Wallace, Gromit and popular misogyny

So. I'm dragging myself out of bed after a night on the razzle, work to do, a headache to get rid of, hoping like hell I didn't say anything stupid to the gorgeous American ladies in the smoking area, one of whom has my number, oh god. I put the kettle on and look for something soothing to watch to clear my head and distract me from the massive pile of grown up stuff I have to get through today. Ooh look, new Wallace and Gromit!

I bloody love Wallace and Gromit. They were some of my favourite films as a young child, and the care that goes into making all those silly little plasticine dollies move and mutter innuendos and operate implausible machinery is still enchanting to watch. They're perfect, twee little fripperies. The heroes are a bumbling, weird-looking eccentric Yorkshireman of indeterminate age and his long-suffering sentient canine companion. They are inventors. They fight crime. They are obsessed with cheese, and drink tea all the time whilst making charming visual puns. It's delightful.

So imagine my surprise when I got halfway through the dynamic duo's new adventure, A Matter of Loaf and Death, and found that on top of all of the above it was forty-five minutes of worn misogynist fairytale about female toxicity and fat-hatred.

The premise, right, is that Wallace gets a new girlfriend. The girlfriend, Piella Bakewell (pictured, being squeezed by the giant modelling claws of the patriarchy), used to be a famous pin-up on adverts for bakery produce. But the famous model got fat, as a consequence of which, right, she could never ever get another job. She becomes so embittered that she goes completely barmy and turns into a homicidal maniac nursing a terminal grudge against all bakers. She seduces Wallace in order to mince him up horribly, before which she fills his house with flowers, pink things and other patently ridiculous symbols of what quite a lot of older men (Nick Parks, perhaps, amongst them) and young children think of as femininity. Overcome by a fit of manic rage, Piella tries to push Wallace into his baking machine, beginning a long sequence of comic tomfoolery involving Piella being really, like, fat, at the end of which she is eaten by crocodiles.

No, really.

A Matter of Loaf and Death is targeted at children. So what will half of the film's intended audience, the hundreds of thousands of little girls all over the world who have seen the thing by now, be thinking? What message does this send to young girls?

Well, firstly, don't ever ever ever get fat, because you'll lose your job and then your mind. Your future success depends entirely on your ability to look great and hook a man. Avoid bipedal dogs who drive delivery vans. And don't worry, it's all a joke, really.

The thing is that it is all a joke. It's a joke that works, partly because it plays into very familiar received stereotypes. And I laughed too. But because I'm a dour, humourless feminist who will eventually be eaten alive by her own cats, after I had my little giggle I realised that I still wasn't okay with this. Yes, I do get the joke. But getting the joke doesn't mean not thinking about the wider implications of the media we squeeze into our children. A lot of popular misogyny comes in under the radar, which is why we dour, humourless feminists need to carry on doing the work of attention, the work of analysis. And stay away from the crocodile pits.


ETA: Parks' studios have just released the title of the next film, A Strip Off The Old Block, in which we get to watch Wallace inventing a machine for beheading whores. Gromit has to turn the winches. He can't scream, you see, because he hasn't got a mouth.