Film Response #8: Speed Racer

The main issue I'd want to talk about Speed Racer with is its portrayal of gender roles and equality of the sexes.  Particularly, its disregard for the female participant.

The gender roles enforced in the film hark back to the same era the design is pulling from.  Relying on traditional 50's and 60's values, the mother in the family is reduced to someone who is there to serve food when needed and offer up a heart-warming piece of advice to her troubled son.  Seen in a montage near the end of the team gearing up to bring Speed to the Grand Prix race, Susan Sarandon appears only briefly in the kitchen making sandwiches and delivering them, while the men are hard at work.  This being her only main task in aiding the team is putting her directly out of the danger zone and excitement of the things that everyone else is doing.

Contrastingly, Trixie is given a bit more to do in the film.  She remains as a support system for Speed and is there to give him a girlfriend, basically.  But, we do get one moment of her breaking out of her female role to drive a race car along with Speed and friends towards the end of the film--even getting to kick some butt of the antagonists.  The thing about this moment, however, is that it's short lived and she still ends up needing saving from Speed when danger comes a-calling.  Trixie still exists on the plane of a supporting female lead, who is there to bat her eyes and look cute, while also providing some sass and surprise with her moment in the cock pit.

I can see the issue with presenting these kinds of ideologies in children's media.  While the film is clearly one giant hyperbole and is not meant to be taken seriously on almost any level, there is still a subliminal message being conveyed.  A woman is not strong enough to handle the dangerous things; a woman is not cut out for more than verbal or emotional support.  I think, if I were to watch this as a kid, I probably wouldn't voice these thoughts or even really think about them, but the happenstances would be stored away in my memory and would be pulled out later when I asked myself why it's so important that I continue to perpetuate my own gender roles.  I feel we may not think it to be harmful, but when the child is consuming so many different films that all perpetuate the same ideas, it adds up to a closed mind.