Of course, that might have been due to the fact that I watched it for what it was worth in my own mind, i.e. a beautifully orchestrated familly movie (not to mention baren of pop-culture jokes and sing-along songs; PIXAR be blessed!!!!) and didn’t seek to attach too heavy and sordid social undertones to it.

I am a woman and I didn’t feel threatened at all by any ‘message’ or roles in that movie. Actually, I don’t see anything negatively sexist in the Buy n Large robots aforementioned. It is a proven fact that women are still predominantly involved with housework and that men most often take care of ‘heavier’ or dirty jobs like landscaping or garbage removal. I don’t think this is shocking or even bad. It just seem to be a natural trend.

To me, a misogynistic portrayal of a female character would be if that character is presented as inherently stupid, or inept, or in some way contemptuous solely because it is female. The mere fact of portraying a female as a love interest or doing traditionally ‘female’ things isn’t necessarily negative.

I think it is getting to be a bit of a social hysteria; the urge and trend to create characters and character line ups almost SOLELY to enforce politically correct rules. While that isn’t wrong in itself, I find it creates very contrived stories and art. A story like Wall-E doesn’t in ANY way encourage or promote contempt, hatred or dismissal of women. It is a story written for its own purpose and, I found, very honest and candid in its delivery.

Wall-E’s heroic act is finding a dirty shoe. It’s not so much that she’s cold, when she initially turns off to Wall-E, so much as: “Why would that girl have anything to do with a pathetic trash-collector robot? She’s got the future of life on Earth, and humanity to save, after all!”

Wall-E’s just a sappy cowering robot that collects garbage and shows up late.

Character complexity is marked by growth. Does a character learn something and change by the end? The character of Wall-E doesn’t grow in the film. But Eve does.

And those robots you were perusing on the website aren’t identified in the film. I don’t know if they were even featured. Wall-E and Eve are really the only robots that were assigned a gender. See it before you write an article.

I’ve checked into statistics for the UK and the proportion of women going on to 3D animation, digital cinema, and media related courses is pretty low – around 22% or so. This may explain it.

I’ve also had a look through the credits of all the Pixar features and counted the number of jobs done by women and the number of jobs done by men. The figures matched up with the number of students – about 22% as an average over the 8 films.

This kinda suggests that Pixar hires people on merit and ability rather than gender. Hmmm…. sounds familiar, rather like the topic of quality of character over gender.

Admittedly my figures aren’t 100% accurate as I couldn’t determine the sex of some people’s names – Konishi, Narottama, for example, or even Alex and Kelly.

Also, I found that over time there has been a slight proportional shift toward a higher male % of crew – but this is negligible, particularly after you consider the % for crew of indeterminable gender (no offense meant).

On the whole though I’m loving the discussion. I find my reaction sways as I read posts and investigate facts. On the whole though I have to say that I don’t think Pixar would intend any sexism… which is based on nothing more than my own hopes… I think they are just writing about what they know and identify with. Perhaps they are just taking the easy way out by not challenging themselves by doing a female lead, but hey, the quality of the stories and the sheer joyful experience of watching these movies, the morally sound handling of good and evil, gives Pixar a ‘get of jail free’ card.

But then, what if. What if they made a film with a female lead? It could really settle some arguments. Or then, as Michael suggested, if it was Ratatouille that had a female lead the outcry could have been incredible! ‘Pixar finally do a movie with a girl as the main character and what’s it about??? COOKING!!!’

Sometimes you just can’t win.

As for Pixar in general, there is an argument to be made regarding the lack of a female lead character. I don’t believe this to be intentional sexism, given that Pixar have created some strong female characters in its films. Part of it is probably down to a mainly male animation staff, and possibly a slight lack of confidence in their ability to produce an positive female lead character.

It’s a dilemma, and I rather see good supporting female characters than bad leading ones. However, Pixar have certainly have the ability to do both, and hopefully we’ll be able to see that in later films.

Hopefully the guys at Pixar will see forums like this one and get the hint. I honestly think that there are just so many men in that building that they just haven’t thought about it.

At least the female characters in Pixar films aren’t feeble women waiting to be saved by male heroes. Or vapid, vain princess/Barbie airheads. And I agree that my little girl loves Pixar movies just as much as my boy.

I love Pixar, but I do hope they’re listening.