Our Anti-Hero Under the Sea

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The New York Sun

The postmodern, feature-length cartoon can go in one of two directions. It can, like “The Incredibles,” allow itself to be seduced by the ethos of what it is parodying, namely the comic-book heroism that is itself a parody of earlier forms of literary heroism. Or it can take a hard line and insist that the parody remain a parody, the heroes only laughably and not in any sense “really” heroic.


“The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,” directed by Sherm Cohen and Stephen Hillenburg, takes the latter course. Every conceivable temptation to real heroism is not only resisted but scorned and ridiculed and the heroic narrative itself, a quest by SpongeBob (voice of Tom Kenny) and his pal Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke) to find and return the crown of King Neptune (Jeffrey Tambor), is left in a pile of smoldering ruins.


You might almost have expected this from a heroic narrative whose heroes are a sponge and a starfish, but it just goes to show you how accustomed we have grown to the weird pomo film language of our times. Parents, lulled by “The Incredibles” into supposing that, for all the dangerously delightful comedy at the expense of heroism, their children are still getting a somewhat wholesome message, might want to take note.


There is also a political, specifically feminist point to the movie, which is more than usually obtrusive. Its real hero is Mindy, a bespectacled mermaid supposed to be King Neptune’s daughter, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. The only female creature in the sea, apparently, and an obvious bluestocking – or blue-flipper – she is briskly dismissive of all the childish males with whom she is surrounded, from her father to SpongeBob.


Mindy is the designated successor of King Neptune as ruler of the sea and is already assuming the right to command, scolding her father for his exercise of masculine authority by saying: “Can’t you get through one day without executing somebody?” She advises him to “try a little love and compassion instead of these harsh punishments.” When Neptune’s crown is stolen it is only a crisis because the king needs to cover up his bald spot – yet more male vanity coming in for a spot of ridicule – but Mindy encourages SpongeBob to go on the quest in order to save their friend, Mr. Krabs, from execution for stealing the crown.


Mr. Krabs has been framed by the evil Plankton (Doug Lawrence), who wants Krabs’s secret recipe for Krabby Patties in order to make a success of his own, rival fast-food restaurant, the Chum Bucket. Even the forces of wickedness here are made ridiculous, by being reduced to microscopic size and set in the context of a rivalry between fast-food chains. Of course, fast-food is a serious business for kids, and SpongeBob’s television show seems to have become so popular with children partly because it understands the romance of burgers and shakes. The movie briefly compares it to the romance of alcohol for adults, but undercuts any other, more adult sort of romance that threatens to develop out of it.


That’s why Mindy is particularly insistent that SpongeBob and Patrick undertake their quest as children, though they themselves have been persuaded that they need to be men. Squidward (Rodger Bumpass) gets the job SpongeBob wanted at Mr. Krabs’s restaurant because Sponge-Bob is “just a kid” and, as Mr. Krabs points out, “To be a manager you have to be a man. Otherwise they would call it a ‘kidager.'”


So SpongeBob and Patrick set out on their quest, as many a hero before them has done, to prove their manhood. But Mindy has no time for such foolishness. “What’s wrong with being kids?” she asks them. “Kids rule anyway. You don’t have to be a man.” When at first they insist, she gives them some fake mustaches made out of seaweed which make them think they have become like men in being fearless. And if fearless, then invincible.


“I never said that,” says Mindy.


Throughout the film all the other authority figures are absurd and silly, but not Mindy. Back at Bikini Bottom, Plankton is using the new success of the Chum Bucket as the springboard to a fascist dictatorship called Planktopolis. But his radio-controlled minions are no match for Bossy Miss Mindy’s determination to keep everything childish and unthreatening.


Thus the alleged “monsters” – really only cartoon grotesques – that SpongeBob and Patrick must confront prove easily entertained and become their friends, and they find and return the crown with the help of a (more-or-less) live-action David Hasselhoff, himself a natural parody of the old masculine ideal.


The explicitly drawn moral of the story is that SpongeBob doesn’t have to be a man after all. “Nothing can make me other than what I am, he says. “A kid. But that’s okay. I did what they said a kid couldn’t do.” When Squidward suggests a more conventional heroic ending, that SpongeBob no longer wants to be Mr. Krabs’s manager but has been changed by his quest, learning that “what you were looking for was really inside you,” the latter replies: “Are you insane?” and takes from him the coveted manager’s pin.


The subliminal message of a great many cartoons is that it’s okay not to grow up, to stay a child and do all kinds of things that grown-ups have said children couldn’t or shouldn’t do. “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” just makes it explicit and unashamed. Parents, be afraid. Be very afraid.


The New York Sun

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