I have found the moral mess'ges of the Laika Films production The Boxtrolls quite difficult to decode.
Boxtrolls is, I think, quite a gorgeous film, although being a stop-motion animation, it automatically makes me miss the drip-feed of jokes you get in an Aardman film. for example: it took me about three watches of Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists to get the joke with the cannon ball dispenser, and the film is stuffed with moments like that. I feel like that if you're going to take such care over something, for so long, that has to be so carefully planned, you might as well stuff it to the gills with details that reward repeat viewings.
That aside, let me think through what I've always found to be a confusing set of values that might make sense if I try to put my thoughts down in writing, or maybe they won't and that will be a conclusion worth reaching. Boxtrolls has had some stick for being transphobic, as it portrays Snatcher as a villinous transvestite.
Let's start with a plot recap, focusing on the Snatcher and Eggs, the an-and-pro-tagonists of this story:
Trubshore the scientist is kidnapped by Archibald Snatcher; his son is sent away with the boxtrolls to be kept safe. The boxtrolls name him Eggs and raise him as a boxtroll. Snatcher claims the boxtrolls killed Trubshore and stole and ate his son; the -mayor?- Lord Portly-Rind strikes a deal with Snatcher that if he can rid the town of boxtrolls - who, it's worth restating, are only considered a problem because Snatcher claims they are - he will be granted a white hat. Of course, Portly-Rind does not ever think he will have to come good on his bargain.
The White-Hats are a group of high-ranking nobles in the city, including Portly-Rind, who... just seem to eat cheese, really, and misappropriate public funds for their extravagant cheese-eating sessions. Snatcher seeks to be elevated to their ranks, despite being severely allergic to cheese.
Snatcher then goes into business as a boxtroll exterminator. at the same time, he becomes a musichall-syle star, performing in drag* as Madame Frou-Frou, singing propaganda songs that whip up hatred of the boxtrolls and hence more business for himself, and drives his political ambition of upgrading from lowly red-hat to elite white-hat.
*I'm not sure this counts as drag, because the audience are apparently unaware that Madame Frou-Frou is not a real person.
So what I'm looking at, is we have this character Snatcher, the atagonist, who is obsessed with image; he pretends to be something he's not when he's performing as Madame Frou-Frou; he aspires to wear a different coloured hat, something that has no intrisic worth; he seeks to eat cheese for the social prestige it carries, despite the fact that doing so gives him an anaphalactic reaction, a fact he denies even to himself as it gets in the way of his aspirations. He is not in touch with his own true nature.
Eggs, on the other hand, believes himself to be a boxtroll, and to the film's credit, this is enough for him to be considered a boxtroll. Boxtrolls are timid, caring creatures, but even as their numbers dwindle, they do not do anything about it - until Eggs goes above ground, disguising himself as a human, to find the other kidnapped boxtrolls. When all looks lost - the boxtrolls all captured, about to be destroyed - Eggs' makes a speech about how they don't have to be slaves to their past:
Fish, Fish, everyone, listen! I'm a boxtroll and I stopped hiding. So you can, too. Stand up for yourselves. We can fight back! Don't be afraid anymore! Sparky! Fragile! Get up! Get up and fight! Just stand up and take a step. Please! Do it for me!
At the time he thinks he failed, but it turns out the other boxtrolls did escape - abandoning even their boxes in order to do so. They have gone against their nature, and grown. Eggs has grown and found his genetic father, revealing more about his identity. At the end, as Snatcher, swollen from his allergy to the cheese he feels like he needs, is about to eat the fatal piece of cheese that will do him in, and we get another little speech from Eggs:
Don't do it. It won't change who you are. Cheese, hats, boxes, they don't make you. You make you.
Snatcher replies:
I have made me, boy.
Snatcher, being the villain - really a tragic hero, if we take this as his own story - dies precisely because he can't really change. Snatcher dies because he wants to be something he's fundamentally not. Eggs and the boxtrolls survive because they redefine themselves at a more fundamental level; not through external signalling, but through changing their actual character.
So this is why I've always been bugged by the story:
On the one hand it appears to be telling us to be true to ourselves, accept who we are, and not to put a value on external signals. On the other hand it appears to be telling us that our nature can change and grow.
But despite that, whilst Eggs idenitifies as a boxtroll, meeting his genetic father is still important to him, implying that his 'true nature' is still human; and Snatcher's true nature, that of being allergic to cheese, is fundamentally immutable; he's not going to be able to will that away.
Is this a muddle? Is it ok for a film's message to be 'know thyself' at the same time as 'Nietzschian transformation is possible'? is that a contradiction - or do you need to be in touch with your own nature in order to change your nature? Buddists would argue that the first step towards changing things is to accept them for what they are.
I don't think I can find any more words to explore this with. I feel like the film didn't really explore the themes it was suggesting. So either it was a brave move to try to put these themes into a childrens' film, and at least get a conversation going about it; or it's a little bit of inspirational philosophy dusted on top that didn't really have the implications thought through. I just can't decide.
The themes remind me of Hedwig and The Angry Inch though;
At the end, the drag is gone, and we are left with Hedwig just as Hedwig; they finally stop trying to be something and there's a moment of acceptance of the situation, of themself, not seeking to be defined one way or another. I'm desperate to rewatch Hedwig as I saw it about 15 years ago, and I'd love to see how it stands up today. The ending taught me a lot about seeing things for what they are. I know it's ran into complications with casting lately, which I just think makes it more interesting.
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Writing all of that above, I realise that I haven't mentioned the character of Winnie at all, because she seems to be, by and large, irrelevant to the plot and without an arc of her own - except perhaps that she reconciles with her own father.
Which brings me to my last point - this film massively erases mothers.
Firstly, like many hollywood mothers, Eggs' mother is entirely absent and never mentioned, as if her existance would just complicate the film too much.
But then I think the film goes one step further by casting Toni Collete as Lady Portly-Rind (Winnie's mother) - and then giving her, if i recall correctly exactly one line in the film (certainly no lines of note, as evidenced at imdb). This must have been a case of the script being finalised after concept art and casting, because there's no way you'd cast that actor in that role knowing how little they were going to be used.
This being a stop-motion animation, due to time and budget constraints, the editing process is done *before* the filming commences, so it can't be that there are recorded and animated lines cut from the film in post-production.
anyway, thaughts.
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