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Lessons We Never Learned From He-Man

I must admit, I was rolling my eyes a bit after reading the discussion chez Prophet about Pixar’s shiny new The Incredibles. For fuck’s sake (thought I) it’s a cartoon about superheroes. I defy anyone – even A.O. Scott – to make political hay from this. Are we in danger of presenting superheroes too uncritically in our cartoons? The message that people seem to be picking up from the film – don’t hide your torch under a bushel, get the most you can out of the talents you have, be an individual! blah blah empowerment-cakes – is always timely, but I don’t think it’s particularly (or exclusively) conservative in the political sense. After all (thought I) laments against mediocrity don’t have to be partisan. I’m looking forward to seeing the film, but for reasons that have everything to do with Brad Bird and nothing to do with politics. And so I went about my day.

You know what’s coming next. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Lois Wadsworth, in what may be her finest hour.

I’m troubled by the ideas expressed and suggested here. Is the movie about being reluctant to surrender youth to age or relegate past heroics to today’s ordinariness? Does everyone secretly long to be a young man or woman going off to fight evil? Does the movie say to really young kids that might is always right, bigger and stronger is better, and being different is only OK if you’re secretly an unstoppable power? The American way?

I retract my earlier eye-roll. Clearly, Pixar’s The Incredibles is a sinister tool of the neofascist right, deviously conditioning our children to, um, be superheroes.

But while Helen expresses warmth and thoughtfulness through her relationships with her husband and children, the little boy Dash is getting the message to “be like Daddy,” and that sounds like a conservative invitation to be a warrior to me.

Jesus. I’m always gratified when people write this kind of thing while I’m putting a Spew section together.

  1. Timbo says:

    My favorite part was the chinchilla. I don’t remember any pets in the regular classrooms when Sho & I were in elementary school.

    I guess the computers too, since I went ahead and ran with that.

  2. Sho says:

    Actually, I stuck it out and never told my parents about how shitty TAG was. I think I didn’t realize that I didn’t have to go if I didn’t want to. And they disguised it well enough to make you believe that you were doing something extraordinary, instead of wasting your time.

    Portland Eastside schools were truly bad. At least in the PIL you could make it into Lincoln.

  3. Andy D says:

    You we’re/are a fucking geek sho! You beggedt your teacher to stay inside?!?
    lol!! you went home and cried to your mommy too! hahah!

    🙂

  4. Sho says:

    I was in TAG from 4th to 6th grade. I when the program asked if I wanted to go in middle school I respectfully declined.

    Once a week, they trucked us from all the elementary schools (in a short bus) to the worst school in the whole district. Knowing that we were TAG kids, the older students at this school bullied us and made us sit at the table usually reservered for special ed kids. We hated going out at recess and occasionally begged our teacher to let us stay in. Of course, she refused saying that recess was a great time for TAG kids to socialize with the regular students (usually it meant dodging rubber balls).

    In addition to the dread of going to that shitty school every week, we also had to do extra homework provided by the program, like book reports and reports on countries. Then we also had to play catch-up in our regular classes over what we missed while we were in that hellhole, putting us further behind.

    The only plus to TAG was the computer lab where we played educational/adventure software which wasn’t that great, but better than no computers at all. The program really should have noticed that most of us were interested in computers and focused on that, rather than make us play word games.

    So, just like Tim, I figure the purpose of TAG in our district was to make the higher-achieving kids feel even more ostracized, while overloading them with more homework to keep them at the same level as the other kids. Fuck TAG.

  5. Andy D says:

    Well atleast your at one of the top universities so your appitude can now be put to the test danimal!

    I was in tag at markham, it wasn’t for very long though, becuase they started making me go to anger management, where we played with legos : )

  6. Melissa says:

    Eh. I’m indifferent. I was taken from my friends during “Reading Rainbow” story time, and forced to build bridges from toothpicks and graph the physics of destroying them.

    …the little boy Dash is getting the message to “be like Daddy,” and that sounds like a conservative invitation to be a warrior to me.

    What’s so bad about being a warrior? In the nature vs. nurture argument, learning societal roles from same-gendered role models is the only way that offspring learn the necessary adaptions to survive, both in the physical sense an the realm of social well-being. Parent to child or kin to kin knowledge transfer by example is the most recent evolutionary adaption to further human progress. In common English, if Dash wants to be like his father, and warrior is the role he fills, that’s fine. In another culture, say, if Dash’s father were a Big Man in the Alyawara culture, that would be the role he would fill. That’s what makes culture…well…culture, and to spit this back in the reviewer’s face, what makes us different. If she has a problem accepting differences, then she’s just a victim of her own philosophy.

  7. Timothy says:

    I can’t decide if the acronym is better or not.

  8. Melissa says:

    I’m from California. We had GATE.

  9. Danimal says:

    Tim said: I can say that the real purpose of the TAG program is sinister and two-fold: 1) Further isolate the already socially akward and 2) Slow the progress of the smart kids down enough so that the other children don’t feel left behind.

    My impression of TAG was that it was the best the (Portland) public education system could do with “gifted” children. We clearly didn’t fit the general plan.

    So, first, they isolated us, so as not to make other kids lose any precious self-esteem. Then, rather than give us a free-range meritocratic environment where we could get into some serious 9 year old intellectual shit, they just gave us the same coddling at a higher level. They told us that we were all equally talented and gifted, only more so (ahem) than all those retards who had to stay back at normal school.

    I also remember, around 3rd grade some of the parents of dumber kids must have really raised hell at the Hayhurst PTA, because all of the sudden TAG was flooded with kids who hadn’t previously made the cut. It became a mockery of TAG, and us original TAGsters knew it. But of course, everyone was still equally talented and gifted, even if they lowered the admissions standards. And so a whole lot of kids who still needed to learn their multiplication tables got to play with LEGOS instead. Brilliant.

    All in all, no program geared towards the “talented and gifted” that I have been through did anywhere near as much for my early education as did three months as an ordinary 8 year old lad in British private school. Olly, you are a truly lucky man.

  10. Andy D says:

    LoL, that does sound like a decent synopsis of tag..

  11. WWB says:

    TAG! Boy, those were the days. But then eventually I grew bored with that as well and started skipping school instead. Now those were the days.

  12. Timothy says:

    Having grown up in American public grammar schools, that is most definitely true. I recount the following mantras from Lake Grove Elementary in Lake Oswego, OR:

    It’s okay to be mad, it’s not okay to be mean.
    Everyone has special talents.
    Timothy, stop answering all of the questions, give somebody else a chance.

    Once I was sent to the principal’s office for calling a teacher “ma’am,” and like many of Oregon’s best-and-brightest I was shunted off into the Talented And Gifted (TAG) program. Having gone through six years of spending a few hours a week solving easy brain teasers and building towers out of newspaper instead of actually learning anything; I can say that the real purpose of the TAG program is sinister and two-fold: 1) Further isolate the already socially akward and 2) Slow the progress of the smart kids down enough so that the other children don’t feel left behind. Being plucked out of math and science for six years to doodle sure was a great use of tax-payer dollars, that’s for sure.

  13. Danimal says:

    Olly:I find (most of) the “esteem” side of the argument more horrifying than words can express.You have no idea how bad it is. One day at an American public grammar school, Olly, and I think you’d be fully paralyzed with horror.

  14. Melissa says:

    Why are we even talking about this stupid movie anyway? The smartest thing Pixar ever did was kick Disney and the Eisner Curse to the curb. Let’s leave it at that. No need to read too much into it.

    And BTW, I happen to be an unstoppable power. I’m offended by this Lois Wadsworth and her antediluvian observations. Lawsuit!

  15. Olly says:

    WWB:The philosophical debate about achievement vs. esteem is at root an ideological one, which lends itself to partisan responses. I don’t think that itself is unfortunate — but of course I think one side of the argument is.Nicely phrased as usual. I find (most of) the “esteem” side of the argument more horrifying than words can express, hence my disbelief that anyone would seriously advance it in the context of The Incredibles.

  16. Matt says:

    Thanks WWB for the Focus on the Family plugged-in website, I’ve been laughing pretty hard. Quick “Team America” review from said website:

    Postive Aspects:
    None

    Indeed, none at all, but only if you count ‘being hillarious’ as negative.

  17. WWB says:

    The philosophical debate about achievement vs. esteem is at root an ideological one, which lends itself to partisan responses. I don’t think that itself is unfortunate — but of course I think one side of the argument is.

    Speaking of “Kinsey” and the Focus on the Family campaign against it (all but invisible stateside), I had to go check out their review of The Incredibles. No great surprise: it’s ultimately a mixed review. But then there’s this, under its evaluation of sexual content:

    Quick kisses, longing gazes, lingering touches and wink-wink romanticism hint at some of the best things marriage has to offer.

    Ewwwww!!!

  18. Olly says:

    Dammit. Dan beat me to it in WWB’s comment section. Stupid rapidly-evolving blogosphere.

    But I came by those quotes fairly, honest: I can even show you my marked-up copy of the EW review, complete with grilled-onion stains from where it made me snarf my burger at Taylor’s.

    Or were you accusing Sho of something?

  19. Danimal says:

    Cherry picker!

  20. Sho says:

    In other movie news, the new film about Alfred Kinsey is conditioning us to have gay sex and abortions. Oh, and to look at more boobies.

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