Bo Peep’s ​“fem­i­nist” makeover is a hol­low ges­ture from Pixar

Pixar’s new take on Bo Peep is pants, in every sense of the word. The announce­ment that the nurs­ery rhyme favourite will return to the fran­chise after 20 years came hand in hand with an intro­duc­to­ry teas­er, a char­ac­ter poster, and news of the film’s release date: 21 June (fun­ni­ly enough, the same day as Lars Klevberg’s Child’s Play remake).

The pro­mo­tion­al footage – which has Bo ditch­ing the dress for a pas­tel romper and bran­dish­ing her crook like Rey’s quar­ter­staff in The Force Awak­ens – aims to hail the once wilt­ing love inter­est as the new poster girl for the stu­dio, but instead feels like a hasty patch-up job for a pro­duc­tion that has laid bare Pixar’s deep-root­ed prob­lem with sex­u­al discrimination.

Toy Sto­ry 4’s shaky road to release is no secret. Pixar founder John Las­seter, who was set to co-direct the film, left the stu­dio at the end of 2018 amid lengthy accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct and gen­er­al­ly cre­at­ing a work­ing envi­ron­ment that open­ly favours male employ­ees. Such alle­ga­tions were rein­forced by the depar­ture of writ­ers Rashi­da Jones and Will McCor­ma­ck from the project in 2017, who described Pixar as hav­ing ​“a cul­ture where women and peo­ple of colour do not have an equal cre­ative voice” in a state­ment giv­en to The New York Times.

In June 2018, Cas­san­dra Smol­cic, for­mer graph­ic design­er to the stu­dio, wrote a defeat­ed first-hand account of her time there for Vari­ety, includ­ing details of what Lasseter’s self-described ​“mis­steps” actu­al­ly entailed. With­in the same month, Las­seter con­firmed his depar­ture from Pixar, although he has since been hired as the head of Sky­dance Media’s new ani­ma­tion division.

The ani­ma­tion indus­try has neglect­ed its female staff for just as long as Hol­ly­wood has. The news of alle­ga­tions against Pixar spurred Women In Ani­ma­tion – an organ­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to improv­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of female in the field – to send an open let­ter to stu­dios demand­ing a hard­er stance against sex­u­al mis­con­duct and more hires for women.

A knee-jerk reac­tion to the move­ment has already worked its way onto screens via war­i­ly-received tongue-in-cheek gags. Dis­ney wrote a bit­ing­ly self-aware scene into Ralph Breaks the Inter­net where the princess­es of fairy tales past con­gre­gate to pick holes in their patri­ar­chal sto­ry­lines, while Emmet’s ​“hap­less male” is held to account as a punch­line in Warn­er Bros Ani­ma­tions’ The LEGO Movie 2: The Miss­ing Piece.

Now Woody’s girl­friend – who didn’t make the cut in Toy Sto­ry 3 – has come out as a cen­tral char­ac­ter thanks to a hefty script rewrite and a pletho­ra of damn­ing tes­ti­mo­ni­als against the film’s found­ing father and the house that he runs. The jump­suit and weapon feel like an idle short­cut to female empow­er­ment, as do press release state­ments like ​“Bo’s tak­en con­trol of her own des­tiny” from the film’s new direc­tor Josh Cooley.

With the char­ac­ter news tak­ing place with­in a week of Domee Shi’s short film Bao – the first Pixar short direct­ed by a woman – earn­ing an Oscar nom­i­na­tion, you hope that the stu­dio will start putting more faith in the women work­ing behind the scenes than the ones they’re cre­at­ing on-screen for publicity’s sake.

Now that Frozen direc­tor Jen­nifer Lee has stepped up to share Lasseter’s for­mer posi­tion with Pixar stal­wart Pete Doc­ter, we might be able to enjoy both.