shycatdreaming:

icandrawthings:

Can Someone Please Tell Me What is Guillermo Del Torro’s and DreamWork’s Obsession with Cross Species Couples Thank You 😊

For Del Torro, at least, it’s explicitly a reaction to casual racism and insular mentalities.

I’m going to focus on Megamind, because that’s the property I’m most familiar (and obsessed) with.

Megamind starts out ridiculed and stigmatized since childhood. When he messes up because of his lack of experience, he’s never told WHY what he did is wrong or how to make a better choice – he’s just punished and blamed. It’s easier for people who are uncomfortable with the idea of a blue literal extraterrestrial alien to justify that he DESERVES to be thought of as unpleasant. He is made to associate his physical identity (alien) with his personal identity (bad, villain, outcast). And then we see the self-fulfilling prophecy where the only reinforcement he can get is where he’s acting “evil,” and everyone else is reinforced for thinking of him as “other.”

We see people equating the outside physical with the internal mental/emotional/spiritual – a person’s literal WORTH.

People who match expectations – quite often in America, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, are easier to trust because that population has been taught to trust its members. If they are LIKE you, you can like them.

But cross species relationships deliberately deconstruct that. You see people not only having similarities on what’s in the INSIDE despite the physical differences, but you also see how the internal differences STRENGTHEN each member when they work together.

Megamind is brilliant, but he hasn’t been given a good rule book for life and he lacks a purpose beyond “acceptance” (which he honestly believes is impossible to achieve)

and “have fun” (can you blame him?).

And then you have Roxanne, who has been pushed into her own stereotype of “damsel in distress” because she’s a beautiful woman, despite her intelligence.

The fandom will tell you, Megamind doesn’t take Roxanne’s observational skills and intelligence for granted. His epic plan at the beginning RELIES on her being brave and smart enough to lure Metro Man to the target.

Their relationship works, not BECAUSE they’re different species, but because their experiences being THEMSELVES compliment and support each other. But because film is a visual medium, having that visual contrast helps as a shorthand to keep the movie under 2 hours.

It’s also a deliberate “take that” to people who insist you can’t have a romantic relationship with someone based on their physical body.

So yes, people who feel like outcasts are drawn to a cross species relationship, because they don’t feel safe in the “people like me will LIKE me.” So they look elsewhere.

Because we all want to find SOMEONE we like being with, romantically or otherwise.

[editted with better gifs]