Big Bang Theory star calls Frozen sexist

[Something Amyss]

Yeah. Maybe you didn't participate in this thread, but Zira started a thread shortly after the movie came out with the same premise. (S)he was very ardent about it.

EDIT: Tried to find and link it but it has been wiped from the Escapist's servers.

That's baffling, since she has ardently defended Japanese games as not racist or sexist because it was part of their culture.

So my mind is just blown that a traditional fairy tale with a twist would then be considered sexist. Because hey, it's part of our culture.

 

[hermes]

I, for a change, do like Big Bang Theory... but I have to wonder what grounds does she have for people to treat her opinion as relevant. Yeah, she didn't like it. Is that newsworthy?

And her arguments make very little sense. In one paragraph, she says the portrait of the characters is feminist, and on the next she says they are male bashing. That is like trying to have your cake and eat it too...

 

[C. Cain]

I'm not denying there are actually racist and sexist things.
It's just that by now, everything can or has been interpreted as sexist or racist in both directions. Trivialities like this thread's OP significantly hurt the discussion, as the points are driven into absurdity.

I don't think this is a straightforward example of reductio ad absurdum. The subject matter of this very thread, in itself, may be somewhat trivial, but there is no inherent contradiction in maintaining that a lack of non-conventionally attractive body types for female protagonists is indeed problematic.

The reaction to a new revelation of real sexism or racism should be a straight "oh no, how horrible", but by now it's "oh boy what's it this time?" followed by a sarcastic shrug and rolling eyes.

Unfortunately these things turn out to be a tad more subtle and entrenched than the open and heavy-handed racism/sexism/ and whatnot of yesteryear seems to suggest.

Since we're already at it, let's apply the underlying reasoning of your argument to something else, shall we? Imagine we're living in a simpler time and it has just become unacceptable to own black people as slaves, but minstrel shows are still popular; a trivial, whimsical bit of entertainment, if you're so inclined. Saying that minsterlsy is racist is surely harming the discussion. The reaction to a new revelation of real racism should be a straight "Oh no, how horrible.", but by now it's "Oh boy, what is it this time?", followed by a sarcastic shrug and rolling eyes.

Or in other words: discussing a problem of one type and then pointing to a more severe problem of the same type doesn't change the fact that the first problem is still a problem.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Hunchback of Notre Dam did kind of tank at the box office though...

I think Hunchback didn't do so hot because it's a rather frightening movie with dark themes, both visual and textual.

Seriously the movie had a few throwaway male characters as more or less background and supporting cast. I mean sexist? The main story is about a family dealing with Mental Illness. 2 Sisters. And the characters are not exactly drawn to be any stereotype. Heck Anna is more or less generic. An audience projection character designed to have elements of how every girl in the audience more or less sees herself. Elsa gets a bit of the sexy beauty thing going on, but that is more an allegory for her coming to terms with adulthood, and also a contrast to the schizophrenia. (which yeah is really what the story is about.)

I think these people can find sexism in root vegetables. They are honestly batshit insane.

I'm not sure if Frozen had anything specific in mind, but I haven't read any staff comments on it so I could be wrong. I think it's just a generic "love you for who you are and don't rely on anything else" story. I suppose the strength is you can project just about any stigma you want onto it.

I can see why people would get the impression, especially given the overall trend in these kinds of fantasy stories. I just don't agree with them.

Snippity do dah
Snippity day
My oh my
What a wonderful day

I haven't been to their threads since. It got locked because (s)he kept insulting everyone and everyone responded in kind, which is likely why it's no longer on the servers. I will say what I said in the other thread, though. Culture doesn't make one immune to criticism. How can a culture grow and learn without criticism?

 

[faefrost]

Hunchback of Notre Dam did kind of tank at the box office though...

I think Hunchback didn't do so hot because it's a rather frightening movie with dark themes, both visual and textual.

Seriously the movie had a few throwaway male characters as more or less background and supporting cast. I mean sexist? The main story is about a family dealing with Mental Illness. 2 Sisters. And the characters are not exactly drawn to be any stereotype. Heck Anna is more or less generic. An audience projection character designed to have elements of how every girl in the audience more or less sees herself. Elsa gets a bit of the sexy beauty thing going on, but that is more an allegory for her coming to terms with adulthood, and also a contrast to the schizophrenia. (which yeah is really what the story is about.)

I think these people can find sexism in root vegetables. They are honestly batshit insane.

I'm not sure if Frozen had anything specific in mind, but I haven't read any staff comments on it so I could be wrong. I think it's just a generic "love you for who you are and don't rely on anything else" story. I suppose the strength is you can project just about any stigma you want onto it.

I can see why people would get the impression, especially given the overall trend in these kinds of fantasy stories. I just don't agree with them.

Snippity do dah
Snippity day
My oh my
What a wonderful day

I haven't been to their threads since. It got locked because (s)he kept insulting everyone and everyone responded in kind, which is likely why it's no longer on the servers. I will say what I said in the other thread, though. Culture doesn't make one immune to criticism. How can a culture grow and learn without criticism?

Oh no, the writers and director have said it is outright an allegory for living with Mental Illness. That's what Elsa's powers are. That's what they had in mind at least. although everyone is free to have their own takeaways.

 

[Schadrach]

A thread mentioning sexism and The Big Bang Theory? Two of the Escapist's big trigger points, how is this not 500 pages?

Worse, she seems to have largely missed the point of the movie, meaning this would be a great argument to pounce on. I mean, where are all the critics of feminism? Tired from making up things about Sarkeesian?

I think everyone is too distracted by the whole GamerGate thing. If it makes you feel better, it's certainly a misrepresentation of the movie, although the movie does end with the princess getting herself a man, even if that's not the "true love" in question. She sounds like she only half paid attention to the movie, at best.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

Bialik, who is mother to two sons, claims the film's plot sets a bad example to young girls as it focuses on a woman's quest for a husband, writing, "The search for a man/love/Prince is still the reigning plot line in the movie ... My issue is that this is a movie geared to small children who I don't think need to be focusing on that as the main driving plot of a movie ... Disney classics were all about this and look where it's gotten us!"

Did... did she even watch the movie? The Hans plot was at best the B-plot, with the main focus being the relationship between Anna and Elsa. And even then the conclusion to the Hans plot was basically "love at first sight is bullshit."

She also takes issue with film's male love interest turning out to be a villain, claiming it promotes "male-bashing," but reserves her most scathing criticism for the way the female characters have been portrayed physically, adding, "The male characters look like cartoon men ... Not so with our lead ladies ... They have ginormous eyes ... Teeny-tiny ski slope noses. Exaggerated delicate ski sloppiness, actually. Barbie doll proportions of their bodies in general: tiny waists, ample busts, and huge heads. They look like dolls."

To the "male-bashing" aspect I have one response: Kristoff. He is portrayed as anything but bad or "bash-able." As for the rest, I bolded the most important parts, as those parts seem contradict. All the characters are portrayed unrealistically, as it is a cartoon. They could have realistic proportions, but that would clash with the overall "cartoony" feel that the aesthetic and story that the movie have.

Overall, her analysis could not have missed the point harder without her becoming subject to Poe's Law.

 

[Lord Garnaat]

Eh, I never cared for Frozen that much. It's not bad by any means, but I never saw why people thought it was some huge revelation. If it's a matter of having strong female characters who don't need no man, why are people acting like it's the first Disney movie to do this? Was Mulan not a strong female character? What about Belle?

If it was just the fact that it has "true love" turn out to be "love between sisters" rather than romantic, I can understand it more. Honestly, I thought that was very novel and a good change of pace. What I thought was slightly hypocritical, though, was the fact that the whole movie was ragging on Anna for falling in love with a guy she had just met in the span of a single day, only for it to do a 180 later on and just have her fall in love with someone else she just met in the span of a single day. Every character Anna meets tells her that it's a terrible idea, saying that she should be more realistic, that true love doesn't just happen... except that it totally does, apparently! Because she falls in love with Kristoff just as fast as she fell in love with Hans, and apparently it's OK so long as it's with him. It gives the impression of a movie that is so incredibly pleased with itself, having thrown off this oh-so antiquated ideas of instant love and mocked them incessantly, but then turns around and does the exact same thing. I don't know, it just bugged me.

Also, those trolls are ugliest, most irritating, most unnecessary things I've ever seen in an animated film. The thought of them fills me with rage.

As for the sexist thing, I think that's ridiculous. What kind of hatred or inequality was this movie advocating for in any way? Whether media has some kind of inherent sexism or not is a legitimate concern, but I can't help but feel that people need to pick their battles more carefully.

 

[Something Amyss]

How can a culture grow and learn without criticism?

I don't know. I couldn't make her square the circle, but it's just weird the whiplash here. Because sexism generally is part of our culture. Nobody really seems to decide you know what? We should band together and oppress women because we're evil misogynistic pigs!"

Though that did happen in a Captain Planet episode I just made up.

I think everyone is too distracted by the whole GamerGate thing. If it makes you feel better, it's certainly a misrepresentation of the movie, although the movie does end with the princess getting herself a man, even if that's not the "true love" in question. She sounds like she only half paid attention to the movie, at best.

That's still sort of the thing, though. People have spent so much time tilting at windmills, but here's one where the accusations could readily be made that they're completely unfounded, and virtually nobody's even responding.

And to top it off, it's an actress from one of the most complained about shows around these parts, which is hilarious because you'll see people complaining about TBBT being "nerd blackface" in one post and then go on to tell feminists to shut up because they're reading too much into things in another in a beautiful flash of self-unawareness, but that's beside the point.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

Yeah, cause someone who's a part of the Big Bang Theory really has grounds to complain when a piece of fiction stereotypes.

My man just went in!

Not going to lie, I was kind of thinking the same thing. The show pretty much lives off of the nerds-are-weird stereotype.

I was going to post in this thread but never mind. Basically this.

 

[Mikeyfell]

snip

snip

Part of me wants to come up with a clever response, but the other part of me wants to answer you by asking another question.
*I'm mostly responding to The Almighty Aardvark, but hopefully this will answer both of you.

Who does it help when someone calls something, that clearly isn't sexist, sexist?

Even if you haven't seen Frozen the thing she's calling out is that the lead character is looking for love.
If you met a woman in real life who told you she really wanted a boyfriend or a husband, you would not tell her her pursuit was diminishing the independence of her entire gender. You just wouldn't because you aren't insane.

A couple things that knowing the premise of Frozen would help with

Anna, the main character that Mayim Bialik is complaining about, has never been outside.
So she's extremely sheltered and naive and only has 1 day to fulfill all her naive fantasies.

she even sings a song about it

Spoiler

This is relevant because Anna is a girl with a unique circumstance and in absolutely no way is she a symbolic surrogate for all woman kind.

If Frozen had any real sexist themes would be if the good guys of the story thought Anna had to get married in order to be a proper woman despite her wishes, because it doesn't matter what she thinks.
As it stands Anna wants to get married because she spend her formative years alone in a sheltered environment and believes that fairytale romance is a real thing.

Or the good guys of the story would think Elsa (The heir to the throne) is not fit to rule the kingdom because she's a woman.
as it stands the bad guys think Elsa is not fit to rule the kingdom because she has magic and that makes her a monster.


So calling Frozen sexist is nothing short of a decoration of your own personal insanity.
And stories like the two I just mentioned up there wouldn't happen unless the writer/director thought they were good enough to make a sexist character deep and rounded enough to carry a movie. because people understand that sexism is bad, even the people who are flagrantly sexist understand that most people hate them for it.

If a legitimately sexist film came out everyone would be able to tell, not just the crazy ones.

 

[Vault101]

Completely off topic, but could I ask why you never start sentences with capitals?

I know, I know. It's yo' biznez and all that, but it's an interesting quirk and I can't help but be a curious George.

I don't?

well I never really noticed, I tend to crank out posts as fast as possible

 

[Something Amyss]

If a legitimately sexist film came out everyone would be able to tell, not just the crazy ones.

Hindsight, indeed any sense of history, would indicate otherwise.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Frozen isn't really sexist, it's just stupid. As 8BitOwl has pointed out, it's nonsensical writing ends up making its "progressivism" fail in turn leading to a reversal of what it's trying to accomplish.

I honestly don't understand the hype around Frozen.

It was 5/10 movie tops, Tangled was better.

This was all I wanted to say. You stole the words I generated sir.