Reactionary

Who knew you could really like a kids movie for its message? And being child-free, I’m not a vocal proponent of “messages” or “good examples” in movies. But I loved an aspect of it though I fell asleep near the end. The scene that encapsulates what I practically cheered for was the conversation in the living room the husband and wife have (the undercover Incredibles). She’s mad about him being busy with other things lately and says something that he can’t miss the son’s graduation the next day. He says (and this is paraphrased), “It’s not a graduation. He’s moving from 5th grade to 6th grade.” She grants its just a ceremony then. He says, “They keep coming up with new ways to praise mediocrity.” I couldn’t have agreed with it more if I’d written it myself.

There’s another part when the villain is describing how he went from being a psychotic fan of Mr. Incredible to this evil person who goes around killing superheroes. He says he doesn’t have any special powers but he’s made things to make him *seem* incredible. He’s going to let out the patents so everyone can be incredible. And then someone says, “Once everyone’s incredible, no one will be.” Once again, I almost cheered.

That is what this pro-PC society is generating. Don’t you get it? Fake incredibility. We persecute the truly great and try to build up nobodys to be great. Case in point: Paris Hilton. What has this whore done besides be rich with Dad’s money? She’s nobody. She has no talent. She’s not even very pretty. But it’s a media zoo around her and at the same time, numerous people out there are complaining that Bono’s preaching too much at the U2 concerts. Damn him. Stone him! What is going on???

We are all called to be incredible. Not everyone will get there. Not everyone can. But we’re all supposed to try… and we need to stop praising mediocrity. We need to stop giving EVERYONE a prize so no one feels left out. We need to stop making and TAKING excuses for faults and general unincredibility. We need to stop trying to keep the great ones down so things even out. We need to stop that for everyone’s sake. Because you’re not incredible doesn’t mean you’re a waste of DNA, but it takes an incredibility of sorts to admit and live with what you don’t know or what you can’t do. There’s only one first prize for a reason. Let’s keep it that way.

P.S. I wrote an essay about mediocrity but it’s still in my folio. Maybe I’ll post it at some point if it’s any good on a second look.

P.P.S. The superfan character in the movie opens up another huge topic about heroes and those who profess to love them. A recent issue has been certain so-called fans of a certain rock band. But that whole thing still makes me so angry, that I don’t want it to ruin my good mood.

Posted on June 5th, 2005 under General •  Print •  Email • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed