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Marxism In The Incredibles

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The world revolves around media, it is what undoubtedly connects us all and allows us to relate to one another; it provides a new platform for culture to develop and engross a growing community. However, media also produces grounds for propaganda to seed and flourish, therefore allowing an individual or group to alter and shape the ideas of a community at large. During the World War II era, Disney actively produced propaganda shorts that revolved around the idea of war and standing unified behind the war efforts at the time. Although this could have been a patriotic move on Disney’s part as he served in World War I, the effort to produce animated shorts about the war was almost entirely driven by the financially unstable Walt Disney Company …show more content…

The movie depicts the story of a superhero family, who, reduced to a 1950’s nuclear style family, struggles to adjust to an average life. Although upon further inspection, the film shows traces of a Marxist perspective as the supers find themselves pitted against the non-supers, who are battling for power; it coincides with Karl Marx’s ideas of the proletariats rising up against the bourgeoisie. The villain, Syndrome, even states that his goal is to provide the technology “so that everyone can be superheroes… And when everyone’s super, no-one will be.” This line shows the effort of the villain rising up against those who have what he does not, real power. These efforts can be further tied into the idea that Syndrome is a representation of a terrorist, attempting to rise up against the “superpower” that is the United States. In cartoons, we always expect the superhero to save the general populace and country from extreme evil; they have power and therefore they are inherently good. As Giroux suggests, Disney implemented these ideas as a way of encouraging people to believe in the government at the time and to “depend on (George W. Bush’s) uncompromising judgments of good and evil”. In this case, George W. Bush would become the superhero, as he has the power and the capability to control the fate of the

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