How To Train Your Dragon – Astrid is Tough, but That’s Okay Because She’s Pretty

In my last post, I talked about the parents in How To Train Your Dragon. Normally I wouldn’t discuss a film more than once, but a story in today’s Toronto Star noted that this film has returned to the number 1 position in the most recent box office tallies, outperforming J Lo, Steve Carell and Tina Fey, and others.

So I’m talking about the film again. This time, I will look more closely at the female characters.

My last post covered the absent mother. The lead male’s mother, Valhallarama, was alive and well in the print version of the story on which the film is based, but somewhere between book and screenplay she was killed off.

This disposable mother trope (as it was called by a writer at the Hathor Legacy) is a familiar one in children’s films. Valhallarama joins: the drowned mother from Ice Age; Remy’s non-existent mother and Linguini’s dead mother from Ratatouille; Nemo’s mother who became lunch for a barracuda in Finding Nemo; Po’s unmentioned mother in Kung Fu Panda; and Flint’s deceased mother from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, to name just a few. There is also the very popular Anakin Skywalker who first lost his mother in 1999’s Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace. His story has been re-introduced to a new generation of boys through the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars film and television series.

In the case of How to Train Your Dragon, one could argue that the producers compensated for the lost mother by adding female character Astrid, a young woman enrolled in dragon hunting class with lead male, Hiccup.

There has been criticism over the years about the lack of female characters in films aimed at boys or mixed audiences. It seems producers have gotten the message and have begun adding girls to these films. While their presence is a good thing, their presentation leaves a lot to be desired. Astrid is just one case in point.

There seem to be two extremes in the way female characters are depicted. On the one hand, we have the women who are articulate, smart, brave and decidedly maternal, like Ellie from Ice Age 3 and Sally from Cars. Then there are the ass kickers—the women whose equality is demonstrated by their ability to be angry and belligerent in the same way as the boys. Astrid falls into the latter category. She scowls, speaks aggressively and even beats up Hiccup.

The ass kickers are, of course, beautiful, and seen as such by the males. Witness the enormous crush that Hiccup has on Astrid.

I love seeing more females in kids’ films, but I have to ask if characters like Astrid represent real progress. By making Astrid an object of desire, the producers are diminishing her “tough” side. They are giving with one hand (by making her strong) and taking away with the other (by objectifying her).

The message here seems to be that females need to become more stereotypically male and resort to gratuitous violence to prove their strength while being be conventionally beautiful so they can, despite their “maleness”, be desirable and become love interests for the boys.

In other words, it’s okay for girls to be strong, but they’d better be pretty too if they want to get the guy. And getting the guy is what it’s all about, even for independent, intrepid Astrid.

In an amazing turnabout, this brave and fearless girl gets scared during her first dragon ride with Hiccup. As they are flying through the air, she finds comfort by wrapping her arms around the boy she once saw as a nerd. She then begins to see him in a new light and eventually falls for him. (The narrative arc for Samantha from last year’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is similar—she is off-the-charts brilliant, pretty, and thin, and ends up in love with male lead Flint.)

As this movie proves, it’s one step forward, two steps back for female characters. We move forward with every depiction of a strong female, but we move in the opposite direction each time they are depicted as babes or, in the case of mothers, removed altogether.