I am a big fan of Pixar shorts. I love them so much I have at least one DVD containing a collection of them. Normally, Pixar is funny and creative in their delivery, but one short really stood out to me as falling way below Pixar's normal bar of excellence. The short "Lava" that comes before "Inside Out" actually made me cringe. For those who haven't see it or need a reminder, it is a story about an anthropomorphic volcano that sings a song looking for love, all the while growing old and slowly sinking into the sea. By the end, a young female volcano rises above the sea inspired by him, singing his song, and restores him above the water. Cute, right? Nope.
The song is alright, and I'm all for a love story, but this combined the wrong elements. On top of that, apparently no one ever though it might be creepy to put together a very old volcano, one that is so old it's sinking back into the ocean, with a volcano so young she's just surfacing. That's some sketchy Hugh Hefner/Charlie Chaplin stuff going on right there. Think of how disgusted people would have been had the genders been switched. Entire movies are based around the concept of older women dating younger men, while it is basically expected and accepted that older men marry younger women. Even in movies where the age difference is quite visible, like in "Sabrina" or "Casablanca", people hardly bat an eye.
Then there was how each of them were designed. The male volcano is basically a volcano with an old man face; short, squat and without any other human attributes (although one may make the argument that the two slopes on either side of him count as arms).
The female volcano, on the other hand, is tall and thin with a young, beautiful face, long, black hair and what looks to be green robes. At the very least, you can distinguish where her arms would be if she were human and not made of stone.
The designs by themselves are not bad, but the comparison between the two disgusts me. The fact that the male volcano is just an old man face whereas the female volcano follows American beauty standards for women really shows what the team at Pixar that created this really thought of women. All the while, this ironically precedes a movie centered around a preteen girl and the big adventure two of her emotions (personified as females) go on to help her. I know Pixar hasn't had the greatest track record with representing women, but I thought they were on an equality upswing.
The short isn't even trying to say much more than "Hey! Here's a cute love story." No, "love isn't everything" or "learn to love yourself" thrown in there. It's just "man is lonely and gets woman because he can sing." On top of this, the female volcano also doesn't even have her own words. She just regurgitates the song the male volcano is singing. So the moral of the story really is "do as your man says and you'll have a happy ending."
