[ SECRET POST #2216 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2216 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 120 secrets from Secret Submission Post #317.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - personal attack ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

16. http://i.imgur.com/zyCijmL.png

[(Anonymous)]

This movie gets so much hate, I don't get it. I know it has its issues, but the movie was something you rarely see-a mother/daughter story. Merida had to be a 'brat', or else the ending would have meant nothing. She was a teenage girl who balked at getting married so young to a stranger, and went about it the wrong way. She's coming into her own and stumbles. The journey makes her realize her mother did love her, and her mother learned to let go a little. (And hey, the guys didn't want to marry a stranger either. But for some reason no one ever really complains about that?)

Personally I find it weird that the kingdom is so young and it already has 'customs'. If there's only been one king and queen then how can it be 'customary?' :X

[sensualcoco.livejournal.com]

Yeah seriously, it was a good movie. I was pretty impressed that Merida and her mom solved their problems by talking them out. I feel like that's such a novelty in movies.

It wasn't quite what I was expecting going into the theaters, the trailers were kind of prepping us for some epic adventure tale and we got more of a family drama instead, so I could see why some people might be a little disappointed. Different expectations and all. But the movie was still really good, it was heartfelt, timeless and genuinely funny. My only criticism is that I wish they expanded on the Mor'du story.

[fauxkaren]

Yeah, the movie wasn't perfect and I think that it had a weird tonal dissonance in places (like the bits with the witch and with the three brothers kinda jarred with the feel of the rest of the movie, imo).

But I really love and appreciate this movie for being a mother-daughter story that showed both sides.

[morieris]

I get the hate for the film (mainly because people want to hail it as revolutionary for it's story [it isn't] instead of the people involved [Well, on case of another princess story, it isn't creative, but a mother/daughter show is])

The only time I found she was acting...incredibly selfish was watching Elinor endure the cake and totally ignoring her pain.

[sparklywalls]

As others have said, the trailers were somewhat misleading I guess BUT I still mostly agree with you. Yeah it might not be what we were expecting but it wasn't terrible. I don't think I'd say it was my favourite Pixar film by any stretch but I did enjoy the mother/daughter relationship being a main focus. I mostly get on with my mum but we had our moments and I'm not ashamed to say the last part of the film had me in tears so bad that I couldn't move from my seat for a few minutes after it ended and my finance was becoming quite worried! Might have something to do with the fact I live in a different city to my mother now so can't see her easily anymore and maybe I was missing her a bit. Basically, it made me want to hug my mum. *Shrug* Guess the film just tapped into a part of me that had an effect on me and I like it when films can do that. Though Pixar has always produced films that manipulate you emotionally a bit! Not that it is entirely a bad thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Personally I find it weird that the kingdom is so young and it already has 'customs'. If there's only been one king and queen then how can it be 'customary?' :X

That bugged me, but I read a couple of hypothesis that kind of explained it in my headcanon.

1. That that's why there are only four families groups rather then more

2. It's bragging hyperbole

3. It is an ancient custom from the people before the four families shown (such as the people that Mor'du came from), and the four families kind of adopted it.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, blaming your mother for what both parents are responsible for, and using magic on her that you have no clue whatsoever is or will do is totally non-bratty! The parents should have just kanye shrugged off the entire political situation creating the problem in the first place!

[intrigueing]

From what I've seen, I think it was her attitude towards her mother that most people found bratty, not the fact that she didn't want to have an arranged marriage. I might just be ignorant of douchier fandom circles, though.

[(Anonymous)]

The hell kinda messed up porno spoof were you watching?

[(Anonymous)]

I loved the movie. I loved Merida.

But I did find some of her actions not just "bratty", but "beyond the fucking pale and bordering on sociopathic." In particular after Elinor eats the cake and is in very obvious physical distress, Merida's only concern is whether she's changed her mind about the marriage. Not that the cake could've been fucking poisoned for all she knew and her mother may be dying right in front of her. She got it from a senile old witch, after all.

[(Anonymous)]

It's an interesting question. How much is royalty expected to do to keep their country out of a war? Be polite to someone you don't like? Yes. Marry someone you don't like? My knee-jerk response to that is "well, how much do you not like them?"

In fiction, good royalty sacrifice their own happiness and priorities to keep their people happy and safe. Bad royalty sacrifice their people's happiness and safety for their own priorities. It's human not to want to sacrifice your own choices, but royalty doesn't get to be human. That's the price of admission.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't find her bratty, just unrealistic. Given the era, she would have known that she would grow up to marry for the good of her kingdom, just as her brothers would eventually grow up to do as well. Arranged political marriages were just how it was done, especially with the firstborn. Her shock and dismay over the whole thing felt anachronistic to me and very annoying. (So to, for that matter, did her need to blame her mother for what both parents had decreed and her decision to use potentially malicious magic against her mother, as another anon pointed out.) I wouldn't have minded it so much if she had been portrayed as pointedly ignoring it out of horror over the whole concept, but it felt to me like she had honestly never thought it would apply to her at all.

But if she was a brat, is that really a bad thing to acknowledge? I mean, look at all the various Disney heroes and heroines out there. Most of them start out immature and flawed. It's one of the big points in a hero's journey to watch them mature and come of age.

[ninety6tears]

I love you, OP. I honestly couldn't see anything Merida did as selfish because the reasons for her supposedly having to marry were not presented solidly enough (and I guess if they had been it would have felt like a darker film and not very Disney?) I get that it's about the fact that she's unnecessarily bratty to her mom but I unfortunately can't come to a story like that without the adult knowledge of sex and a "I would be trying to claw the eyes out of somebody who tried to force me into marriage" mentality, so who gives a fuck if she has a tantrum and lobs more of it at her mother, the parent who should be the more understanding one because she's a woman. After growing up with characters like Jasmine who may have actually shaped my ideas of being entitled to choose, the tone of it in this movie was kind of a slap in the face and I feel like this is such an unpopular over-serious reaction to the story but I can't help it.

[(Anonymous)]

I found Merida a bit bratty, and I really really did not want to. I wanted to love her.

But it's not because of what you're suggesting OP, it's because of Merida's total lack of empathy for other people and because of her selfishness. As others have talked about above there were a few moments in the film where it's a bit concerning that she doesn't seem to care that say she may have just poisoned her mother.

And I've heard from Pixar people that they struggled with making Merida a likeable character. I don't know what was going on in the story department but they apparently just had a lot of struggles with that film.

[(Anonymous)]

...I had genuinely never thought of it that way. Wow.

I did think she was unpleasant because of the way she didn't appear to care about her mother's pain during the cake scene, but yeah. You make a very good point. For some reason I'd just not thought beyond the marriage inevitably involves sex. Is that the Disney effect? I hope not, I thought I was more switched on than that.

[(Anonymous)]

OP, here:

I don't have any sympathy for the mother. She was OKAY WITH HAVING HER DAUGHTER RAPED. She was in fact, ACTIVELY WORKING TO HAVE HER DAUGHTER RAPED. Merida, and any woman, is/was entitled to do absolutely anything to prevent being forced to have sex against her will. I quote reviewer Scott Mendelson:

"This isn't a kid who doesn't want a curfew, but rather a kid who is 100% accurately upset over being forced to marry (and presumably have sex with) a guy she has no interest in because he won her in a sporting event. That the film tries to say that 'Merida has to learn to empathize with her mother' is insane and outright offensive in this specific circumstance. When a parent is treating their daughter like chattel, there can be no middle ground. The film either has to support the institution of forced marriages or it has to come out against it. Boiled down to its core elements, this is a seemingly light and warm-hearted story about a young girl who has eventually wins the approval of her mother to not be forced into marriage and treated like a prize. In the end, Brave is a mediocre variation on Drew Barrymore's Whip It. But the film's rather dire stakes makes its false moral equivalency downright offensive. And if you think I've being melodramatic, just imagine the same story revolving around another 'traditional practice' - female genital mutilation."

[(Anonymous)]

Merida is a brat because:

- She is very, very privileged, and accepts all these privileges gleefully, but does not want to take responsibility or do any of her parts in it. Not just getting married, but working hard at becoming a good Queen someday. She'd rather goof off with the bow and horse that she only has because of the privilege lent to her by the position of being a princess.
- As others have said, she solely blames her mother for what both her and her father are responsible for (not to mention the law, which they're not totally above)
- Destroying her mother's tapestry was completely unnecessary--I was pretty disgusted with how little she cared about destroying it, when it was the end of the world that her mom broke her bow (something she was instantaneously regretful of)
- She did not give two shits about her mom having eaten a pastry from some old witch in the forest and then immediately becoming physical ill. Who on Earth would not think she hadn't been poisoned or something?
- She immediately declares "It's not my fault, it's not my fault!", which might be realistic, but it's incredibly self-centered to think on those terms first considering she has no idea whether it's permanent or not

And the triplets bothered me at times too--they had to be bribed to help rescue their mother from being impaled by their father. That's...pretty freaky.

I wanted to like Merida so much when I watched it, I came away completely disgusted after. Knowing that, I ended up liking her a bit more on the second viewing.

...you guys realize Disney's been doing this for a while, right?

[nyxelestia]

Mixed feelings on the whole "she's royalty, she's obligated to forced marriage" thing, but most of the arguments have been stated upthread so I'm not going to repeat them.

I will say that "skipping over the horror" is pretty much the Disney M.O. If you look at the premise of most Disney movies - or hell, if you look at most children's media - there's a lot of Fridge Horror involved in most of them, and it's almost always skipped over in the actual movie/show/ect because, quite frankly, they are not the point of the story and the story is meant for children, anyway.

And I feel the need to add that the marriage thing was mostly a catalyst for the plot, which was really about Merida's relationship with her mother. If you expect Disney to 'address' the problematic nature of forced marriage, why not have them also address the problematic nature of, oh, I don't know, un-elected leaders/lack of anything remotely representing democratic ideals, here? Or why isn't anyone getting mad at the other three clan leaders for nearly going to war over the fact she didn't want to marry one of them in the first place instead of placing all the blame on either Elinor or Merida in this debate? Why not addressed the socioeconomic disparities presented in the movie? Who wants to expand on how sex and marriage were political tools for most of human history in a children's movie?

The movie is not set in the modern day, and it's childish to just apply modern day standards and ethics to an archaic setting without giving any thought to context. I hate rape and forced marriage, but I also hate war and mass murder even more. But either way, do you really want to go into that kind of debate in a children's movie that's meant to ultimately be about a mother and a daughter learning to cooperate and compromise to save their relationship?

The movie wasn't about forced marriage. It was about Merida ignoring the fact she had responsibilities as a princess which is part of the price she pays for her privilege, and it was about the fact Elinor was ignoring her daughter's genuine concerns and desires about the course of her life - and it was about them reaching a middle ground by the end of the movie despite all this.

[(Anonymous)]

I hated that feminist peice of crap. There are more important things in the world than your convenience and comfort. Like, you know, RUNNING A COUNTRY. Suck it up and deal, Merida, you brat.

[(Anonymous)]

It's funny how people here will freak out about the portrayal of women as subservient to men, or about women being forced into certain positions as a result of the sexism inherent in their society, or about women being shown as powerful only in the context of their ability to manipulate men.

But when anyone brings up 'Brave,' you get a bunch of people going, "it's okay for a woman to be forced to marry if she's royalty."

[illiadandoddity]

I found her a brat at the beginning not because she didn't want to get married, but because she didn't want to take any responsibility as the princess. I suspect that if she hadn't spent all her time being surly and uncooperative about almost every single other thing we see her do, Elinor probably would have been a lot more receptive to listening to her about the betrothal issue. But because Merida is equally surly about everything Elinor asked her to do, Elinor sees it as just one more instance of Merida being childish and selfish, instead of realizing that this really is a BIG DAMN DEAL for her daughter.

[(Anonymous)]

I...am kind of torn.

On hand, I can see where they're coming from - She's running away from a responsibility that would have [as her mother said] Very Bad Consequences if it didn't happen. I won't get into the sexual slavery bit because I can see both sides on that*. Yes, it sucks that she has to marry someone she doesn't know [and frankly, everything said on this side for her would go for the guy too.] On the other hand? It's a political marriage, and not doing it would have some Bad Consequences [according to her mother at the beginning.]Considering the past those four tribes had, it's possible it could even result in a war - and yeah. Choosing to risk a war instead doing what is, probably, viewed as your duty is kinda selfish, imo.

Though, one thing that always bugged me about the 'I don't want to get married!' argument is that her reaction to someone she mistook as one of her suitors...kinda seemed to contradict that, and make it more 'I don't want to get married to *these* guys.'

*Before someone jumps on me for this - I mean that in the fact that we are missing a lot of context, not that 'OMG! Sexual slavery isn't bad!'

[iggy]

Brave made me realize how gross and misogynistic critics et al regarding films about women. I feel foolish for not realizing it before.

And a lot of the commenters here are not much better.

(My favorite are the fans who adore Ariel and then think Merida is OMG SO TERRIBLE AND BRATTY for being mean to her parents.)

[chibichan]

I think I've been very lucky, in the sense that I haven't seen any bad or sexist reviews of this film, but knowing they exist makes me kinda sad. I will not lie, it is a bit flawed as a movie, but it dealt with mother-daughter relationship beautifully and anyone who has ever had a rocky relationship with their mother can relate to her (like me).

I'll keep on loving Merida with you, OP.