Essay-thing
So, like every Incredibles fan around here, I've been thinking a lot about what makes our movie tick. Here's what I came up with. Bold text for the closest thing to a thesis.
Joseph Campbell’s “hero theory” describes the epic hero who accepts a challenge, departs on adventure, in which he is helped by companions and mentors, makes a final and solitary leap for the climactic conflict, then returns to his community with new self-knowledge and leadership status. The Incredibles initially hints at this pattern, if Bob Parr constitutes the epic hero and his family the supporting characters. However, when Bob fails to make the “final leap” alone, his family takes a step of their own into the “unreal world” of superhero conflict. On return to the real, or mundane, world, the family incorporate the new experience into the old for a new and permanent synthesis of identity. Thus the hero cycle is altered to comprise not a cycle but an ascent, through the vehicle not of a single hero but the dynamic and codependent community of a family.
Our first view of the Parrs has them as a perfectly functional family by modern standards, but dissatisfied with these standards. The whole family is eating at a pleasant dinner table - or, in Jack-Jack’s case, being fed by Helen, who despite her enthusiasm makes “weird faces” to which the other family members protest. Bob, to his wife’s irritation, is reading at the table and Dash, faced with an apparently palatable steak, tries to eat without cutting up his meat. Violet refrains from eating at all and, when in a quarrel with her brother, they turn their superpowers against each other. Helen tries and fails to separate the two, who take advantage of the length of her elastic arms. When she finally gets her husband to “intervene,” he does so by lifting the table - along with the three people hanging from it - off the ground, which hinders the source of the problem but solves little. This disruption seems the symptom of people who, unable to use their abilities on any large scale, end up tormenting one another. They can neither safely use their superpowers nor successfully suppress them (“Normal? What does anyone in this family know about being normal?” cries a distraught Violet). In this sense, every day is “leftover night” for the Parr family: they must make do with the discarded scraps of both normal and superhuman worlds. Neither “shrinking” Violet, with her lack of appetite for life, nor Dash, with his dysfunctional ambition, can successfully swallow these. They seem to conceal this discontent on a daily basis; when the doorbell rings the Parrs quickly untangle themselves and sit like a “normal” family once more. But this semblance cannot last.
In their civilian roles, Helen and Bob tend, ironically, toward the paragon of errant husband and patient, faithful wife. Helen begins to suspect Bob is literally unfaithful when she finds a strand of fair hair on his suit. She takes responsibility on herself, seeming to think her love is inadequate - when Bob leaves on his second undercover assignment (but ostensibly for “work”), Helen sees him off with a rueful “I love you… so much.” Although Bob is not having an affair, his propensity to superhero activities indicates as much - he claims to go bowling with Lucius, makes a rescue instead, and comes back late, which Helen implies is an annoyingly recurrent behavior. He withdraws the family’s everyday life, not content to sit through Dash’s fourth-grade graduation - which he sees as “more ways to celebrate mediocrity.” Bob’s increased participation in family life after his first adventure with the Omnidroid - feeding the baby, playing ball with Dash - suggests that his identity as a father is contingent on his “strongman” self-image, and that Bob Parr is not complete without fulfilling his Mr. Incredible side. During “leftover night” he was willing to flex his physical, but not authoritative, muscles; this changes after putting his abilities to the “great things” Mirage speaks so temptingly of. Beforehand, however, Bob is at odds with Helen’s philosophy of conforming to the supposedly stable model of “normal” American life. He is unable to let go of the “Glory Days” he has wallpapered his study with (we see no comparable Elastigirl memorabilia in the house). This is turn frustrates Helen’s efforts to reconcile her children to their powers. She has offered them steak, pasta, meatloaf, and every means of quiet assimilation she can think of: there’s no reason to be ashamed of their powers, but they can’t use exercise them in full. Their powers make them special, but then, everybody’s special. Trying to confront the no-man’s land the family finds itself in destroys Helen’s credibility with her children as well as discouraging them, if Dash’s words in the car (“You say ‘do your best,’ but you don’t mean it”) are any indication. It is worth noting that after breaking Dash’s plate, Bob simply left the table to get a new one, rather than working to fix the problem; similarly, the “new plate” of Syndrome’s first job offers an easy escape from the trouble at home. The couple’s irreconcilable philosophies only lead to mutual frustration; Bob is consumed with guilt over staying out late and Helen waits up, worrying. When she deduces that he was in fact exercising his superpowers, they clash over the value of non-super family life. Bob accuses Helen of hindering her own goal by holding the children back from their full potentials, but she “will not be made the enemy” (significantly, the enraged Helen stretches vertically to tower over Bob when making a point). As at dinner, when Bob irritably sawed through Dash’s plate, their dispute over what’s best for the children effectively works away from a solution, as the children are woken and listen to their parents yelling. They are as much pitted against one another’s “pigheadedness,” as Helen says, as against the double-bind of assimilated superheroes, and they need a solution that transcends both.
Bob has betrayed Helen in the sense that he places his superhero work over the family she has worked so hard for, and the crisis can be amended only by their joining him in the superhero world. When all of them confined themselves to mundane life, they were alienated because private life was not enough for Bob, who is dependent on his identity of the super-world. When the whole family is initially immersed in this world, we see how they cannot manage divided. Bob, alone, is captured (in part because of Helen’s efforts to find him, a “warning” both to Bob and to his enemies), and the other three are endangered when Syndrome sees they are his weak spot. Later, Bob appears guilty over what he sees as his inability to protect his family. He tells Helen to avoid the Omnidroid battle because “I can’t lose you… again,” an eerie reminder of Helen’s tearful words to Edna. Helen points out that by using their superpowers to mutual benefit, the family will be assured of both professional and personal security.
There are, of course, obstacles to this state. Bob’s departure to the super-world, obligating the others to follow, puts great pressure on Helen, Violet and Dash to reconfigure their identity. Helen, who can scarcely bring herself to use her superhero name when talking to Edna on the phone, breaks down when she realizes Bob has returned to the world she tried for fifteen years to forswear. At this point Helen’s worst fears are realized - her efforts to accommodate her family, at the expense of her super identity, have been for naught because of Bob’s actions. She has indeed “lost him” because, in her private wife-and-mother identity, she lacks the means or the will to retrieve Bob. But when Edna admonishes her to “Go. Fight. Win! Show him who you are - and that you remember who he is,” Helen is sufficiently empowered to resolve to deal with any neglect or transgression on Bob’s part. “Either he’s in trouble,” she says to Violet, “or he’s going to be [i.e. with me].” That is, if Bob is willingly deceiving her, rather than being detained by bad guys, Helen will make him sorry for it (and indeed, she attempts to do so when she finds him later).
For the children, who are unfamiliar with both the rewards and challenges of superhero work, the transition is more appealing but harder. For Dash, it initially represents an opportunity to exercise the powers that have previously been forbidden him. He will not be deterred from trying on his super-suit, and he is pleased with the resulting image (and prospective identity). In urging Violet to try on hers as well, he seems either uncomfortable enough with his image of “The Dash” that he feels strength in numbers, or is somehow uncomfortable with an activity, especially one his mother disapproves of, unless his sister joins him. We cannot know whether Violet or Dash (or both of them) initiates the elopement from home to join Helen on her adventure, but this unity again implies an insecurity, by either child, with the idea of one and not the other being a superhero.
Both panic when disaster hits, despite their mother’s transformation into a parachute to save them from the fall. At this point they still seem uncomfortable with the use of superpowers even in emergencies, or are not yet sure enough of their new identities to trust their powers - that is, when Helen sheds her parachute shape there is no guarantee that she’ll be able to save them again. As they try to reach land, Violet thinks the only solution is to swim, and Helen has to admonish her children “to trust me” in using their powers. By the time they reach land both Helen and Dash seem newly self-assured as well as mutually assured, as Helen praises Dash (“what a trooper”) and he basks in this confirmation of a job well done. Violet, however, seems to dwell on her earlier failure to protect the plane, and when she apologizes to her mother Helen tries to boost Violet’s confidence as a novice superhero (“you’ll know what to do”).
Perhaps this advice, and Violet’s experimentation with her shielding powers, is what enables her to be the first to use her superpowers when the children are captured by soldiers the next morning. “Remember what Mom said,” she tells Dash, who at first doubted Helen’s instructions to run “as fast as you can” if in danger. For Violet, her ability to disappear is more accessible than her force-fields, as she seems to have readily used invisibility in the past to “shield” her from overwhelming situations. The seemingly contradictory dual nature of Violet’s power - associated with shyness and strength - is a paragon of the classic heroine who struggles between competence and sentiment. The same conflict applies to Helen, represented by her “flexibility” - literally, when on the job, and metaphorically when between jobs (heroine and housewife).
For Violet, initiation into the superhero world is smoothed by her experience and comfort with the “shrinking” aspect of her superpowers. When threatened by Syndrome’s guards, it is easy enough for her to revert to her usual defense - and, later, when Dash is also in danger, she is able to take a further step, surrounding them both with a force field strong enough to deflect bullets. Although Helen’s orders on the place were too big a demand, Violet can now successfully grow into her powers by gradations. The episode with the soldiers also builds on the Incredibles’ value of collaboration. Earlier, Helen formed the boat and Dash the engine; now Dash runs inside Violet’s rotating orb to allow them both a safe and speedy escape.
Dash also learns a great deal “on the job;” he is pleasantly surprised to see he can run over water, duck punches, and escape a pursuer by grabbing a vine and veering to the side. All of this gives him great confidence in his new superhero role (especially pummeling an enemy soldier too quickly to be parried), but this very confidence can also trip Dash up. After repeatedly punching the soldier in the hovercraft, Dash is so consumed with victory that he fails to anticipate the soldier’s next blow, which knocks him off the craft. After falling fifty feet through jungle vegetation and breaking the fall by clinging to a vine, Dash then celebrates his survival by cheering, which gets the attention of more nearby enemies. While Violet’s timidity once hampered her safety, Dash’s self-assurance can do the same thing. Both children must temper their weaknesses in order to become effective superheroes - which they accomplish through exercising their powers.
In using Mirage as an initial herald to Bob, and having her play hostess on Bob’s first missions, Syndrome put an attractive, and false, name and face on the world of superhero conflict he is reviving. It is therefore no surprise that Helen walks in to see her and Bob embracing, in that this is a mere extension of how Bob has excluded the family from his undercover work. “How does it compare?” Mirage asked him of Syndrome’s home-grown cuisine, suggesting a reference to the superhero world in general. “Everything’s delicious,” Bob replies, something he probably wouldn’t have said at “leftover night.” Similarly, a promotional sequence names “dessert” as one of Mr. Incredible’s weaknesses, showing a middle-aged Bob struggling to fit into his old super-suit. Thus Syndrome’s gracious room and board included in the Omnidroid mission easily tempt Bob. It is not until Helen’s plane is blown up that he realizes how his solo adventures threaten the family. Bob must learn to value family unity above all, and the family must reconcile to their superpowers. Although the “mirage” of reclaiming his glory days was initially tempting, Bob must fix the broken plate at home before coming newly into himself.
In the final scene we see the fruits of the Parrs’ hard-won new identities. On leftover night, Violet arguably jumped Dash at “If we were having Tonyloaf she’d be hungry” not because he was right but, on the contrary, if offered Tonyloaf at that point Violet would not have the heart to eat him, because she didn’t consider herself worthy. But at Dash’s track event we see that Violet, with hair pulled back and enunciated speech, not only attracts Tony (who, furthermore, is no longer the sole object of her attention) but outdoes him for assertiveness. Departing from the social axiom “let him take the lead” (The Rules, 1997), Violet determines an activity for both of them and offers to sponsor it herself. Finally out of hiding, Violet is now able to enjoy the “Tonyloaf” Dash spoke of earlier. As Dash takes off with the competing runners, lagging behind the group, we see a familiar cocky look on his face, clearly that of a boy who has proved himself so far beyond the conditions of the race that mundane standards mean little to him. With superhero work to confirm his abilities, Dash no longer turns to sports to vent his competitiveness. Sports are no longer the “temptation [to show off]” Helen feared they were, for Dash is now happy to use his powers in moderation (and take second place, as the family instructs him from the bleachers). No longer eating the “leftovers” of Helen & Bob’s forsworn glory days and the conflicting demands of society, the family is reborn as the Incredibles (alter ego, the Parrs). They have found a balance between super life and private life.
I was going to include something about how the characters' powers reflect their personality in collaboration as well as individually, but I've basically covered that. :P
Give feedback. What was new for you, what don't you agree with? Just phrase it nicely, please. :)