Bob is marginalised in a way invisible to the people around him, but itās there. As a plus size person, he doesnāt fit in his cubicle or his car. When he stops paying attention, the world around him crumbles. World of cardboard. Being huge and super strong isnāt easy for him.
But whatās even harder is having Bobās justice sensitivity. Justice sensitivity is a symptom of autism in which neurodivergent people are more sensitive to social problems. Bob gets fired because his sense of right and wrong is too strong to fit into the world around him.
Dash also struggles with the same problems as neurodivergent people. Dashās allegory is ADHD. Heās not allowed to participate in the parts of school life that interest him; that heās good at. Heās constantly holding himself back. I was a gifted kid too, and my giftedness has caused consequences for other students when I dominated a classroom discussion. When I was moved to a gifted school and surrounded by peers, life got better for me. I see myself in Dash.
Violetās marginalisation is more of an immigrant/racialised/misogyny problem. Sheās accepted the mainstream narrative that her powers make her a freak. That sheās different and thatās bad. That normality is an ideal to aspire to. She becomes confident in herself after sheās allowed to engage with her own native culture and see that itās not bad. She gets a talk from Mum and forges a new relationship with her minority identity. The fighting is secondary. The story isnāt about it.
There are queer or disabled people in white middle class nuclear families, and they have problems. I think Brad chose to make the story relatable to everyone by using a cultural image weāre very familiar with. But then he showed problems that happen when someone, even someone in that social role, is different from what society expects.
Oh, now youāre stretching. Bob isnāt āplus sizeā heās meant to look like a bodybuilder who let himself go (and gets back into shape once the societal restraints on his self-actualization are removed). The scenes where his environment is shown to be too small for his stature are a visual representation of ānormalā life holding him back from his natural greatness, not a rendition of the struggles of plus sized people.
I mean, Dash and ADHD works better, but it has the same problem as Viās anxiety in that he gets better by being himself and doing what he was meant to do and ābeing the best he can beā, which is what he complains his mom is not letting him do. If you want to read the kidsā powers as mental health issues actualized then I canāt be on board with how the denouementās return to a modified normalcy presents their new situation. They didnāt work to get adjusted, they didnāt need help or therapy or support, just to be set free to self-actualize.
I donāt think thatās the idea, beyond the superficial (the kidsā mental health is played as growing pains or inherent characteristics of childhood, if anything), but if it was itād be more problematic than the alternative.
I also take issue with the idea that white suburban middle class is āa cultural image weāre familiar withā and so suitable to serve as a projection of a minority allegory. I mean, no, white suburban middle class isnāt default human. If you set out to make an allegory about middle class you donāt come at it from that premise, thatād beā¦ bad. Again, I think the objectivist read is actually less problematic there.
On that it again helps to look at similar media that DOES use superpowers as a minority allegory. Yeah, the X-Men work as a metaphor for that, and you do see it transposed to white middle class. X2ās āHave you tried NOT being a mutantā scene comes to mind. But they are also presented on the run from authorities, living in the sewers, looking visibly different to non-mutants and being shunned on sight and in all sorts of other situations analogous to real world discrimination. The Incredibles does very much not. Suburban middle class life is stiffling in that very 90s way where itās fine but itās not the self-realization that special people like the Parrs were meant for, so it makes the men in particular feel restless and frustrated.
The Incredibles is a bit of an anti-Fight Club, now that I think of it. Which is weird to think about, but it fits. Both get interpreted backwards often, too.
You know what does more for a trans personās mental health and suicide risk than any amount of talk therapy? Being themself.
Besides that, itās a movie. There isnāt any time for a therapy scene in a 115 minute family movie about superheroes with everything else going on. The core theme of the movie is family, and family is what helps Dash and Violet. Helen accepts them for who they are instead of telling them to repress, and Bob gets on Helenās side and encourages restraint. Thatās actually kind of accurate - childrenās mental health issues are so often caused by a bad family environment. Bob and Helen werenāt on the same page for most of the movie, and they were giving their kids conflicted messaging. When they reconcile and agree on how to parent the kids, the kids are able to reconcile too. Dash stops parroting Dadās supremacist views and Violet stops internalising Mumās conformist views. Good parenting is the very best thing for a childās development.
And when I say plus size, I donāt mean fat. Plus size menās clothing stores are called ābig and tallā. Mr Incredible is big, and heās tall. His size is plus compared to the body type the world is built for. Itās giving him back problems and poor activity levels because he doesnāt fit.
Yeah, but thatās not what you said Dash stands in for. Being yourself is not how you treat ADHD.
The solution to not having enough time to cover that is to not make Dash stand-in for that. Which they donāt because thatās not what the movie is about.
The movie is about a stiffling system making the kids of a white middle class nuclear family struggle by forcing them to conform to a rigid (government-set) standard when they would thrive by self-expression and learning from their parentsā experience instead. Which neatly solves the problem of having to find a stand-in for mental health tratment by making the kidsā issues in the fictional universe be caused by the conformity, not by their superpowers.
Because the movie isnāt interested in the downsides of the powers. Dash getting bored because heās fast isnāt presented as a struggle when heās not forced to stay on the level of the normies. Itās not a day-to-day problem in the way The Thing being a monster made of rocks is a problem for him. Itās not caused by his powers, itās caused by society trying to hold him back. Dash isnāt trans and he doesnāt have ADHD, he is a precocious kid being dragged back because the system is meant for people with less talent than he has.
That is what the movie is concerned with, and it overlaps with the ideology that it does. You are projecting what is at most a secondary concern (the feelings of otherness and isolation) onto the text because they are a more palatable interpretation.
Bob is marginalised in a way invisible to the people around him, but itās there. As a plus size person, he doesnāt fit in his cubicle or his car. When he stops paying attention, the world around him crumbles. World of cardboard. Being huge and super strong isnāt easy for him.
But whatās even harder is having Bobās justice sensitivity. Justice sensitivity is a symptom of autism in which neurodivergent people are more sensitive to social problems. Bob gets fired because his sense of right and wrong is too strong to fit into the world around him.
Dash also struggles with the same problems as neurodivergent people. Dashās allegory is ADHD. Heās not allowed to participate in the parts of school life that interest him; that heās good at. Heās constantly holding himself back. I was a gifted kid too, and my giftedness has caused consequences for other students when I dominated a classroom discussion. When I was moved to a gifted school and surrounded by peers, life got better for me. I see myself in Dash.
Violetās marginalisation is more of an immigrant/racialised/misogyny problem. Sheās accepted the mainstream narrative that her powers make her a freak. That sheās different and thatās bad. That normality is an ideal to aspire to. She becomes confident in herself after sheās allowed to engage with her own native culture and see that itās not bad. She gets a talk from Mum and forges a new relationship with her minority identity. The fighting is secondary. The story isnāt about it.
There are queer or disabled people in white middle class nuclear families, and they have problems. I think Brad chose to make the story relatable to everyone by using a cultural image weāre very familiar with. But then he showed problems that happen when someone, even someone in that social role, is different from what society expects.
Oh, now youāre stretching. Bob isnāt āplus sizeā heās meant to look like a bodybuilder who let himself go (and gets back into shape once the societal restraints on his self-actualization are removed). The scenes where his environment is shown to be too small for his stature are a visual representation of ānormalā life holding him back from his natural greatness, not a rendition of the struggles of plus sized people.
I mean, Dash and ADHD works better, but it has the same problem as Viās anxiety in that he gets better by being himself and doing what he was meant to do and ābeing the best he can beā, which is what he complains his mom is not letting him do. If you want to read the kidsā powers as mental health issues actualized then I canāt be on board with how the denouementās return to a modified normalcy presents their new situation. They didnāt work to get adjusted, they didnāt need help or therapy or support, just to be set free to self-actualize.
I donāt think thatās the idea, beyond the superficial (the kidsā mental health is played as growing pains or inherent characteristics of childhood, if anything), but if it was itād be more problematic than the alternative.
I also take issue with the idea that white suburban middle class is āa cultural image weāre familiar withā and so suitable to serve as a projection of a minority allegory. I mean, no, white suburban middle class isnāt default human. If you set out to make an allegory about middle class you donāt come at it from that premise, thatād beā¦ bad. Again, I think the objectivist read is actually less problematic there.
On that it again helps to look at similar media that DOES use superpowers as a minority allegory. Yeah, the X-Men work as a metaphor for that, and you do see it transposed to white middle class. X2ās āHave you tried NOT being a mutantā scene comes to mind. But they are also presented on the run from authorities, living in the sewers, looking visibly different to non-mutants and being shunned on sight and in all sorts of other situations analogous to real world discrimination. The Incredibles does very much not. Suburban middle class life is stiffling in that very 90s way where itās fine but itās not the self-realization that special people like the Parrs were meant for, so it makes the men in particular feel restless and frustrated.
The Incredibles is a bit of an anti-Fight Club, now that I think of it. Which is weird to think about, but it fits. Both get interpreted backwards often, too.
You know what does more for a trans personās mental health and suicide risk than any amount of talk therapy? Being themself.
Besides that, itās a movie. There isnāt any time for a therapy scene in a 115 minute family movie about superheroes with everything else going on. The core theme of the movie is family, and family is what helps Dash and Violet. Helen accepts them for who they are instead of telling them to repress, and Bob gets on Helenās side and encourages restraint. Thatās actually kind of accurate - childrenās mental health issues are so often caused by a bad family environment. Bob and Helen werenāt on the same page for most of the movie, and they were giving their kids conflicted messaging. When they reconcile and agree on how to parent the kids, the kids are able to reconcile too. Dash stops parroting Dadās supremacist views and Violet stops internalising Mumās conformist views. Good parenting is the very best thing for a childās development.
And when I say plus size, I donāt mean fat. Plus size menās clothing stores are called ābig and tallā. Mr Incredible is big, and heās tall. His size is plus compared to the body type the world is built for. Itās giving him back problems and poor activity levels because he doesnāt fit.
Yeah, but thatās not what you said Dash stands in for. Being yourself is not how you treat ADHD.
The solution to not having enough time to cover that is to not make Dash stand-in for that. Which they donāt because thatās not what the movie is about.
The movie is about a stiffling system making the kids of a white middle class nuclear family struggle by forcing them to conform to a rigid (government-set) standard when they would thrive by self-expression and learning from their parentsā experience instead. Which neatly solves the problem of having to find a stand-in for mental health tratment by making the kidsā issues in the fictional universe be caused by the conformity, not by their superpowers.
Because the movie isnāt interested in the downsides of the powers. Dash getting bored because heās fast isnāt presented as a struggle when heās not forced to stay on the level of the normies. Itās not a day-to-day problem in the way The Thing being a monster made of rocks is a problem for him. Itās not caused by his powers, itās caused by society trying to hold him back. Dash isnāt trans and he doesnāt have ADHD, he is a precocious kid being dragged back because the system is meant for people with less talent than he has.
That is what the movie is concerned with, and it overlaps with the ideology that it does. You are projecting what is at most a secondary concern (the feelings of otherness and isolation) onto the text because they are a more palatable interpretation.
Which, hey, is the point of this entire thread.