A 7-min animated short, Float was released on November 12, 2019. It has been available on Disney+ since its launch on the very same day and is listed as a Pixar Sparkshort. But it was released to Pixar's Youtube on February 26, 2021, making it available to the general public. It was directed and written by Bobby Rubio with the music composed by Barney Jones. The description reads, "A father discovers that his son is different from other kids in the most unusual way. To keep them both safe from judgment, Dad covers him and keeps him out of sight." Rubio based it heavily off of the interactions between him and his own autistic son and the short is said to be a metaphor for this.
Float introduces us to our father/son pairing, a loving duo innocently playing in their yard. All of a sudden, the son starts floating. The higher he goes, the happier he gets, but the more worried his father is. A few people see this, and immediately run and back away. The father realizes his son isn't normal and quickly grows scared of how other people would react.
Like any loving parent would, he tries to protect his son from possible criticisms. But as time goes on, it becomes clearer that his son's abnormality isn't just a way he expresses himself, it's a critical part of him. With it impossible to hide, the father winds up hiding his son away from the world, driving himself insane with other's opinions.
Skip forward a few years and they've both grown quite a bit. You can now see the stress of the situation embedded into the father's gritty appearance. The two go out, with the son on a leash and rocks in his backpack. The father's anxiety levels spike up at the smallest things. But for a moment, he looks off at the other kids in the playground longingly. While he was wishing he could take his kid inside, the son runs off.
What follows is a series of chaotic events when the father hunts down his floating kid. While he drags him out, the kid is screaming. All he wants is to play and have fun freely. He doesn't see the situation the way dad does and instead feels restricted. The father snaps and yells at him, "Why can't you just be normal?"
This is where I started crying. The young boy relents and puts on his hood. He gives up any happiness to be "normal." The father realizes what he'd done, and almost immediately tries to push the boy to embrace himself. His smile returns and all is well.
Like I said at the start, this is a metaphor for autism. Autistic kids are too often held to the standards of neurotypical kids when that simply isn't right. You don't take a paralytic and then call them weak because they can't play sports like an able-bodied person. The paralytic is strong in their own way, a way that we might miss if we're too busy making them feel bad for something they cannot control. The same applies to kids with autism. They could wield some of the most intelligent, most creative, most critical thinking minds in the world--but because they process things differently, adults will spend years trying to rewire them.
This is my second post talking about autism, but I myself am not actually autistic and I urge you to find the channels and pages of autistic people such as Paige Layle and Chloe Hayden/Princess Aspien for more personal accounts and go to organizations such as the National Autism Association for more information.
Inspiration: Float
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