Laura Merrell
I had high hopes as I began watching the Oscars last Sunday, but most of my predictions didn’t come true. However, I did correctly select “Brave” as the winner for Best Animated Feature. While this award is usually dwarfed in comparison to awards such as Best Actress or Best Picture, this year’s nominees in the animated film category, including “Wreck-It Ralph” and “Frankenweenie,” were stiff competition. I was very prepared for the animated films category this year. I had seen most of the nominations, having used my younger brother as an excuse for going to watch such movies as “The Pirates! Band of Misfits,” which I discovered was surprisingly amusing and clever.
While films such as “Argo” and “Lincoln” are important and fully deserved their wins, I was really pulling for “Brave.” Finally, Disney, which has always had problems depicting princesses as role models, was motivated to present a better portrayal of females. This was a victory for Disney because even though Pixar made the movie, Disney bought the company in 2006, so it can still be considered a Disney film.
I have been following the developments of “Brave” since this past summer, as countless articles were published in anticipation of the film heralding a new era of Disney princesses. I was just as eager to see the finished product as film critics and scholars, because my First-Year Seminar at the College spent considerable time analyzing the problematic portrayals of females in Disney films. When I went to see “Brave” at the movie theater, I was not disappointed. Princess Merida, the film’s main character, is a far cry from her princess predecessors. She is not dependent on a prince, she can ride a horse with ease and she can shoot arrows better than all her hapless potential suitors.
This Oscar win gives Disney the incentive to continue to update and modernize their portrayal of females in their films. By being rewarded with an Oscar for their first real attempt at addressing the issues the public has with their princesses, Disney can clearly see that creating a more independent, strong female character is profitable — maybe not in terms of money, but in very prestigious accolades. Many have pointed out that “Brave” fared worse at the box office than previous Pixar movies, but as Dorothy Pomerantz of Forbes notes, “I think the problem here isn’t that ‘Brave’ disappoints financially or creatively. The problem is that Pixar has had so much success that it has set its own bar incredibly high.”
If Disney executives were not sure about whether to continue in the direction of “Brave,” they got their answer with their updated princess beating other strong contenders to win them an Oscar. Hopefully this win will convince Disney to continue to improve its depiction of females, and may lead to a revision of their portrayal of different ethnicities as well, but I understand that Disney may need to take one step at a time. They have decades of negative stereotypes in their films to throw out and replace. “Brave” should make headlines for its advances in the depiction of females, not for its director Mark Andrews, possibly the first person at the Oscars to accept an award in a kilt.