The Rainbow Kilt

Scott Hardie | June 27, 2012
There's a lot of talk about whether the heroine of Brave might be gay because she spends the movie rejecting male suitors. Apparently the fact that she's the child heroine of a kids' movie, and thus too young for romance, isn't obvious.

I get the idea, and it's interesting, although I don't think Pixar's meticulousness in the tiny visual details justifies speculation as to that kind of thematic subtext. ("Pixar is too talented to have created a movie without a hidden message! Therefore, we must decipher what they meant when they didn't bring up the subject in any way.")

But for Kelly and me, it has long been a pet peeve that female characters only get stories about romantic pairings. We watch fictional men get to be doctors and lawyers and leaders, who have sub-plots about going to bed with someone. The fictional women are lucky to get a professional matter as a sub-plot; their stories are almost exclusively about who they're flirting with, sleeping with, marrying, divorcing, etc.

Much has been made of Brave featuring Pixar's first female protagonist, and so it's a shame that much of the movie concerns itself with her being paired or not paired with a romantic suitor. But it's even more of a shame that the movie apparently doesn't go far enough with its romantic intrigue, such that bloggers imagine whole new dimensions to her sexuality. Seriously? Can't she just happen to be female without that changing everything?

Lori Lancaster | June 27, 2012
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Kelly Lee | June 27, 2012
The story isn't anything to do with romance, it's about a mother/daughter relatioship. I hate how everything a female character has to do in most media is be a romantic interest with someone else.