Congeries of cross connected concepts
Maybe I will turn this weblog in to rants on geek literature. For this post, I will defend the vision of Syndrome from The Incredibles who is, in my view, unfairly maligned. For example, Melissa Clouthier rips in to him for the following —
Oh, I’m real. Real enough to defeat you! And I did it without your precious gifts, your oh-so-special powers. I’ll give them heroics. I’ll give them the most spectacular heroics the world has ever seen! And when I’m old and I’ve had my fun, I’ll sell my inventions so that everyone can have powers. Everyone can be super! And when everyone’s super — [chuckles evilly] –- *no one will be.”
This is presented as if self-evidently bad, but why? It sounds extremely American to me. The fundamental concept in this quote is that if you’re not as cool / rich / powerful as someone else, improve yourself. Syndrome isn’t advocating stifling anyone else, or holding them back. And once he’s done that, he’s going to share his improvements with his fellow citizens through the market. So, in essence, Syndrome’s “evil” plan here is to make himself and everyone else effectively have super powers and make a lot of money doing it. I don’t see the problem.
Is that because no one will be special because of super powers? Isn’t that like objecting to eliminating income inequality by making everyone rich? Hey, if some one offers me a plan to completely eliminate differences in income by giving everybody Bill Gates’ life style, I am onboard with that.
P.S. Yes, yes, I know, Syndrome is in fact a bad guy, but because of his use of murder, kidnapping, and wholesale reckless endangerment, not because he invented super power technology.
