Don’t be Incredible

“Everyone’s special, Dash.” “That’s just another way of saying no one’s special…”

We are all familiar with Dash’s complaint about “everyone’s special.” The Incredibles explores this theme through satire. Satire is a literary/mediated work that diminishes or derogates a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn, or indignation. The goal of satire is to shame into reform.

Most of the satire in The Incredibles utilizes is Horatian satire. Horatian satire is gentle, urbane, and smiling. Horatian satire aims to correct through gentle sympathetic laughter. The Incredibles is also indirect satire, relying on narrative, characters, or groups who are the focus of the satire and who are targeted not by what is said about them, but by what they themselves say and do.

The movie satirizes mainly two things: middle-class life and the superhero genre. For middle class life, The Incredibles uses reversal to point out the problems of how we view our middle-class life: boring, lame, and normal. Reversal presents the opposite of the normal order, in this case, a family of “supers” trying to have a normal life.

The dinner scene makes us all chuckle – Horatian satire – but none of us really want to be in the Parr family’s place. By watching a family struggle to even get through dinner, we are challenged to think of our own dinners and how we interact with our family members. Sure, it’s barely a four-minute scene, but a powerful one at that. It begs the question: is our middle-class life really as bad as we think it is? Violet’s rant about being normal also makes us consider how we try to “just be normal” and fit into the crowd…while also wanting to be “super” or “special.”

The second thing The Incredibles satirizes is the superhero genre, specifically the villain story line. Syndrome is your typical villain, wanting revenge for a wrong done to him in the past by the hero (Mr. Incredible), complete with flash-backs, crazed antics, and evil laughter. This kind of technique is parody, imitating the style of something in order to reveal it’s flaws.

Most villains in the superhero universe have a backstory, but rarely do we see what it is beyond the wrong done to the villain. As in Syndrome’s case, he takes be rejected as a side-kick (IncrediBoy) to Mr. Incredible (after letting a villain escape, cause train tracks to blow up, and getting Mr. Incredible in trouble for the train crash). We see no more of Syndrome until two-thirds of the way through the movie, as a revenge-driven, crazed villain. He even has the crazy spiked hair to go with his personality. This extreme measure of childhood-rejection-turned-villain shames the lack of creativity in super villain backstories.

Even when Mr. Incredible apologizes for treating Syndrome unfairly, Syndrome rejects his apology, parodying the heartlessness and one-sidedness of super villains. Throughout the rest of the movie, he is made out to be completely evil, even daring to steal the Parr’s baby, Jack-Jack. As with thee superhero genre, the super villain is not a three-dimensional character, but rather a flat character meant only to blow-up in the end.

Although there are many other things that The Incredibles points out through its satire, there are two things that carry the majority of the film. The Parr family comes to peace with not being normal, and of course, Syndrome meets his demise because of his cape. But more than that, the Incredibles urges us to think differently about the way we view our families, and pushes the superhero genre to give more depth to its villains.

This kind of social and corporate reform is very important for Disney movies because it stimulates deeper thinking and can help move us into action. Many Disney movies have little depth to them, but The Incredibles stretches beyond the typical shallowness of animated movies. Disney should consider the success of The Incredibles and integrate its satire into more of their movies. This kind of Horatian satire can instigate changes, especially if the satire is focused around issues of race or any other inequality. Next time Disney produces a movie with more ethnic diversity, they should consider using Horatian satire similar to The Incredibles. Perhaps then they could be truly incredible.

 

Cover Image: Comic Vine