Intro. to Women Studies
Children’s Film Essay
Finding Nemo
The film that I chose to do the essay on is Finding Nemo. Before taking this course I didn’t realize any other message that the film was conveying until I watched it from a different perspective. The film’s message to the viewers about gender and power is very clear looking from a feminist point of view.
The message about gender, in the beginning of the film, the mother was not able to swim away fast enough like Marlin, Nemo’s father, did. It showed that a woman is physically weaker and slower than a man, and that in order to survive in the real world, you have to be a man. There is a character, which is a female, they make her out to be kind of slow and have a disability where she cannot remember anything for a long period of time. This portrays woman as mentally weaker than men, making woman look like they are more stupid than man and that will not be able to amount to anything in their future. In Finding Nemo, Marlin is the hero who recues and finds his son; this representation of men makes the male stereotype as the one to always save the day and is the one who is keeping the family and home in order.
Throughout the film, Marlin and Dory travel through the sea to find Marlin’s son Nemo, but during this adventure, Dory is the sidekick to Marlin. The message that is being sent to viewer’s is that woman cannot do anything unless they have a man guiding their way, and that women rely on men to get things accomplished. Overall, in Finding Nemo, women are portrayed as less than men and that without men; women would be lost and confused. The message that Finding Nemo is sending about power is that in order for a female to even want to get anything done, she must have a man to lead the way. Throughout the film Dory follows Marlin around and Marlin tells Dory what to do. This shows that a woman is pretty much useless without a male figure controlling them. Dory has a disability, where