\u00ab\u00a0The Incredibles 2.\u00a0\u00bb Disney\/Pixar Imagine, for a moment, if the \u00ab\u00a0The Incredibles 2\u00a0\u00bb had been made by the Disney of 40 years ago.\u2026<\/b>
\n\u00ab\u00a0The Incredibles 2.\u00a0\u00bb
Disney\/Pixar
Imagine, for a moment, if the \u00ab\u00a0The Incredibles 2\u00a0\u00bb had been made by the Disney of 40 years ago. Violet, Dash, and Jack-Jack Parr would be orphans left to discover the extent of their superpowers without their parents’ assistance. Violet would derive strength from her mother’s spectral presence, which would perch next to her sleeping bag in the Parr kids’ cave hideaway. Dash would be inspired by his father’s brawn each time he set off towards a villain. The older siblings would promise to keep their parents’ memory alive for baby Jack-Jack. Eventually, they would settle in Frozone’s house as his adopted children in a makeshift home.
Certainly, this warped version of \u00ab\u00a0The Incredibles 2\u00a0\u00bb would fit in amidst the good ol’ terrifying Disney movies that defined my youth. Whether they were set in the bazaars of Agrabah or the forests of Bavaria, the majority of my favorite childhood Disney movies have something in common: The protagonists’ story began with the absence of a parent. Sometimes, the parent dies on screen, as with \u00ab\u00a0The Lion King\u00a0\u00bb and \u00ab\u00a0Bambi\u00a0\u00bb (though this also occurs in Disney Pixar movies, like \u00ab\u00a0Finding Nemo\u00a0\u00bb). More often, at least one parent was already absent, and their child began the movie alone in a teetering world. Over half of the Disney movies made since 1937 feature a protagonist with one dead, absent, or missing parent.
There’s a legendary, if not wholly accurate, explanation for parental absence in these early movies. In 1938, Flora Disney passed away of carbon monoxide poisoning in the house that her son, Walt, had purchased for her after the release of \u00ab\u00a0Snow White,\u00a0\u00bb his very first feature-length animated movie. Walt felt forever guilty for her death, and edited mothers out of movies.
It’s a fittingly cinematic story \u2014 but likely, the real reason for Disney’s lack of parental figures is steeped in source material, not trauma. Many of these early Disney movies were based on classic fairy tales. And if you’ve read classic fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, and the Brothers Grimm, which provide the inspiration for movies like \u00ab\u00a0Cinderella,\u00a0\u00bb \u00ab\u00a0Snow White,\u00a0\u00bb and \u00ab\u00a0Sleeping Beauty,\u00a0\u00bb then you know this: The worst thing you can have is a parent. Parents and\/or step-parents will trick you and leave you out in the woods to die (\u00a0\u00bb Hansel and Gretel\u00a0\u00bb), or they will try to eat your heart (\u00a0\u00bb Snow White \u00ab\u00a0). \u00ab\u00a0Tale by tale, they reflect some very difficult conditions under which children grew up,\u00a0\u00bb Jack Zipes, a fairy tale scholar, told Refinery29. However, these tales \u2014 when first told in the oral tradition \u2014 were never specifically intended for an audience of children. \u00ab\u00a0Before print culture, fairy tales had a multigenerational appeal. Adults needed good racy violent stories to make the time pass,\u00a0\u00bb Maria Tatar, the chair of the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, said.
The Disney classics tend to lack parental figures.
1950
Disney swept the so-to-speak grimness from the fairy tales, but preserved the crux of the story arc. In each movie, characters make the transition from a brutal home to a happily ever after, and they do it without support, guidance, or lessons from their parents. \u00ab\u00a0The fairytale works because the protagonists are on their own. They have to learn how to navigate the world of monsters, of terrible things that are going to happen. They have to use their wits and their courage to construct a new home,\u00a0\u00bb said Tatar.
This narrative arc is not limited to Disney movies. In fact, it’s ubiquitous throughout iconic children’s stories and books. Case in point: Harry Potter and the Baudelaire kids of \u00ab\u00a0A Series of Unfortunate Events\u00a0\u00bb are all the orphan wards of evil-caretakers. It’s only after the four Pevensie kids in C. S. Lewis’ \u00ab\u00a0The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe\u00a0\u00bb are banished from London (and their parents) that they discover Narnia. Dorothy of \u00ab\u00a0The Wizard of Oz\u00a0\u00bb and the Lost Boys of \u00ab\u00a0Peter Pan\u00a0\u00bb only got to Oz and Neverland, respectively, because they were orphaned. There’s a practical explanation for the persistence of this narrative trope. Expelling a child from the comfort of the home is \u00ab\u00a0an easy way to create peril and a plot line for the kid where they have to find themselves,\u00a0\u00bb said Jill Murphy, the president of Common Sense Media.
Childhood, in iconic stories, was tied to expulsion \u2014 until now. Disney Pixar is changing the way childhood is represented in film, and it’s doing so by making parents and the home a more crucial part of the narrative. In \u00ab\u00a0The Incredibles 2,\u00a0\u00bb the Parr kids definitely aren’t orphans. In fact, their identities are derived by their relationship to their parents. In the trailer for \u00ab\u00a0The Incredibles 2,\u00a0\u00bb Bob Parr (more commonly known as Mr. Incredible) fumbles while acclimating to stay-at-home fatherhood. Gone is the primary storyline of a kid lost in a big, scary world. Instead, the action is based in the home.
Whereas fairy tales were created to reflect the dangers lurking outside the house, Pixar movies are created to teach kids to navigate the modern world’s dilemmas with kindness and strength. \u00ab\u00a0Inside Out,\u00a0\u00bb in particular, was a revolutionary in its creative depiction of the ordinary. The plot is simple: An 11-year-old struggles to adjust to her new home after a big move. Riley Anderson (Kaitlyn Dias) doesn’t need to be cast out of the family unit to feel scared, alone, and confused \u2014 just moving to San Francisco is difficult enough. Eventually, her happily ever after arrives within the four walls of her house, once her parents take her struggles seriously.
Riley Anderson struggles to adjust after a big move in \u00ab\u00a0Inside Out.\u00a0\u00bb
Pixar
\u00ab\u00a0Inside Out\u00a0\u00bb rewrites the movie’s conception of childhood by eschewing the reliance on expulsion or parental absence. To Murphy, this trope is dated. \u00ab\u00a0We’ve grown up with those archetypes, and we’re looking for something deeper. Those of us who are in the role of telling these stories, working for these companies, now want to grow more complex and sophisticated stories,\u00a0\u00bb she explained. Notably, Pixar movies don’t draw from fairy tales the same way Disney movies did, and continue to do. Instead, they’re wholly original stories shaped to suit the needs of a modern audience – including the need for art that parents and children can enjoy equally. \u00ab\u00a0Pixar movies were the first movies that parents and kids loved together and wanted to watch together,\u00a0\u00bb said Murphy. In their broad appeal, Pixar movies are actually quite similar to how fairy tales functioned in the oral tradition.
Many Pixar movies do involve an element of expulsion or estrangement from the family unit. But as far as the kids in \u00ab\u00a0Coco\u00a0\u00bb and \u00ab\u00a0Finding Nemo\u00a0\u00bb travel, they also come home to their parents \u2014 and actually improve their home conditions with what they learned along the way. The same goes for \u00ab\u00a0Moana,\u00a0\u00bb which is a Disney (not Disney Pixar) movie, but is nonetheless representative of the animation studios’ general trend toward family harmony. The story arc doesn’t end in forging a new home, but a better one.
At the core of each Pixar movie is a gleaming, digestible message \u2014 often multiple. However, Tatar questions whether we should assume these messages render Pixar movies automatically more valuable to children than their darker, fairy-tale-based counterparts. \u00ab\u00a0I worry about the fact that we’re trying desperately to create empathetic children by reading them stories in which the end is a sappy one-liner that tells them how to behave. You feel like you’ve been programmed to think a certain way,\u00a0\u00bb says Tatar.
Still, it doesn’t seem like these older stories are going anywhere. While Pixar is forging fascinating and modern portraits of modern childhood, Walt Disney Studios is converting old classics into live-action form. \u00ab\u00a0Cinderella,\u00a0\u00bb \u00a0\u00bb Beauty and the Beast,\u00a0\u00bb and \u00ab\u00a0Sleeping Beauty\u00a0\u00bb (in \u00ab\u00a0Maleficent\u00a0\u00bb) have already had the cartoon scrubbed out of them; eventually, \u00ab\u00a0The Little Mermaid \u00a0\u00bb will be part of that cinematic world, too.
Tatar believes these older, fairy-tale-based stories will hold wisdom, too \u2014 even if their messages are less overt or pre-planned. \u00ab\u00a0The stories themselves give us a lot of wisdom without putting it into one sentence. The wisdom comes from talking about the story, discussing it with someone else,\u00a0\u00bb Tatar said.
Pixar movies are full of teachable moments for the modern age, but the older movies can be, too. It just takes adult figures \u2014 who are notably absent from the movies \u2014 to navigate them.
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