Friday, July 06, 2007
Food for thought...in the form of ratatouille
Ratatouille happens to be one of my favorite dishes; I especially like it as leftovers, served cold on toast. But enough of the personal, on to the political. In an op-ed in today's San Jose Mercury News, writer Margot Magowen asks the question: why is it that animators can imagine worlds in which rats can cook, and cars and toys and ants can talk, or even worlds in which gravity is easily defied, but they can never imagine "a magical land where boys and girls are treated equally, where gender doesn't matter"? Why can they conjure up worlds in which "lion can be best friends with a warthog and a meerkat without gobbling them up, but [they can't imagine a world with] a lioness heading a pride?" Why is sexism and sex-role stereotyping taken for granted in worlds in which every other assumption is up for grabs?
