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Rand the Incredible

While we're on the subject of cartoons, David M. Brown at LFB tells us about how various reviewers are seeing the Ayn Rand undercurrents in the animated flick, "The Incredibles." In his post, "The Incredibles' Ayn Rand," Brown writes:

When the animated feature "The Iron Giant" came out in 1999, some libertarians saw a theme of man or robot versus the state, because the movie depicts the government, in the person of a repressive bureaucrat, trying to destroy an innocent and good giant robot. The Pixar production "The Incredibles," directed by "Iron Giant" director Brad Bird, boasts not only more sophisticated animation than "Giant" but perhaps a more sophisticated theme as well. At any rate, more than one reviewer is finding the footprint of Ayn Rand.

I've not seen the film yet, but have heard similar things from other colleagues and friends. If true, of course, it would not be the first time that Rand made it into animation. In my newest essay in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, I discuss "The Illustrated Rand," that is, the ways in which Rand and her work have permeated popular culture, giving us a plethora of both positive and negative references. It's a much extended, much more developed piece than its predecessor, "The Cultural Ascendency of Ayn Rand." As I write:

Rand’s presence on television is not restricted to live action dramas or sitcoms. It has also been felt in cartoons. In a “Futurama” episode entitled “Second That Emotion,” the character Bender holds up Atlas Shrugged while commenting that, in the sewer among the mutants, they find “nothing but crumpled porn and Ayn Rand.” In an infamous “South Park” episode called “Chickenlover,” Atlas Shrugged is presented to Officer Barbrady, who has recently learned how to read, and who, upon seeing the massive size of Rand’s novel, laments his achievements in literacy.

I also discuss the more "philosophically astute ... Rand references" that have shown up on “The Simpsons.” In a terrific book (co-edited by our esteemed colleague Aeon Skoble), The Simpsons and Philosophy, authors William Irwin and J. R. Lombardo tell us about that Rand episode:

[I]n “A Streetcar Named Marge,” Maggie is placed in the “Ayn Rand School for Tots” where the proprietor, Mr. Sinclair, reads The Fountainhead Diet. To understand why pacifiers are taken away from Maggie and the other children one has to catch the allusion to the radical libertarian philosophy of Ayn Rand. Recognizing and understanding this allusion yields much more pleasure than would a straightforward explanation that Maggie has been placed in a daycare facility in which tots are trained to fend for themselves, not to depend on others, not even to depend on their pacifiers.

My JARS essay also surveys Rand references in scholarship, film, television shows, music, and comic books, especially the work of Steve Ditko and Frank Miller. Rand herself was no stranger to illustrated media; her Fountainhead was illustrated in a Kings Features serial back in 1945 and Anthem made it into Famous Fantastic Mysteries. With Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom having been illustrated in "cartoon" format in Look, and Ludwig von Mises having being mentioned in Batman comics, and libertarian themes showing up in the comic book character Anarky, I'd say that illustrated media and pop culture are both prime areas for affecting (and reflecting) wider ideological change. Libertarians and individualists need to think more seriously about how to affect that change in entertaining projects that are as widely viewed and praised as The Incredibles.

Posted on Thursday, November 18, 2004 at 10:31 AM | Comments (20) | Return

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