Ratatouille/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

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** Besides, humans have persecuting and murdering sentient species all throughout history. It's just this one is a Non-Human sapient species.

*** Er. I meant ''sapient''.

*** Even assuming the world at large doesn't know about these sapient rats -- Isn't Linguini being kind of selfish in trying to [[The Masquerade|keep Remy's human-like intelligence a secret]] to further his own career? Shouldn't Remy be more concerned with getting the guy to put a good word in for his species then with [[~~Its~~ All About Me|what's in the white sauce?]] I know he loves to cook, but if I were spending hours in the kitchen coming up with fantastic new recipes to serve to some folks who were trying to systematically exterminate my race, I'd feel like a bit of a [[The Quisling|traitor]], even if I was [[Warped Aesop|following my dreams]].

*** Even assuming the world at large doesn't know about these sapient rats -- Isn't Linguini being kind of selfish in trying to [[The Masquerade|keep Remy's human-like intelligence a secret]] to further his own career? Shouldn't Remy be more concerned with getting the guy to put a good word in for his species then with [[It's All About Me|what's in the white sauce?]] I know he loves to cook, but if I were spending hours in the kitchen coming up with fantastic new recipes to serve to some folks who were trying to systematically exterminate my race, I'd feel like a bit of a [[The Quisling|traitor]], even if I was [[Warped Aesop|following my dreams]].

**** He does feel conflicted, remember?

*** Rats in the kitchen = MAJOR health code violation.

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***** Scientists have already devised many tests of animal intelligence that Remy could easily complete with or without a human partner. Results would need to be replicated in a controlled environment, but saying it would be impossible to get the word out when Remy is so clearly of human-like intelligence is depressing. Either Remy and Linguini are selfish to the point of sociopathy, or humanity in this film really, really sucks.

****** Not impossible, but not exactly easy either. The problem is that you're talking about erasing several millenia of hatred and enmity, and even Anton Ego knew how hard it was to get new ideas to be accepted. You'd get a few humans willing to accept the idea, but the majority would be more skeptical and harder to convince, which means that Remy would basically have to devote his entire lifetime to work with getting the humans to understand; already a hard task. Basically, he would be swapping one boring but useful job (poison checker) to another boring but useful job (test subject on rat intelligence) -- and then it becomes a movie not about daring to dream and nurturing your talents, but about giving up your own ambitions for the greater good, even when people don't appreciate what you do. I mean, the other rats couldn't care less about humans; interacting with and behaving like humans seem to be some kind of mild taboo in rat society (note Emile saying that all with all this cooking and reading and TV watching he feels like he's aiding Remy in some kind of crime); the only reason why they helped out in the end was because of Remy. Now, admittedly, they could have made it work, but abandoning cooking and instead dedicating yourself to the betterment of inter-species relationships would probably have made for a much less focused and probably less interesting movie, that would likely cause the audience to say: "Wait, didn't he want to be a chef? Why have we spent the last twenty minutes watching him crusade for rat rights?" ...okay, I kinda went off-track there, but my main point is that it would be a ''lot harder'' to change things than simply, as an earlier troper remarked, put up a video on [[YouTube]], and calling Remy and Linguini "selfish to the point of sociopathy" just because they don't try to take on a task bigger than both of them, that neither of them are probably qualified for (Linguini is ''not'' good with convincing people, as evident by his total failure to bring most of the chefs around) seems unnecessarily harsh.

******* If Pixar wanted to make a shiny, happy film about cooking rats without getting sidetracked by all that messy xenocide stuff, they [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|shouldn't have brought it up in the first place.]] Unfortunately, they ''do'' bring it up, even going so far as to let Remy's father [[Straw Man Has a Point|give a little speech about how humans kill their kind]] while standing in front of an exterminator's storefront [[Nightmare Fuel|with dead rats hanging in the window]]. Saying that addressing this would have made the script longer or unfocused is missing the point; Pixar could have sidestepped the issue entirely if they wanted to, but instead they decided to milk it for drama and then ignore it later creating some distubing implications. Naturally, getting humanity to accept that [[Fantastic Racism|rats are people too]] would have been difficult, and any effort on the part of main characters' towards this end would not be guaranteed to succeed, but it's downright upsetting that every major character spends the entire film entirely preoccupied with their trivial personal concerns [[~~Its~~ All About Me|(I want to be a chef! I have a crush on my coworker! An excellent restaurant is about to go out of business!)]] with nary a thought for the ethical considerations of the deeply horrific discoveries they make during that timeframe . Besides, when important concerns that arise from the premise organically are being pushed aside to make way for less important, more contrived conflicts, that's just plain bad writing.

******* If Pixar wanted to make a shiny, happy film about cooking rats without getting sidetracked by all that messy xenocide stuff, they [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|shouldn't have brought it up in the first place.]] Unfortunately, they ''do'' bring it up, even going so far as to let Remy's father [[Straw Man Has a Point|give a little speech about how humans kill their kind]] while standing in front of an exterminator's storefront [[Nightmare Fuel|with dead rats hanging in the window]]. Saying that addressing this would have made the script longer or unfocused is missing the point; Pixar could have sidestepped the issue entirely if they wanted to, but instead they decided to milk it for drama and then ignore it later creating some distubing implications. Naturally, getting humanity to accept that [[Fantastic Racism|rats are people too]] would have been difficult, and any effort on the part of main characters' towards this end would not be guaranteed to succeed, but it's downright upsetting that every major character spends the entire film entirely preoccupied with their trivial personal concerns [[It's All About Me|(I want to be a chef! I have a crush on my coworker! An excellent restaurant is about to go out of business!)]] with nary a thought for the ethical considerations of the deeply horrific discoveries they make during that timeframe . Besides, when important concerns that arise from the premise organically are being pushed aside to make way for less important, more contrived conflicts, that's just plain bad writing.

******* Okay, in response to the above, a real life comparison. By the 1940s Louis Armstrong was recognised as the one of the greatest Jazz musicians/singers and entertainers in show business, able to command huge audiences of both whites and blacks. Yet it was still necessary for Martin Luther King to lead a civil rights movement for blacks by 1963. Now should we criticise Louis Armstrong for not doing more to fight for racial equality and 'selfishly' persuing his dream of being a jazz musician. Or should we recognise that his finally achieving his dream ''despite'' extreme prejudice is a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] and, incidently, doing something to push the door open for more of his people to achieve equality.

******** Comparision doesn't hold up for a number of reasons. Firstly: Remy hid his identity, and thus did nothing to 'open the door' for more rats who might have wanted to follow their dreams in human society. Armstrong might have been chiefly motivated by the desire to make great music, but if he'd bleached his skin and pretended to be white in order to play in white clubs, we'd likely not hold that up as his finest hour. Secondly: Remy and Linguini were in a rather [[With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility|unique position to improve the condition of ratkind]], what with Remy's human communication skills, and Linguini being (at least as far as he knew) ''the only'' human to know of the sentience of rats. It's one thing to choose cooking over the crusade for social justice, but it's entirely another when the means to make a good run at [[Big Damn Heroes|saving an entire sapient species]] falls into your lap and choose to ignore it because you had [[I Just Want to Be Normal|less important things planned for yourself]]. Thirdly: there were in fact supporters of the civil rights movement who were disappointed with Armstrong's choice avoid offering the movement any public support. This, of course, does not make Armstrong any less of a jazz musician, but regardless of whether his choices were ultimately right or wrong, historical context does make his life story a ''little'' more complicated than what is implied by Ratatouille's Unambiguous Disney Happy Ending (and that's without the metaphorical skin bleaching).