The newest movie from Pixar for Disney is Elemental, which was released in the spring. However, since I never voluntarily watch these movies, I ended up seeing it now because I’m staying with people who wanted to watch it. It was a fascinating film because, combined with surprising common sense, it reflects so much about leftist values and how leftists impose them on Americans, especially on children.

For those who know nothing about the movie, the setting is a place called Element City, in which actual elements live: water, air, earth, and fire. A fire husband and his pregnant wife (Bernie and Cinder) escape their obviously third-world country and come to Element City, only to find that they’re not welcome anywhere because they’re perceived as so destructive. They find a slum building and, through hard work and devotion to their core fire values, build a prosperous store and are the heart of a thriving fire community.

They have a daughter, Ember, who has explosive temper issues. When her temper causes a flood in the store’s basement, that brings in Wade, a water element and city inspector. He writes the building up for infractions but, when Wade, who never got to have closure with his father, learns that closing the store will break Bernie’s heart, he works with Ember to erase the citations and find the source of the water leak. Of course, they fall in love, but they must deal with their differences (you know, fire and water). And that’s the movie.

Image: The colors of elemental (Pixlr image).

What’s interesting is the movie’s visuals, its approach to minorities, and its relentless leftism, along with occasional moments of common sense.

First and most obviously, the movie is absolutely gorgeous. I’ve seldom seen a visually more beautiful movie. It’s not just the sophisticated animation that captures the movement of fire and water. It’s also because the color scheme is so rich. This video gives you a little sense of that:

My brain was just pinging “happy, happy, happy” over that color scheme. Then I realized that it’s very close to the color scheme of the whole “pride” movement. That’s not surprising, of course, because both take their colors from the rainbow, and the rainbow is probably hardwired into the human psyche. It’s not just that it contains within it the color spectrum; it’s that it is the promise of life on Earth.

I’m not just talking about the Biblical promise God made not to destroy humankind. I’m talking about the fact that the rainbow is the melding of sun and water, the two essential requirements for life on Earth. One needs both to have the rainbow. So yes, we’re hardwired to resonate to its beauty.

Drown things in rainbow colors, and people will be happy. That’s one of the secrets of the Pride movement—it attracts people, especially children, at a visceral level, one beyond reason and even self-preservation.

Second, the movie makers aren’t huge fans of the bureaucracy, at least when it interferes with the dreams of poor immigrants.

Third, the movie is very pro-father. I applaud that because I think one of the most toxic things about leftism is the war on fathers.

Fourth, the movie actually encourages assimilation. It turns out that Ember, even though she always thought she wanted to take over her father’s store, doesn’t really want to. Instead, she wants to be part of the larger society, meeting different people and doing different things. Wade encourages her to break free from her culture’s restraints.

So far, all of that’s good: pretty colors, anti-bureaucracy, pro-father, pro-immigration. What’s not to like? Well, the fifth factor is a problem. That’s because the assimilation asks immigrants to embrace a very leftist set of values.

Once upon a time, American assimilation meant being an American (no hyphens), being a patriot, supporting the Constitution, and buying into traditional Judeo-Christian values. Now, though, Amber is expected to assimilate to upper-middle-class leftist values. These include following your bliss and being in touch with your emotions, which veers straight into narcissism; being welcoming to immigrants, which is not inherently bad unless a movie is released when the Democrat party is flooding the country with millions of illegal aliens; and embracing LGBTQ+ism, although not as much as the LGBTQ crowd would like.

In terms of this assimilation agenda, what’s very clear is that Amber represents a fusion of East Asian Indian and Muslim cultures while Wade, who is pure, clear, loving water, represents the white upper-middle-class. (Ironically, Wade is voiced by a black man.) Amber’s family is hardworking but limited in its viewpoints, as well as being racist (because of the systemic oppression from above), while Wade’s family has reached a point of true emotional enlightenment.

Overall, as I said, it was a weird movie but amazingly beautiful, with some decent values and quite clever wordplay. I knew I was being manipulated but—and this is the scary part—it was kind, gentle, colorful manipulation. If I hadn’t been looking for it—and most people are not—I never would have known that I was being pushed into a very specific leftist line of thinking.