A failure of creativity

[avram]

I’ve read that bunch of right-wing idiots have decided that The Incredibles is some kind of political metaphor for, I dunno, the Bush administration’s Iraq policy, or the restraints that right-wingers imagine liberals are placing on them. So I figured I’d write up a bit about how all of Pixar’s movies have been current-events political metaphors only, damn, I can’t think of anything.

I feel like I did back when I tried to synopsize the NATO Charter as a series of excerpts from television theme songs, but ran out of gas after only coming up with Article 5: The theme from Bonanaza (“If anyone fights any one of us, he's gonna fight with me”).

Hey, wait! The theme from Cheers could work for Article 2!

Comments

[sdelmonte]

This matches the idea in some circles that this film - which I haven't seen yet - actually a piece of right -wing propaganda. It doesn't help, though, that a week before it opened, the NY Times arts section had an article saying that the film was built on midwestern family values (which Brad Bird seemed to deny in that very same article).

It must be a popular film if everyone is tripping over thmeselves to claim it for thier own uses. A similar thing happened when Buffy was being used a metaphor for everything late in its run.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Obviously, Toy Story is about Bill Clinton (in the guise of Woody), and how he overcomes the over-the-top accusations of mistrustful swine and lapdogs. Monsters, INC is an attack on corporate greed and extractionist economics (the goal of the villains is to replace the long-term (renewable) farming of child-screams with the fatal all-at-once extraction of said screams -- at the end, an alternative energy source is discovered which is not only (morally) clean, but more powerful to boot). Finding Nemo is so far left wing it attacks the practice of keeping pets (PETA) and endorses an inter-racial blended family as the best of happy endings. Whether the anemone-bearing reef is the gated community within the stultifying suburbs is a matter for debate.

I'd rather not spoil the movie, but to put a right-wing reading onto The Incredibles takes work.

[avram]

Monsters, Inc is a direct metaphor for the Bush administration, which converts fear into political support. (That one came to me on the way home, but I’d forgotten about it by the time I sat down at the keyboard.)