Synopsis

Monsters, Inc.

In Monstropolis, a city inhabited by monsters, the energy that sustains the entire system is obtained from the screams of human children.

Convinced that children are dangerous, the monsters work by scaring them at night.

Everything changes when a little girl, Boo, accidentally enters their world.
What seemed like a threat becomes something unexpected: closeness, tenderness… and a new way of seeing.

From that moment on, Sulley and Mike will have to face a question they had never considered before:

 What if everything we believed to be true… isn’t?

 When we take for granted what we have never questioned

There are ideas we don’t discuss.

We simply accept them as valid.

• because they’ve always been there
• because everyone accepts them
• because we have never had reason to doubt

In  Monsters, Inc. , the monsters live convinced of one very clear thing:

 Children are dangerous

And from that idea, they build a whole system.

Fear as the basis of what we do

They don’t just think children are dangerous.

They organize their world around that fear.

They work from it.
They relate from it.
They make decisions from it.

And that’s not so far removed from real life.

How many things do we do out of fear?

• avoid
• distrust
• distance ourselves
• overprotecting ourselves

Sometimes, the problem isn’t fear.

 It’s not questioning where it comes from

From what we believe… to what we discover

In  Zootopia  we saw how prejudices condition the way we look at others.

In  Monsters, Inc. , that prejudice takes another step:

 it becomes a system

But just one real encounter is enough to start changing everything.

Boo doesn’t fit the idea they had.

And that forces us to rethink everything.

When the other ceases to be an idea

Change doesn’t happen because of a theory.

It happens because of a relationship.

Sulley doesn’t change because someone convinces him.
He changes because he knows.

Because it experiences.
Because it connects.

And that’s where a very powerful key comes in:

 Prejudice thrives at a distance;
 understanding emerges in closeness.

Changing your perspective is not easy.

Discovering you were wrong is not comfortable.

It implies:

• questioning
• let go of certainties
• to assume that what you were doing wasn’t entirely right

But it also opens a door:

 the possibility of doing things differently

From a system based on fear… to one based on care

The film proposes a profound change:

to move from a model based on fear
to one based on laughter

And it’s not just a narrative detail.

It’s a proposal.

 From where are we building what we do?
 From fear… or from care?

What this story teaches us

Monsters Inc.  is not just a funny story.

It is a reflection on something very present in our lives:

 Many of our beliefs have not been reviewed

And without realizing it, they may be influencing us:

• how we see others
• how we act
• how we relate

For young people, families and educators

For young people, it raises a key idea:
not everything you’ve learned is final.

For families, it invites us to review beliefs we take for granted.

And for educators, it introduces an important responsibility:
not to transmit closed certainties, but to teach how to question.

The question that remains

If many of the things you do stem from what you believe…

What would happen if you started questioning what you’ve always taken for granted?

José María Sánchez Villa