Monsters Inc. Review. The Cartoon Essay Example

Monsters Inc, is a Disney movie produced by Pixar Animation Studio released in 2001. It can make you cry and laugh all at once, and over the years it has remained one the best movies I have ever seen. The storyline of the movie is very creative and in depth, but upon analyzing it I realized that our deviance course material can be applied in a variety of ways. In the following paragraphs I will be discussing how a few concepts, as in crime vs deviance, deviance perspectives, social control, audiences, and dimensions play a role in the film.

First, the concept that I found to be the most persistent throughout the film was crime vs deviance. There were many occasions in which crime, deviance, or both were committed by many characters. Randall was an employee at the energy company where he was always second place on the scarer chart, since Sulley always took first place. Their duty was to scare children because they were the source of energy for their city. On a late night Sulley stayed to finish paperwork but noticed a door on the work floor and saw Randall working off the clock when he should not have been. Randall had committed the deviant behavior of cheating in trying to work after hours without permission so he could boost his scare numbers in the hopes of becoming number one. Also, Sulley and his work partner and friend, Mike, took in Boo, the little girl that had escaped from the door Sulley had seen that night.

This was not only deviant but also a crime because children were seen as danger in their society. This being said, Boo was not supposed to be in their world which is why Sulley and Mike decided to make her a monster costume out of their purple leather couch. They both knew that they were going against the social norm and ultimately committing a crime but hoped that they could fix the problem before it was too late. Unfortunately, the problem turned out to be bigger than what they thought because they later discovered Randall’s true intention that night Sulley encountered Boo. Randall had planned to use the scream extractor machine on the little girl as a test to revolutionize the scare industry.

This machine would basically physically harm the children’s face to force them into screaming more. The worse part was that the CEO, henry J. Waternoose, was in on the plan as well because he wanted his company to thrive since they had not been meeting their quota for a little over a month. Sulley and Mike uncovered this truth about Mr. Waternoose when they had gone to inform him about Randall and his accomplice, Fungus, had tried to do with the machine and he banished Sulley and Mike! That was unfortunate because they thought that they could trust him, but he was just as corrupt. The plan Mr.Waternoose had and acted upon with his two accomplices was both deviant and criminal, especially if he claimed that he would kidnap one thousand children before he would let his company die. Ultimately, the film had a very complex story and it involved a variety of deviant and criminal examples. 

Next, social control and audiences were essential into labeling Sulley’s and Mike’s actions as deviant and criminal. Although there were a number of deviant and criminal actions it is important to focus on the main plot of the movie. From the beginning of the movie it was clear that children were seen as a threat to the monster society because of the fear instilled in them. For instance, the CEO of the electric company, Mr. Watenoose, swore that the touch of a child could kill them. I believe that he used this to his advantage in making his workers believe that kids were bad, so they had to scare them, but it was really to maintain his scare numbers high. This was shown when Sulley had confessed to Mike that he had taken the little girl with him because he did not know what else to do.

Mike automatically got frightened when he saw her and once they got home, he was paranoid because he really believed that Boo was a killing machine and had some kind of plan to kill both him and Sulley. Also, the rest of the monsters who saw the little girl in the restaurant reacted just like Mike because they were told that children were dangerous. Another social control element was the CDA (Child Detection Agency) which is basically their CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention). Throughout the movie there was a character named George who was always attacked by the CDA due to a code 2319 which stood for white sock. The white sock was usually a child’s sock that would somehow always end up getting stuck to his fur and unfortunately had to get it shaved off.

The CDA was best described as and external social control since they followed certain rules or guidelines that would keep the community safe. In regard to the audiences, society and the news media were the two essential components. For example, when Boo had appeared at the restaurant the night Sulley took her from work the witnesses were interviewed by news reporters and exaggerated on what really happened. One of the monsters interviewed claimed that Boo raised him in the air and shook him with her mid powers. As we saw the event earlier, this did not really happen, but the witnesses swore it did and that they themselves saw it. Society on the other hand is just what they grew up hearing by others like Mr. Waternoose and the CDA. 

The final topics I would like to discuss are deviance perspective and dimension. As we know, there are two deviance perspectives which are normative and reactive but normative was the one that related the most to the movie. The reason for this is because Sulley and Mike violated the rule when they took Boo in and put society “in danger.” At the end of the movie children are not seen as deadly anymore because all the truth came out with Mr. Waternoose and Randall. Sulley became the CEO of the company and decided to make it a laughter company rather than continuing being a scare company. The time he spent with Boo he discovered that laughter was ten times more powerful than screams. When talking about dimensions of deviance I would say that intensity was the most important in the move because of how society and every character reacted with Sully and Mike taking care of Boo.