Yes, this is a nerdy blog post about scientific management, a theory in public administration and organization development, and the 2004 Pixar movie, The Incredibles.  When it first came out, I heard a lot about the ideology of The Incredibles, including in the New York Times review by A. O. Scott:

“They keep finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity,” grumbles Bob Parr….He is referring to a pointless ceremony at his son’s school, but his complaint is much more general…

By “they” Bob means the various do-gooders, meddlers and bureaucrats – schoolteachers, lawyers, politicians, insurance executives – who have driven the world’s once-admired superheroes underground, into lives of bland split-level normalcy. “The Incredibles,” written and directed by Brad Bird and released under the mighty Pixar brand, is not subtle in announcing its central theme. Some people have powers that others do not, and to deny them the right to exercise those powers, or the privileges that accompany them, is misguided, cruel and socially destructive.

Some compare this ideology to objectivism, and others applied thematic elements of the movie to some political-cultural-Christian-conservative statement, which was really confusing.  And, finally, a liberal criticism.  The New York Times even jumped on board.  At least twice.  Paper of record, I guess.

But I have another idea to add to all of these interpretations. By no means do I want to ascribe this view to the entire movie, but there is something to be said about a connection between the movie and Scientific Management.  First of all, before I describe this particular theory, I have to mention the look of the movie.  It is nearly a period piece from emerging modernist America, circa the turn of the century up to the mid-century.

Take a look at the house, the cars, and the urban environment.  They just scream modernism to me, all similar to (if not direct copies of) the International style.

But I digress.  Let me talk more specifically about why The Incredibles is a rebuke of Scientific Management and the general modernist philosophy in management and organizational behavior.

Scientific Management is a theory developed by Frederick Taylor around the turn of the 20th century and famously published in The Principles of Scientific Management (1911).  The book involved time motion studies to understand efficiency, and the rebuke of “rule of thumb” management.  His theories (along with Max Weber, the Gilbreths, and many others) assigned nearly-religious qualities to efficiency and the enduring truth of hierarchical organizations.

In The Incredibles, a manager of the insurance company our castrated super hero works for says:

A company is like an enormous clock. It only works if all the little cogs mesh together. Now, a clock needs to be cleaned, well-lubricated and wound tight. The best clocks have jewel movements, cogs that fit, that cooperate by design. [chuckling] I’m being metaphorical, Bob.

Taylor would be so disappointed that he was only being metaphorical.  Our manager, to be despised as a central figure in our hero’s internal demise, is of course central to Taylor’s theories.  Taylor said,

The fourth set of principles of scientific management…consists of an almost equal division of the actual work of the establishment between the workmen, on the one hand, and the management, on the other hand (Shafritz and Hyde, Classics of Public Administration, pg. 37).

In The Incredibles, and many other cultural artifacts, the manager is not to be considered equal to the worker, however.  The worker does all of the work, we are told, and the manager just gets in the way.  Taylor is turning over in his grave over that portrayal.

Beyond that, however, I think one could see that “progress” is roundly defeated by “human ability” in the end.  Put another way, I see the central conflict during the period of emerging modernism as between science and people.  Modernism was central to the birth of feelings of alienation (hence, the popularization of alien mythology) and feeling as if one is estranged (and the popularization of the word strange, as in feeling as if one is a stranger in one’s own environment).  So, if the central conflict of modernism is between progress and humanity, then the Incredibles (as a family) strike a blow to Syndrome, the personification of the evils of progress.  Yet again, I digress.

In some ways, The Incredibles is a rebuke of more than just SciMan, to me.  It also appears to be a rebuke of the merit system, hierarchical decision-making, and (at an extreme) proto-communism in the guise of “we are all amazing if none of us stands out.”  Our antagonist (Syndrome) declares,

And when I’m old and I’ve had my fun, I’ll sell my inventions so that everyone can be superheroes. Everyone can be super. And when everyone’s super…no one will be.

Sounds to me like a rebuke of meritocracy.  And remember, meritocracy is not a bad word.  It is what built the middle class, and high standards of living for people that are not born rich.  Meritocracy just means that people are hired, promoted, exalted even, for their merit instead of their lineage, or religious-fervor, or whatever subjective qualification a society chooses.

Anyway, the point probably really is that The Incredibles was a beautiful and thought-provoking work of art.  Even Brad Bird admits that people will interpret it as they see fit, and he seems OK with it (from previously cited NYTimes):

“When you make a film, people interpret it a lot of different ways,” he said. “My goal is to create something that works on more than one level. If they want to dig deeper, there’s stuff there that can be had.”