I don't know...I was looking forward to seeing Brave, but now that I've read
this, I realize just how racist, misogynistic and offensive it truly is.
Melissa McEwan wrote:
Like its cohorts, Brave is doing something very cynical in its appropriation of Scottish culture for the backdrop of this film: It's using the most identifiably tribal white culture to side-step charges of racism while playing the same goddamn exploitative game of hilarious caricatures and noble savages. Scottish people, with their clans and tartans and ubiquitous red hair, have become the go-to group for makers of pop culture who want all the fun of racial stereotyping without the charges of racism. "Scots are tribal with weird indigenous clothing and silly instruments and some old language and funny words and goofy accent and ginger hair, and these facts have been used to marginalize this occupied nation for centuries, but they're WHITE, so it's okay!"
These are the exact things that have been used to paint reductive pictures of people of color in animated (and non-animated) films for years. That Scots are now frequently used as "hilarious" sidekicks and broad comedic punchlines, and historical Scotland as a shorthand for "magical kingdom," and that Scots are the most identifiably tribal white culture is not a coincidence. Whiteness is not a monolith. Acknowledging that a universal white culture is a fallacy even though a universal white privilege is not, is an important part of dismantling white supremacy. Othering certain groups of white people isn't a part of dismantling white supremacy; in fact, it serves to reinforce the racist narrative that there is a default "normal (white) culture" from which people exclude themselves by being "different."
When people of Scottish extraction don't object to Othering, that silence is construed as tacit tolerance and used to suggest that peoples of color, particularly indigenous peoples, who object to similar treatment of their cultures are "oversensitive" and "overreacting" and all the other familiar silencing tactics. Meanwhile, when people of Scottish extraction do object—surprise!—the same silencing tactics are used against them.
Which is all the evidence one should need to identify that it's the same gross game, in a whiter package.
Worst of all, Brave pretends to be this empowering story for modern girls because it shows the female protagonist asserting her independence against societal norms, but really, it just "evoked the tiresome stereotype of the fiery redhead [and, by being set] in some magical version of historical Scotland,...allows the gatekeepers of the Patriarchy to keep telling themselves—and everyone else—that the lack of true freedom for girls and women is a thing of the past."
You see, "to tell the story of a modern ginger-haired Scottish girl, and the intersectional oppressions she must navigate, would have been truly Brave", but instead we just get this shite.
Sorry, Pixar, but you clearly dropped the ball on this one.
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