The XX Factor: What women really think.

Disney will give you your money back, if you're willing to admit you thought a video would make your baby smarter

A post from DoubleX writer KJ Dell'Antonia:

My kids still love the Baby Einstein videos. If I popped one in now, even the 8-year-old would sit down and watch the pretty toys spin to the music. When it was over, none of them would be any smarter, and if you thought they would be, I'd say you should get a clue. Disney—rather surprisingly—says you should get a refund ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Marge Simpson As Playboy Covergirl? Surely We Can Do Better.

Poor Ariel. She’s got the lusty red hair, but it’s tough to make the cover of Playboy without hot legs. (They’re required for more than just running, dancing, it seems.) She, and many equally deserving characters, were beat to the honor of being the first animated Playboy cover girl by none other than Marge Simpson, who poses coyly on the front of the November issue ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

Ponyo, Disney's Latest Princess

Deep in the hottest, doggiest days of summer, Disney is bringing audiences a refreshing treat: Ponyo, the latest film from legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.

Ponyo is the story of a spunky little goldfish who falls in love with a human boy and, after getting her fins on some of her father's magic elixir, turns herself into a little girl. Little does she know, that act is about to throw the entire natural world out of whack ... (Read more in Double X.)

The Princess and The Speech

As Nina pointed out last week, and the Times pointed out over the weekend, Disney's The Princess and The Frog, its first animated feature to star a black heroine, Tiana, is already controversial, and it doesn't come out until December. Watching the trailer for it on the big screen over the weekend (it's playing before Pixar's totally awesome Up!) got me thinking about another potential source of contention: Tiana's voice... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

What Does American Girl Know that Disney Doesn’t?

Boy Talk

Communicating with boys is the theme of the day in the New York Times, which has a front-page article on how market researchers are communing with young guys to help Disney carve out a boys' entertainment niche, as well as the Science section column on how pediatricians tackle the sex talk with boys. Like you, Jessica, I like the basically egalitarian core of the message the doctors urge, which is an emphasis on respect and consideration; that strikes me as right, and something kids (especially teenagers) of both genders can't hear enough about. And I was surprised that the subtext of the Hollywood story seemed to be gender convergence, too. Forget the Girlz vs. Boyz approach to marketing, apparently. Expert "boy-whisperers" like Disney's Kelly Peña have discovered that boys aren't so into the stark winner-loser paradigm after all, and the no-girls-allowed ethos seems to be out.

But also like you, Jessica, I have my doubts about the adult presumption that all this communication is, or even should be, quite as open and revealing as it's cracked up to be. I'm dubious about the doctors' claims that if adults are at ease, the conversations about sex won't be awkward—and I wonder if it's a service to parents to suggest they can expect that. I'd say the Talk is easier to conduct with respect and consideration—qualities parents should model, after all—if adults aren't envisaging lots of cozy sharing and caring.

And based on the other Times article, I'd say the market researchers are kidding themselves if they think they've established great rapport with boys, whom I'd credit with doing a great job of keeping their own counsel in the face of those who want to snare them into endless show-based merchandizing. Certainly Disney's probing hasn't produced much in the way of insights: Show the underside of skateboards in movies, use check marks not Xs (which remind boys of bad grades). The boys aren't talking much, and it's not clear the adults are listening very well when they do. Disney seems to have concluded boys want "fun with a purpose," though the rare comment offered by a kid in the story did not exactly confirm that. The boy helpfully defined a popular boy pastime—to "crash"—for the nice, nosy lady. "After a long day of doing nothing, we do nothing."

Let's Not Ignore Mulan!

Dayo, I, too, am eager to see Disney's awesome-to-be-beheld marketing forces plaster Tiana's face on lunchboxes and bathing suits. I remember how important the Polynesian Barbie was to me, and I'm thrilled to have cheesy fantasy avatars available to little girls of all colors. But I've never really understood this line of argument:

the Mickey Mousers have cycled through the Middle Eastern, Chinese, Native American, and Hawaiian princesses, not to mention six kinds of white—why not black? Compounding the frustration is the distinct lack of “live action” roles for black actors and actresses, which makes any perception of Hollywood bias smart a bit more.

I understand that Disney probably has more to redress vis-à-vis the African-American community, and obviously roles are limited for performers of color. But Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Native American actors get even less screen time than black actors. (Does the Hawaiian Lilo count as a princess?) I'll admit it right here: I cried when I saw Mulan. In fact, I still cry whenever I see it. I don't think this is or should be a racial pissing contest, but those intervening films are important, too.

Disney's Got Jungle Fever?

All About Eve

Pixar’s latest kiddie masterpiece, Wall-E, did some massive damage at the box office on its opening weekend. As A.O. Scott recently noted in a New York Times essay about Kit Kittredge (watch this space for more on that film), Pixar has yet to build a movie around a girl protagonist. But Wall-E does prominently feature a pretty bad-ass lady: Wall-E’s crush object, Eve, a sleekly minimalist commando-bot with an itchy trigger finger. What kind of girl is Eve? One XX Factor-er wondered whether Pixar had intentionally made Eve beautiful but dangerous. The hapless Wall-E “is attracted to her,” she noted, “yet fears she will destroy him or, at the very least, come to his house and mess up his stuff.” Is Eve some kind of femme fatale? (Or, given the fact that she looks like a floor model from a Japanese tech show, is she an electronic dragon lady?) I, for one, found Eve’s wanton destructiveness hilarious, and it occurred to me that she actually evokes a specifically male comic archetype—the powerful brute who can’t control his own strength—which I think makes her even funnier, not to mention a little subversive. In other words, I think she’s more Small Wonder than Angelina Jolie.

Eve also fits into another classic comedy narrative: the chic, competent career woman who falls for a bumbling but sweethearted schlub. Do you think Judd Apatow got a consulting credit for that?

The more I thought about it, though, what Eve reminded me of most was the world’s first Eve—in particular, the vision of her found in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Like her namesake, robot Eve’s initial design objective is to incubate the first stirrings of life; it’s no coincidence that she’s shaped like an egg. And the biblical Eve was pretty destructive in her own right. (“Oh, honey, about that whole ‘ruining our chances at immortality and losing God’s everlasting favor’ thing: Totally my bad.”) But even more significant in my eyes, both Pixar’s film and Milton’s poem are about the importance of finding a true partner and companion. The famous last image of Paradise Lost shows Adam and Eve standing outside the gates of Eden; as they prepare to begin a brand new life in a brand new world, they take hold of each other’s hands. If you saw Wall-E, you know that it’s pretty much a 100-minute pantomime about a boy robot trying to hold hands with an oblivious girl robot—before they go repopulate the Earth. The good stories never change, I guess.

Also in Slate, read Dana Stevens' review of Wall-E and see what critics are saying about the new Pixar film in Slate V's Summary Judgment.

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