“How to Train Your Dragon” is a great movie; I was riveted from start to finish. The story is compelling and the animation is wonderful. A misfit boy, Hiccup, refuses to kill the dragons who relentlessly attack his Viking village, even as everyone around him, who he loves and respects, viciously slaughters them. Hiccup, instead, befriends and trains the creatures, ultimately bringing peace to his people.
But why couldn’t Hiccup have been a girl? Why couldn’t the dragon in the title have been female?
This movie, like most modern day animation blockbusters, does throw girls a few bones. There are two main characters that are girls; Astrid and Ruffnut are both good fighters, but they are clearly in supporting roles. Their job in the movie, as for most girls in most movies, is to help propel the guy, in this case, Hiccup, to greatness. Astrid and Ruffnut preform their archetypal tasks as helpmeets very well. Rah rah.
There are a few minor, minor roles for adult female Vikings, drawn as fat rather than strong, shown mostly in crowd scenes, never getting more than one line at a time. Hiccup’s father is a main character; he’s the leader of the tribe. His mother– surprise, surprise– is dead, so unusual for the mom to be killed off in a kids’ movie. She’s mentioned just once, when Hiccup’s dad hands his son a helmet which he tells his son used to be half of his mother’s breast plate. Ha ha.
The repetitive gender dynamic of boy-leader/ girl-follower is troubling because, like it or not, Hollywood provides our kids with some of their earliest leadership training. The star of the movie is the leader of the movie. Hiccup demonstrates all the skills of a truly visionary and effective leader: he’s smart, compassionate, creative, listens to his own truth, advocates for causes he believes in, builds constituencies, and trains his team. The girls’ critical choice in the movie is whether or not to follow him.
What gets me about “How to Train your Dragon” is here was a prefect opportunity to put a girl in the star role, even without messing too much with Hollywood’s beloved gender stereotypes.
Usually, when I complain about the lack of girl characters, people respond with something like “But in real life, lionesses never lead a pride” (Lion King) or “There aren’t really female chefs in top tier French kitchens” (Ratatouille)— temporarily forgetting while this may be true, it’s also true that rats can’t cook or even speak, and that lions don’t pal around with warthogs and meerkats or sing songs either. Why can’t DreamWorks create a magical world where girl and boys are equally important?
In “How to Train Your Dragon” Hiccup was already stretching the bounds of accepted masculinity by being so skinny and sweet compared with the muscley, hairy, slow-thinking, Popeye-on-steroids Vikings. Hiccup redefined bravery by refusing to kill. Why not go just a little further and make the character a girl? Apparently, DreamWorks is still too afraid, or too unimaginative, to come out with a movie starring a female, so I guess a skinny, weak boy is the next best thing.
How is Astrid finally convinced to put her trust in Hiccup instead of in his father, the tribe’s real leader? Hiccup takes her for a ride on his trained dragon, Toothless. As she dares to climb behind him on the saddle, grinning and clinging to his back, she reminded me of watching “Superman” as a kid, seeing Lois Lane dazzled by handsome Christopher Reeve as he flew her through the starry night or myself, cruising down a freeway in Austin, on the back of my boyfriend’s motorcycle, in awe at the sunset in the giant Texas sky. Yeah, it’s seductive and all, but why can’t Hollywood give girls the chance to be the hotties in the driver’s seat?
There’s one more female in this movie, blink and you’ll miss they call her a she. Spoiler alert: it turns out all the dragons are stealing food to feed a secret, hidden, giant, boss dragon, “like worker bees to a queen,” Hiccup discovers. I’m going to look at this paradoxically minor/ major female role as subversively feminist, and awarding the movie an extra G for it, though I don’t know how many people who see the movie will get that part is a female one.
“How to Train Your Dragon” gets a GG/S rating: some girlpower, some stereotyping.
For those of you who are going to comment boys will see movies about girls, girls will not see movies about boys, please see this post.
Reel Girl 
Hi Margot. I was drawn to this movie because Toothless reminds me of my cat Laurylai. I think it teaches empathy without promoting an unthinking kind of duty. Philanthropy instead of altruism. Volition, ability and inclination are so much better attributes than duty.
I completely agree with you on a number of terms here. In general, I pay a lot of attention to the respective roles of girls and boys in films and books, and why the writers decide to put them here. I look at if gender roles are meant to make commentary on the real life issue, be historically or culturally accurate, change typical roles, or are simply ignorant. I agree that in fictional stories, when so much else is changed, why not change the stereotypical or cultural gender roles? However, I find How To Train Your Dragon different because the movie is about a father-son relationship, and because putting a girl in the “weak, sweet” role would be even worse.
Some people would respond to your statement by saying “well viking women wouldn’t have had leadership positions.” Number one, maybe, maybe not, but the whole idea of this movie was to show a father son relationship, not a mother daughter one. Hiccup needed to be a boy to talk about this very specific and unique relationship between father and son. Number two, women are shown as warriors in this movie rather than at home, so that’s good, even if they aren’t in leadership roles. (and your statement about “fat” doesn’t work because that is simply historically accurate and allows the men and female warrior adults to be about the same size. Why would they have fit, slim women adult vikings and fat/buff men vikings? That would be much worse.)
My main point is that if Astrid was the “weak sensitive” character and Hiccup the “super hot strong” one, that would be pro-stereotypes so much more. The only thing that one could complain about is that the boy ends up saving the day, but the whole point of the movie is that boys don’t have to be stereotypically manly and tough: they can be sensitive, thoughtful, and different. Meanwhile, Astrid gets to be the hard to please, on top, sexy, and tough one. I see this movie as giving the message about gay sons and their fathers, about fathers accepting that their sons aren’t like everyone else, and that they may not be stereotypically masculine. If it were vise-versa, the girl would be in that same old “weak, seen as unimportant, not listened to, and seen as oversensitive” character. How like a girl, to not want to kill the dragon. Though we would all be rooting for the girl when she finally changed the world, it’s not the same as rooting for the boy who is a little like a girl, and who wins by being himself.
Thanks for putting out good thoughts to talk about and respond to,
Tera
We just saw this movie yesterday — my two boys, ages 6 and 8 and me. I loved everything about it, to be honest. In fact, in the car on the way home my 8 year old said à propos of absolutely nothing, “You know what I learned from that movie, Mom? That just because someone is bugging you doesn’t mean you should be mean to them.” Not a bad takeaway for either gender!
Hi,
I feel like the Christian coalition is doing a better job than women (in general) getting their agenda into mainstream media. Juno made keeping an unwanted baby all fairy tale happy and easy. J Lo’s new movie Backup Plan was probably not written by a woman.
Is it time for women to develop an old girls network and push this agenda forward. Women (and girls) as capable, strong, people – and characters for movies.
I’m glad Geena Davis is in the mix.
Moe,
I seriously can’t tell the difference betweeh rom-com posters with Jennifer Lopez, Jennifer Aniston, and Sandra Bullock.
Yes, old girls network! I’m doing my best with the Woodhull Institute, training young women ethical leaders in skills they too often lack (financial literacy, negotiation, advocacy, publishing.) I wanted to create a place like Woodhull because I was tired of women protesting from the outiside (which I do some of in my blogging, but at least I AM blogging. I’m surprsied by how male dominated the intrenet is and the comments are on the mainstream sites.) Anyway, the goal is to create and network more women writers, producers, and media moguls. It’s not that men’s stories are bad, it’s just too many stories come from that one prespective. If women ran the world as a group, men’s roles in movies etc would be boyfriends and foils, that’s why we need diversity.
Sorry it took me so long to reply, I’m in over my head wit this blogging.
Margot
After watching this movie with my daughter (8) and niece (5), I gave them an in-one-ear-and-out-the-other lecture about if in the future they become authors, they need to write girls. When I watched the movie, I had the sense that the book that was written by a woman, which I later confirmed. My 8 year old is a big Harry Potter fan, so I asked her, why couldn’t JK Rowling written HENRIETTA Potter (a thought which left her flabbergasted)? This point really struck home when my daughter picked out two books at the library Oogie Cooder: Party Animal and Roscoe Riley Rules: Never Glue Your Friends to Chairs, both books written by women about boys. Love your blog, Margot.
4-girl mom,
I feel the same way about Harry Potter! Why couldn’t she have been a girl? And J. K. Rowling too is obviously a gender ambiguous name.
Thanks for your comments.
Margot
I love your blog, and I hate to disagree with you on this movie. There was a reason they couldn’t make the main character a girl. In the movie, notice that Astrid was the “tough, cool girl”, leader of the gang who were in dragon training, and best dragon killer. All the other kids admire her, including the male leader of the gang. Hiccup is a weakling, a thin, scrawny little kid who gets treated like dirt by the rest of the gang, including the “cool, tough” Astrid. He is a peace-loving wimp but eventually befriends a dragon and teaches the village the meaning of peace. The high-and-mighty Astrid accepts him as her boyfriend. If Hiccup had been a girl and Astrid a boy, it would seem far more sexist of the movie producers. The media would be quick to pick up on the fact that there was a female sterotype where the hero, though a girl, is a weakling who is peace-loving and has to befriend the dragons, while the leader of the gang is a strong, tough, cool guy who treats the girl like dirt. Indeed, Astrid is definitely not a help-along role. She does not act or seem like the pictured girl who holds on to Hiccup tightly as they fly through the air on Hiccup’s dragon’s back. In the movie, she is portrayed as fiercely independent, tough, and brave. Hiccup is a peace-loving nerd and wimp with a strange accent.
Finally, Hiccup’s breastplate-wearing, battlecry-screaming Mom is nothing like the repulsive female Viking stereotype– for instance, a stereotypical fat, homey blond Viking woman who never went out to war and weaved and cooked Hiccups’ luncheons each day before sending him into battle.
Karen,
Thanks for your comments and your views on Astrid. I still would prefer Astrid to be the title character. I get what you’re saying– and basically wrote the same thing in my post– that making the skinny, weak, peaceloving kid a girl would be capitualting to gender sterotypes. That said, I will take what I can get! If that gets a female as the star, and she is ‘weak’ compared to a bunch of steroid war crazy Vikings, that’s not so bad by Hollywood standards in kid media.
Thanks again for visiting ReelGirl.
Margot
Thank you Karen, I totally agree. Yes, we need strong female role models for our girls, but we also need role models that teach boys that being gentle and showing mercy is not the same as being feminine or weak. (And also being anti-violence, I’d rather my children watch this movie than one where a female warrior kills hundreds in an avalanche.) While perhaps not “girl-power” I’d say this movie is definitely anti-stereotyping.
I’d also note that men and women were in the war party that went out to hunt dragons and the one person that stayed home to look after the younger children was male, And bonus points for showing people (or dragons) with disabilities as functional members of society.
Amy,
Agree its good to show a boy not being stereotyped. I guess my first frustration is with the lack of female characters but not stereotyping boys is good.
MM