Part Of The Appeal Of Stanton's Finding Nemo

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Part of the appeal of Stanton’s Finding Nemo (2003) is its admirable characters. However, one character, Marlin, behaves in a way that makes him particularly interesting to examine. Marlin’s story begins with the loss of his wife and children after his failed attempt to fight the barracuda who attacked them. The only other survivor is one of his sons, whom Marlin names Nemo and becomes immensely overprotective of. When Nemo grows up and is ready to attend school, Marlin is horrified to see as Nemo, out of defiance of his father, swims out into the ocean to touch a boat and get captured by a diver. Marlin then embarks on a journey with Dory, a forgetful fish who helps Marlin travel across the ocean to get back his son. Marlin encounters various …show more content…

Using Freud’s psychoanalytic theory can unveil the unconscious thoughts, conflicts, and experiences that guide Marlin’s behaviour (Larsen et al., 2020). Specifically, psychoanalysis can help explain Marlin’s anxiety, how his behaviour reflects this anxiety through defence mechanisms, and how his behaviour indicates a fixation at the oral stage. Firstly, Marlin is an anxious character whose internal worries can be categorized as moral anxiety. This anxiety emerges from conflict between the ego and the superego (Larsen et al., 2020). Because the expectations the superego places on an individual are high, and sometimes unattainable, it can overwhelm the ego, causing shame when those goals cannot be achieved (Larsen et al., 2020). This anxiety is characteristic of Marlin. Before the barracuda attack, Marlin held expectations for himself that were difficult to manage. He wanted to provide his family with an extraordinary life. When this expectation to provide the best was ruined by the barracuda, which was out of his control, he felt guilty for surviving and failing to meet this …show more content…

This thought is not desirable for Marlin, because keeping Nemo home means keeping him out of school and preventing him from exploring. As such, Marlin projected his feelings onto Nemo, easing the moral anxieties that emerged from this complex situation. Another defence mechanism Marlin uses is repression, which involves keeping unpleasant thoughts and memories out of conscious awareness to avoid the anxiety they cause (Larsen et al., 2020). Accordingly, throughout the movie, Marlin never once speaks about the loss of his wife and children. Although the attack may fuel his fear of the ocean, he never mentions the barracuda attack or his family, as his ego tries to manage the moral anxiety of having failed to provide them a wonderful life and home. The beginnings of this repression process can be seen towards the end of the movie when Marlin and Dory temporarily think Nemo is dead, which would mean that Marlin had once again failed to uphold his intense expectations. Dory tries to stay with Marlin, confessing that she does not want to forget him and this

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