Shark Tale also draws cultural capital through another device absent in The Incredibles: Product placement and recognition. This is a device that has grown in use since the 1970s. Corporate owners of a film company regularly place their products into the settings of films, making the film itself an advertisement for their diversified product lines. Audiences have grown used to this, sometimes believing that the product placements are there to heighten verisimilitude. In the case of Shark Tale, the products are disguised with parodic names but are clearly identifiable by audiences familiar with the malls and the food courts contained therein. Since these products are blatantly visible icons of popular culture, their capital is strong among audiences.

The Shrek films gains cultural capital from both hip pop-culture references as well as time-tested, classic fairy tales. Courtesy of DreamWorks.

DreamWorks, as it functions under Spielberg and Katzenberg, has increasingly used the most modern cultural references to inform their films, especially their CGI creations. Much of the humor in Shrek 2, for example, is based on the recognition of celebrity, materialism and lifestyle endemic to Southern California culture (as typified by Hollywood). Spielberg frequently used hip, self-reflexive humor in many of his animated television series. Katzenberg, who once helped mastermind some of the most complex animated features ever produced at Disney, appears to have become mesmerized by this narrative device (if can even be called that). Shrek 2 survives wearing its onerous mantle of the “New and Now” better than Shark Tale does, probably because vestiges of the film’s origin in the fairy tales of antiquity remain.

This analysis brings us to an inevitable process of comparison: Which film is superior in spending its cultural capital to gain an audience? One way to look at this question is to examine the box office gross, but this is a crude rule of thumb. Based on the returns (at the time of this writing) one could say that The Incredibles won the battle by $240 million to $160 million. Still, this turns out to be a relative comparison since both movies were extremely profitable. Another way of evaluating the films might be to examine numerous critical reviews; on the available evidence The Incredibles trumps its DreamWorks counterpart yet again. However, audiences and not professional critics are the heartiest consumers of cultural capital and reviews are naturally subjective in any case. In evaluating which form of cultural capital used by these two movies is most successful (or least debased) it may be more prudent to examine whether or not this capital generates the permanence that marks a film as timeless.

As I have discussed, The Incredibles possesses the resonance of countless hero myths, a very powerful form of cultural capital. If one doubts this, simply recall the popularity of recent movies based on superhero comicbooks and graphic novels. The Incredibles would have been a significant movie had it been released anywhere from 1940 to the present; audiences would have been wowed by this retelling of stories centuries old, just as they fell in love with Superman, Batman and eventually the Fantastic Four (also soon to be a motion picture). The Incredibles covers universal themes of disgrace, redemption, hubris and finally asserts itself as a modern mythology. The film’s theme of the family triumphant also has strong capital in a time when political discourse seems to be framed by “values.”

Shark Tale, on the other hand, almost glories in its impermanence. Had this movie been released in 1940, virtually no one could have comprehended much of the content. Because the film lives and dies by its immediate references and in-jokes, it cannot achieve the sort of stature that The Incredibles will ultimately attain among animation fans. This was a deliberate choice on the part of the studio, and even though that decision succeeded on its own terms it is still a deal with the devilfish. In 20 years or less Shark Tale will be laughably outdated, at best a charming relic of what audiences thought was cool back in the ancient days of Wi-Fi. Although the film turned a tidy profit, it will leave nothing behind; it is as if a wealthy tycoon had died, passing nothing on to charity, posterity or the culture in which he lived. The coin of the realm turns out to be merely gilded.

In the final analysis, both The Incredibles and Shark Tale are well-made movies that feature divergent methods of “spending” cultural capital. The true profit lies in creating unforgettable cinematic legends for audiences. On the basis of such a judgment The Incredibles comes much closer to reaching that admirable goal than does Shark Tale. Audiences and tastes will continue to change with every passing blockbuster movie, box-office smash and Academy Award presentation. Today’s coin will not have the same face as tomorrow’s, but a great story remains timeless.

Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.