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Pixar’s ‘Float’ on Disney+ Is a Moving, Must-Watch Metaphor for Autism
By Anna Menta
November 15, 2019
I realize there are a lot of options for new subscribers of Disney’s streaming platform, Disney+, but I humbly suggest you add the new Pixar short, Float, to the very top of your list. Float is one of three new original Pixar shorts that premiered on November 12—meaning it’s not attached to any feature-length Pixar films, like many of the other Pixar shorts are—and it absolutely wrecked me.
Float is not even six minutes long (not including the credits), yet somehow this short film managed to tell one of the most poignant, moving, and just spot-on stories of autism than I have ever seen. The reason for that, undoubtedly, is Pixar animator Bobby Rubio, who wrote, directed, and produced the film based on his own relationship with his son.
The story itself not explicitly about autism, and can no doubt apply to any parent or person who has a family member that’s been “deemed different.” In Float, a father realizes his baby son, well, floats. It’s not dangerous, necessarily, but it’s very noticeable, and other parents of children who don’t float find it weird and wrong. So the father tries to stop his son from floating. He keeps him inside as he grows up. When they do go outside, he has his son on a leash and weighs his backpack down with rocks. One day, his son gets away and floats around the playground. The child is happy, but the other parents on the playground are not. They are afraid. The father drags his screaming son away, and, in a moment of frustration, exclaims—in the short’s only moment of dialogue—”Why can’t you just be normal?!”
When the father realizes how much this exclamation hurts his son, he is ashamed. Instead of holding his son back to protect the parents of children who don’t float, he lets his son float freely. The film ends with a dedication from Rubio, which reads: “For Alex. Thank you for making me a better dad. Dedicated with love and understanding to all families with children deemed different.” (Even typing it, I’m tearing up.)
Again, though the film can be interpreted in many ways, I suspected from that dedication that Rubio’s son is on the autism spectrum. Rubio himself confirmed that to be the case, in the making-of video, which is also available to watch on Disney+.
“When my son was first diagnosed, I didn’t handle it well,” Rubio said in the short documentary. “My wife said, you’re a storyteller, maybe you should tell a story through a comic.”
Rubio, who is Filipino, did, but he initially wrote the characters as white. Rubio—who’s served as a storyboard artist on films like The Incredibles 2, Inside Out, and more—was shocked when a friend suggested he make the character Filipino instead. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if anyone wants to see a Filipino-American character.”
As it turns out, people did. The outpouring of love on Twitter has come from all over, but especially from Filipino-Americans who say the representation is invaluable.
“In the beginning, the father loves his son wholeheartedly without restriction,” Rubio said. “And then, when he looks at society, that seeps in and kind of taints it. The father has to decide: Does he agree with them? Or does he say, ‘I don’t care what you guys say.'”
Float is Rubio’s first project as a writer and director, but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more from him very soon. Pixar is nothing if not pure storytelling, and the studio has found another storytelling master in Rubio. Make Float your next Disney+ watch ASAP, and be sure to watch The Making of Float when you’re done. ... See more
