Luke Epplin’s recent piece “You
Can Do Anything” in The Atlantic
accused computer-animated children’s movies like Kung Fu Panda, Ratatouille,
Wreck-It Ralph, Monsters University, and the newer Turbo
and Planes of “infecting” children with “the belief that their greatness
comes from within,” of encouraging youngsters to follow personal dreams to the
detriment of society. It doesn’t seem to occur to Epplin that the pursuit of
personal dreams benefits society.
He points, for example, to the
story of Turbo in which a common garden snail “toils in a tomato patch
during the day and dreams of racing glory at night.” His brother, a safety
supervisor in the snail colony, puts a damper on such fantasies: “The sooner
you accept the miserableness of your existence, the happier you'll be. Dreamers
eventually have to wake up.”
Turbo predictably proves the pessimists
wrong, like the main character in Planes, a crop-duster “who yearns to
break free from his workaday existence and compete in the famed Wings Around
the Globe race.” He is determined “to achieve his far-fetched goal, arguing
that ‘I’m just trying to prove maybe, just maybe, I can do more than I was
built for.’” And of course, he does.
Epplin links the message of such
movies to the “cult of self-esteem” in our narcissistic era in which we are
encouraged to “follow our bliss,” as mythologist Joseph Campbell once famously
urged. The “restless protagonists of these films… sneer at the mundane,
repetitive work performed by their unimaginative peers.” They never have to
wake up to reality; “[i]nstead, it's the naysaying authority figures who need
to be enlightened about the importance of never giving up on your dreams, no
matter how irrational, improbable, or disruptive to the larger community… Their
attitudes are all part of an ethos that privileges self-fulfillment over the
communal good.”
Fair enough. He has an undeniable
point that “these films discount the hard work that enables individuals to
reach the top of their professions.” He’s right that it’s not enough for the
protagonists simply to “out-believe their opponents.” Behind every overnight
success, as every realist knows, lie years and years of persistent striving. Hard
work and incremental progress are the unglamorous reality behind making dreams
come true – and even then there is no guarantee of success.
But “disruptive to the larger
community”? “Putting self-fulfillment over the communal good”? What a curiously
repressive perspective. Yes, by all means let children know that into each life
some failures and disappointments must fall, to paraphrase Wordsworth. But to insist
that young people should squelch their dreams and ambitions, however
improbable, for the sake of “the communal good,” wrongly elevates the
collective over the individual.
You know what elevates the “larger
community”? The improbable dreams of people who defied conventional, earthbound
groupthink and who nudged us toward enlightenment and civilization. You know
who contributes most to “the communal good”? Individual dreamers like Steve
Jobs, whose achievements have elevated us more than the entire sum total of any
collective-minded society.
I have two very young daughters
whose future paths, at this point, know no limitations except those imposed on
them by a society that is increasingly emphasizing the collective over the
individual. While I will certainly teach them that dreams are built brick by
brick, I refuse to inculcate in them a suppressive fatalism or to tell them to
abandon self-fulfillment because it threatens those who claim the right to
determine for others what constitutes “the communal good.”
As Turbo’s brother says, “Dreamers
eventually have to wake up.” Yes, but sometimes they enable us all to wake up
to a better world.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 8/30/13)
