Float: a Disney+ Pixar short about being different
Float is a short, animated movie with a runtime of a little over five minutes (so it’s a very short movie!). Initially I was planning to write a short blog about it, but as you can see, I failed to so do. This is because, despite the short duration, there is a lot to say about the imaging of the movie.
The short is about a father who discovers that his son is different than other kids. At first the father watches in awe how his son floats through the air, but he quickly comes to realize that other people are startled by it and gossip about it. The father responds to this by prohibiting his child to float when they are outside. Only when other people are not around to witness the floating, it is allowed. Do you get the reference to autism?
Sparkshorts at Disney+
Disney+ is a relatively new streaming platform where you can watch movies and tv series from companies such as Disney, Pixar and Marvel. To watch Float, you will need a Disney+ subscription.
When Disney+ went live at November 12th 2019, the Sparkshort Float also premiered. Sparkshorts are movies that aren’t being shown in movie theaters but are only available at Disney+. They generally have a smaller budget than other movies and the creators have less time to finish the project. However, this does give the creators an opportunity to showcase their work to a wider audience. Sparkshorts can bring forth many great projects.
What’s so special about this short is that two out of six Sparkshorts chose autism as their subject. The second movie, Loop, will also be discussed in another blog.
The (true) story behind the movie
Bobby Rubio is the director of Float. The story is based on his relationship with his own autistic son and it’s about how he dealt with his son’s autism. That “big” story is crammed into a short 5-minute movie. In ‘Making Float’ more comes to light about the story.
But why did they choose to show floating instead of just showing autism?
Producer Krissy Cababa answers:
“Some people were asking: ‘why floating?’ I think Bobby wanted to tell this story so that it could be really the story of any child’s difference. It doesn’t necessarily have to be autism.”
Personally, I believe that if the creators had tried to show autism in those five minutes, it would have been an incredibly stereotypical image. By choosing to make the child float, the story doesn’t specifically have to be about autism, but rather puts the feelings of the main characters front and center.
Metaphor for autism/being different
Because of the backstory the movie is being linked to autism, but obviously it could be about any disability or any parent with a child that is different.
Producer Krissy Cababa:
“I think Float is the story about a parent learning to love their child for what the child is, and not for what they want the child to be.”
The floating that’s shown in the movie is actually a metaphor that serves multiple purposes. This can make it difficult to understand what’s going on. Hopefully, this blog will help bring clarity.
Representation of autism
The message of the movie is that the child is allowed to be who he is, and that it’s the father (and society as a whole) that needs to change.
The son doesn’t seem bothered at all by the stares he receives. He’s at his happiest when he’s allowed to float around. The father finds the floating to be amazing at first as well, until he notices how other people stare at the two of them. This causes the father to choose to want to shy away and thus when the two of them go outside, the son needs to adapt.
The latter is painful to watch and can bring back a lot of emotions if you have been in a similar position. It very clearly shows how much harm it can cause to deny an autistic child to be who they are. The movie has no dialogue, except for one line. When the father and child go to the playground, the son finds a way to escape from the grip of his backpack, which his father had filled with rocks to keep him grounded. The people at the playground are startled when they see the floating boy. The father pulls his son away from the playground, which the boy is resisting. The father gets frustrated and yells the only line of dialogue in the movie: “Why can’t you just be normal!”. He is immediately shocked by what he just said. The son slowly sinks to the ground and starts to cry. Because there is no other dialogue in the movie, this one line has a huge impact.
Bobby Rubio mentions in an interview that the goal of the movie was to make other parents in similar situations feel less alone. But where is the autistic person in this story? Isn’t it also the story of the son? The movie and the story around it revolve mostly around how hard it is for the father. This begs the question: how much permanent damage is being done to an autistic child when their environment has the same reaction as shown in the movie? In the movie it all ends well, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that no permanent harm has been done. Will the child now forever consider himself “weird” and will that prevent him from being himself? I hope that that’s something people will keep in mind after watching this movie.
Diversity
Apart from the autism representation, this movie is also about representation of people of color. Float is set in a suburb in America where for the most part people of color live, specifically people with a Filipino background.
This type of diversity is very scarce in movies about autism. The stereotypical autistic character is an adolescent, white male from a middle-class environment. So, Float breaks a couple stereotypes. This is also the case for the other Sparkshort, Loop, which I will write another blog about.
The father and son are the first Filipino main characters in a Pixar movie. However, this almost would not have been the case.
Bobby Rubio (showing drawings from the early drafts):
”The characters are white. And because of my unconscious bias, I’m like: well, who’s gonna want to see Filipino American?”
He says that in hindsight he’s glad he made the decision to make the characters Filipino.
“I hope that it inspires other people of color to create characters in lead positions.”