The guys in “Lord of the Rings” didn’t seem to mind getting stuck in, and they could hardly be called Oafish Brutes.

However, raising those possibilities, just like raising the possibility that she’s gay even after it’s been pointed out that she displays apparent interest in a male suitor, doesn’t make you keenly insightful. It makes you at best someone who is so open-minded their brains have fallen out, and at worst a tool with a round agenda you’re determined to push in every square hole that presents itself.

…The traditionalism this movie seems to be attacking is long, long dead for most of the women I attended community college classes with (if Charles Murray is correct, it’s still alive and kicking for the upper classes).

The women I’m referring to were mostly working-class white. Most of them were pigs in the same way that the women on The Jersey Shore are (really a lot of them were far worse). And, as near as I can tell, there was nothing close to traditionalism anywhere in their life. ( I doubt they had over-bearing mothers trying to teach them poise, etc..) They seemed to take their cues from popular culture.

And women who are not upper class/white, are ignorant pigs who do better in their natural habitat, similar to chimpanzees and gorillas do better in the wild than in zoos… or they are the victims of unfortunate circumstances.

Your response is like abstract art or techno music. It offends me with asymmetry and the discordant lack of flow and unexpected nature of it, but I want to stick a gold ribbon of success upon it as well. Such pleasing noise!

I don’t personally agree with this interpretation (that she is gay) but I can see how some people can advocate for it.

The achetype archer is a young man, but a young woman may occasionally be observed, a spunky tomboy.

I have noticed this as well, it is interesting to observe the close quarters fighters stereotype has changed from valiant crusader to oafish brute; I tend to think this reflects the destruction of the “white male” dominant social archetype in general. It follows suit with commercials and television shows depicting the white father as an incompetent useless out of touch ineffectual moron, and catholic priests being described as money grubbing pedophiles. These are all related: down with the white man. More freedom for all.

I believe TLP wrote about this on his blog. The 80s action hero is dead. I am in my late 20s and I remember growing up, still able to identify the “white male” dominant hero archetype from my early 80s television media. Kids today cannot say this. The hero is either NOT a white male, or he is a very corrupt weak flawed hero, not at all a source of strength to emulate or respect.

It also strikes me, based off the descriptions I’ve read, that this movie is really about upper-class white girl problems and that the message of the movie is potentially disastrous for non-upper class people. I recently attended some community college classes and I can tell you, traditionalism was not much of a threat to the women there. They were mostly – and I feel I’m being kind here – pigs (morally and personality wise), or they were otherwise nice girls who had gotten themselves into bad situations and were headed for tough, very tough lives – (too bad they couldn’t have married up, well and soon).

Also, I haven’t seen Brave (because I have zero appetite for didacticism served up glowing cabbage patch kid people) but I have to wonder if freedom and individualism in this movie, and for Merida, are not, in fact, a kind of nihilistic slumming.

People, the movie slaps you upside the HEAD with the fact that the suitors are all varying degrees of repulsive. Apparently it slapped some of you a little too hard, if you think Merida needs any more reason not to want to give up her freedom and living with her family doing whatever the Hell she wants. Stop. Trying. So. Hard.