So I saw "Brave" with the lady-friend Friday night, and I'd been planning to write something about it in the meantime, be it about the meaning of the complaints that it's too "generic" a story for Pixar or the fact that it explores mother-child relationships in a way Pixar and Disney in general haven't really done before or something else of that nature. But then Adam Markovitz over at Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch wrote this post, about how Kelly MacDonald's Princess Merida is secretly a gay gay homosexual lesbian who is gay. His evidence?
She bristles at the traditional gender roles that she’s expected to play: the demure daughter, the obedient fiancĂ©e. Her love of unprincess-like hobbies, including archery and rock-climbing, is sure to strike a chord with gay viewers who felt similarly “not like the other kids” growing up. And she hates the prospect of marriage — at least, to any of the three oafish clansmen that compete for her hand — enough to run away from home and put her own mother’s life at risk. She’s certainly not a swooning, boy-crazy Disney princess like The Little Mermaid’s Ariel or Snow White. In fact, Merida may be the first in that group to be completely romantically disinclined (even cross-dressing Mulan had a soft spot for Li Shang).Arguing against something like this can be kind of a tightrope-walk, similar to arguing with people who think the president is a Muslim: one the one hand, the suggestion is patently ridiculous; on the other, when you're arguing that something is ridiculous, it's easy to make it seem like you think it's somehow slanderous to suggest someone is gay or Muslim, which can be offensive in and of itself. My main issue with Markovitz's thesis is its reliance on stereotypes, and the fact that he essentially is interpreting anything not traditionally feminine as lesbian subtext.
Obviously, Markovitz is pretty confused about human sexuality if he expects "cross-dressing" to automatically discount heterosexuality (especially since, in Mulan's case, it was entirely for practical purposes rather than a preference); I must admit I'm kind of surprised that he paints with such a broad brush just because, even beyond one's personal experiences, feminine lesbians have been part of the cultural landscape for YEARS. Yes, admittedly, some of them are of the fan-servicey Katy Perry "aw, two chicks, hawt!" variety, like Lucille from "Sin City" or "Sherlock"'s reinterpretation of Irene Adler, but there are plenty of three-dimensional, well-developed ones as well, such as Willow Rosenberg, Joanie Stubbs, Angela Darmody or Blue Rain.
The second part of his "theory", the fact that Merida doesn't want to marry any of three guys who even Markovitz describes as "oafish", manages to be even more of a reach. Yes, deciding a woman is a lesbian because she doesn't have any interest in one guy has been useful to frat boys throughout history, but it's not exactly "evidence" of anything. Even beyond the fact that the film goes out of its way to establish her suitors as unappealing (hey, I guess Jasmine was a lesbian for the first half of "Aladdin" by Markovitz's logic), it's made explicit that the reason Merida is uninterested in marriage has far more to do with wanting to be free to do the things she enjoys without the expectations of being a wife or a queen. And yet Markovitz sees that and his response is essentially "More like MeriDYKE, lol". Shit, Adam, they have her going "I want my freedom" in pretty much all of the trailers. You didn't even have to see the movie.
Now, just to say something nice, there may well be some merit to Markovitz's idea that Merida not fitting into her society could be analogous to growing up gay. That kind of parallel is one that's been made in fiction for a while, sometimes much more explicitly. But beyond that, Markovitz's reasoning is a prime example of Sherlock Holmes' warning not to "twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts".
And sometimes women just aren't ready.
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