Jack Saint · @LackingSaint
2nd Dec 2018 from TwitLonger
Reflecting on my Sky High vid
Back in September, after dipping my toes in some general cultural critique and then looking at the underlying philosophy of a video-game DLC, I decided to try my hand at a full-blown film analysis based on a few recurring themes I felt I had "noticed" in the text. The film was Sky High, and the themes that seemed to tie together (in my mind) were that of a eugenicist, 'bloodline essentialist' ideal I had noticed in quite a few lauded western movies.
Sky High was not a particularly "lauded" film, but it did seemingly follow this pattern - it established a world wherein little was deemed more important than genetic superiority and inheritance, for the purposes of letting audiences revel in the 'fantasy' of such a reality. Our main hero hides his shameful lack of inherited ability for fear of being looked down upon and mocked as per the standard of that world, and is revealed as a top-of-the-crop superhuman halfway in. While the film gestures vaguely in the direction of 'all together now' mutual acceptance of those at all levels of the class system, it ultimately culminates in a celebration of these tropes and an indifference to really solving the inherent problems of this society - no “And so we got rid of the class system!” note in the credits here. I dubbed this a Fascist Eugenicist reading of the text, and felt it fairly straightforward in this regard - Fascist as the film was built around a system which followed a strictly regimented hierarchical class system, Eugenicist as this hierarchical class system was primarily based around (mostly inherited) genetics. And so this reading sat at around 4,000 views, a pretty large number by my count, most of the responses generally positive and none overly critical of the piece.
Enter the Algorithm Gods - the video suddenly shot up to more than twenty times that number of views, and with it came a whole new range of eyes and ears. Many were derisive even of the idea that a youth-focused fantasy text like this could have such a serious reading. To this I wasn’t particularly bothered - as a writer primarily looking to create stories for younger audiences, I’ve spent my whole life massively overthinking fairly unassuming narrative, and damn if I’m gonna stop now. While many that remained I’d be hard-pressed to call ‘good faith’ - a fair number concluded either that I believed anything I didn’t like was secret Nazi Propaganda (incidentally, I like Sky High), or just a plain ol’ “Fuck off”. Some were pretty solid, however, and in any case some recurring themes began to emerge. I’d like to run through a few of them now, for the sake of clarity:
1) Sky High isn’t a fascist or eugenics movie, it’s actually about ____! You missed the point!
Well, first of all, I do want to make it clear Sky High IS *neither* of those things. My wording was clumsy, my title deliberately hyperbolic so people knew what they were getting into - but I do not believe my reading of Sky High here is the only reading. One comment declared Sky High was actually not a film about eugenics, but instead about ‘friendship’ - this, also, is a valid reading, even if it contradicts my own in a few ways (as well as the narrative of the film itself - many of the main character’s key achievements in the film have nothing to do with friendship). It does not need to objectively be one or the other. What I wanted to put across is that I think Sky High can be fairly straightforwardly read in these terms, and that if we can read this fairly generic Disney flick in those terms, we could extrapolate that to a lot of common cinematic tropes. As I said, my wording was off, and too often was I declarative when I should have been more suggestive. At least, you know, in my opinion.
2) You might explain how it’s a eugenics movie, but I don’t see how it’s a fascist movie.
You got me.
I still believe I make quite a strong argument for the film adopting some classic eugenicist tropes, deferring to a direct glorification of those at the ‘top of the food chain’ even while it attempts narrative beats to contradict this worldview. While the sidekicks ‘help save the day’ (several of whom having already been established as ‘improperly placed’ as sidekicks - I still don’t even know how Warren Peace ended up in that camp, unless being a villain’s son gets you demoted), Will defeats the bad guy entirely independently with a reliance on his natural genetic gifts, and the film does revel in this. Triumphant, swelling music plays as Will reveals his super flight, just as it played when he revealed his super strength - the film plainly presents that having really strong natural superpowers is something we should all be very impressed by. It may pay lip service to the idea that maybe sidekicks aren’t so bad after all, but none other than the specific sidekicks who helped save the day are given much consideration - they are, as I say in the video, presented as “one of the good ones” (or maybe “not like other sidekicks”). Now, fascism? Man, did I drop the ball.
I define fascism in what, I hope, is a fairly uncontroversial manner - it is a strictly enforced hierarchical society with a strong dependence on centralized state authority. You mix that up with eugenics, you get yourself a Hitler - one who asserts that hierarchy be established via a strictly genetic component, albeit a component backed up by some *powerfully* iffy pseudo-science (but I don’t need to go into the ways Hitler’s understanding of biology was off here, do I?.... Do I?) However, you can be a eugenicist without being a fascist, just as you can be a fascist without being a eugenicist - I do believe Sky High represents both of these things, but I gave very little elaboration on the fascist part.
What makes Sky High fascist, to me, is the fact that the text appears to push the idea that these kids are being placed into school systems which designate them hard-defined positions which will dictate their roles and placements in society - it literally takes everyone almost dying for just a couple sidekicks to be vaguely hinted at as maybe being able to move up a notch. The problem is, I hardly push this angle, and even with that in mind I have to acknowledge that the film remains vague enough to potentially shrug off this reading. Maybe it’s not a state school, but rather a private institution. Maybe kids aren’t ‘forced’ to go there, but simply encouraged to by their parents. We’re never told one way or the other, so there are some weak threads here - nonetheless, I brandished the term ‘fascist’ quite a lot in my analysis, and I think this scared a lot of people off. It gave the impression to some, even, that I literally think fascism and eugenics are the same thing. On further reflection, I would probably conclude I entangle a pretty good eugenicist reading of a movie with a pretty poor fascist reading of a movie.
3) The structure doesn’t fit your analysis - you go off on tangents and spend too much time on summary.
YES. I feel this one 100%, and it’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned from this and my Alice In Wonderland critique. While I know tons of people like these videos, and there’s a lot I do too… god, I really hate how much time I spend just messing around pointing out silly things in a movie when I actually have a pretty pointed argument to make. There’s way too much fluff here, and in future it’s something I’m going to be very cognisant of in my critique videos.
4) You just think Sky High is a Nazi movie because you hate it.
To say it again for those at the back - I fucking *love* Sky High.
Those are the big ones, I’m sure there’s more but I can probably cover those in comments and tweets instead of further bloating this already way-too-long clarification. In any case, I hope it helps clear some things up. I don’t want to stick my fingers in my ears as far as criticism goes, especially as I try to improve with each video - just as long as, you know, you don’t end that criticism by calling me a worthless brainwashed npc cuck.