Brave vs. Tangled

We recently watched Brave again, and I have to agree that I didn't find it fully satisfying, though it clearly touches something in my wife that is directly linked to her tear ducts.

The writing of the film seems unfinished to me. Like the script has areas of "In this scene daughter and mother somehow share a kind of epiphany over some kind of bondy thing or other" and nobody ever finished working out exactly what was happening. They just hoped that by nodding at it we'd get somewhere.

And we get symbols without connection to anything. Twice we see a physical object that is broken/torn between characters to represent the destruction of some kind of bond by some unspecified bad thing. The prospect of the queen's humanity being lost to the savage nature of the bear is kind of scary, but it doesn't really have any kind of link to anything else going on, no chance of thinking "Hey, her loss of her human nature is kind of just like _______ "

And the enchantment itself is undercut by the transformation of the boys. For her it is supposed to be terrifying, but they're just hilarious.

The lead is wrestling with responsibility, but that doesn't really have anything to do with anything else. And her sorrow over having potentially destroyed her mother is late, shallow, and not really earned. Plus I can't shake the unpleasant f\notion that part of what she learns is that proper women should know their place. Like Dorothy and Jasmine, she has to learn that these kind of adventures are to be avoided-- the only positive outcome is that they return the young woman to her proper place.

Not that manly lit doesn't have the quest archetype. But men go on quests, achieve things, and return home better men. Women go on quests and return home having learned that the only true destination for their quest is right where they started.

Tangled gets shunted aside as lesser Disney, but I agree it makes a better case for its lead.

First, as a middle-aged man, I find the central threat really resonates on a feminine level without being less of a real threat. It's a dramatization of the very Good Girl cage that many women learn by quest to lock themselves in willingly. You're not strong enough. You're not good enough. You can't handle the world. Stay in your tower.

She does display the classic woman-heroine power-- the power to enlist the willing aid of others by making friends (same as Dorothy). And if I ignore the wacky hoodlums, I'm left with the lovable-ish rogue, who is perfectly competent and capable to handle certain situations-- just not THIS one.

Why the film couldn't give her a female sidekick or friend I do not know. For that matter, why some of the mangy hoodlums couldn't be women escapes me. But the more I consider this movie, the better I like it.

Which for no particular reason reminds me-- do we have to consider Xena, Warrior Princess at some point?