DreamWorks “Flushed Away” (Psychoanalytic)

The movie “Flushed Away” is an animated film by DreamWorks and Aardman Animations. The movie centres on a pampered and posh house-rat named Roderick “Roddy” St. James, who is the beloved, but lonely pet of an upper class family in the Kensington district of London, England. After the family leaves on vacation, leaving Roddy alone in the well-decorated abode, a sewer rat by the name of Sid finds his way into Roddy’s now empty house and decides to stay there. When Roddy’s plan to remove Sid by flushing him down the toilet goes awry, he finds himself “flushed away”, down into the sewers of London. It is there where he meets Rita Malone, a cunning and independent “tomboyish” rat, who owns the boat Roddy needs to get back “up top” to his home.

According to Sigmund Freud, Rita plays the role of the Id in “Flushed Away”, and opposes Roddy who is the Superego. Rita is a street smart scavenger born and raised in the sewers of London, the oldest child of her obscenely large family. She characteristically trusts no one but herself and her family members, and prefers working alone. She exemplifies the Id well because she is sporadic in her actions, and does not conform to a single set of rules. Her decisions are often high-risk, high-reward and come from emotions and less from rational thought, which is what initially plunged the two characters into their fray with The Toad. Her sympathy for Roddy and his quest to get back home help Rita realise her own potential for trusting people.

Where Rita is intelligent and sporty, Roddy begins as an ignorant and un-athletic house pet who has no family or friends due to his refusal to leave his home. His character is content with a life of boredom and loneliness as a sacrifice to security, but it is not until he meets Rita that his true desires for companionship surface. Roddy is a classic Superego, one who obeys the rules and performs solely on logic, as he is rather unknowledgeable of the world outside of his fantasy playhouse. He is a germaphobe (an ironic trait for a rat) and a coward on the surface. He is capable of heroism, but only after he meets Rita, who sets them off on their journey.

As a team of two, Roddy and Rita together form a pair that can be considered the Ego of the film. They both struggle internally with their issues of distrust and insecurity, but together they help each other overcome these problems to achieve a balance between themselves. Rita learns to relax the way Roddy has his entire life, despite her family’s hectic lifestyle keeping her tense. The turning point for her comes when she accepts the emerald Roddy offers her to help stabilize her family, and she realises that there is genuine good in people. Her development as a character is not as drastic as Roddy’s, but she still experiences personal growth.

Over the course of the movie, Roddy becomes more comfortable with breaking the rules as he learns how to truly live without fear. During his negotiations between his Superego past and the present Id, Rita, he finds himself performing increasingly intense actions, such as riding on the extended hand of the Jammy Dodger while escaping from The Toad’s henchmen, or swinging by Le Frog’s tongue in order to save Rita from the clutches of The Toad, or flying through the air hundreds of feet above London with only a plastic bag parachute. He makes the symbolic transformation from hatchling to bird, boy into man as he comes to terms with the reality of the dangers of the world, and secondly that happiness is not material. The fight to balance the Id and Superego is concluded when Roddy decides to stay with Rita and her family in the sewers, and leave his old life behind him.