Steve Zissou Gender Roles

“The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” Wes Anderson’s movie The Life Aquatic is able to portray the gender roles of men and women in western society so vividly it can be painfull. The life Aquatic follows its main protagonist Steve Zissou on a quest to locate and film a mysterious shark that had ate his best friend. Steve is a world class oceanographer that is known around the world for his documentaries that show the voyages him and his crew embark on. The setting alone sets a scene where gender roles can thrive and the viewer is able to contemplate the pros and cons that go along with western culture.Anthony Cefali sums this beautiful in his blog post titled “Hoptellectual: Gender, exploration and David Bowie in Wes Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic””

This film is able to show this value that is put on men clearly. In the scene Steve walks on the stage confidently head held high excited to show the crowd his newest creation. Praising this as one of his best creations he smiles as the film starts to role. When the movie shows you can clearly see that the crowd feels otherwise, after thirty second of the film people start fidgeting on their seats and leaving the theater. What is shown on the screen is a spotty two minute film that consists of nothing more than introducing the crew of the ship followed by a short clip of Steve thrashing in the water screaming about how his diving partner Estevan had just been ate by a large “fish like creature” he refers to as the “leopard shark”. When the movie ends Steve gives a meek smile and explains that the movie was short because he dropped his camera into the water and lost the other footage. This is a classic example of the view that men should be confident even overly confident in all that they do. Even though Steve knows his final product is terrible he can’t help but portray it as something that he thinks is great and in the end is unable to admit any weakness that he may have. After the showing he even furthers the stereotypes that are put on men. Another stereotype that is constantly put on men is that their minds are constantly on sex and see women as nothing other than

In the ratio of men to women alone this is apparent there are only two women in the film who have a major role compared to the countless male characters that are in the movie. This can be seen as a lack of diversity and in site into the roles of women but when looked into the purpose of this you start to realize that Wes Anderson has done this for a reason. In traditional gender roles women take the back seat when it comes to action. The tend to support them men whenever they do things and are expected to stay out of the way when the action is going on. The lack of women characters in the movie supports this. Whenever the men leave the boat for a mission the Female characters are out of view and play no role in it. The only time they are involved is when there is down time or some sort of planning that is going on in the film where they can support the