Andrew Stanton, we need to talk.

In response to numerous criticisms of the Gerald character in Finding Dory, Andrew Stanton, co-director, had this to say:

We just wanted him to be the nerd, because all of us were nerds…. It’s a bit of a cathartic autobiography for all of us animation nerds that we allowed Gerald to finally win the rock.

(From a story hosted on Business Insider)

I’m sorry, Mr. Stanton, but this explanation just isn’t working for me.

First of all, Gerald doesn’t win the rock. He gets his chance to take it only after Fluke and Rudder find something more interesting to do. They were bullies to Gerald and they exploited Becky, but because in doing so they helped Marlin and Nemo find Dory, they get rewarded with front row seats to the big release.

And to say that he was meant to be a nerd, I’m sorry it just falls flat. It feels exactly like rewriting history. He may not have been intended to represent cognitive disability, but he is very clearly built on tropes of the fool, the goof, the jester. And as a writer you should know that these tropes have ableist origins.

If you want to talk about nerd empowerment, you need look know further than Dory herself (her keen memory for trivia) , or Mr. Ray (his ecological and biological knowledge), or even Bailey (awkward and uncertain) and Destiny (poor vision and clumsiness) . The entire movie is about nerd empowerment, and manages to do so without using the tired idea of cool oppression to make it work. All this just makes the Gerald and Becky character development seem even more lazy and inexcusable.

You can’t make anything foolproof from people’s interpretation. So all we can do is trust that we were very respectful…

Here’s where your statement really misses the mark. The words you are looking for are

I’m sorry.

Surely you can see why this interpretation of Gerald and Becky are so pervasive. Yet you won’t acknowledge the very clear arguments set forth by so many of your fans.

Gerald is non-verbal, gullible, used, abused, and ignored. Becky has a defect, is exploited, and infantilized. In a movie full of empowering characters, creating these cheap tropes, the fool and the beast of burden, just to move the star characters across land… I think you could have done better. And I think it would have been easy.

Without even having to give these characters lines, it could have easily been implicitly demonstrated that Gerald and Becky willingly help Marlin and Nemo. Fluke and Rudder can also maintain their bully status by being barriers to accessing Gerald and Becky, rather than being the ones that give Marlin and Nemo Carte Blanche to exploit them. Fluke and Rudder could have flippantly refused to help, Gerald and Becky could have been heroes. You wouldn’t have had to change anything other than the script between Marlin, Fluke, and Rudder to make this work.

Try harder next time.