Author: Kira Reed, Clinical Social Worker

Family is a universal concept that takes on many forms in our society. Many cultures view family as a core value and often a large portion of cultural practice such as going to family for holidays or learning about your heritage. Family emphasizes acts of loving and caring for your family members and working toward common goals even in the face of adversity. Most often, family is thought of as a two parent household with kids and stable income. But this just is not the case for many around the world. It can be difficult to see the depictions of family in media as a “loving mom and dad” and “children in a happy healthy home” because this is not always reality. The movies “The Wild Robot” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” do beautiful jobs in demonstrating the power of found family.

Family often emphasizes a structure with roles where all members participate to support the group and their shared goals and values. Guardians of the Galaxy released in 2014 and tells the story of Starlord, a bounty hunter that was taken from earth as a child and raised by aliens. During the movie, Starlord encounters other outcasts and bounty hunters who ultimately team up to fight the Kree and Thanos to protect the galaxy. While the Guardians are reluctant to work together at first, often looking out only for themselves, they begin developing friendships through shared experiences, humor, and values. Throughout the movie The Guardians encounter challenges that force them to work together and start to let their emotional guards down. In the final fights, The Guardians stand together. Despite their bickering and difference in opinions, they have developed close bonds in their time together and will fight to keep each other safe.

The Guardians are an important representation of found family. Within the LGBTQIA+ population there can be challenges with acceptance from biological families forcing a need for boundaries and distance. However, we still crave the need for belonging and to feel cared about; ultimately many LGBTQIA+ individuals are able to find that through community. To be seen and accepted for who you are allows you to engage with your full potential. 

Another example of found family comes from the 2024 movie The Wild Robot which shows the formation of family despite differences. Roz is a robot that becomes responsible for raising a gosling. Brightbill, the gosling, is bullied by other geese for his differences and must process his unnatural upbringing. While The Guardians were able to represent finding belonging and family later in life, The Wild Robot provides a window into formed families through adoption and other adverse circumstances. On a personal level, I was adopted as a baby and grew up in a different world. I often consumed media with happy biological families and all white characters which caused feelings of being an “other” While there are some examples of “untraditional” families in media such as “The Brady Bunch”, “This is Us”, and “Tarzan” they don’t stray far from the typical heterosexual mold. The Wild Robot is able to communicate a strong message about diversity and resilience through fictional characters and give them distinct differences that impact their perspective of the world. 

Tradition has created a norm of expectations that discourages differences and sets a standard for “what is acceptable” Growing up with limited representation continues to exacerbate the villainizing of straying from the norm. However, media has shifted towards more inclusivity and representation as presently observed by movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and/or the Wild Robot.