Brave‘s Merida is one of the few Disney princesses—along with Mulan—who gets to be physically active, and really the only one with a physique to match her love of riding horses, shooting things, and her ability to stand up to a bear. But Disney, as it’s done to other women in the official Disney Princess pantheon, decided that to mark her inclusion, Merida needed a new dress that was off-the-shoulder, and a belt instead of a quiver for her arrows. Unlike the other Disney Princesses, it also decided that she needed to get a lot skinnier for the occasion.

The website Disney debuted as a portal for Merida merchandise seems to be sticking with the original design for Merida, kinky red hair, forest-green dress, and bow ready to fire, a move that some advocates are claiming as a victory. But the products themselves seem to be a mix of Merida ready for action—at least holding on to her bow, as in this nightshirt—and Merida in party-wear, as on this mug. Change.org petitions may feel good, but it’s hard to get a big corporation like Disney to junk an entire product line on a moment’s notice.

But hopefully, as Disney considers the reaction to the Merida art that circulated, and as they consider how to make even more money out of the Brave universe, Disney could consider that dresses and princess crowns aren’t the only things that you could sell to little girls through their parents. Get into the archery sets game. Get into weaving kits, even. If “princess” is a title you can give Native American advocates, Chinese warriors, and Scottish tomboys, then the things princesses can do don’t have to be limited to going to parties.

Over at The Atlantic, my friend Christopher Orr has some worries about Pixar’s sudden reliance on sequels, and points to something larger—the diffusion of Pixar’s creative team:

To what do we owe this sudden outbreak of sequel-itis? Well, Finding Nemo is the third-highest grossing animated film—and the best-selling DVD overall—of all time, which might have something to do with it.

If Pixar’s films seem to have been slipping back into the pack of excellent-but-not-transcendent animated features of late, it is in part because that pack has dramatically lifted its game.
Moreover, to at least some degree, the original Pixar team has been turning its attentions elsewhere. The studio’s first 10 features were all directed by one or another of the immensely talented quartet of John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and Brad Bird. But of late Lasseter has Disney Animation to oversee in addition to Pixar, and Bird (Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, the upcoming 2014 Tomorrowland) and Stanton (John Carter) have been trying their hands at live-action. Of the last three Pixar features—and the next two coming down the pipeline—just one has been (or will be) directed by a member of that original quartet.

I’m not inherently opposed to sequels, for the same reason I can enjoy open-ended television shows. There are some characters who are worth spending extended time with, or whose stories don’t fit neatly in two or three hours, but don’t ned to be stretched over twenty or a hundred either. I can easily see a sequel to The Incredibles that focuses not on the grown-up Parrs, whose arc is largely resolved, but on their children, who are growing up superpowered in a world where the use of their abilities is technically illegal. For all that I’m charmed by the idea of Monsters University, I don’t see the necessity of an origin story for Mike and Sulley, just as I don’t feel particularly drawn to spend more time with Dory, the cheerful, forgetful fish voiced by Ellen Degeneres in Finding Nemo. For sequels to be artistically necessary, there needs to be some sort of narrative or character-driven urgency to them.

Of course, sequels can also justify themselves by providing a reliable base of business that allows a company to take risks on new ideas, or on developing new people who will have brands that end up equivalent to John Lasseter’s and Andrew Stanton’s. This isn’t a model that’s made all movie studios particularly daring, thus the death of the $30 million picture. But if any company seems likely to use a large financial cushion, derived from projects that are not uninteresting but not disastrous either, to do interesting things, Pixar is it. Secret passageways and whining gates, if that’s in fact what it takes to foster outrageous creativity, don’t come cheap.

I’m off to the cheery task of finishing my (very long) Zero Dark Thirty review, so have an early look at Pixar’s latest short, which proves they can anthropomorphize anything:

Although I do think it would have been a bit more of a test of their abilities to make any possible object have a personality if the umbrellas weren’t in gender-coded red and blue. Step it up, Pixar, and give us some green and yellow! Or even a nice, jaunty orange!

Via The Mary Sue comes the news that Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as well as Mad Men and Glee) veteran Marti Noxon has been hired by Pixar:

Joss Whedon isn’t the only Buffy alum with big things going on. Writer Marti Noxon, who’s worked on Mad Men, Grey’s Anatomy, Glee, and last year’s underrated Fright Night remake since leaving Sunnydale behind, has just been hired by Pixar to work on one of their upcoming films.

It’s unclear exactly what Noxon will be working on; Pixar currently has several films in pre-production, including a Dia de los Muertos-inspired flick and the latest from director Pete Docter (Up, Monsters, Inc.), listed on IMDB as “The Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside the Mind.” (I’m envisioning Monsters, Inc. meets Inception—I can hope, can’t I?)

Many of Pixar’s best movies have been about adult men who are unmoored from the sources of their identities, or have them challenged. In The Incredibles, Bob Parr’s been stripped of his right to work as a superhero. In Finding Nemo, Marlin feels that he’s failed to protect his family when his son Nemo is scooped up in a net, and as he journeys to find him, has to explore what and who he is without Nemo around to occupy all his attention and interest. Much of what made the introduction to Up so shattering was its demonstration of how much Carl Fredricksen built his sense of self around his wife Ellie, and how that idea deepened through disappointments like the failure of their travel plans or their inability to get pregnant, an event that would have expanded Carl’s understanding of his role. Wall-E’s encounter with Eve puts his work processing trash in a new context and gives him new things to yearn for.

The company’s made strides with young female characters, both in Brave, which did a lovely job of exploring the complicated relationship between a teenaged girl and her mother, and in the Pete Doctor movie mentioned in the article I quoted, the brain the film explores is supposed to be a girl’s. But it’s notable that both of those projects are about girls rather than adult women, who have never been so fully realized and sympathetic in a Pixar movie since we saw Elastigirl reckon with her husband’s secret-keeping and temper, and then kick into superheroine high gear to protect her family. I’ve always thought that the sixth season of Buffy, which Noxon executive produced, never quite got enough credit for its depiction of women who were in similar senses of crises about their identities. Whether Buffy was reckoning with her lack of job credentials in “Doublemeat Palace,” her lack of prestige relative to her ex-boyfriend Riley in “As You Were,” exploring a new kind of sexual relationship with Spike, or dealing with a dramatic realignment of her sense of her friendships and her sister Dawn after she was forcibly recalled from heaven, Noxon helped craft a portrait of what it means to be reconsidering every element of your identity in your twenties.

If she can identify these kinds of crises and find stories that make them universal (rather than aimed just at ladies) in the same way Pixar’s done for men who are widowed, separated from their children, or fired from their jobs, she’ll bring something special and important to the company—and to our standards for popular, high-quality entertainment. And if she can’t, that’s still something Pixar should pursue as a goal. If the company can sell audiences on the identity anxieties of a middle-aged man gone to fat, a cranky retiree, a voiceless robot, or a fish, it ought to be able to turn them out for stories about a woman.

When I like to look for gay subtext in cultural artifacts, I tend to look for actual sexualized interactions between characters, rather than equating whether or not someone conforms to gender stereotypes with their potential sexual orientation as EW does with this piece on Brave:

But could Merida be gay? Absolutely. She bristles at the traditional gender roles that she’s expected to play: the demure daughter, the obedient fiancée. 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).

One of the things that’s brilliant about Brave is that it puts off the question of Merida’s sexual maturity, and her need to do her duty to her family by marrying, until a more appropriate age. The movie decouples Merida’s mother’s desire that she act the princess and fulfill that role by marrying from what Merida herself actually wants and feels, and Merida’s triumph in the movie is delaying the question of who she’ll marry until she is ready to answer it on her own terms, and in accordance with desires she actually feels. The movie takes a strong stand against the idea that the best way for girls to be good daughters, or to perform girlhood correctly, is to become sexually available when they’re expected to. The prize to be won isn’t a prince. It’s autonomy and self-knowledge. Merida’s primary relationship during the events of Brave is with her family, and in the schema of the movie, that’s perfectly fine: it doesn’t portray her as behind or a failure.

And I really wish that anyone, anywhere, would stop reading a girl’s desire for physical activity or pleasure in the abilities her own body gives her as a sign of potential incipient gayness. Girls who like playing sports are just as likely to grow up loving other women as the girls who cheer them from the sidelines, or the girls who are off in an art studio or a college newspaper office. Sexuality and gender performance are not the same thing. And if a girl is defying the gendered norms laid out for her, that should be a sign that we question the adequacy of the norms in capturing the diversity of girls’ experiences, rather than the girl herself.

Pixar movies are, in so many ways, what I hope for movies to become: visually stunning, narratively inventive, and often about issues like aging, masculinity, fatherhood, and responsibility, but with a confidence that the audience will derive those themes from an excellent original story, rather than needing them clearly articulated. Marlin’s search for Nemo is about the recovery of his own bravery and sense of adventure, a chance to overcome the worry-wart tendencies that have plagued him since his wife’s death, as much as it is the recovery of his son. Carl Frederickson’s adventures in Up are about rectifying what he sees as his two failures as a husband, his diminished dreams of adventure and his inability to become a father. Wall-E is about the power of love, from a young robot’s perspective rather than a young man’s. These men’s emotional experiences are specific to them and influenced by their gender, but their adventures are not particularly male or female experiences: there is nothing gendered about surfing with sea turtles, hanging out with talking dogs, or running around a space ship. And so it does feel like Pixar’s denied us something in giving its first female protagonist a uniquely gendered catalyst for her adventure—in other words, by making her a fairy tale princess—by not making her the subject of a more truly universal story, and in doing so asserted that the default in such settings need not always be male.

But it would be a shame to dismiss Brave on those grounds. Pixar isn’t the only standard for greatness. Brave plants a flag in much-derided territory and makes something visually gorgeous and emotionally rich out of the familiar rhythms of fairy tales. And while the wars between mothers and daughters and fathers and sons may be fought on different ground, Brave should stand as a reminder that those battles can be equally lacerating, and equally resonant, no matter the gender of the participants.

Brave begins with a tiny, flame-haired Scottish princess at peace with both of her parents, Elinor (Emma Thompson), the mother who plays hide and seek with her, and Fergus (Billy Connolly), the father who gives her a bow of her own for her birthday and patiently teaches her how to shoot. Their peace is shattered when a bear breaks up their family gathering, scattering Merida (Kelly Macdonald) and Elinor, and costing Fergus his leg.

As Merida gets older, the tensions between her and her mother grow, too. Elinor (Emma Thompson) isn’t a bad mother, but the tension between them is inevitable. Some of the training Elinor gives Merida hints at a greater role for her—”A princess must be knowledgeable about her kingdom”—and some of it carries tinges of the kind of innate cruelty of mothering. “Hungry, are you?” Elinor asks Merida when she brings a plate of desserts to the dinner table. “You’ll get dreadful collywobbles.” Some of the power of Brave is the way it gives depth and power to those ordinary motherly slights. Elinor’s comments come after Merida’s spent a day ranging through the woods with her horse Angus in one of the more powerful sequences I’ve seen of a girl enjoying her body’s capacities and the pleasure of being very, very good at something. Elinor’s words undermine Merida’s pleasure in her strength and exercise, aimed at making her physically and emotionally fit the corset she’s stuffed into for the Highland Games.
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Vulture has a blockbuster read on what went wrong in the campaign to market John Carter, and this strikes me as particularly illuminating:

Stanton (who also nixed all mentions of his Pixar work in the teaser for fear that people would think this film was for little kids) was working from the belief that John Carter was still as universally iconic a figure to people as Dracula, Luke Skywalker, or Tarzan. “It was my Harry Potter,” he said during an interview at Google last week that was streamed live on YouTube. “All I ever wanted when I read that book was to believe it.” He believed that audiences would gasp in delight at John Carter’s very appearance in much the same way that a Batman teaser might only need to flash the Bat Signal. As such, he felt that the very first John Carter trailer needed only to intrigue, not explicate. “To him, it was the most important sci-fi movie of all time,” recounts one Disney marketing insider present for the pitched battles. “He could see no idea in which someone didn’t know who John Carter of Mars was. But it’s not Frankenstein; it’s not Sherlock Holmes. Nobody cares. People don’t say, ‘I know what I’ll be for Halloween! I’ll be John Carter!’”

Carney fought strenuously with Stanton — insiders describe arguments that ended with the brash department head almost reduced to tears — and urged him to rethink this vision and tell a more personal story of the man, but he won every battle: Because of his outsized animated successes, Disney gave him final approval on everything. “They throw petals at his feet,” says our insider. And then the respectful trailer did nothing for the buzz. Adds a former Disney distribution exec, “You only get one shot at making a first impression … And that first trailer, it never jumped off, never did anything to catch that wave of anticipation that all new movies crave. That’s what so critical for a movie like this.”

Ultimately, if you want to make movies in the commercial system, with all the support systems and resources that entails, you probably have to acknowledge the basic realities of that system: among them, that not everyone in the universe feels the same way as you about your source material. It’s one thing if you’re tweaking Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to make a difficult book adaptable. It’s another if you’re absolutely deluded about the market penetration of the book you want to adapt, and of what parts of it will seem fresh and powerful to your audience. I absolutely support the idea that we should have greater innovation in commercial film. But there’s a difference between that and belittling the people around you who are trying to make your movie a success and maximizing the financial risk your employer is taking on you in pursuit of a private vision you’re not willing to examine with any sort of clarity.

Erik Kain flagged this post from Otaku Kun on Brave, Pixar’s upcoming movie that will be its first with a female protagonist. While I don’t agree with his analysis of Disney’s offerings—yes, the company has a strong princess franchise, but Pixar in particular has become acclaimed in part for its sensitive, creative stories about men—I think it’s worth unpacking what lies behind this sentiment: “I’d just like to see a movie from Disney/Pixar for once where the main character is a young boy, who follows his heart and defies his own society and culture, and achieves something more than just mere personal happiness, but actually makes a difference.”

I have nothing against stories where boys get to grow, and be empowered, and slay the dragon, and get the girl. But I don’t exactly think we’re lacking in those kinds of narratives. Across generations and countries, the most popular literary and cinematic phenomenon of the last decade and a half is a nice kid named Harry Potter who achieves both personal happiness and major societal change. Christopher Paolini got to live out that narrative both in real life and on the page when he went from self-publishing homeschooler to best-selling author with his Inheritance series before he was 20. The most kid-friendly superhero in movies and cartoons is Spider-Man.

But I am generally sympathetic to the idea that just as we need more expansive roles for women in pop culture, we need more flexible roles for boys and men that allow for a broader range of emotions. And so I asked Tamora Pierce last year about whether we needed different kinds of boys to act as heroes and role models for male and female readers alike (she is one of the authors I think does best creating fully-realized boys and men). “The majority of boys have male heroes. Even if the characters are animals, they’re male. Girl heroes are by far the minority in children’s literature, which is absolutely infuriating to me, because this was the status quo when I started, and the numbers have not changed that much,” she said, explaining why, though she’s working on her first series with a male main character, she’s more concerned about providing innovative stories about women. “It’s not that I have anything against boys. I just see a need for girl heroes.”

And I wonder if the rise of authors like Pierce, and of a vigorous conversation about roles for women and girls more generally, even if it hasn’t gotten us to character parity or all the depictions we’d like, is something that guys would like a male equivalent of. There’s no question that there are clear archetypes of male characters, from Bad Boys to Nice Guys, and forums for discussion of them ranging from the Good Men Project to lots of good feminist writers. But are there authors or filmmakers who folks think are doing a uniquely good job of building particularly innovative male characters? Clearly there’s some unfulfilled hunger out there for something new. And I’d be curious as to what the men in the audience are feeling most engaged by.

The bridge is yours.

-It’s quite odd that Sarah Palin’s team thinks media ethics dictate they’d get script approval of Game Change.

-From the WWE to VOD in China.

-Hollywood gets behind Elizabeth Warren.

-How Eminem’s lawsuit could change our understanding of digital purchases—and artists’ takes.

-Footage from Pixar’s newest short, La Luna, which will debut in front of Brave:

The bridge is yours.

-Me. Maureen Ryan. Ryan McGee. Todd VanDerWerff. Homeland. Parks and Recreation. You know what to do.

-Some of the best television lines of the year.

-Brave‘s fired female director talks Belle, her daughter as inspiration, and her split with Pixar.

-Super-cute Game of Thrones house banners.

-Art, healing, and the Happy Valley.