Stereotypes In The Film Nanny Mcphee

In the movie Nanny McPhee, a windowed father tries to replace his seven children’s mother by hiring nannies. The children intentionally try to sabotage their father’s efforts of replacing their mother with a nanny. (Doran & Jones, 2005) The children ban together and formed a group in order to destroy their father’s efforts. The children were successful of running off seventeen of the nanny’s that their father has hired. According to Borkowski (2011) groups are defined by meeting four characteristics. The first characteristic is there are four or more people in a social interaction. The Brown family consist of seven children. The second characteristic of a group is a stable structure. While the Brown’s children may be a disorganized group, they are still a family unit. The third characteristic of groups is the members share a similar interest or goal.

The Brown children exhibits characteristics of group think as Simon functions as the group leader and the other children agree to whatever he says. The Brown children exhibited the use of stereotyping when they decided all stepmothers were like the wicked stepmothers in the fairy tales. Stereotyping is the perception of traits that one projects to a group of people and is the most common stereotyping are based on gender and leadership according to Pattie Rose (2013). Nanny Mcphee exhibits many characteristic of a leader, especially that of an authoritarian style leadership. Nanny Mcphee exerted her authority by telling the children exactly what she expected and she did not consult the children before making rules or telling them what to do. Mcphee exhibits her authoritarian role by punishing the children by making the do what they were doing only faster with the tap of her