer this discussion save that little bit of trivia. Carry on!
Oliver, she’s not trolling for attention, she’s just hyper-sensitive about anything being even remotely racist. There are many minorities that see racism in well, EVERYTHING.
Where this woman gets into trouble (and a lot of “activists” do as well), is when she lives in the fantasy world where white people and black people are “the same” and should always be represented “equally”. In other words, black people in movies, tv and literature should just be white people with tans. She actually anti-equality. There must be the same number of white people as black people. The black person can never be the victim. The black person can never be “rescued”. The black person must be in charge. If things are not in this way, then the movie is “racist”.
And tim, Pixar is made up primarily of white people. This my point. It’s racist when a bunch of white guys sit around and make movies starring white boys? And if you actually WATCH their movies , their black characters are ALWAYS outstanding examples of the “strong black woman”. ElasticGirl? E.V.E? Carl Fredickseon’s wife? And wasn’t Doris the actual BEST part of Finding Nemo? (wait, no – are there ANY examples??) I find this “everything is racist” crap tiring.
It kind of dilutes the case where there is CLEAR racism when EVERYTHING is seen as racist.
White men make movies about white men and boys. This is not just a feminist issue. My guess is that luv is a white man, and so sees nothing wrong with the status quo. A fun test to do with any movie is called the Bechdel test:
1. Does it have at least two (named) women in it?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. When they talk, is it about anything other a man?
You can do the same test with people of color talking about race. White men make movies about white men, and women are generally presented in only one way. That doesn’t mean they are bad movies, and it doesn’t mean they hate women, but the number of films that do not pass this test illustrates the institutional bias present in the movie industry. Asking that women be represented equally is an attempt to break the cycle.
I’m with some of the other commenters. No, by itself, Toy Story 3 is not sexist. However, taken as part of the Pixar canon, which in turn is part of the Disney canon, which in turn is part of the Hollywood studio system, you can see it as a small part of a gestalt which IS pretty big on institutionalized sexism.
Part of it, as SpiderJ notes, is a result of the wildly disproportionate number of men in computer science.
But I’d say the real villain is Hollywood. Hollywood targets men and boys heavily; movies intended for female audiences tend to fall in a pretty limited range of genre. And when Disney puts out a perfectly-decent movie like The Princess and the Frog and it fails to sell enough toys to 8-year-old boys, the result is…well, you guys saw the same trailer for Tangled I did, right?
And selling toys to 8-year-old boys is the name of the game. Yes, Toy Story 3 was a brilliant movie, and to the people at Pixar it was quite clearly a labor of love. But to their bosses, it was the biggest toy-sales machine in history. The REASON it’s a movie about boys’ toys is because that’s what Disney is selling.
I loved Toy Story 3. And I loved Up, and The Incredibles, and pretty much every Pixar movie I’ve ever seen. And taken individually, I wouldn’t call any one of them sexist. But taken as a whole…well, the main character is not female in a single one of them. And I DO think that’s a problem.
movies intended for female audiences tend to fall in a pretty limited range of genre
This is pretty much true of every movie targeted to a gender. Know why? Men and women like different things.
SHOCKING.
Vul, thanks for mentioning the Bechdel rule. IIRC, in that comic strip, the woman mentions that the last movie she had been able to see was “Aliens”, because Ripley and the girl talk about the monster.
That said, I know my older son is somewhat resistant to watching movies with girls as main characters. My younger son has no such qualms.
Minor tangent – I happened across a review of TS2 in which the reviewer bemoaned the fact that Andy _gave away his toys_ at the end of the movie – to a CHILD. Apparently, letting go of childhood things when childhood is over is a tragic fate, one which the reviewer has manfully* avoided.
*Pun entirely intended.
The article also argues that the film is homophobic in its depiction of the doll Ken as a ‘closeted gay fashionista with a fondness for writing in sparkly purple ink’, stating that: ‘Pairing homophobia with misogyny, the jokes about Ken suggest that the worst things a boy can be are either a girl or a homosexual.’
** SPOILERS **
First of all, Ken isn’t homosexual, he’s effeminate. Why is he effeminate? Because he’s a girl’s toy, and girls tend to play with toys — any toys — in effeminate ways. That’s not a putdown or a stereotype; it’s an acknowledgement of gender. I mean, look at Jessie. She’s female, but she’s also rather butch — because she’s a boy’s toy, and thus reflects boyish concerns. Don’t hear anyone complaining about that, do you?
Ken’s effeminacy is amusing because it’s familiar. Surely no one is suggesting that Pixar is the first to insinuate that Ken has “girly” preoccupations; these character traits are well-established in our culture, and if they weren’t, the jokes wouldn’t work. Obviously, the jokes are aimed at adults who have that kind of cultural awareness to draw on. It’s not really subversive anymore to have grown-up references in a cartoon that’s nominally for kids — in fact, it’s expected. In fact, some cartoons go too far and cram the whole story full of wink-wink crassness that flies over kids’ heads. Pixar doesn’t. Pixar achieves the tricky balance of making movies that everyone can enjoy and successfully access at their own level. It’s harder than it looks.
By the way, is there anything inherently wrong with closeted gay fashionistas with a fondness for writing in sparkly purple ink? No. Is there anything wrong with depicting such a character in a cartoon? No. Does this cartoon suggest that there is something wrong with such a character? Yeah, somewhat; Ken does take a villainous turn, though he redeems himself. Seems to me, though, that the villainy has to do with the closetedness rather than the effeminacy. That is, Ken puts on this wholesome, plastic (if you will) front, but behind the facade there’s a different story going on — and that, the movie suggests, is sinister. Hiding who you truly are is not a virtue. Notice that after Ken’s effeminacy is revealed, he starts to turn into a more sympathetic character; his affection for Barbie is ultimately what turns him away from the dark side, and his change of heart doesn’t mean a change of interest in fabulous clothes. By the end of the movie, sparkly purple ink boy is a hero. And nowhere in the film does anyone suggest that there’s anything wrong with Ken’s interests; a bit unusual, perhaps, but not wrong.
Of course, the fact that the primary villain in the movie is a big dirty bear named Lotso is clearly a form of discrimination against overweight Italian homosexual men.
‘“It’s sexist when a bunch of guys sit around and make movies starring boys?”’
So how would you classify ‘Sex and the City’ I and II and other so called ‘chick flicks?’
Are there not enough gender oriented forms of entertainment for all of us?
Oliver – men and women like different things like white and black people like different things. Do you really believe that??
Chick flicks are an offense to my gender. Women are sexual and political, but never presented that way. We are presented as sex objects or constantly in some romantic dream/race of finally, FINALLY getting that HUSBAND we covet. We have thoughts, ideas, and dreams outside of the elusive HUSBAND. Other things matter to us. The media NEVER portray us as such. Women ONLY want husbands, the way that black people ONLY want drugs or sex. Please think about all the movies you have ever seen, and how women and people of color have been presented. Men and women are not so different, it is just that the media wants you to believe that.
Shorter Oliver: “Even though I’m a guy, or maybe because I’m a guy, I know more about what’s sexist or not than feminists who have been studying, discussing, writing and thinking about it for decades.”
Uh, no.
Oliver Willis has an opinion. It differs from Natalie Wilson’s opinion. In your opinion, that means that Oliver Willis is claiming to know more about the topic than Natalie Wilson does.
Your opinion is wrong. Thank you for playing.
[...] Via oliverwillis. com [...]
Actually, I’m black, but thanks for playing. And I’m tired of people referring to that stupid-ass Bechdel test. If you actually look at the video of it for her hundreds of “examples” of movies that fail her test, she literally had dozens of movies THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH WOMEN on their. Or rather, nothing that would warrant a movie passing her precious “test”. She had Rocky movies on their. She even had Alien, one of the most pro-feminist movies ever on there.
Just because some person made a “test”, doesn’t mean it’s a good “test” and that people should keep referring to it. Hey, Platoon fails her test! What a sexist movie! 12 Angry Men fails it! Cast Away fails it! GAAAAH!!
Really? Have you not been paying attention to anything?
“Chick flicks” are called “chick flicks” because men think they suck. They are mostly correct because they are mostly poorly written by men pandering to a certain percentage of women. Apparently many of you think that this covers all women.
The flip side of the awful movies written by men pandering to a certain percentage of men. These aren’t disparaged as “dick flicks” though, they’re considered “Summer Blockbusters”. Even when they suck.
I think you’re missing the point of the test. The test doesn’t indicate a good or bad movie, or imply that Rocky should have had Adrianne chatting with Rocky’s mom about whatever.
The point is of all the many movies that are made, there are very few depicting women as friends. Or enemies. How many buddy cop movies are there? How many are two female cops? How many outlaw movies are there? How many, oh right, Thelma and Louise, so one. And castaway could have been a female castaway just as easily as a male castaway, but wasn’t.
I know, right? It’s almost like he thought the headline of the post said something like “Toy Story 3 is sexist? No, somebody took their stupid pills” instead of “Toy Story 3 is sexist? Not in my opinion”.
It’s more like somebody decided to use the appeal to authority fallacy to try to make it look like Oliver was discussing feminism in general rather than a single movie in specific.
If the a ratio of seven males to one female in the article Oliver was quoting was part of the argument to support the thesis that Toy Story 3 is sexist, then the person making that argument has indeed taken their stupid pills. Even if they’re ignoring the supporting characters, there are three female characters in the core characters of Andy’s toys: Barbie, Mrs. Potato Head, and Jessie.
I know the point of the test. I said the test was stupid. Every movie doesn’t have to be “feminist approved”, which is my whole point. That was the point of my original post. Some “feminist” aren’t satisfied unless everything is “equal”. A movie is about a man stuck on a deserted island for 4 years doesn’t pass her silly “test” and is therefore “sexist”. It’s moronic and simple-minded to the point of almost being comedic. Every movie must adhere to her dumb “rules” in order not to be labeled sexist.
And what even more pathetic are people who so quickly snapped up and adopted the ridiculous “test” and are spreading it as “gospel”. More the fools, they are.
And to put a finer point on it, some of the worst movies (from an artistic and feminist perspective) ever made have passed the idiotic Bechdel test. This year’s Sex and the City movie being one of them.
Again, the fact that so many seemingly intelligent people gulped up that pap with no critical analysis of it shocks the hell outta me. Google “Bechdel Test” and see how many pseudo-intellectuals rave about how “profound” and “insightful” it is. Watch the video of Ms. Bechdel herself smugly explaining the rules of the test, barely resisting the urge of giving herself a compound fracture patting herself on the back. *sigh*
Yes, it is. And no, most of you kvetching about how silly this all is don’t get it. It’s not just that PiXAR has made a few computer animated movies geared towards boys. It’s that that’s all they have made, and there is nothing equivalent out there for my daughters. A story with a strong central female lead, who does not end up marrying the Prince, does not exist. At least in American films. The Japanese, surprisingly enough, have done much better, thanks in no small part to Hayao Miyazaki.)
…riiight, because “someone took their stupid pills” isn’t an opinion? You think someone’s going to mistake that for a fact?
Really?
Or are you just whining because Oliver didn’t mince words in his disagreement?
I’m not saying that isn’t an opinion. I’m saying that by calling her stupid, he pretty much indicates he thinks he knows more than her.
And what’s with the comment about whining? Are you familiar with sarcasm? Because that’s pretty much all that was going on in my post.
‘“Chick flicks” are called “chick flicks” because men think they suck. ‘
What is your evidence of that ridiculous claim? Just because these films are produced specifically to appeal to women doesn’t automatically mean mean think they suck, just that they aren’t as appealing to men, in much the same way that women don’t rush out and line up for the latest James Bond film in the same numbers as men, because so called ‘prick flicks’ are not produced specifically to appeal to women, but rather to men.
And watch your fucking attitude bro; just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention; it simply means your argument is not convincing.
You’ll notice I didn’t resort to challenging your cognitive abilities.
PIXAR or any other studio is not obligated to produce films in any gender balanced way; their sole purpose, as with any business, is to make money.
Would they likely do so more prodigiously if they had an even balance of gender oriented productions? Unquestionably? Are they smart enough to have clued into that fact yet? Sadly no. Has that hurt their bottom line?
Not one bit.
Have generations of young girls and women been irrevocably damaged by their films over the years? I don’t think so.
Try asking an 8 year old girl who has just seen TS3 to comment on its obviously sexist bent; she likely won’t know what the Hell you’re talking about. I’ll bet that she tells you how much she enjoyed it however.
PIXAR or any other studio is not obligated to produce films in any gender balanced way; their sole purpose, as with any business, is to make money.
Would they likely do so more prodigiously if they had an even balance of gender oriented productions? Unquestionably? Are they smart enough to have clued into that fact yet? Sadly no. Has that hurt their bottom line?
Not one bit.
Have generations of young girls and women been irrevocably damaged by their films over the years? I don’t think so.
Try asking an 8 year old girl who has just seen TS3 to comment on its obviously sexist bent; she likely won’t know what the Hell you’re talking about. I’ll bet that she tells you how much she enjoyed it however.
Yikes, sorry for the doppelganger.
My guess is that luv is a white man, and so sees nothing wrong with the status quo. A fun test to do with any movie is called the Bechdel test:
Your guess is wrong. A fun test to do with any new commenter is called the QiaB test:
1) Does the commenter make arguments based on unwarranted assumptions about others?
If yes, ignore.
An eight year old girl? That’s probably because the only ism they are aware of is That’s so unfair-ism.