Hey guys, Michael here, or as I’m known
in the office - the bad boy of 19th century
Danish philosophy scholarship.
You probably already know two of the things
we love rambling about most, at Wisecrack,
are superheroes and philosophy.
So, today we’re going to take a look at
two films that are full of superheroes and
big philosophical questions: The Incredibles
and Incredibles 2.
Since the release of The Incredibles films,
there has been much digital ink spilled over
its philosophical themes, with much of it
pooling around one idea.
Namely, that The Incredibles is making an
argument for objectivism, a philosophical
theory developed by novelist Ayn Rand.
Advocates for this reading point to the emphasis
on the exceptionalism of the supers and the
implied critique of egalitarian society as
evidence.
And while we see where they’re coming from,
— "If the time comes, you'll know what to
do.
It's in your blood."
— we also think they’re wrong.
While there is undoubtedly some objectivist
color to the films, their true philosophical
importance is the way in which they consider
the question of power.
From the moral responsibility of having super
powers, to fans going insane due to a desire
for power, to the power and influence of the
media, these films pose questions that are
as pertinent now as they were in 2004.
And this time, we agree with you, Kanye.
“No one man should have all that power.”
Welcome to this Wisecrack Edition on The Philosophy
of The Incredibles.
And of course, spoilers ahead.
But before we get to that, a Mr. Incredible-sized
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And now back to the Fantastic Four.
I mean, the Incredibles.
First, a quick recap.
In the first movie, Mr. Incredible’s scorned
former fan Buddy wants to be a super, but
since he’s a normie, he decides to use technology
to kill them all instead.
Taking on the villainous persona, — "I'm
Syndrome!"
— Buddy plans to use Mr. Incredible to optimize
his own personal death machine, the Omnidroid.
Once perfected, he plans to defeat it in public,
so that society will see him as a hero, and
eventually he can sell his technology as a
product, so that everyone can become super.
And as we all know, "When everyone's super...
no one will be."
Mr. Incredible feels neutered and aimless
as a result of the Superhero Relocation Program,
— "Well, what are you waiting for?"
"I don't know!
Something amazing, I guess!"
"Me too, kid." — and secretly returns to
the superhero game to curb an impending midlife
crisis.
He even questions the point of the egalitarian
spirit of Dash’s elementary school.
"It's not a graduation.
He is moving from the fourth grade to the
fifth grade."
"It's a ceremony!"
"It's psychotic!
They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity,
but if someone is genuinely exceptional—"
"This is not about you, Bob!"
But he eventually comes full circle, as he
realizes that his power isn’t just for feeling
like a badass, but instead makes him responsible
for the good of society.
In this parable about power, we see that great
power unchecked by great responsibility leads
to very bad things.
Incredibles 2 continues this exploration of
power, but shifts the focus to the considerable
influence of two media moguls.
"Prestige...
Worldwide!"
No, not those media moguls, these ones.
The brother, Winston Deavor, is a lifelong
superhero fan who wants to use his media influence,
and his seemingly endless piles of money,
to repair the supers’ broken public image
and change the laws so that they are legal
again.
While his sister, Evelyn, wants to use said
influence to mind control supers into doing
horrible things, thus ruining their public
image and ensuring that people don’t put
their faith in them ever again.
Alright, so in order to discern why the film
has been read through the lens of objectivism,
we need to first figure out: what in the hell
is objectivism?
The basic tenets of Randian objectivism are:
(1) the ability of human reason to gain objective
knowledge of reality; (2) the moral aim of
human life is to seek personal happiness;
(3) man’s being is heroic in nature; and
(4) and that free market deregulated capitalism
is the socio-economic system most suitable
for this happy heroism.
So basically, the philosophy of Ron Swanson.
"This man is a failure.
He is not up to snuff.
His business is failing, and you're bailing
it out.
This is a bail out, and I don't like it."
We might usually associate heroism with those
who use their powers to help others, but for
Rand, a captain of industry is a better example,
as they are the ones who make the world better
simply by willing their own power and proving
their superiority.
Randian superheroes don’t wear capes, but
rather, neatly pressed suits with Italian
shoes and gold-plated cufflinks.
Now, according to a whole bunch of writers,
this is just the sort of philosophy we find
in The Incredibles.
Normal society represents the meaningless
egalitarianism which tells us that everyone
is special and that it’s bad to be exceptional.
The supers represent Randian heroes; frustrated
by society’s obsession with fairness and
equality.
Only when they are able to don their mask
and tights are they able to will their own
power and find happiness in their own strength.
But rather than advocating for objectivism,
these films shine a light on the types of
problems that come from this inherently selfish
philosophy, through the failures of both Buddy
and Evelyn.
They explore a number of interesting philosophical
ideas in relationship to power and responsibility.
If anything, the films may be an exploration
of what happens when “keeping it Rand goes
wrong.”
So, let’s start by taking a look at the
first film.
As we mentioned, many of the Incredibles-as-Objectivist
proponents point to the characters’ frustrations
with the inhibition of their exceptional nature.
Bob can’t use his powers to stop muggings,
and instead professionally ruins the lives
of old ladies.
Then there’s Dash, who can’t tryout for
sports, lest he go all Usain Bolt on his classmates.
"Dad always said our powers are nothing to
be ashamed of.
Our powers made us special."
"Everyone's special, Dash."
"Which is another way of saying no one is."
And while we see how examples of people’s
exceptional nature being suppressed by society
can be read as objectivist, it ignores some
clues to the contrary.
First of all - the insurance company sucks,
and Mr. Incredible’s boss is a monster who
only cares about profit.
"Tell me how you're keeping Insuracare in
the black!
Tell me how that's possible with you writing
checks to every Harry Hardluck and Sally Sobstory
that gives you a phone call!"
This, of course, makes him an ideal candidate
for a Randian hero, but there’s no evidence
that he’s anywhere close to a sympathetic
character.
"I'm not happy, Bob.
Not happy."
Most importantly, this reading ignores Bob’s
moral journey, which can be best understood
with the help of the Greek philosopher Aristotle,
whose superpower was getting millions of undergrads
to read his boring books for thousands of
years.
When Bob first shoves his middle-aged body
back into his suit and gets back into the
game, he does indeed exemplify the type of
selfish exceptionalism that Rand lauded as
heroic.
He starts to care more about his secret superhero
missions than he does his own family, selfishly
prioritizing his own power and the pleasure
it brings.
So, if you stop the movie after half an hour,
then sure, Mr. Incredible is an objectivist
and the whole movie is one big ode to Ayn
Rand’s philosophy.
But for those of us who finished the movie,
we see that Mr. Incredible was simply beginning
a moral journey in which he learns about the
true purpose of having great power.
In his lectures on ethics, Aristotle tells
us what it means to live a moral and happy
life.
But before giving us the answers, he warns
us of some common temptations that keep us
from true happiness.
Namely - pleasure, money, and power.
Coincidently, all of these are essential components
of objectivist happiness.
Much like trying to understand bitcoin, Aristotle
thinks our moral journey should consist of
an endless pursuit without a seeming end.
After all, pleasurable activities eventually
get boring; money is only for other stuff
and never really makes us happy; and power
is often dependent on factors outside our
control.
Mr. Incredible seems to fall into a devil’s
threeway of moral temptation, as his super
secret superhero activities bring him pleasure,
make him feel powerful, and throw some extra
0’s in his bank account along the way, like
a good Randian hero.
In this false happiness, he’s experiencing
pleasure from his own power, which is sort
of like masturbating to a picture of yourself.
And according to a, uh, friend of mine - you
can’t come back from that.
Now, of course, Mr. Incredible is only drawn
back into his super self via the trickery
of his old fan Buddy, now acting as Syndrome.
And while Buddy wanted nothing more than to
be Mr. Incredible’s faithful sidekick when
he was younger, this fixation on power has
turned his fandom into a near psychotic obsession.
"After all, I am your biggest fan."
Buddy has structured his happiness, and his
moral goals, around this pursuit of power.
He wants power so badly that he needs to destroy
the supers to prove to himself, and the world,
that he has an ultimate sort of power.
And this does not end well, as at one point,
Buddy doesn’t seem to give a crap when Mr.
Incredible almost kills his assistant, Mirage.
"That sounds a little dark for you?
Eh, go ahead."
If she was an objectivist before this encounter,
she’s throwing out her copy of Atlas Shrugged
afterwards.
On the flip side, when Mr. Incredible’s
pursuit of personal power puts his family
in harms way, he realizes that his power is
only moral when it’s actively used in the
service of others, — "I'm not strong enough!"
"Strong enough?
And this will make you stronger?"
"Yes-no!"
"That's what this is?
Some kind of workout—" "I can't lose you
again!
I can't."
— whether these others be his family, or
the innocent citizens of Metroville.
This stands in stark contrast with Rand’s
insistence that one’s personal happiness
leads to the greatest good.
"I swear by life, and my love of it, that
I will never live for the sake of another
man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
And it’s this that distinguishes Buddy from
Mr. Incredible.
In Incredibles 2, it seems as if a couple
of objectivist captains of industry might
just be the saviors of supers everywhere.
As the second film finds the Incredibles both
broke and without government protection, these
two hyper-capitalists, Winston and Evelyn
Deavor, are set to make everything better
with their financial resources and media influence.
For a moment, it seems that the powers of
industry might just save the day.
In Randian terms, the Deavor siblings are
titans of industry, ready to get what they
want, i.e. fulfill their own happiness, via
the most powerful force in modern society,
the media.
As a childhood superhero nerd all grown up,
Winston wants to use his media influence to
literally change the law so that he can get
what he wants, which is a world full of cool
superheroes to idolize.
And though Evelyn might initially seem on
board with her brother’s plans, she intends
to use her tech empire to make sure that supers
go extinct, as she has spent her entire life
blaming them for the loss of her father.
It’s revealed in the film that when burglars
broke into their home, Evelyn and Winston’s
father waited on two supers to save him, but
they never showed up, and he was murdered.
For Evelyn, her father’s reliance on the
supers is indicative of an inability to take
responsibility for one’s own life and actions.
It’s sort of like how all of us who grew
up with spell check can’t spell “calendar”
or “definitely” to save our lives.
Evelyn’s desire for self reliance is very
Randian, but it’s not so Kosher that she
wants to stifle the exceptionalism of others.
But while all of these shiny titans of industry
are spending billions to get what they want,
the villain Screenslaver exposes the dark
power of screens.
This resentment of superheroes, and their
broader effect on society, leads Evelyn to
create ScreenSlaver, whose mission is expressed
in a strikingly poignant manifesto.
"Superheroes are part of your brainless desire
to replace true experience with simulation.
You don't talk, you watch talk shows.
You don't play games, you watch game shows.
Travel.
Relationships.
Risk.
Every meaningful experience must be packaged
and delivered for you to watch at a distance."
If much of this sounds eerily true of our
contemporary relationship to technology, it’s
because it is.
Before we know that Evelyn is ScreenSlaver,
she has a conversation about the ills of the
modern era with Helen in which Helen agrees
with her — "Which of us has the greater
influence?"
"Which side of me are you asking?
The believer or the cynic?"
"The cynic-" "-would say selling is more important
because the best sellers have the most buyers.
Doesn’t matter what you’re selling, it
only matters what people buy.”
Now, while a disciple of Rand might argue
that our present digital age has led to a
capitalist utopia in which the right algorithms
can lead to massive wealth for the exceptional
few, the movies explore the effect that this
entertainment driven media has on our humanity.
To better understand this, we can turn to
nineteenth century Danish philosopher Søren
Kierkegaard, who at times was the Screenslaver
of his day.
Kierkegaard was worried that the modern media,
which at that point was the dawn of print
media, was creating a world devoid of passion,
in which reading about the interesting lives
of others was thought to be equivalent to
living an interesting life oneself.
In a line that makes me relatively convinced
that he had access to time travel and spent
an afternoon reading sponsored content on
Instagram, Kierkegaard said about his own
age that while “a revolutionary age is an
age of action; the present age is an age of
advertisement and publicity: nothing happens,
but there is instantly publicity about it.”
For both ScreenSlaver and Kierkegaard, the
media distorts our relationship to powerful
people, as rather than lead us to imitating
them in our own lives and activities, we settle
and become mere spectators.
Kierkegaard was worried that this would make
nineteenth century Europe devoid of passion
and individuality.
Of course this doesn’t end well for Evelyn
- and eventually the super heroes all come
together and use their collective power for
good, both stopping Evelyn’s plan, and in
the process restoring the world’s faith
in the goodness of superheroes.
Notably, Winston is pushed to action during
the final act, not just using his massive
resources to change the world for the better,
but by actually risking his own life to save
the lives of others.
Just like in the first film, we see that true
heroics isn’t just flexing one’s own power,
it’s about doing the right thing at the
right time.
To pull one more example from Aristotle, he
thought that justice was completed virtue,
as true justice is working for the good of
another.
And in this way both films show that true
heroes exhibit this type of justice, as their
power is at its most virtuous when it’s
used in service of others.
And we have a final critique of Randian thought
in Violet’s final words during Evelyn’s
arrest: “Well, I’m sorry, she’s rich
and will probably get no more than slap on
the wrist.”
Because at the end of the day, Metroville
is like our own world, and access to wealth
is the ultimate superpower.
And while a Randian objectivist would enthusiastically
agree, Violet is pointing out the fundamental
injustice in this type of system.
So, there you have it, what some see as a
pair of films with a Randian slant, are in
fact asking crucial questions about power,
responsibility, and the forces in our world
that have power over our attention and imagination.
And just in case you still need to hold onto
some sort of objective truth, just listen
to what Mr. Incredible has to say about math,
“Why would they change math?
Math is math!
Math is math!"
Or if not, share your own truths with the
world by creating a free website with Wix.
Click here to get started building an easy,
professional looking website.
Right here!
Thanks for watching, guys!
Peace!
