Perhaps a bit too militaristic and sexist?
There’s so much going for this film, but the whole military and sexist sub-text made me a bit sick…
I saw this film today with my 4 and 6 year old children, and although I had checked beforehand that it was age appropriate and that there was nothing inappropriate for my children, I was a bit disappointed. The whole military theme – the elves with military uniforms, the military-like operation to deliver the gifts, the authoritarian military leadership style – was completely unnecessary (mea culpa, I should have paid more attention to the trailer…). I don’t want to suggest that there’s any intentional positive message about the military, but there’s certainly an excessive link between Christmas and the military which simply distracted from the otherwise nice storyline. I understand that the script-writers may have wished to convey the idea that the eldest son ran the Christmas operations with a military style, but that could have been done by simply using certain tones of voice or behaviour that reflected an authoritarian and unemotional approach to the gift delivery and children’s feelings. Bottom line, I think that this type of film normalises the military (even if unintentionally), when the military should be an exceptional sight in our world – this can’t be good for children (or adults!).
And the sexist side-story is not very positive either… I’m not referring to the “when people believed women couldn’t be taught how to write” joke, as that actually was meant in a positive way. But the “whatever women do at home whilst their husbands go to work” remark, along the whole passive role Mrs Christmas takes throughout the film, is rather sad, even for a film about a classical/tendentiously conservative theme like Christmas. The poor lady cooked, put up with all the cranky males of the family, was eternally patient and understanding, and wrapped up all the presents, including her own… how servile is that? Even if she manages to fly the spaceship, what time of role model is that for the girls watching the film? Yes, apparently the elf that wraps up the presents is a girl (although that’s something hard to figure out in the film, considering the speed of the dialogues) and she has a more assertive role in the film, and maybe other aspects of the film may be more liberal (if the two elves kissing are really male), but sexist undertones to the film ruined it considerably for me.
And of course some may think I’m just exaggerating, and need to take things a bit more lightly… but perhaps that’s the problem: children’s films nowadays seem so keen on pleasing parents / grown-ups too, that they become inappropriate for children. References in this film to giving whiskey to children and a child becoming an alcoholic at the age of 9, or the speed at which things happen in this story without giving any time for a child to catch up with any changes in the plot, illustrate the point…
A couple of weeks ago I went to watch Mary Poppins with my children. They loved it, never got tired, and still sing the songs. Today they both got so bored and even sometimes scared, that they wanted to leave half-way through. And this is surely amongst the most naïve children’s films having been released in the last few years… so I guess I’ll have to stick to 60s, truly age-appropriate films for children for a few more years, until my children become old enough to listen to some types of jokes, see some sort of things and figure out some sub-texts…