Movie:  Incredibles 2

Do female-male relationships demonstrate mutual respect throughout entire movie?

To find out, let’s look at some important scenes in the movie.

After hearing Winston Deavor pick his wife ElastiGirl to lead the super hero campaign, Mr. Incredible’s expression is this:

Then, when the information sinks in, Mr. Incredible looks at his wife like this.

What do these expressions convey to you?

Sadly, Mr. Incredible’s expressions aren’t of admiration, excitement, or acceptance. They aren’t even of pure jealousy or surprise. His expressions are mixed with disdain (a feeling that someone is unworthy) and contempt (the belief that someone is unworthy of your respect).

Then Mr. Incredible shows allegiance to the man he just met over his spouse. He pleads his case to Winston Deavor that ElastiGirl couldn’t possibly be the right choice because she is…female.

Winston Deavor:   “…for our first move, well, ElastiGirl is our best play.”

Mr. Incredible:   “Better than me?” “I mean she’s good, she’s really a credit to her…but uh…you know…you know…” 

The scriptwriters have Mr. Incredible not liking the decision and then claiming the decision is flawed because of gender. Mr. Incredible insults half the population by inferring that even a female who is top among females is not as good as a male for an important job. Even worse is that Mr. Incredible is disrespecting his own spouse, the person he chose to love and share his life with.

The scriptwriters are sending our kids the messages that:

Boys stick together against girls—even when the girl is someone the boy cares about, and he just met the other boy minutes before.

A boy can’t be an equal to a girl. A girl is always supposed to be “second banana” to a boy. If she’s not, there is something wrong with the boy, the girl, or both.

A boy doing something is always better than a girl doing that same thing. If a girl is better than a boy in anything, it is shameful and unnatural—to be ignored or ridiculed.

The scriptwriters made the scene sexist by having Mr. Incredible argue his point through gender. Instead, Mr. Incredible could have been upset without being sexist. Some examples of dialogue are:

“But I’m ready now. Right now. ElastiGirl is great and so is FroZone, but I’m Mr. Incredible. You need my kind of super power to start this thing.”

“Wait a minute. Hold on. I’m Mr. Incredible. You need me out there.”

“Hey, you don’t need ‘elastic’ for this kind of job or ‘ice,’ for that matter. You need ‘incredible.’”

Then, later in the movie (see screenshot below), Mr. Incredible struggles to compliment ElastiGirl–practically giving himself a ruptured aneurysm.

Further undermining mutual respect, when Mr. Incredible is home parenting his kids, the scriptwriters have him lie to his wife.

Instead of lying by saying, “Nothing” when ElastiGirl asks, “What happened with Jack Jack?,” Mr. Incredible could’ve said:

“Uh…he has a few new things to show you when you get home. Tell me, what’s going on in ‘super’ land?”

Later in the conversation, when ElastiGirl shares her excitement about saving a runaway train, this is Mr. Incredible’s expression:

He then heads to the television, as she excitedly shares details with him, and clicks it on with the remote control in his other hand. In the screen shot below, where is the phone in relation to his ear? Where is his attention? What is his expression? As we watch him, we hear what he hears. Her voice is only animated incoherence, while the TV sound is clear.

He learns from the television how well she has done and this is his expression:

Where is the phone now?

Is this how we want our sons to feel towards the girls and women in their lives? Their classmates, sisters, friends–and later their wives, daughters, colleagues, bosses, and political candidates? Are these the responses we want our daughters to accept as “just the way it is,” even from their partners/spouses?

What if these roles were written in reverse? How would we feel about ElastiGirl if she acted toward Mr. Incredible the way he has acted toward her? Would we think, “Awww, poor ElastiGirl. She deserves to be out there and she’s stuck at home with the kids.” Or would we think “What a b—-” and “What a ball buster”? Because she doesn’t know “her place” as secondary to a man for any public accomplishment he cares about?

This movie shows how we’ve been socialized to always sympathize with a male over a female, now coined as “himpathy” (link https://www.vox.com/2018/9/27/17887210/brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-hearing-kate-manne), and these scriptwriters are training our kids to do the same.

Scriptwriters need to do better.