Note to Self: Make This Title "Incredible Something"

The Guardian Weblog nicely follows up on my post of about the hidden messages in cartoons with one of its own.

"Nietzschean" and "Randian" are thrown about as if the writers have never actually encountered superheroes in popular culture before. Elsewhere in the Guardian, the piece tells us, Oliver Burkeman comes up with this remarkable analysis:

The Incredibles is positively Nietzschean. Some people are just better than other people, it seems to say, and their resentful inferiors ought not to try to suppress them, but to let them shine.

I actually prefer this message to the Forrest Gump one about how stupid people can get by if they are just nice. Or, well you know, the standard "clever people are not to be trusted and having a folksy intuition is better anyday" rubbish that movies often peddle. But, anyway...

Not having seen The Incredibles yet, but being familiar with the Pixar oeuvre, I imagine the message that Burkeman is willfully misunderstanding is more likely to be "Some people are just different to other people, it seems to say, and that others who are resentful of this ought to try not to be, but let them shine." Which I think is roughly the same without the loaded language.

Perhaps what should be read into all these is that over-analysing The Incredibles is a great way to fill space in newspapers. And, strangely to get Americans apologising for themselves. I mean, I know where this comes from:

"I am an honest-to-god liberal, left-wing resident of Idaho, a state where GW got 91 percent of the vote. Let us not forget that slightly less than half the United States went with Kerry in the election, so not all of us are drooling slobs. A lot of us are, granted . . . I like the Guardian because it is not reverent of our rickety American institutions, especially the rotten presidency."

But I'm not sure it's needed when fitting yourself into a discussion about a popular film. Or maybe it is:

"I'm a left leaning Englishman living in Austria, a place where the FPÖ got 30% of the vote. I don't drool but I am, occasionally, a slob. I like The Guardian because I grew up reading it. This probably explains why I'm often compelled to watch, and mostly enjoy, cheesy action movies starring The Rock."