Up!:Hi Pixar, awesome movie, no girls?
≡ Category: Books, fliks, tunes..., queer, Rants, Semi-daily thoughts | ≅ 2 Comments
Up is excellent. Beautiful. See it in 3D on the biggest screen you can find. I laughed out loud. I cried at 3 scenes. I just might pay $11 to see it again. I rave.I was so moved that after the credits, “awesome!” was the first word out of my mouth. Then I exploded with “WHAT THE FUCK Pixar? Would it have killed you to have a lead female character?” For real, Just One woman, girl or animal that is not: 1) dead, 2) wordless and myopically focused on returning to children when not cracked out on chocolate and named Kevin (because all cool stuffs must be boy gendered until proven otherwise), or 3) Mom patiently sitting on the sidelines while Son pines for Dad or Grandpa figure.
I’m so jaded by the father-son, boy-man character relationship dominating most films that I rarely get this riled up anymore. Plus, Disney/Pixar is the veritable King of the Mother-less child, Father-Son bonding odessey (Finding Nemo, Pinnochio, Bambi et al.) I shouldn’t expect radical gender bending here.
But I’ve paid good money to see 8 out of the 10 Pixar movies in theaters because they are consistently smart, creative and moving storytellers.
Ultimately, my distress is not about Pixar movies per se, but about the deeply entrenched ideas about gender and how they restrict our imaginations and sense of possibilities, especially for girls and young women. I mean, really, you charge a boat load of the best creative minds with making a movie and they can’t create a cast of characters that operate beyond typical gender relationships? Pixar’s cast isn’t even bound by human characteristics. They are fish, robots, animals, toys, monsters, race cars and imaginary super heroes. Yet, they imbue strict human gender identities in each character.
The always secondary female characters Pixar creates shows their team can make funny, complex and engaging female/girl characters: The Incredibles, Eva in Wall-E and of course, Dory in Finding Nemo. Gender roles aren’t encoded in our DNA. They are created and enforced by each of us and promulgated by wonderful storytellers like Pixar.
10 Pixar films and not one with a lead girl/woman. It feels like a deliberate snub. C’mon Pixar! Use your powers for good! Give us a girl!
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Prop 8: Moreno dissents
≡ Category: Politicking, queer, Semi-daily thoughts | ≅ Comments Off
In law school, when assigned to read cases I felt were decided wrongly, I would read the dissent first to fortify myself for the chore of reading the majority opinions.I downloaded the Prop 8 decision and skipped to Carlos Moreno’s lonely and eloquent dissenting opinion. It carefully lays out his legal argument for why a proposition that requires discriminating against a group based on a suspect classification is indeed a revision of the state constitution. But for this blog entry, I’ll spare you a re-cap of the analysis surrounding the distinction between a revision and amendment and share with you a selection of the grand statements that will ground me as I wade through the majority opinion. If you want to read the actual legal arguments—of which there are 185 pages worth, go here.
Justice Moreno’s name was briefly floated as a possibility for the Supreme Court and I wonder how this opinion would have played out in confirmation hearings. Guess we’ll never know.
Justice Carlos Moreno:
“The rule the majority crafts today not only allows same-sex couples to be stripped of the right to marry that this court recognized in the Marriage Cases, it places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities. It weakens the status of our state Constitution as a bulwark of fundamental rights for minorities protected from the will of the majority. I therefore dissent…
Describing the effect of Proposition 8 as narrow and limited fails to acknowledge the significance of the discrimination it requires. But even a narrow and limited exception to the promise of full equality strikes at the core of, and thus fundamentally alters, the guarantee of equal treatment that has pervaded the California Constitution since 1849. Promising equal treatment to some is fundamentally different from promising equal treatment to all. Promising treatment that is almost equal is fundamentally different from ensuring truly equal treatment. Granting a disfavored minority only some of the rights enjoyed by the majority is fundamentally different from recognizing, as a constitutional imperative, that they must be granted all of those rights. Granting same-sex couples all of the rights enjoyed by opposite-sex couples, except the right to call their “ ‘officially recognized, and protected family relationship’ ” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 7) a marriage, still denies them equal treatment…
I realize, of course, that the right of gays and lesbians to marry in this state has only lately been recognized. But that belated recognition does not make the protection of those rights less important. Rather, that the right has only recently been acknowledged reflects an age old prejudice (Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th at pp. 821-822, 846, 853) that makes the safeguarding of that right by the judiciary all the more critical…
Proposition 8 represents an unprecedented instance of a majority of voters altering the meaning of the equal protection clause by modifying the California Constitution to require deprivation of a fundamental right on the basis of a suspect classification. The majority’s holding is not just a defeat for same-sex couples, but for any minority group that seeks the protection of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.”
Iowa
≡ Category: Politicking, queer, Semi-daily thoughts | ≅ Comments Off
In a unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court held denying same-sex couples the right to marry is unconstitutional. So in 21 days, Iowa will continue to slouch towards Gomorrah as gay men, lesbians, trannies and queers of all stripes storm the Bed and Bath to set up marriage registries and file joint tax returns.I only skimmed the decision, but it seems that it’s not as sweeping as California’s In re Marriage decision. That case also declared unconstitutional the ban on same-sex marriages. More importantly though, it held laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation are subject to “strict scrutiny.” Sexual orientation joined race, religion and national origin as a “suspect classification.” And all that is legalese for “you better have a damn good reason to treat this group of people differently from others.” In sum, the California Supreme Court provided queers the highest level of protection against discrimination.
The Iowa Supreme Court didn’t go quite as far. Concluding that the ban on same-sex marriage didn’t even pass “intermediate scrutiny”, judges in Iowa called it a day and punted the question of whether laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation require a highest level of review. Perhaps this was a compromise to get a unanimous decision.
Nonetheless, with most court-side cheerleaders and commentators tensely expecting California’s court to uphold Prop 8’s ban on same-sex marriage, we can rest assured that we can always move to Iowa…or not.
As I re-read this, I wonder why I am compelled to post this sort of constitutional law 101 entry. I don’t even enjoy reading legal writing. Oh well, one of the many existential queries facing Lunamania. Off to do more productive things on this beautiful Saturday afternoon.
