At 5:09 PM -0800 11/28/04, Devine, James posted:
November 5, 2004
MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE INCREDIBLES'
Being Super in Suburbia Is No Picnic
By A. O. SCOTT
<snip>
Like their parents, the children are forced to conform to a society
where "everyone is special, so no one is."
In the movie's view of things, this kind of misguided
egalitarianism, enforced in petty ways at school and work, is not
just stultifying but actively, murderously evil. The super-villain,
a flame-haired nerd named Syndrome (Jason Lee), is a would-be
superhero tormented by his own lack of special talents. From his
high-tech island laboratory, populated by faceless minions, a slinky
second-in-command (Elizabeth Peņa) and giant killer robots, he plots
a quasi-genocidal campaign against the former costumed crime
fighters, whom he lures out of retirement by promising them the
chance to practice their profession once again.
Syndrome's ultimate goal is not so much to rule the world as to
force the rules that already govern it to their logical conclusion.
His diabolical utopia will be cleansed of heroes: once he is done,
he hisses, "everybody will be super, which means no one will be."
<blockquote>The New York Times
November 21, 2004 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 4; Column 1; Week in Review Desk; Ideas & Trends:
The Un-Incredibles; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1297 words
HEADLINE: When Every Child Is Good Enough
BYLINE: By JOHN TIERNEY; John M. Broder contributed reporting from
Los Angeles for this article.
''THE Incredibles'' is not just an animated adventure for children,
at least not to the parents and teachers who have been passionately
deconstructing the story of a family of superheroes trapped in
suburbia. The movie has reignited one of the oldest debates about
child-rearing and society: competition versus coddling, excellence
versus egalitarianism.
Is Dash, the supersonic third-grader forbidden from racing on the
track team, a gifted child held back by the educational philosophy
that ''everybody is special''? Or is he an overprivileged elitist
being forced to take into account the feelings of others?
Is his father, Mr. Incredible, who complains that the schools ''keep
inventing new ways to celebrate mediocrity,'' a visionary reformer
committed to pushing children to excel? Or is he a reactionary in red
tights who's been reading too much Nietzsche and Ayn Rand?
Is Syndrome, the geek villain trying to kill the superheroes, an
angry Marxist determined to quash individuality? Or is his plan to
give everyone artificial superpowers an uplifting version of
''cooperative learning'' in an ''inclusion classroom''?
At one level, the debate is over current controversies in public
education: Many parents believe that their children, mostly in elite
schools, are being pushed too hard in a hypercompetitive atmosphere.
But other parents are complaining about a decline in programs for
gifted children, leaving students to languish in ''untracked'' and
unstimulating classrooms. Some critics of education believe that boys
especially are languishing in schools that emphasize cooperation
instead of competition. No Child Left Behind, indeed.
But the basic issue is the same one raised four decades ago by Kurt
Vonnegut in ''Harrison Bergeron,'' a short story set in the America
of 2081, about a 14-year-old genius and star athlete. To keep others
from feeling inferior, the Handicapper General weighs him down with
300-pound weights and makes him wear earphones that blast noise, so
he cannot take ''unfair advantage'' of his brain.
That's hardly the America of 2004, but today's children do grow up
with soccer leagues and spelling bees where everyone gets a prize. On
some playgrounds dodge ball is deemed too traumatic to the
dodging-impaired. Some parents consider musical chairs dangerously
exclusionary.
Children are constantly feted for accomplishments that used to be
routine. They may not all be honored at a fourth-grade graduation
ceremony -- the event in the movie that inspires Mr. Incredible's
complaint about mediocrity -- but they all hear the mantra recited by
Dash's sister in response to his ambitions.
''Everyone's special, Dash,'' she says.
''Which is another way of saying no one is,'' he replies.
The villain, Syndrome, makes the same point when he envisions
empowering the masses with his inventions.
''Everybody will be super, which means no one will be,'' he says,
gleeful that he will finally have revenge on Mr. Incredible for
snubbing him during his childhood.
He may be the villain, but you could also see his psychopathology as
evidence of the bad effects of status-seeking among children. Even
the winners can be victims of competition, said Denise Clark Pope,
the author of ''Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of
Stressed Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students.''
''When learning becomes about competing with your peers to get ahead,
what gets learned is how to compete and not how to learn,'' said Dr.
Pope, a lecturer at Stanford University's school of education. ''Kids
learn to cheat, to raise their hands even when they don't know the
answers, to form alliances instead of learning the material we want
them to understand.''
Her attitude is shared by some parents, especially ones whose
children are frantically competing at exclusive private and surburban
schools. But fans of competition complain that it's been
de-emphasized for most students. Some schools have dropped honor
rolls and class rankings, and the old practice of routinely
segregating smart students in separate tracks has given way to the
heterogeneous ''inclusion classroom.''
Competition has long been out of fashion at education schools, as
indicated in a 1997 survey of 900 of their professors by Public
Agenda, a nonprofit public opinion research group. Only a third of
the professors considered rewards like honor rolls to be valuable
incentives for learning, while nearly two-thirds said schools should
avoid competition.
To some critics, that cooperative philosophy is one reason that so
many boys like Dash are bored at school. ''Professors of education
think you can improve society by making people less competitive,''
said Christina Hoff Sommers, author of ''The War Against Boys'' and a
resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. ''But males
are wired for competition, and if you take it away there's little to
interest them in school.''
In his new book, ''Hard America, Soft America,'' Michael Barone puts
schools in the soft category and warns that they leave young adults
unprepared for the hard world awaiting them in the workplace. ''The
education establishment has been too concerned with fostering kids'
self-esteem instead of teaching them to learn and compete,'' he said.
The No Child Left Behind Act was an attempt to put more rigor into
the system by punishing schools whose students don't pass
standardized tests, but it has had unintended consequences for high
achievers. Administrators have been cutting funds for gifted-student
programs and concentrating money and attention on the failing
students.
''In practice, No Child Left Behind has meant No Child Gets Ahead for
gifted students,'' said Joyce Clark, a planner in the Pittsburgh
public schools' gifted program. ''There's no incentive to worry about
them because they can pass the tests.''
''The Incredibles'' might take comfort from a recent report, ''A
Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest
Students,'' by the John Templeton Foundation. It summarizes research
showing that gifted children thrive with more advanced material and
describes their current frustration in prose that sounds like Dash:
''When they want to fly, they are told to stay in their seats. Stay
in your grade. Know your place. It's a national scandal.''
But if they do fly, what happens to the children left on the ground?
One of the report's authors, Nicholas Colangelo, a professor at the
University of Iowa who is an expert in gifted education, pointed to
research indicating the left-behind do not suffer academically or
emotionally.
Other scholars say that these children feel stigmatized and
demoralized, and that in practice, a tracking system tends to
discriminate against poor and minority students.
''The public generally seems to have caught on to the social
undesirability of claiming educational privileges for students who
are already relatively privileged,'' said Jeannie Oakes, a professor
of educational equity at the University of California, Los Angeles.
''Superhero kids don't exist in such abundance that we need to
develop special and separate programs for whole classes of them.''
The movie never quite resolves the issue. In the end, Dash is allowed
to race but is coached not to get too far ahead of the pack. The
writer and director, Brad Bird, offered a less ambiguous answer in an
interview. ''Wrong-headed liberalism seeks to give trophies to
everyone just for existing,'' he said. ''It seems to render
achievement meaningless. That's a weird goal.''
He sounded very much like Professor Colangelo, who says that children
want to compete and can cope with defeat a lot better than adults
imagine. ''Life hurts your feelings,'' Mr. Bird said. ''I think
people whine about stuff too much. C'mon, man, just get up and do
it.''</blockquote>
--
Yoshie
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