Congeries of cross connected concepts
I ran in to a comment today somewhere about one of the better lines in The Incredibles:
If everybody is special, nobody is special
Apparently this is considered a bad idea for some reason, but to me this one of the most sympathetic aspects of the villian. He, unlike the people who originally caused the supers to go underground, wasn’t going to eliminated being special by maknig the supers un-super, but instead by making everyone super. I suppose it’s a matter of whether you think special people are good because they’re better or because they’re talented. I tend to utilitarianism, so I go with the latter and would not mind uniformity a bit, if it can be achieved by raising everyone up rather than dragging some down.
| cjm Friday, 24 February 2006 at 15:16 |  |
the helenic greeks used stories about “special” people in a different way than we do, now. people with extraordinary ability (or other personal attributes) were considered to be favorites of the gods. trouble was that because the gods were immortal they tended to go after each others’ favorites as proxies for getting at the patron god directly. thus hercules goes mad and slaughters his children, etc. the overall message is “don’t be envious of those the gods have smiled on because they will get theirs” which helped people accept their less than special place in the scheme of things.
here, celebrity has been raised to the nee plus ultra of human existence, and everyone wants to be special. this tends to make people with ordinary lives disastified and restive.
personally i am very happy with my work a day existence, and see celebrity as requiring a person to forfeit their identity to the needs of the adoring masses — they become consumed by their personnae.
