I might even agree with some of the issues supported by today's feminists such as in this partial statement from Wikipedia, "Since the 1980s, standpoint feminists have argued that the feminist movement should address global issues (such as rape, incest, and prostitution) and culturally specific issues (such as female genital mutilation in some parts of Africa and the Middle East..."
I do have a problem with ultra-feminism, where women want to be superior and not just equal to men, where motherhood and children (particularly unborn children) are devalued. That said, I will point out the anti-feminism themes I see in two movies.
I grew up listening to two Disney movie soundtracks on vinyl record. As the movies were released in the theater before I was born, I was familiar with the soundtracks long before I actually viewed the movies. One was "Mary Poppins." The other was "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." I love both. The story of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," as presented in the Disney movie, has so many elements that I enjoy: the Victorian setting, the folk art aesthetic, a family friendly story and an absent-minded inventor/dreamer/visionary main character. It's hard for me to fully express just what I love about this movie.
In recent years, as an adult, I read the original "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" book by Ian Fleming, who is more famous for his James Bond stories. I was disappointed that, aside from the main characters and their ridiculous names like Truly Scrumptious and Caractacus Potts (perhaps to imply Cracked Pot) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the flying car, the book had absolutely no resemblance to the movie whatsoever. The plot is entirely different. There is no trip to Vulgaria, no Baron and Baroness Bomburst and no children banned to the underground. I have to confess I like the Disney movie plot better.
As an adult, however, I see something different in the movie than I saw as a youth. Children are outlawed in Vulgaria. The baroness who rules the land recoils from children as if they were mice or vermin.
This makes me think of China where there is a two child limit per household, and children are aborted to keep the number under this quota. But it also makes me think of the selfish ultra-feminist who devalues children as an inconvenience, who treats the unborn child as an extension of the mother's body, a lump of unfeeling flesh to be disposed of if it's inconvenient. She has the right to abort, because "It's my body" as if aborting a baby was something like trimming hair or nails. Clearly, there are two bodies involved.
A sixteen-week-old baby in utero
I have some past experience as a child care worker, and I saw an ugly side to motherhood there too, as did the writers of "The Nanny Diaries," a selfish motherhood that puts career above all else, where children are shuffled from one program to the next, to before-care, then school, then after-care to ballet or karate class. I cared for affection-starved children who wanted me to hug and cuddle them and asked me, "Pretend you're my mom."
The fact that the child-hating baroness is the villain, and the story is in favor of the children, seems to me to have a parallel to a pro-life and pro-children message, whether or not that was the intention of the Disney writers.
The other more recent movie where I saw a subtle anti-feminist message was in "Mars Needs Moms." Other reviewers saw just the opposite, but since this female-dominated world (on Mars) is presented in a negative not positive light, I see it as taking a different stance. Although perhaps it could be stated that children viewing the movie might not be able to see the subtlety.
In the female-dominated world of Mars, young girls are raised by nanny-bots, not mothers, and young boys are thrown into the trash heap where they are raised by the "hairy tribe guys." I have to think that the script writers are making a point about ultra-feminism and not a positive one.
In the end, they discover a cave painting that shows "two parents," showing that in the past Mars had a family structure more similar to that on Earth. They had forgotten about a mother's care and love for her children and the need for children to have two parents. One critical reviewer disliked the fact that the word "father" is never mentioned specifically in the movie. I can understand that, but perhaps the point was that this society had degraded to such a point they no longer understood what "father" was. However, the point of the movie seems to be that two parents is a good thing rather than otherwise.
The fact that the young boys are treated so differently than girls in the Mars society is, of course, disturbing. I remember (not verbatim) the disdainful line that the villainous matriarch of the society makes about young boys, "always laughing and playing." There does seem to be a similar prejudice in our modern society about active and excitable young boys.
I was talking some months ago to a female friend of mine who is the mother of two teenaged boys. She mentioned a female educator who unfairly made things difficult for her sons on a number of occasions and had the nerve to announce during a public ceremony that she "hated boys." Really? It reminded me of stories my own mother has told me about when my oldest brother was in elementary school. My poor brother who was a quiet, well-behaved boy who was far from being hyper was getting stomach aches from the stress his teacher put on him and the boys in his class in general. She screamed and yelled in a paranoid way even when they were behaved, and one time, my mother caught her in the act and understood my brother's stress.
Why are so many children, especially boys, labelled ADD and ADHD? It may not be natural to every boy (or girl,)especially at a young age, to sit quietly in school for hours on end. I tend to think, and this is just my opinion, that these levels of energy are more basic and normal human differences. Why is the active child "abnormal" and needs a label and a prescription for Ritalin? If these children are so abnormal, why are there so many of them? There may be some cases where medication is needed, where the problem has some root in some neurological abnormality, but I don't believe it's a good thing to label a child because he exhibits some unwanted traits or to give out Ritalin as a panacea.
The throwaway children in both movies, the underground children in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and the trash heap boys in "Mars Needs Moms", makes me think of another social problem that is not a direct result of feminism, street children in Peru. The problem comes as a result of the breakdown of the family, as much from problematic fathers as problematic mothers, but the boys in the trash heap of Mars make me think of the boys in the trash heaps of Peru. My pastor has written a book, Habitations of Cruelty, about this very problem and other problems affecting the world's children. There are, I believe a preponderance of street children in other nations as well, but my church in particular has concerned itself with the street boys of Peru, supporting an organization called Centro Shama.
From the Centro Shama website,
"Only in Lima it is calculated that approximately 1500 to 2000 boys, girls and adolescents, with the age among 6 to 17 years, are living in the street. This phenomenon is consequence of the family crisis that we experience, the increment of disfunctioning families, extreme poverty, migration to Lima, that during the last two decades ascended to exorbitant percentages, the crisis of values that our society experience and the infantile abuse, that every day is increasing. All this causes, that every day a boy escapes from his house."
I'm so happy that my church supports the shelter, care and rehabilitation of these children at Centro Shama.
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