Finding Nemo

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies Upper Secondary School Teacher Training in English Language and Literature Bc. Nika Göthová Male Roles as Presented in Animation Movies Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Ph. D. 2019 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature I would like thank To my supervisor, for his patience and willingness to help To the heroes of my family, who kept other responsibilities at bay To Sir von Newhouse, for he kept positive energy and sugar dose coming To all the librarians and those who bought the new computers in the lib. And the many others, not for the thesis, but for the years of teaching me and creating me And to the best of all my teachers, though he would not understand it here, he sees it from above and knows. Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 5 Theory ................................................................................................................................... 8 Selection and analysis of data .......................................................................................... 21 Characters .......................................................................................................................... 27 Physical Appearance....................................................................................................... 27 Accent .............................................................................................................................. 32 Character in Relation to the Story ................................................................................... 35 Characters and Society .................................................................................................... 48 Conflict ............................................................................................................................... 57 Conflict Stages in Finding Nemo..................................................................................... 65 The Message of Conflicts ................................................................................................ 69 Case Study: How to Train Your Dragon ......................................................................... 73 Synopsis ........................................................................................................................... 73 Analysis ........................................................................................................................... 75 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 88 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................... 91 Summary ............................................................................................................................ 98 Resumé ................................................................................................................................ 99 Introduction The world of animation has changed over the last few decades. The companies attributing to it multiplied and so did the number of movies presented to the viewers. The primary target audience for most of the movies, however, stays identical: children. The influence of movies on this age group is growing. The entertainment industry slowly takes over time and some roles that previously belonged to parents and school and becomes one of the most common sources of information of the children of the western world. The influence originates in cinemas, home screening, the internet, advertisements and even toys. This thesis explores the message the animated movies send about the role of sons and fathers in the family and in the society. Due to the importance and common occurrence of family in the world of children, the representations of the fathers and sons are not scarce in animation movies. Many movies try to offer a character that can become a target of identification of the viewer. And that character should have a family, hence, at least one relative. This thesis argues that such common representation of the roles of father and sons in the animation movies create patterns. These patterns arise from the combination of characteristics of the figures in the target roles, and their place in the plot presented in the movies. This thesis recognises that a pattern connected to a character in a certain role is not bound only to the character as an individual but to the complexity of his representation. The patterns thus can be found in connection to the looks of the character, their mentality, reactions, sociability, values or the place a character has in the plot of the story The milieu and complexity of the animation movies and of their influence on the audience is explored in the first chapter. Although the thesis concentrates more on textuality of the movies, animation movies have been created by a specific process that 5 makes the product distinct from all the other movies. The specifications of genre, of the target audience and a basic introduction to present stage of research are briefly explained in this chapter. They are followed by an insight into the methodology and process of collection of data. A selection of a specific animation studio was considered unessential, as the focus is on the receptive, not on the productive side of the movies. Instead, the material was chosen according to several conditions. The most important one was the earnings of the movies in the box office. This condition allowed for selection of probably the most influential material. However, it also secured a place in the corpus only to the US made movies from several studios. The studios supply only a limited number of producers and creators of the movies, which is probably one of the sources of the coherence in the message of the movies. This thesis recognises that a pattern connected to a character in a certain role is not bound only to the character as an individual but to the complexity of his representation. The patterns thus can be found in connection not only to the mental and physical aspect of a character, but also to the manned of their reactions, sociability, values or the place the characters in the plot of the story. This is why the second chapter is dedicated to the description of patterns concerning the representations as individual beings. It explores the patterns of physical, vocal and mental qualities among the representations of the target roles. The chapter also shortly addresses the place of the selected characters in the societies in their respective movies, the position and relation to the society. The last aspect of the patterns in the depictions of fathers and sons is their position in the conflict. The third chapter represents an attempt to describe whether depiction of fathers and sons are necessarily connected to conflicts and whether these 6 are minor or major conflicts in the stories. The text comprises a short analysis of reasons behind the conflicts on both sides and tries to identify a pattern of the development of the conflicts from their birth to the closure. Further implications of the conflict patterns and thei influence on the perception of the target roles are described at the end of the chapter. The argument is concludes with a case study on animated movie How to Train Your Dragon. In this case study, I attempt to analyse the elements described in the rest of the thesis and demonstrate how the individual pieces compose a wholesome picture. The application of decomposed particles of the target roles to the movie and comparison of the conclusion of my analysis in the synthesis of the movie is supposed to demonstrate that the separate parts composed into a one image really sent the messages identified in the separate parts of the thesis. 7 Theory Animated movies have found their target audience and their place in the cinema industry. Some of them can be found among the highest grossing movies in the US. The highest grossing animated movies, The Lion King (1994) or Shrek 2 (2004), are comparable to movies from long term projects such as Star Wars or Avengers (Box Office Mojo). Generally, however, animated movies tend to gross less in the cinemas than movies which target mainly the adult audience. Nonetheless, they extend their influence through the screens at home. The influence of animated movies on the whole family overreaches the cinema experience. First of all, although the animated movies are primarily designed for children, this is not the only target group. The producers anticipate the inevitability of the presence of parents in the audience. This means that producers are trying to create a multi-layered movie that can be enjoyed by multiple age groups (Booker XXI, Shepard 176, Kümmerling-Meibauer 39). Second of all, for many families, the experience of watching a certain animated movie is not limited to cinema. Box office, as the main indicator of the popularity of movies, was introduced in this essay from practical reasons as it is an easily accessible and a relatively general indicator. The degree of influence of movies on society is a much more complex issue. Animated movies exercise their influence extensively even

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