A recurring problem in animated children’s films featuring anthropomorphised animals is that of dealing with the exorbitant cruelty and horror of animal life. Madagascar 2, for example, simply forgets that it ever mattered in the original Madagascar that Alex-the-lion’s natural diet includes animals like his best friend Marty-the-zebra (an issue that is resolved in the first film by converting Alex to a diet of fish, which are un-anthropomorphised and cannot therefore be anybody’s friends). None of the lions in Alex’s African pride is ever seen feasting on the slain carcass of any of Marty’s identical cousins; in fact, only the humans ever seem to need to eat at all. But the Madagascar films are witty, vivacious, technically accomplished tripe; they’re not obliged to be serious about their own problems. Pixar’s movies are far more determinedly ideological, in the sense that they are driven to compose imaginary solutions to the problems they pose; this is what gives Pixar their reputation for satisfying, responsible storytelling, placing their films in the tradition of psychologically complex fairytales for children rather than recklessly trashy entertainment for kids.

Pixar’s Finding Nemo is an exceptionally beautiful film, and will probably be cited by marine biologists in years to come as the childhood event that first kindled their fascination with the ocean and its teeming denizens. But it is also a kind of dream-work in which an initial trauma is systematically displaced and transformed in order to fabricate a fantasy life-world, a “biological imaginary” that can be lived with.

The film begins with a mass slaughter of unhatched clownfish, indifferently swallowed in a single gulp by a passing predator, leaving the titular Nemo and his father Marlin as the only survivors. The film manages the anxiety induced by this terrifying opening scene in several ways. The ubiquitous threat posed by bigger fish is concentrated upon a posse of sharks who are trying to reform their predatory habits: “fish are friends, not food”. They are scary but morally defanged, and the (somewhat shaky) reassurance generated by their good intentions propagates metonymically along the food chain. Nemo himself spends much of the film in the relative (if temporary) security of a fish tank in a dentist’s surgery, while his father’s dedication to rescuing him establishes a narrative context in which constant danger is part of an exciting adventure rather than simply an omnipresent condition of existence. Most of the creatures we encounter below the surface of the ocean seem happy to be alive, rather than beset by terror and confusion: their world may be a perilous place, but it is nevertheless one in which it is possible to thrive. Indeed, the ostensible “moral” of the tale is that Marlin’s overweening protectiveness towards his offspring is misplaced: it is better to treat life as a great adventure, and to have trust in one’s own and others’ capabilities, than to be paralyzed by fear, however rationally justifiable the latter response may seem.

In certain respects, Finding Nemo is a repetition of Pixar’s earlier Toy Story 2, in which the crucial decision facing the central character is between eternal, incorruptible life in a box in a museum (cf Nemo’s fish tank) and being returned to his owner as a plaything whose certain destiny is to be used, broken and discarded. Some fairly harsh lessons about the inevitability of death and emotional abandonment are implied, for which the palliative is a heroic treatment of the virtue of loyalty, a theme established in the first Toy Story’s buddying-up of Woody and Buzz Lightyear. In these films, the highest form of the good is an unconditional commitment to that which you know will ultimately fail you, and it is Woody’s capacity to devote himself selflessly to his owner that makes him capable of the self-sacrificing, heroic friendship which binds the community of toys together.

One can’t quite forget however, even though it is sung by a cute cowgirl breathily vocalized by Sarah McLachlan, that the film’s musical centrepiece “When She Loved Me” is a Randy Newman song, and that its citation of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” is bitterly and knowingly ironic. Parton’s melody fixes the key phrase to a high note shared by “I” and “you”, underlining the constancy of the sentiment; Newman’s tracks it with a descending scale, and a gorgeously despairing harmonic shift into a minor key. Toy Story 2 may end with a recapitulation of the theme song, “You’ve Got A Friend In Me”, but the desolation of this moment is not easily dismissed. For the child viewer, the film offers encouragement that life is worth living in spite of the inevitability of what you most fear, and that everyday human sociality will more or less get you through; but it also accommodates an adult perspective in which loss is not only in the future but in the past and present also.

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