Cloudy Gender Performativity

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs harnessed an interesting continuity with our work last week in terms of the discussion on ethnicity and performance by placing a heavy emphasis on the performativity of gender. In the work of Sacha Baran Cohen in Ali G we examined the performance of racial stereotypes and their implications, while in Bamboozled the focus was upon, among other elements, the exaggeration inherent in the black-face performances, intersecting history and racial shaping and self-awareness. Performance is a persistent theme in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, where the male protagonist is constantly wearing his (overgrown) lab-coat and performing the role of genius scientist despite his technical shortcomings. The island itself aims to harness tourism and ‘perform’ its best qualities for the external world. But most interestingly, perhaps, is the role of the female protagonist, the intern and budding weather girl who brings forth some particularly salient exposés of gender roles.

The intern is described as ‘peppy’ and ‘eager’ by her older co-workers; however her gender is far from incidental, particularly as she is attached to weather reporting and what has traditionally been perceived as one of the most problematically patriarchal aspects of broadcast news. Weather girls are often charged with the task of making some of the most mundane elements of the news attractive, their famed good looks and perfect smiles particularly working to achieve this. What I found fascinating about her character was her self-awareness and perceived need to downplay her intelligence, particularly when in the presence of the inventor and love interest. She would often catch herself uttering spontaneous analyses of the intricate technology he developed and quickly rectify and obscure this with purposefully simplistic comments. Though this performance of ‘playing dumb’ is not uncommon in female media representations, rarely is it so overtly displayed as a construction – thus leaving room for its deconstruction, as well as a questioning of why this is perceived by the character as a necessary artifice in the first place. Moreover, that this character would be present in an animated film, of all places, serves as a testament to the cultural relevancy and pervasiveness of this trait; animated films have traditionally aimed for a broad audience and courted accessibility above all – though his has naturally shifted slightly in recent years. While it is commendable that the film explores this aspect of the intern, she is not entirely exempt from embracing the very distractedness she purports to avoid; she is easily hypnotized by the cat video the inventor displays while he frantically puts together his machine, and despite all her intelligence she remains the reporter, the passive conveyor of events that observes and describes the inventor’s seemingly magical devices instead of an active agent in their construction and development.

Animated films often tiptoe a weary line when constructing their characters and defining the gender roles they will embody, and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is no different. But perhaps to some extent the fact that the intern’s gendered performance was made visible speaks to a positive irony and self-reflexivity that these characters are garnering that undercuts gender expectations and points to uncomfortable and yet very necessary questions of gendered self-presentation.