I've been reading this book, Wild at Heart by John Eldredge, and it's been pretty exciting so far. Everything I've read makes my spirit leap in response, as if he's speaking to some deep, hidden part of me I've been ignoring all my life. I definitely need to get my sister something as a thank you for giving me this book for Christmas. Wish I hadn't waited almost all year to read it!
Now, the thing is, I've gotten halfway through, and when I finished the sixth chapter, a though occurred to me: a lot of what he's talking about seems to be mirrored in one of my favorite movies, "The Incredibles", which I watched again just this week. In fact, one could almost think of the events in the movie as an allegory of what has happened to men in America, and possibly across the world.
I should warn those of you who haven't seen it that there are spoilers ahead. If you don't want to read them, I suggest you skip ahead. Or better yet, just go out and rent the darn movie; you'll be doing yourself a favor.
***SPOILERS***
When things first start out, the world is in a wonderful age. Yes, there is crime and there are super villains, but there are the Supers as well, heroes and heroines ready and willing to fight for the common man. Heck, they're so much a part of natural life in the country that the police and citizens have no trouble treating them as little more than celebrities. Not gods, really, but definitely popular people. And the Supers themselves are very down-to-earth, almost blue collar in their attitude and approach to their work (as shown when Frozone chats with Mr. Incredible... while chasing a helicopter full of crooks). Life is good.
Then something unexpected happens. Mr. Incredible is sued for saving the life of a man who tried to commit suicide. Others follow as greed sets in, with the people on the train also filing for wrongful injury. Not long after that, other Supers begin to find themselves being sued. And since they're on the government payroll, it's costing taxpayers a fortune. It isn't long before the decision is made that Supers are too dangerous to have around. They're wild, out of control. A danger to public safety. All this after years of serving and protecting, of making the world a better place by becoming a sort of Super Police, taking out the really bad crooks and assisting the cops in keeping crime down. And how are they rewarded? With public pressure to go away and stop being super. Statues in their honor are torn down, the government forces them to go underground, and they are all but forgotten. Only the other Supers and the government have any idea of their identities.
Raise your hand if this sounds anything like what's happened to men in our society.
......maybe I should get a bigger audience before making such statements. =P But on we go.
When next we see Mr. Incredible, he's not super anymore. He still has his powers, his strength and invulnerability, but he's not using them. He's sitting at a desk job, the kind that requires practically no physical strength or endurance, and denying some poor woman's claim. Definitely not super.
It shows in every part of his person. He's gotten fat, he speaks in an almost bored, lifeless drone, a tone that speaks volumes of the defeat he's suffered, the wound to his soul. He's a shell of a man, cliche as it sounds. The guys at Pixar did a wonderful job with the symbolism as well, putting him into a cramped cubicle where he doesn't really fit. And it's the one with the concrete column taking up much of the space as well. He doesn't fit here. He's been forced into a box that's too small for him. In a sense, he's been emasculated. Tamed. Defanged. Much like the men in our culture.
And much like myself in some ways. But I'll save the emo rant for later; I want to finish this.
As a result of what's happened to him, Bob (formerly known as Mr. Incredible) is depressed and almost lifeless. He hates what he's become, what he's been forced to become. And he knows he has no choice. Not only has the public rejected him, but his own wife, once a Super herself no less, pressures him to be normal, to fit in... to be tame. But Bob doesn't want to be. He's still a lion inside, a king of beasts, and he hates being locked up. He lashes out in various ways. He approves his clients' claims and gives them advice on how to get what they need, despite his supervisor's insistence he think of the company first. He argues with his wife about letting their son, Dash, compete in sports. And, presumably, he keeps doing things that get him fired and require the government to step in and erase memories (there's several points in the film that tell us this isn't the first time he's thrown a supervisor through the wall... or rather, several walls). He's a wild beast in a cage and it's killing him. And he can do nothing about it.
The breaking point comes when he's forced to watch a man get mugged and do nothing about it. Helen is relying on him to bring home the bacon, to keep his job. So when he tries to help the man, in essence to do what God made him to do, he's forced to stop when threatened with unemployment. And what stops him? A tiny, little, pathetic boy in the body of a man. His supervisor is safe, a nice man, so long as you keep in line, but a tiger when you don't do things according to policy. He's already lost his own masculinity, and he's left with throwing his weight around at the office, bullying others into submission. And when he does it to Bob, it's too much. He says it's good the crook got away, because Bob almost got fired. And it's just too much.
Next thing you know, Bob's supervisor is flying through the wall to slam against some file cabinets and slump to the floor. Then the camera pans to show us it was actually several walls he went through, five of them at least. And then Bob realizes he's dead. He lost control, he let the beast out, he was wild. And it gets him fired. No one cares if he's a good man or not. A good man would've gone out there and stopped that crook, to help the victim to a hospital, regardless of his safety or whether he had super powers or not. But the world didn't want Bob to be a good man. It wanted him to be safe. And whenever he wasn't, it got him in trouble. Which is probably why he, and many of the other Supers, were so quick to jump on a chance to be wild again.
Syndrome's offer comes just after the incident in the office, giving Bob the chance of a lifetime. It's a chance to be wild, to let himself go and be a hero again. To a Super. The only problem is getting it past Helen. And he knows that if she learned the truth she'd veto it. She'd keep him tame.
Why? Why would she fight so hard to keep him from living in glory? From being what God made him to be? The answer is simple and ugly: she's bought into the lie that it's better to be safe than good. She's forced Bob to be tame, to adapt to the world's insistence that he deny his true self. I've no doubt that, if things had continued as they were, eventually she would have found her marriage to be devoid of passion. "Where's the fire? Where's the fierceness we once had?" And the answer would be, "You took it out of him, Helen. Did you really expect anything different?" When a man is forced to be what he is not, it kills him, right in his heart. His body and mind keep going, but his spirit drags like entrails torn from his gut. It hurts, and he doesn't want to admit it. And when she asks, he never gives the answer.
To get around this, he tells her a lie: he's going to a business conference. She approves, because she's convinced it's finally worked. He's finally become tame and being rewarded for it. And it's a lie, but only because she doesn't wish to face the truth: that make Supers behave as anything but Supers is a sin. The same sin as when we force boys to behave like nice little dolls, never yelling, shouting or having adventures. She doesn't want to believe it because then she'd have to address the wound in her own heart. She misses the glory days too. She's just too proud and stubborn to admit it.
Considering how much she's invested in that lie, is it any wonder she suspects him of having an affair? He's suddenly upbeat and seems to have regained the life inside him, regained his fire and fierceness. She loves it... until she finds evidence he hasn't told her everything. Then she suspects the reason for his fire is he's found another beauty. This is every woman's deepest fear! Suddenly, he's no longer in love with her. She's not the beauty anymore, not worth fighting or living for. She feels... second rate. It makes her hurt and angry. It isn't until much later that Bob hadn't been chasing another beauty. He'd just been fulfilling his purpose once again.
(Of course, we don't know what Syndrome had Bob doing in-between the first fight with the robot and Syndrome's introduction. However, given his new love of life and the implication he was being paid handsomely, it's not far off to assume it was something like hero work, even if it was a mere charade to keep him busy. No one likes being idle; we were made to work. So in all likelihood, we can assume Syndrome set him up with fake hero work to keep him busy while he prepared the robot for its final mission.)
At the end of the film, Helen and Bob are still together, and better yet they're Supers again. The adventure they shared reminded them of who they were, and of who the other was. They were more than heroes, more than man and wife... they were a family, and if they stuck together, there was little they couldn't do.
In the end, Bob got his masculinity back. He was a man again, wild at heart and with his wounds healed (though irl, that doesn't usually happen without God's help), and best of all he has a beauty to share it all with. And Helen couldn't love him more for it. When the Underminer appears and starts shouting threats, she doesn't beg him to hold back or be normal or to think of his job... she puts on her mask and smiles... smiles because she knows...
...the adventure is just beginning.
***SPOILERS***
I'll end it here for now, but I'm not quite done. Bob's loss and recovery of his masculinity doesn't affect just him and his wife. There's also his kids, who suffer from his loss as well and then grow when thrust into an adventure that's more dangerous than they can imagine.
Plus, Syndrome's own journey is much like Bob's, only it ends in tragedy instead of triumph.
I'll cover these in future posts. For now, I'm going to take a break. =P After all, even wild men need to bathe now and then. Catch ya all later!
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