The Spongebob Squarepants Movie II

The Spongebob Squarepants movie 2 has very few if any noticeable gender roles. Although only one main character is a female, she exhibits no form of domesticity, submissiveness, piety or purity. Sandy is not bound to any “spheres” and she behaves just like any other character in the movie. This particular movie is important because millions of young, impressionable children across the world (mostly in America) will view this movie.

In the movie, Plankton tries to steal the Krabby Patty secret formula from Mr. Krabs, and while him and Spongebob wrestle over the bottle containing the formula, the bottle simply disappears. With Krabby Patties no longer in production, the entire city of Bikini Bottom is thrown into a depression of rioting and hysteria. The main characters, Spongebob, Plankton, Mr. Krabs, Squidward, Patrick, and Sandy, the only female, must find the secret formula in order to save Bikini Bottom. 

Although there is a shortage of female characters, the lone female is treated and portrayed very similarly to the men. She does not take orders from any of them and does not show any of the characteristics that most other women in American culture do. 

When the Krabby Patty shortage began, everyone in the city of Bikini Bottom was panicking. Senseless violence and disorder was occurring, and Sandy Cheeks, the only female main character, leapt into action. She attempted to reverse engineer the Krabby Patty secret formula so she could stop the violence and bring Bikini Bottom out of tough times. She did this on her own volition, without any encouragement or supervision by a male figure.

The whole slew of main characters decides that they need to go on land to hunt out the Krabby Patty secret formula, each character decides for him or herself whether they will make the journey. Sandy decides by herself that she will make the trip, without any encouragement or reassurance from the male characters. She is of a different sex, but all the characters function as equals.

At the climax of the film, the main characters must fight a deranged neo-pirate to get the secret recipe back, and they quickly find that they function as an awful team. Since there is no teamwork, they fight as individuals, and Sandy is no exception. Her superpower is nothing stereotypically identified with the female sex.

Although the Spongebob Squarepants Movie II is very progressive when it comes to defining sex roles, it is very different from other works of American culture, and it hardly can enlighten children when most other culture is implanting sex roles into their very impressionable minds.