I'm asking you to understand it in a larger cultural context, which is more complicated than the good news about Pixar finally realizing girls exist.

Please understand: I'm not telling you not to like Brave. Or, a place where helpful Scottish sidekicks help train dragons, anyway.Īnd broad Scottish stereotypes are increasingly popping up in American advertising. Ewen Bremmer, best known as Spud from Trainspotting, often pops up as a token Scottish caricature, often with a 'hilariously' impenetrable Teuchter accent, like kooky pilot Declan in The Rundown.ĭwarves in fantasy franchises are routinely made Scottish, and Scotland (along with other Celtic cultures) is frequently the backdrop for 'magical historical fiction'-it is a place inhabited by dragons where wizards roam the Highlands.

The Smurfs were updated with Scottish stereotype 'Gutsy Smurf.' Robin Williams cross-dressed his way into his children's hearts as Mrs. One of Disney's most famous secondary characters is Scrooge McDuck, an embodiment of the stingy Scot stereotype. Scottish stereotypes have shown up as sidekicks, comic relief characters, Magical Celts, and noble domestics at least as far back as Scotty on Star Trek (who wasn't even played by a Scot).

Every time we see a trailer for Brave, Iain grumbles: 'How is Mike Myers not in that movie?' (Note the irony of its being a movie about tolerance whose lead reinforces the very narratives that underlie caricatures used to marginalize Scots.) Mike Myers, who voiced Shrek, built a career on playing Scottish stereotypes: From the grumpy shopkeep in SNL's recurring 'If It's Not Scottish, It's Crap!' sketch, to the Scottish dad in So I Married an Axe Murderer, to the loathsome kilt-clad Fat Bastard of the Austin Powers franchise. The central character of Shrek is a character who encompasses all the negative stereotypes of the Scots-grumpy, penny-pinching, misanthropic, hulking oafs. Or, as Graeme McMillan put it in Time: 'Look at Brave with its heroine rising above the cliché of the demure, passive princess even as those in her immediate vicinity seem to have come from Celtic Cliché Central Casting.'īrave is certainly not the first film to do this. I am not glad, however, that they did it while trading on Scottish stereotypes. I am genuinely glad Pixar did a film that a lot of people are receiving well because of a female protagonist. So, I haven't seen Pixar's new film Brave.

Ginger brave girl