by Leah Brubaker
After fourteen years, The Incredibles 2 finally arrived on June 15! Our favorite superhero family remains funny and relatable as Helen heads off to a new job, leaving Bob to deal with Jack-jack’s powers, Dash’s math, and Violet’s boy problems. Helen’s new job gives her the important task of representing superheroes well to the public, so all superheroes can be legal once again. While on this mission, Helen encounters a new and disturbing villain: Screen Slaver.
Screen Slaver is an eerie, black figure with glowing blue eyes and an opaque black mask, which completely obstructs any human features. The main threat from Screen Slaver is his hypnotizing patterns on screens. He possesses the power to control all screens and hijack entire systems, taking control of trains, planes, and other vehicles with potentially devastating results. A villain with widespread hypnosis capabilities? Not someone to mess around with.
Screen Slaver is a surprising mix of chilling creepiness and relevant insight. His widespread control is frightening in the magnitude of influence, from controlling vehicles to television. However, does our own culture possess a Screen Slaver? Screen Slaver presents a relevant message to this current era of phones, computers, and everything in between. When Screen Slaver rasps to his captive audience, “Screens are everywhere. We are controlled by screens,” it’s hard not to look around and agree. Self-driving cars, smart TVs, social media, online shopping, smart phones, and on and on… Although the movie presents an extreme version of screen control for the sake of the story, The Incredibles 2 also delivers a thought-provoking nudge about the actual connection we have with the technology around us. The most easily recognized connection is simply how much time we spend with our screens, especially cell phones.
According to eMarketer,
“US adults will spend an average of 3 hours, 35 minutes per day on mobile devices in 2018, an annual increase of more than 11 minutes. By 2019, mobile will surpass TV as the medium attracting the most minutes in the US.”
Also, according to a survey from Gallup, “52% of smartphone owners check it a few times an hour or more.” There seems to be a strong bond between people and their personal screens.
Many spend a lot of time distracting themselves or having a third-person experience through their screens, a tendency that Screen Slaver points out, saying “You don’t talk, you watch talk shows.” Screen Slaver targets the use of screens and the fascination with superheroes within the movie as an obsession with convenience and passivity. We, like Screen Slaver’s captive audience, replace meaningful or mundane activities with a virtual, detached alternative. It’s a struggle of our culture, rarely leaving anyone completely unscathed.
Screen Slaver is an unorthodox villain because he seems to represent evil, yet he is the one who identifies greater issues within society. His revelations about the controlling aspect of screens should be neither ignored nor fixated on, but rather should prompt a revealing examination where we look at ourselves and our screens to evaluate which has greater control.
Leah Brubaker is a freshman from Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, which is in Lancaster County (but not LAN-caster county). When not busy with homework, she enjoys exploring and finding interesting places around campus. She loved the first Incredibles movie and was thrilled to watch the second this past summer. (Her favorite character is Violet, because she can be invisible and snarky sometimes.)