When I was reading the press leading up to the release of Incredibles 2, I was (and also wasn’t) surprised to find that The Incredibles (2004) was apparently criticized as elitist because of the message it sends.
The Incredibles (a.k.a. the Parr family) are all “Supers,” that is, people with talents that make them different. Mr. Incredible is super strong and fast: Elastigirl is stretchy: Dash is really fast, and Violet can become invisible and project force fields. Because of government policy, they are required to bury their talents and to adhere to secret identities and live as ordinary people. The kids have grown up under this program, and are surprised that mom and dad, when things get dire, expect them to step up and perform as superheroes. Syndrome, the villain of the story, means to sell inventions that will make everyone super, so everybody will be the same. As I interpreted this, the message to kids is: Don’t hide out; step up and learn to use your own talents for the good of society.
So, is this message really elitist? Where did it come from leading up to 2004? And why did writer/director Brad Bird feel it was necessary to say this in a children’s animation film? Everyone is supposed to be equal under the law, of course, and democratic ideals say that everyone should be respected the same regardless of race, creed, talent or color. But does that mean everyone should be an ordinary interchangeable cog in the great machine of society?
There’s some background here: For anyone who isn’t aware of how the Bush era No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 was interpreted, it meant the US educational system should work for equal outcomes from all students—no one should have undue advantage or disadvantage. The Act set minimum standards and required that schools spend their time and resources to bring all children up to this level, but no further. In some states, funding for gifted programs was cut by 90% as a result. Schools shifted to achieving the mediocrity of minimum scores. Add to this the tendency of children to persecute anyone who is different, and the result was that talented kids were hiding out left and right, without any avenue to discover and develop their talents. All the emphasis in the public schools is still pretty much on achieving minimum performance, and anyone who stands out is pretending they are better than everyone else. Right?
So, what do we do about the fact that people really do have individual talents? Some people are world-class athletes and some are Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and some are Nobel Prize-winning scientists. If you try to substitute a scientist for a ball player, then there’s going to be a problem. Right? And if you try to dump all those kids who have been encouraged to adhere to minimum standards into a job market, then there’s going to be a problem there, too. Right?
But then, maybe I’m wrong. Surely it’s elitist to look for the best job candidate.
Ahhh. Okay. Now I feel better.
Next, a review of Incredibles 2.
Lela E. Buis 
Jul 27, 2018 @ 07:57:29
“So, what do we do about the fact that people really do have individual talents?”
Two words: Home. Schooling.
If you have a kid with any talent whatsoever, you take that kid the hell out of Kid Jail and let them do their talent thing in peace. I have extensive knowledge, do not get me started. If you turn them loose with an Internet connection and a bicycle, they’ll do a lot better.
Also, do not get me started on the job market. My company needs secretaries. We are training young women with university degrees how to do basic office stuff, because they don’t know how to take a phone message or call a client to make an appointment. I have to drive an hour and a half next week, because nobody in that office knows how to re-install a printer driver in Windows 10. The owner, me, has to go do it.
How the f!!! do people get by in life these days, Lela? They all have phones and laptops, but nobody knows what a f*ing printer driver is? Because they don’t.
Kids! Get off my lawn. 😡
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Jul 28, 2018 @ 00:20:44
I think you’re right about the home schooling. It’s popularity has skyrocketed since it first appeared on the educational horizon. After a good start, my nephew’s (brilliant) older kid had a disastrous result last year, so they’re out buying home schooling materials for the upcoming year. We’ll see how it goes.
I know about printer drivers. 🙂 In the bad old days, there was nothing on the screen but a C prompt, and you had to tell it what to do. Operating systems have ruined everyone’s mind. Of course, there are instructions for installing printer drivers online–it just takes a bit of google-fu to find them. But then, maybe you’re better off doing it yourself.
And secretaries, really? I thought everybody made employees do their own typing and calling these days. Opportunities in Canada must be even worse than the US if university educated people are working in clerical occupations. Whatever, phone etiquette isn’t something that’s taught at the university level. Business school, maybe, but I think that’s a relic of the past.
Are these employees millennials? Does Canada have the same focus on educational testing that the US does?
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Jul 28, 2018 @ 21:08:19
“Opportunities in Canada must be even worse than the US if university educated people are working in clerical occupations.”
Canada is in the grip of Leftists. Opportunities here are -crap-. We’re in a trade war with the USA. Yes, university grads are applying for entry-level clerical work. Hilariously, most of them are unqualified.
It is an all-female shop. No boys. Because the men are completely useless, and the customers complain about them too. I’ve got Millennial women, white middle aged women, immigrant middle aged women (they’re the best ones) and young girls with squeaky new degrees.
None of them can delete and re-install a printer driver. Even though they work with the computers all day, every day.
But I can. I’m a house painter with a degree in Anthropology and another degree in Physical Therapy, but I can fix the fricking computer.
Which, I guess, is why I’m the Grand Fromage and they answer the phone.
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Jul 28, 2018 @ 06:43:26
Well, according to Vox Day, Disney is run by literal Satanists (who developed Frozen around the beliefs of Aleister Crowley). Social Darwinism is part of Satanic philosophy, so perhaps this explains the subtext of The Incredibles…
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Jul 28, 2018 @ 19:55:53
You read Vox Day?
…
Why?
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Jul 28, 2018 @ 23:16:35
I do. Not his books, but his blog.
He says interesting things sometimes, and he’s in Europe where there are different perspectives. You can’t discount what people say because they’re unpopular.
I read File 770, too.
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Jul 30, 2018 @ 06:26:46
I’m writing a book about the Puppy controversy, which is hard to discuss in depth without reading him.
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Jul 30, 2018 @ 10:52:13
You have my sympathies then. ~:)
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Jul 31, 2018 @ 22:08:30
Sounds interesting. The puppies took a lot of grief, but I think they were right. It looks like there been changes from the Nebula for greater inclusion in response. Don’t really see it in the Hugo yet.
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Aug 01, 2018 @ 09:30:54
Lela said: “It looks like there been changes from the Nebula for greater inclusion in response.”
The Nebula, being voted on by the SFWA members, will (theoretically) be more responsive to changes in the audience. When half the audience stands up and walks out in a rage, it makes an impression. So as much as the SFWA seems quite cliquish, they still have actual skin in the game.
WorldCon is a private club, as they’ve made abundantly clear. They pursue their agenda with no reference to the outside world at all.
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Jul 28, 2018 @ 09:48:26
Had a look. You might be onto something there. Bird doubled down in the Incredibles 2 and presented opposing philosophies on development. More on that in the next blog.
Here’s a quote about Herbert Spencer from Wikipedia on Social Darwinism: “Spencer supported laissez-faire capitalism on the basis of his Lamarckian belief that struggle for survival spurred self-improvement which could be inherited.” Lamarckism is still lurking out there, a useful concept for sociocultural evolution, even if no one has been able to prove it really happens in biology.
It looks like Bird was a child prodigy of sorts, brilliant and lucky enough to be recognized and nurtured by the right people in his teens. Some of this might be about his own life experience–he’s trying to support brilliant kids who may not be so lucky. This rates really high on the Ideation Scale, too. He’s asking some hard questions about the value of conformity versus individualism.
Vox Day hates Disney because it’s so far left. I’d actually put him in the Social Darwinism camp. I’d actually put him in MENSA, too, regardless of the malicious snickering about that. He’s sort of got that “different child” feel about him.
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Jul 28, 2018 @ 20:49:17
“Lamarckism is still lurking out there, a useful concept for sociocultural evolution, even if no one has been able to prove it really happens in biology.”
Actually there -is- evidence of Lamarckian inheritance in biology. Not in humans, and unfortunately I can’t remember where I read it, but environmental factors faced by organisms in their lives can change what genes get expressed as they grow, and can also change what genes get expressed in their offspring. I laughed pretty loud the first time I ran into it. Imagine, Lamarck was right after all.
I once, in the mists of time, did a bunch of research on Herbert Spencer. I was working on a paper about E.O.Wilson’s huge textbook “Sociobiology.” I even got published. ~:D
Spencer, as one might guess, was a bit of a wave rider. He took the concept of Darwinian inheritance and applied it to Human social structure, in much the same way that Sigmund Freud took the concept of a steam engine and applied it to the human mind. The result was predictably silly, but he was as influential in his time as Foucault was in the 70’s and 80’s. (Foucault was another wave-riding jackass in the same style. I can’t stand that guy.)
Its gibberish, in short. Sadly a lot of people in N. America and Europe were taken in by it. Leftists like Roosevelt, Hitler, Mussolini etc. were big fans. (Pretty shocking when you put them all together in the same sentence, right? But when you look at what their -said- its all very similar.) That’s why you got the Social Hygiene movement, the whole Indian Schools thing in Canada, all sorts of busybody Good Ideas that ended up being disasters.
As we understand it today, society is an emergent property, not a biological one. But, just to make things more fun, biology is involved, and so is the physical environment. It’s inherently chaotic too. But we could be just as full of shit about that whole explanation as Spencer was, because nobody knows even the most basic things about human intelligence, or even -insect- intelligence. People who study bees don’t know how they work.
Talking about Vox. The thing with him is that he’s a lot like Alex Jones. Mr. Jones has uncovered some really astounding stuff over the years, and he’s usually right about the things that he says. But every single thing is an emergency with him, like he’s permanently turned up to 11. The other thing is the relentless self promotion, and he never admits when he’s wrong. He spins things so he’s always right.
Vox is right about Disney. It -is- a Leftist propaganda factory. There are a lot of extremely questionable people working in and around Disney. Probably because of the number of questionable people working in Hollywood generally. Ever wonder why weird pervy bondage stuff keeps showing up in movies all the time?
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/death-a-hollywood-sex-dungeon-how-a-top-agency-executives-mummification-ritual-ended-tragedy-1123815
Because there’s a -lot- of movie people involved in pervy bondage, and they think its normal. They think -we- should think its normal. They’re promoting it. Disney has its share of weirdos promoting stuff to -kids-. Ever notice the big smokey eyes and come-hither looks on those Disney Princesses? Oh yeah.
The thing with Vox though, is that ultimately its all about him being the smartest guy in the room. So he comes up with all these elaborate theories, and then spins and spins to make it look like he’s super duper.
Its tiresome. That’s why I don’t read him.
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Jul 28, 2018 @ 23:28:51
A lot of those old theories have good points. They’ve been replaced by new theories, but hey, Newtonian physics still works fine on the Earth, even though we know its limitations.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/death-a-hollywood-sex-dungeon-how-a-top-agency-executives-mummification-ritual-ended-tragedy-1123815
??? Dang. I love the police report. I guess in Hollywood the cops have seen it all.
About Vox: His spin is an ego thing, and not unusual. Surprisingly, it works for a lot of people. Whatever, you can’t accuse him of hiding out. 🙂
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Jul 29, 2018 @ 16:01:53
That guy still works at his Hollywood job. Think about being a young woman working in that office, with that guy in it. You have to ride the elevator with him. Like a damn horror movie.
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