this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Dare I ask you to go further?
What’s an extreme example of a crypto-rightwing-coded-80s-flick?
I don't know, man, Die Hard is pretty far out there.
The Rambo and Rocky sequels are what they are as well. They are almost naive about it in a way that supports ironic appreciation, though.
Dirty Harry tracks, but that's back in the early 70s. I never went deep enough into the sequels to see if it got really bad down the line.
I've heard some stuff about Field of Dreams, but I don't think I've watched that in one sitting.
I don't know it's often the action stuff. Your Commandos and Death Wishes and so on. Does stuff like Red Dawn and Invasion USA even count as "crypto"? Those are pretty overt.
If you let me break the time frame I will say that I think The Incredibles flies over people's heads as being aggressively conservative. Forrest Gump used to, but I think people got wise to it over time. Another Zemeckis joint, too. Maybe it's Roger Rabbit that was the accident.
Superheroes are a metaphor for minorities. There's the immigrant experience in constantly moving house, the queer experience in hiding who you are, the neurodivergent experience in being told not to stick out in school.
The villain is a capitalist billionaire who wants to appropriate a minority's culture without understanding what it means. If you're an indigenous minority you've been through that.
There's a scene where the mum has a talk with her kids about treating authority figures they've been trained not to fear as threats to their lives. That talk is familiar to any black family in the USA.
There's a struggle between parents and their children about how to navigate assimilating into the majority culture while retaining their own identity. Many immigrants go through what Dash and Violet did.
That's not an invalid read. My problem with it is that the movie doesn't show the supes as being inherently feared or hated. This isn't the X-Men, which does work on that front.
Here the supes are suppressed by the government, not a societal issue. They are presented as being accepted in the past, in a world without intervention. Thriving, in fact. They are celebrities and have a whole James Bond-style support system. They didn't come from a different place with a different culture like Superman or Wonder Woman. Superheroes-as-minorities is a very frequent trope, but The Incredibles isn't rehashing any of those, they're doing the Fantastic 4. Superheroes-as-family. Bit of a different tack.
And when they're suppressed they aren't suppresed into a marginal role in society. They are suppressed into suburban white middle class. Which, incidentally, is presented as less flashy than the life of the one explicitly black character, but that is probably a well-meaning accident.
I do think the concept of cultural appropriation is and has alway been iffy, but beyond that, while I think you can argue that read I don't think it fits the movie particularly well.
And yes, in the moral space the movie is drawing it is explicitly including those characteristics as part of the exceptionality you are supposed to self-realize. As I told you on the other thread, I don't think Bird has a Randian "you should be an asshole if you want to" approach to this. He sees it as moral and ethical and valuable for society when people can self express their exceptional, natural abilities, and I do believe there is an explicit attempt to include those things in the mix. It's why the slightly token black guy is there in the first place.
I should say I also think it's undermined because the one instance of someone even appearing to have a recognizable trait of those things in the main family, which would be Vi's crippling social anxiety, is shown as getting better when she fully expresses her powers and self-realizes, which if a bit of an icky approach.
Not true. The government shut down the superhero program because of public pressure. The catalyst was the suicide jumper that Bob saved. But around that time there were a lot of incidents of property damage and lawsuits that made it too expensive for the government to have superheroes, because of what the people were doing.
Bob is marginalised in a way invisible to the people around him, but it's there. As a plus size person, he doesn't 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 isn't easy for him.
But what's even harder is having Bob's 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. Dash's allegory is ADHD. He's not allowed to participate in the parts of school life that interest him; that he's good at. He's 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.
Violet's marginalisation is more of an immigrant/racialised/misogyny problem. She's accepted the mainstream narrative that her powers make her a freak. That she's different and that's bad. That normality is an ideal to aspire to. She becomes confident in herself after she's allowed to engage with her own native culture and see that it's not bad. She gets a talk from Mum and forges a new relationship with her minority identity. The fighting is secondary. The story isn't 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 we're 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 you're stretching. Bob isn't "plus size" he's 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 "normal" life holding him back from his natural greatness, not a rendition of the struggles of plus sized people.
I mean, Dash and ADHD works more, but it has the same problem as Vi's anxiety in that he gets better by being himself and doing what he was meant to do and "being the best he can be", which is what he complains his mom is not letting him do. If you want to read the kids' powers as mental health issues actualized then I can't be on board with how the denouement's return to a modified normalcy presents their new situation. They didn't work to get adjusted, they didn't need help or therapy or support, just to be set free to self-actualize.
I don't think that's the idea, beyond the superficial (the kids' mental health is played as growing pains or inherent characteristics of childhood, if anything), but if it was it'd be more problematic than the alternative.
I also take issue with the idea that white suburban middle class is "a cultural image we're familiar with" and so suitable to serve as a projection of a minority alegory. I mean, no, white suburban middle class isn't default human. If you set out to make an allegory about middle class you don't come at it from that premise, that'd be... 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. X2's "Have you tried NOT being a mutant" 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 it's fine but it's 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 person's mental health and suicide risk than any amount of talk therapy? Being themself.
Besides that, it's a movie. There isn't 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 Helen's side and encourages restraint. That's actually kind of accurate - children's mental health issues are so often caused by a bad family environment. Bob and Helen weren't 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 Dad's supremacist views and Violet stops internalising Mum's conformist views. Good parenting is the very best thing for a child's development.
And when I say plus size, I don't mean fat. Plus size men's clothing stores are called "big and tall". Mr Incredible is big, and he's tall. His size is plus compared to the body type the world is built for. It's giving him back problems and poor activity levels because he doesn't fit.
Yeah, but that's 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 don't because that's 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 parents' experience instead. Which neatly solves the problem of having to find a stand-in for mental health tratment by making the kids' issues in the fictional universe be caused by the conformity, not by their superpowers.
Because the movie isn't interested in the downsides of the powers. Dash getting bored because he's fast isn't presented as a struggle when he's not forced to stay on the level of the normies. It's not a day-to-day problem in the way The Thing being a monster made of rocks is a problem for him. It's not caused by his powers, it's caused by society trying to hold him back. Dash isn't trans and he doesn't 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.
Don't forget any movie that includes a fleet of Chevrolet Suburbans being driven as a government vehicle!
Oh, man, way too new for the conversation.
But I guess we can add Bad Boys 2 to the list. I mean, all of Michael Bay's oeuvre, but holy crap, Bad Boys 2. That MUST have been some form of weird Florida-lobby/CIA psyop, there is no other explanation.
Ahh Deathwish I haven’t thought about that in years but yeah it does have white flight, brown gangs, and one NYC architect-cum-vigilante savior.
Even the incredibles thinks the insurance industry is predatory. It flew over my head completely in being right wing, but I’m autistic and often miss really, really obvious subtext (though I can generally predict entire plots from the first few minutes, so it’s a weird combination). I could tell that zootopia was a heavy handed allegory, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it referencing racism, for example.
In fairness, Zootopia is... kinda muddy on that front.
The Incredibles is very overt about the whole objectivist "if everybody is special the nobody is" and how the supes are better because they were born better but the wannabe sidekick has no business trying to be one of the special people by inventing stuff. And how the government and society are regulating these people who are intrinsically better into normalcy when they should be allowed to freely express themselves.
But not the guy who isn't born into it. That's evil.
I mean, I'm pushing it, but it's not really a secret. And man, does it set people off. Not just on the Internet. There are full on thinkpieces that have been printed on paper about how he's subtly different from a true Objectivist and so his ideas that some people are exceptional and superior are fine.
The villain says that. When Thanos said half the population should be randomly killed, did you think that was the message of that movie? The Incredibles is about Bob navigating his relationship with his own biases. Syndrome is Bob's dark foil; a villain made of all the worst parts of Bob. Bob can only defeat Syndrome after learning to fight for something more than himself. He can only defeat Syndrome with help from other people who he loves. He has to stop believing that superheroism is about being better than everyone else.
Because he's not trying to help people! Superheroism is meaningless without empathy. That's the thesis of the movie
The government banning people who are different from freely expressing themself is bad... Wonder whether that's a left or right opinion.
Right, but the argument isn't that the characters are objectivist, it's that the movie is.
The thing with Syndrome is that the movie doesn't make him wanting to be a superhero a problem because he's bad at it or doing it for the wrong reasons, they do it because he's not superpowered. He seems genuinely keen on helping when he first shows up, in fact. He is just bad at it because his artifical replacements aren't as good at getting it done as natural ability.
Had the movie shown him to have superpowers then the read wouldn't hold, because it'd be his incompetence or his desire for fame and glory that makes him unsuitable, not his inherent characteristics.
But that's not the case. The family's kids are shown as being perfectly fine getting into superheroics. Unlike Syndrome, despite having no gear and never having practiced it much they are naturally talented at it. They're good at it and it's good for them. It helps them feel accomplished and get over their plain-normie anxieties because it's what they're meant to do.
You CAN make a non-objectivist take on The Incredibles and that's called The Fantastic Four. It's the version where the powers are the result of an accident, not a birthright, the non-powered bad guy is a monarch, who HAS a birthright but also a dictatorial position. Where the powers aren't always a self-realizing blessing and can be a curse and the leader can feel guilty for having forced them onto his family instead and vow to work to make them optional. And where the people with powers may be infatuated with each other, but also sometimes with a disabled artist because it's not about the powers or inherent characteristics.
Obviously Bird doesn't think his objectivism or exceptionalism or whatever you want to call it is an immoral or unethical stance. Obviously he thinks the full expression of your talent and the fame and fortune that should come with it are a result of you using your natural talent to help others and lift society up, normies included. Doesn't mean it's not saying what it's saying, though.
No. Buddy blows up a bridge and lets Bomb Voyage get away because he wore a cape and wouldn't listen. Bob tried to tell him there was a bomb on the cape, and he flew off and told Bob to go away. You cannot have children volunteering to go into life or death situations who won't listen to their responsible adults. We see the same thing later on when Helen tells Violet to put a force field around the plane, and Violet doesn't listen. She says Helen told her not to. But then she starts listening, and while she doesn't get it right away, Helen sits the kids down to have a talk and they get the hang of things.
Buddy and Violet both make fatal mistakes they would have died for, if an adult hadn't helped them. Then, Helen becomes patient with Violet and Violet listens. Bob puts Buddy in a cop car and Buddy doesn't listen. No kid is instantly great at superheroism. In order to live long enough to get good at it, they need a good role model who they'll listen to.
Brad Bird has said many times the most important thing in The Incredibles is the family. Dash and Violet succeed because of their relationships with their family. Buddy and Bob don't have a good relationship. That's the story, coming straight from the authorial intent.
It's not even a case of Buddy's invented powers malfunctioning in the movie. He makes a simple mistake of bad judgement. His powers didn't have anything to do with not listening to an adult.
See, no, that doesn't work, because Buddy being excited to do the superhero thing and not being patient enough to listen to the cautious adult in the room doesn't survive Bob thinking Dash risking exposure by using his powers is a bad thing. Which Helen finds is a major issue and Bob, to her frustration, either ignores or encourages.
Later Dash, who is coded as the rash, impulsive guy, will find himself in a situation where he DOES have to go into a life or death situation by himself and naturally thrives and finds out about things he didn't even know he could do. If the payload Bird wants to deliver is that kids should listen to adults then why would Dash's rebelliousness save the day while Syndrome's ruins it? What did they do differently from each other for the movie to consider one a bad kid who grows into a villain and the other as a good kid who is being repressed by society? It sure seems to just be what their natural ability happens to be by birth.
Violet also thrives by herself, by the way. When the adults are off the picture she DOES learn how to use her powers, despite being too anxious to pull it off in the plane. Helen isn't there when it happens, she and Dash are being actively shot at and she just reacts out of instinct. And by the end of the movie she hasn't just done that, but become more self-assertive and gotten over her anxiety. Instead of having added PTSD to the mix, somehow.
You can taste how proud of itself the movie is for tapping into that Goonies thing where when the kids are in danger they are in danger, the movie isn't pulling punches and their adventure has real stakes. Which is cool, but it really takes the fangs out of the argument that Syndrome shouldn't have been superheroing because he was young or inexperienced. Either the movie presents Syndrome's issue as being less naturally capable and jealous of the natural ability of others... or Bob is an absolute monster who flip flops between being so arrogant and incompetent he brews a major supervillain out of callousness while simultaneously putting his whole family at risk for his midlife crisis-fueld political views.
Oh, and for the record, Syndrome isn't the only one to say "if everybody is special then nobody is".
Dash does, too.
Sure, Syndrome uses that retort to describe his evil plan of first becoming a superhero himself, then giving everybody superpowers through technology. But that's the plan the good guys have to stop. Because it's a bad thing. The movie agrees with Syndrome. Dash doesn't learn the lesson that everybody IS special after all, everybody else learns the lesson that Dash was right in the first place, so now they're all back to superheroing and being praised by the masses for it.
I addressed the Dash everyone super idea in another comment - https://lemmy.zip/comment/18650684
I'm running low on time and think we're getting away from the core issues, so I'll reply with a meme.
The villain saying "I want to make everyone Super, so that it's not just natural Supers that get to have powers" is absolutely an objectivist-adjacent plot. The fact that Syndrome also wants to murder (genocide?) Supers with his droids and "spend his life getting all his kicks from being the only (artificial) Super until he gets bored and then shares the tech with the public" is a classic example of attaching blatant evil to the ideology you want to villainize.
It's not the movie saying "if everyone's super, no one is", it's the movie saying "the dude who wants everyone to be super instead of only the genetic lottery winners is evil bad murder villain, look, we wrote him doing so much evil bad murder!"
Like, let's say you want to have themes of anti-environmentalism in your movie. What's your villain? Eco-terrorist that bombs coal power plants to stop them from polluting the earth. It's the oldest framing technique in the book, especially for all-ages media: just have the character that expresses the ideology you want to defeat also be a mean bad murder villain. Bonus points if you can somehow make the murder bad villain evil plan relate to the ideology in some superficial way.
Syndrome doesn't want to give everyone powers so he can help people. He wants to give everyone powers to spite his enemy and make money. He's Elon Musk. The idea of helping people is just a marketing line and an ego trip. He's not actually making anyone's lives better. He's doing the opposite; selling advanced weapons to world governments under the table. Arms dealing isn't equality! You think things will be more equal when rich people can buy flight and super strength? Syndrome does. Because he's a capitalist villain who doesn't understand any of the leftist rhetoric he's co-opting.
You fell for a billionaire's self-aggrandising lies.