Truth, Justice and the Middle-American Way
By JOHN M. BRODER
CHICAGO - Already, the omnipresent advertising art for "The Incredibles," the next animated film from the Walt Disney Company and Pixar Animation Studios, promises something different. Bulging in all the wrong places, its red-sheathed superhero struts his stuff over wry lines like "No gut, no glory" and "Twice the hero he used to be."
But artful self-parody, long a staple of television comedies like "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill," may not be the only twist Disney and Pixar are preparing to deliver for the big screen.
The buzz out of early screenings is that "The Incredibles," set to be released Nov. 5, carries a considerably more middle-American sensibility than the usual fare from Hollywood, where liberal shibboleths often become the stuff of mainstream movies.
The new movie's hero, Bob Parr, a k a Mr. Incredible, after all, has been driven into middle-aged retirement and the Superhero Relocation Program by a flood of lawsuits brought by personal-injury lawyers representing people Mr. Incredible has saved but who later complain of things like neck problems.
Mr. Incredible's 10-year-old son, Dash, is blessed with super speed but is forced to conceal it from his unknowing peers at school - until, that is, he complains that he is being held back by the "everyone is special" ethic, which holds that kids should receive a trophy just for showing up on the playing field.
And Mr. Incredible's mission - to save the world from evildoers - was conceived by the writer-director Brad Bird a dozen years ago but largely realized in the wake of 9/11. It carries the earmarks of an era in which even cartoon villains can provoke debate about the true source of terror.
In an interview here last week, Mr. Bird, best known for his cold war-period animated feature "The Iron Giant," released by Warner Brothers in 1999, said his aim with "The Incredibles" was to provoke thought, not to communicate specific values, much less a political agenda.
"When you make a film, people interpret it a lot of different ways," he said. "My goal is to create something that works on more than one level. If they want to dig deeper, there's stuff there that can be had."
In some respects, that "stuff" is likely to resonate more in conservative-leaning "red" states than in liberal-leaning "blue" ones. An intact nuclear family, the Incredibles are mired in a boring suburban life, until they dare again to be great in the face of a society suspicious of the outsized and protective of underachievers.
Evil trial lawyers are the least of their problems, and Mr. Bird demurs when asked if the unflattering portrayal of them is a conscious tweaking of a lobby that provides large sums to the Democratic Party. "I just always wondered when a superhero broke through a wall, who was going to pay for that wall?" he said with a smile. "In the small-minded world we live in, that deed is not going to go unpunished."
In an increasingly partisan environment, viewers have been quick to suspect movies of having political messages, even when filmmakers disavow partisan intent. Last summer, for instance, the director Jonathan Demme's remake of "The Manchurian Candidate" for Paramount Pictures - a box-office disappointment - was widely seen as veiled critique of the current administration and particularly of Vice President Dick Cheney's ties to the oil-services giant Halliburton.
Oren Aviv, president of marketing for Buena Vista Pictures, part of the Walt Disney Company, says "The Incredibles" is an uplifting holiday-season movie about a family whose members just happen to have superpowers. No overt or subtle political statement is intended, he said.
"The themes that come through are all-encompassing positive themes about the family," Mr. Aviv said. The movie is not meant to lead viewers to any political conclusions, he said, but "people will do what people will do."
In creating "The Incredibles," Mr. Bird - who lives in Marin County, Calif., and professes frustration with both major political parties - said he was drawn to universal themes about the role of man and superman in society, and the dynamic of a functioning family.
"I had this goofy movie idea about superheroes trying to balance family with their responsibilities to society," said Mr. Bird, a onetime Disney animator who has frequently contributed to "The Simpsons." He began sketching out his superhero family shortly after the birth of the first of his three sons.
"At the time I was worried that if wanted to make that movie I would be selling my family short," he said. "Or if I wanted to be a good dad it would prevent me from being successful in the movies."
"The Incredibles" explores those themes, as Bob Parr and his wife, Helen, try to put aside their superhero pasts and concentrate on being good parents.
"It's about the danger of looking back to the exclusion of what's in front of you," Mr. Bird said. "On the surface, it's meant to be a blast, a pretty basic action movie, but below that it's about some basic issues - getting older, getting married, being a teenager, what it's like to be in a job you don't like - all wrapped in superhero clothing."
Mr. Bird said the story was pretty much set when he took the concept and some early drawings to Pixar in 2000. The election of President George W. Bush and the bitter political division of the nation, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq were all in the future.
"Anyone making a film now consciously or unconsciously will have elements of 9/11 because it's just an event that affects you," Mr. Bird said of the inevitable leakage of political trends and dilemmas into even family entertainment.
"The Incredibles" falls squarely in the literary and cinematic tradition of superheroes and super villains, said Martin Kaplan, who analyzes the interplay of entertainment and society at the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California. What makes this genre particularly resonant now is that the United States is engaged in a conflict with a shadowy and pervasive enemy, with an ending that remains to be written, he said.
"The challenge in the post-9/11 world is that the news provides plenty of examples of genuine monsters, so how do you compete with that?" Mr. Kaplan said. "One way is going to the kind of fantastic figures you find in Batman and Superman. The other way is to return to this long tradition of taking our deepest societal fears, in this case now embodied in the news, and put them back in a story line where you get to defeat them."
Mr. Bird said the larger point he was making is that a nation, a superhero or an ordinary mortal can be rendered impotent by fear and the conflicting demands of life. It happened to Hamlet. It happened to Jimmy Carter. It happened to Peter Parker in "Spider-Man 2."
"You don't want someone going in with guns blazing but not thinking," Mr. Bird said. "You don't want someone standing on the train tracks wringing their hands and getting run over by a train. You have to just be."
In one key scene, for instance, Helen Parr, a k a Elastigirl, voices what has become for many a post-9/11 mantra, telling her daughter that "things are different now," and dismissing doubt as a luxury of the past.
If such scenes provide some knowing moments for the red-state audience, there may be something hiding in "The Incredibles" for blue-state denizens as well. The villain of the piece, who goes by the name of Syndrome, creates a mechanical weapon of mass destruction to terrorize the world so that he can disarm it and make himself a superhero.
Will some be tempted to think of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
Mr. Bird insisted that it was not his vision of Syndrome, a vision that predated the election of Mr. Bush and the war in Iraq. But, he said, "if you connect that with George Bush, that's all right with me." |
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