Exploring the historical accuracy of ‘Brave’ (2012) and discussing the balance between fantasy and historical accuracy in 3D animation “
The Beginning
At first I wanted to look at romance/marriage in historically based animations as content/storytelling-wise that is a genre that I’m interested in. So I looked at Brave (2012), Frozen (2013) and Tangled (2011). I also had a look into the ‘Feminine Hero’ and how society/media has moved further from the demonization of femininity (see early 2000’s films such as Mean Girls (2004). Our leading ladies (Merida, Elsa and Rapunzel) don’t steer away traditionally feminine things and remain fully fleshed out, strong characters. Youtube channel ‘The Take’ has some brilliant videos in which they break down tropes in media, one of which tackles the ‘Girly girl trope‘
I then decided that while gender expression and feminism in media is an important and interesting topic to me, the historical context is what would keep me passionate about the work. The 10 minute limit then reared it’s head and I chose to narrow my idea down to historical accuracy and Brave (2012).
Research
And so I started my research into medieval Scotland, the clothing and the marriage laws. At first this was a challenge as most sources I found related to medieval England rather than Scotland, or weren’t detailed enough to be of use. Luckily I managed to find the relevant information as well as many interesting articles and journals pertaining to my topic. All of these are reference below in my bibliography!
After extensive research I found the holy grail of this presentation ‘Disney Pixar’s Brave: Historically Accurate?’. A detailed analysis of all of my speaking points and more! With this information in hand I could move on to looking for case studies to debate my topic with.
Case Studies
I have 2 case studies for this presentation! Earlier in the project I explored how Pixar approached creating Brave, their trips to Scotland and their ideas about historical accuracy. Visually speaking the film is very accurate, many of the locations in the film can be found in Scotland, the look of the clothing has clearly been well researched too. But the team didn’t aim for complete accuracy, they aimed to create a fictional Scotland. This is reflected in the clothing, with clothing from mismatched eras and kilts that didn’t exist at the time.
It’s important to note that I’m not fighting on either side of the historical accuracy debate. I also acknowledge that I am not speaking on representation, a topic that I believe would need more time and research to explore.
As for case studies I decided to look into modern takes on historic story-telling and how they approach historical accuracy. My first Case study being Michelle Cheng or ‘lemoncholy’, a Toronto/LA based CalArts Student studying Character Animation. Her youtube video ‘Art, Fashion, & The French Revolution’ follows her character design process of Robespierre (a prominent figure during the French Revolution). Her work lies on the less historically accurate side of the debate, she explains that “while historical accuracy is nice, incorporating modern influences allows us to express character in a way that audiences can better interpret.” This is an interesting point and one that I think is important in character design as at the end of the day we’re creating work for a 2022 audience.
My second case study is the historical dating simulator game ‘Time Princess’. This game allows the player to play as real women from history (Marie Antoinette) as well as literary heroines (Jo March, Little Women). As a dress-up game Time Princess takes creative liberty with clothing and with it’s plots and characters too. On the other hand, Time Princess offers its players historically accurate information about events, people and places in it’s stories based on real events. I think this fits in well with what Michelle Cheng had to say about historical accuracy. As a game Time Princess aim to captivate an audience and keep them interested, ultimately they want to make money. By making their story-telling and designs with more of a modern influence they increase their chances of attracting and being approachable to their potential audience. This can definitely be said for their use of modern language during their historically based stories.
Conclusion
Ultimately I believe my conclusion to be finding a middle ground. I think there should be a balance between entertainment and historical accuracy. This balance will vary from project to project, some stories need historical accuracy to be taken into consideration, for example Disney’s Pocahontas. This includes cases of representation and the re-telling of events in history. On the other hand some stories use history as a backdrop and so accuracy isn’t as important of a factor to consider.
There is also something to be said for the duty of animation studios such as Disney and Pixar to consider the educational parts of their work because of their young audience. Perhaps this isn’t an issue at all but it’s interesting to consider whether children are taking historically inaccuracies as fact as they consume media.
References
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