56 English Journal 100.2 (2010): 56–60
By addressing a different
set of questions about wellknown
animated films,
students learn to think
critically about how
disability is represented
in society.
Daniel L. Preston
Finding Difference:
Nemo and Friends
Opening the Door
to Disability Theory
ur students have no doubt watched
a good chunk of the Disney library
of films. Earlier generations saw
Cinderella, Snow White, and Robin
Hood in first release; later came Beauty and the Beast,
Aladdin, and The Lion King. Over the last 25 years,
Pixar has joined in by releasing Toy Story and its sequels
and a host of other films to delight audiences
everywhere. Entertainment, however, has never
been the only reason that as parents we allow our
kids to watch the Disney and Disney/Pixar films.
We hope that the stories will teach them lessons
about people and situations. We hope they can see
themselves represented there—and represented
well—and we hope they can find something to take
away from the film other than the characters’ names,
colors, and characteristics.
While middle school and high school students
may have watched these films when they were
younger, chances are they did not do so with a critical
eye toward difference and disability, despite the
fact that these films serve as excellent tools for
teaching about difference. Recent estimates label
20% of the world’s population with some form of
disability (Riley 1), making it important for us to
consider the ways in which disability is represented
in literature, film, and other cultural texts. Disability
does not only exist solely on the televised stages
of a Jerry Lewis telethon but also in the fabric of the
cartoons that we enjoy with our children. The following
pages describe how the film Finding Nemo
can be used as an excellent tool for helping students
at all levels to start thinking about disability in different
ways.
Interpreting Disability
Scholarship across the relatively new field of Disability
Studies has defined several models through
which disability can be interpreted, and for the
purposes of this article, I will use two of the primary
ones: medical and social. In broad strokes,
the “medical model” focuses on a physical difference
of the body: a broken or missing limb, blindness,
or the inability to hear. The medical model
seeks to “normalize” the population identified in
its ranks. In contrast, there is the “social model,”
developed in Great Britain, in which disability is
seen as arising at least partly from an environment
that creates barriers for people with impairments.
In other words, disability does not exist solely because
people use wheelchairs; disability exists because
people who use wheelchairs need more ramps.
In this way, the focus is not on “fixing” the person
with the impairment, but rather how society can
improve its integration of people as they are. These
models are just a framework, however, as even these
scholars admit that the criteria used to account for
persons with disabilities are out of date (Riley
3–4). As Disability Studies scholar Tom Shakespeare
has pointed out, no one model can completely
encompass the need for an interpretation of
“disability.” “Disability” as a single concept, therefore,
becomes just as difficult and complicated to
define as the concepts we now identify as race, gender,
sexual identity, and ethnicity. This places disability
on equally important and intersecting
terms with the other identity categories. In discussing
disabilities, it is important to focus not
O
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Copyright © 2010 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
57English Journal
Daniel L. Preston
only on physical disabilities but also on hidden
disabilities, those that cannot be seen.
Reading Nemo
For readers who don’t know the film, Finding Nemo
tells the story of an overprotective father and a son
who are separated when they have an argument.
Marlin, the father, spends the rest of the movie
searching “the entire ocean” looking for Nemo.
Along the way, Marlin meets Dory, a fish with
short-term memory loss, and the two fish travel together.
Nemo, on the other hand, has been taken
across the continent to a dentist’s fish tank as a
present for his niece at the end of the week. Viewers
see the film from both sides of the story, and as
Nemo and his father attempt to find each other,
Nemo learns that he can do things by himself.
Along the way, Marlin learns to trust others and
realizes that the world isn’t as frightening as he
once believed.
After watching the film with students, I ask
them what they saw and how disability was represented
in the film. The first answer surrounds
Nemo’s “Lucky Fin” (one fin is congenitally shorter
than the other), and the second is about Dory and
her memory loss. It’s not difficult to imagine
Nemo’s smaller fin as a disability, nor is it uncommon
to place Dory’s memory loss on the spectrum
of disability. Likewise, viewers are likely to translate
Marlin’s overprotective nature as that of a typical
father. All of these assessments are based on the
medical model. Even Marlin’s interactions with his
son become that of a father trying to “fix” his son in
particular ways. Fewer than ten minutes into the
film, Nemo is swimming around talking to his father
and gets stuck inside a plant. As he is working
his way out, his father remarks, “Nemo, let me do
it; you’ll never get out of there yourself”—and already
depicts his son as “less able” than other fish.
Later, as Nemo is introducing himself to his new
classmates (an octopus, a fish, and a seahorse), one
of them notices his smaller fin:
KID#1 (Octopus):	 What’s wrong with
	 his fin?
KID #2 (Fish):	 He looks funny.
(Seahorse’s DAD slaps Seahorse with fin.)
KID #3 (Seahorse):	 Ow! Hey, what’d I do?
	 What’d I do?
Seahorse’s DAD:	 Be nice, it’s his first
	 time at school.
MARLIN:	 He was born with it,
	 kids. We call it his
	 lucky fin.
NEMO: 	 Daaad!
KID #1 (Octopus):	 See this tentacle? It’s
	 actually shorter than all
	 my other tentacles, but
	 you can’t really tell,
	 especially when I twirl
	 them like this. (twirls)
Kid #3 (Seahorse):	 I’m H2O intolerant.
	 (sneezes)
KID #2 (Fish):	 I’m obnoxious.
Already, there have been clear demonstrations
of both models of disability under discussion here.
Marlin, as the protective father concerned about
Nemo’s success, worries and smothers Nemo to the
point of alienating him. The kids, on the other
hand, acknowledge the difference and take it in
stride, creating an atmosphere free (at least for the
moment) of disability. What is particularly nice
about this exchange is that the kids share their differences
with Nemo as well, establishing that they
are all different in that they each have different attributes,
but on some level that makes them the
same, too. While moviegoers are likely to find intolerance
to water and obnoxious behavior humorous,
it is easy to see that when taken on their own
The Finding Nemo DVD Cover.
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58 November 2010
Finding Difference: Nemo and Friends Opening the Door to Disability Theory
merits, these conditions can be socially isolating
and debilitating.
Later, as Nemo meets the others in the fish
tank at the dentist’s office, we are introduced to a
variety of characters, each with a unique trait that
can be troublesome in certain circumstances and incredibly
useful in others. Consider Bloat, for example,
the blowfish that expands under stress. Several
times throughout the movie, Bloat expands to the
point where he needs help to recover. Stress is disabling
for him. However, during the rescue of
Nemo near the end of the movie, that particular
trait is invaluable as Gill is exiting the tank.
Gill is the character that Nemo most admires.
Like Nemo, before he came to live in the tank, Gill
lived in the ocean. Also similar
is Gill’s damaged fin, which
allows Nemo to understand
that a physical deformity need
not negatively affect the life
led. More than that, Nemo is
valued as important and capable—even
special—because of
his size and ability. Never once
does Gill tell Nemo he can’t
do something. This behavior directly contradicts
Marlin, who constantly reminds Nemo about his
fin and how it limits his ability. A class discussion
of this film could go into far greater detail, with
space given to all characters: what makes them different,
unique, and interesting, as well as what
might create the context for their (mis)treatment.
Classroom Activities for
a Deeper Understanding
While trying to identify disabling conditions in
Nemo or any text, students may have difficulty determining
what constitutes a disability. They should
realize that they are not alone and that scholars are
grappling with this question every day. One of the
many reasons for models of interpretation is because
the definition has become so complex. Also, the
chances are good that they are already familiar with
these concepts, just in more general ways. Remind
students that they are likely to have seen characters
with disabilities on TV or in movies before, but
might not have thought about how those characters
were depicted. As Paul K. Longmore points out,
there are plenty of examples: Porky Pig and his stutter,
Mr. Magoo and his huge glasses, and Captain
Hook from Peter Pan, to name a few (65). Here are
some basic questions to get students thinking about
disability in what are perhaps new ways for them:
•	 Which characters in the text appear to be
physically different from the others?
•	 Which characters in the text are treated differently
from the others? Why?
•	 Which situations in the text cause characters
to feel inferior to others?
•	 What stereotypes are present in the text?
•	 What labels are used to identify certain characters
to the rest of the group? This could
take the form of name-calling or identification
with (or by) a physical, cognitive, ethnic,
or cultural trait, among other things.
•	 Which characters are always allowed to do
what they want? Which ones are not? Under
what circumstances and by which characters
are they stopped?
Posing these questions does not automatically
expose a character’s disability, nor does a discussion
stemming from these questions guarantee a
thought-provoking, critical look at disability in society.
There is more work to be done than this for
both a textual reading and practical application.
What these questions can do, however, is help students
notice where different treatment occurs because
of a disability, and it is up to the students to
determine the correctness and value of those behaviors.
Such questions, and a subsequent guided disWhich
characters are
always allowed to do
what they want? Which
ones are not? Under what
circumstances and
by which characters are
they stopped?
Nemo with Gill, who never tells Nemo he can’t do something.
From Finding Nemo. Dir. Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkirch.
Dreamworks, 2003.
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59English Journal
Daniel L. Preston
Enabling Views of Disability
Many feature films and novels already familiar to students
can offer further opportunities for critical thinking
about disability. Along with Finding Nemo,
Disney/Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004) offers a good look
into the world of being different. The discussion
about Dash going out for sports and the question of
who is considered “special” can spark a lively debate
among students. Tom Hanks’s Oscar-winning role as
Forrest Gump (1994) could also prove fruitful for analysis,
especially if students recognize their own perceptions
of his disability and how they shift throughout
the movie. For a more classic (and text-based) example,
students could be encouraged to read Harper
Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
or John Steinbeck’s Of Mice
and Men through the lens of
disability studies, looking
specifically at conditions or
characters that help to establish
a disabling environment
for the other characters in
these novels.
I show movies to my
students to get them talking
about disability in ways
they haven’t thought of before.
Teachers use movies in
classrooms all the time because,
as Joseph Coencas
writes about working with
movies and students with special needs, “[M]ovies
are an ideal motivational device for auditory or visual
learners who resist or have difficulty with the
printed word” (67). Teaching, however, is never
cussion of them, help students form their own
critical questionings of other texts, as well as a way
of looking at society, and disability, through a
Disability-Studies lens.
Along with movie discussions, an activity
that challenges standardized thinking about ability
can also serve students well. The following exercise
is suggested in Wendy Chrisman’s essay, “The Ways
We Disclose: When Life-Writing Becomes Writing
Your Life.” Chrisman discusses the importance of
the time and place of disclosures, including the
ways that those disclosures take place between students
and teachers, particularly in writing classrooms.
She suggests developing a “hierarchy of
disability,” paying attention to the social costs of a
public disclosure. The exercise she recommends
helps promote critical thinking:
Together as a class, make a chart on the social hierarchies
of disability, the relative risks of disclosing
each type of disability, the stigmas associated with
each type, the material consequences in terms of
employment, civil rights, and so forth. (135)
Figure 1 shows a chart I made for Finding Nemo that
follows Chrisman’s directions.
As Chrisman suggests, the questions raised
through such an exercise can become a point of departure
for further research, such as “finding employment
statistics of people with disabilities”
(135). Research projects that grow out of a genuine
curiosity about real people in the real world—even
if that curiosity is initially sparked by a film or cartoon—are
likely to be taken much more seriously
by students than are typical projects completed for
the generic “research paper.”
Research projects that
grow out of a genuine
curiosity about real
people in the real
world—even if that
curiosity is initially
sparked by a film or
cartoon—are likely to be
taken much more
seriously by students
than are typical projects
completed for the generic
“research paper.”
Figure 1.  Analyzing Disability in Finding Nemo
Character/Trait Trait Visible Consequences of Disclosure
Nemo/”Lucky Fin” Boy/Missing arm Yes Employment/social/physical ability
Dory/Short-term memory loss Short-term memory loss/
mental disorders
No/Maybe Social stigmas/employment/family
Jacques/OCD cleaning OCD No/Maybe Social stigmas/friends/interactions
Bruce, Anchor, Chum/
Addiction disorder
Alcohol/Drug addiction No/Maybe Employment/social stigmas/
family/friends
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60 November 2010
Finding Difference: Nemo and Friends Opening the Door to Disability Theory
Daniel L. Preston teaches for the English department at the University at Albany (SUNY) and is currently earning his doctorate
in Cultural Foundations of Education with a focus on Disability Studies from Syracuse University. His research interests
include how disability is represented in literature, film, and to students, and he speaks widely about how disability continually
interacts with society. Email him at Daniel.preston@gmail.com.
classrooms from a sophisticated critique of these
cultural texts has the potential of transforming how
people with disabilities are treated in the larger
community.
Works Cited
Chrisman, Wendy. “The Ways We Disclose: When LifeWriting
Becomes Writing Your Life.” Disability and
the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Cynthia
Lewiecki-Wilson and Brenda Jo Brueggemann.
Boston: Bedford, 2008. 130–35. Print.
Coencas, Joseph. “How Movies Work with Special Needs
Students.” English Jounal 96.4 (2007): 67–72. Print.
Finding Nemo. Dir. Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkirch.
Dreamworks, 2003. DVD.
Longmore, Paul K. “Screening Stereotypes: Images of Disabled
People in Television and Motion Pictures.”
Images of the Disabled/Disabling Images. Santa Barbara:
Praeger, 1987. 65–78. Print.
Riley, Charles A., II. Disability and the Media: Prescriptons for
Change. Hanover: UP of New England, 2005. Print.
Shakespeare, Tom. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London:
Routledge, 2006. Print.
———. “The Social Model of Disability.” The Disability
Studies Reader. Ed. Lennard J. Davis. 3rd ed. New
York: Routledge, 2010. 266–73. Print
about a single audience, and so we need to think in
broader strokes: movies, if framed by critical questions,
become useful for all classrooms at all levels.
It is the work of disability studies in part to question
and change the representation of people with
disabilities.
Finding Nemo is just one movie among several
that can teach that lesson simply by virtue of presenting
both sides of the argument and letting the
audience decide for itself. However, as teachers who
want to provide tools for interpretation, we are in a
unique position to shape the kinds of questions
asked about texts. Therefore, using the films, cartoons,
and novels our students already know to introduce
critical questions posed by disability studies
makes a lot of sense. As teachers, we are invested in
changing the lives of our students for the better.
We know that students will go home and talk to
their friends and families, sharing information on
social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. The
more enabling view of disability they get in our
READWRITETHINK CONNECTION	 Lisa Storm Fink, RWT
“Exploring Satire with Shrek” uses fairy tales as an introduction to satire. Students view a scene from a movie and
examine the ways in which it departs from typical fairy tales. They are then introduced to the four techniques of
satire—exaggeration, incongruity, reversal, and parody—and asked to identify these techniques in a clip from
Shrek. Students next select a fairy tale to satirize and share their finished stories with the class or in small groups.
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/exploring-satire-with-shrek-810.html
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