Ratatouille

LET THE MOVIE COMMENCE!

Update: This post is imported from our original post in the LBT Facebook group.

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We watched Ratatouille this weekend.

Didn’t have the spoons to do a live-comment like we did for Frozen II & Onward BUT we did have a couple discussions with the kids.

Of course, they revolved around the sole woman in the movie, Chef Colette Tatou (the rat family apparently had no women because rats divide by mitosis or something).

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Scene A: Chef Tatou goes on a quick rant about having to be tough to be the only woman to break into the kitchen.

Both despairingly accurate, AND doesn’t address the issue with exceptionalism. And CERTAINLY doesn’t forgive the fact that the ONLY REASON they put a single woman in this movie was to make her an object of a man’s lust.

And the script writers clearly see that a glass ceiling for women forced into exceptionalism as a THING but don’t consider it a PROBLEM because they LITERALLY DID THE SAME THING FOR WOMEN IN THE MOVIE.

Exceptionalism and the ‘not like the other girls ’cause she’s tough‘ trope.

Discuss.

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Scene B: Remy the Rat has a subtle but clear contempt for Chef Tatou’s abilities, even going so far as to getting into a fight with her about ingredients.

Again, using a woman for this scene (the *only* woman). The script could have used any of the other characters to call their abilities into question to show how much better Remy (an untrained rat, at that) is as a chef and to create a conflict in the scene and the movie.

There are other aspects of the movie where Remy-controlling-Linguini breaks rules and disobeys authority.

YET – the only active and overt disobedience is reserved for the single point of authority where a woman is involved.

Discuss.

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Scene C: Linguini gets creepy and weird and Chef Tatou grabs mace out of her purse.

And then of course, in classic ‘Bad Mood And The Stick‘ form – she ends up kissing him. Because she can just shut off that fear real quick, right?

When the Earthquakes asked what the mace was, we suddenly had to talk about:

1. What is mace

2. Why women carry mace.

3. Why women HAVE to carry mace

4. Why it’s seen as so NORMAL that women have to carry mace that it made it into a Disney movie.

5. How the movie never actually addresses that constant vigilance and fear Tatou has to live with every day, and completely minimizes it by making her kiss a man she considered a threat just seconds before.

Discuss.

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Extra nitpick: Did anyone else get annoyed at the way the movie kept confusing the position of ‘Chef’ with ‘cook’?

I found that hugely disrespectful and a big error. Surely they must have had at least one actual chef review the script who would have caught that?

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Now, in terms of all things talking rat chefs and problematic ‘mediocre-white-men who get the girl’ tropes, anything to add?