Gender And Gender Roles In Monsters, Inc.

Nominated for three Academy Awards and winner of Best Original Song (IMDb, n.d), Monsters, Inc. is “well-liked by many” thus qualifying as an example of popular cinema (Storey, 2001). Produced by Pete Doctor and David Silverman, Monsters, Inc. tells the tale of two monsters, Mike and Sully, who both work at a utility company called Monsters, Inc(operated), where children’s screams are harvested as power. One night, Sully stayed late as a favor to Mike to finish his paperwork and noticed a door left on the scare floor. The door was left by Randal- a very competitive co-worker, who planned to kidnap the child to test his ‘scream machine’ that sucks the screams out of children at a much more efficient rate than scaring them. Just as Sully was

is gender. In both the human and monster world there are very clear gender roles between men and women, with the exception of one character, Roz. In the film, all the monsters who work on the scare floor are male, all the supervisors are male, all the CDA workers appear to be male, and the owner of Monsters, Inc., Mr. Waternoose, is male. In short, anyone with authority (excluding Roz) is male. The only representation of female characters (except Roz) in the monster world shows them vacuuming, babysitting, or in some type of administrative/ hospitality position within Monstropolis. The reason why Roz is the exception to this is because at the very end of the film it is revealed to the viewer that she is in charge of the CDA, but get this, all throughout the movie up until this point she was an administrator. The only other reoccurring monster female character in the film is Mike’s love interest, Celia. Celia is an administrator/ greeter at Monsters, Inc. who resembles medusa from Greek mythology. Celia is a great example of a character who shows both gender, and sexuality as structures of identity. Gender, because she fits into the perpetual gender roles Monsters, Inc. pushes and sexuality because although she is clearly supposed to be medusa she has sex appeal, such as her long slender legs and exaggerated feminine features, even though medusa in Greek mythology is considered to be a repulsive monster. There is also an interesting scene when Mike takes Celia out to dinner and the whole restaurant gets fumigated and the only person wearing a cone after the fumigation is Celia. It is unsure whether any other female characters are wearing the cone but during the scene that we see her with it she charges Mike and her snake-like hair tries to bite him. This scene along with Roz’s grumpy-like demeanor prejudices the viewers, especially young children, into thinking that women are extremely