Unquirky: ‘Candace Against the Universe’ and the life of an actor’s heroes
I have always felt that Candace from “Phineas and Ferb” is misunderstood.
If you haven’t seen the show (and you really should), it is a Disney Channel cartoon about Phineas and his stepbrother Ferb who try to occupy each day of their summer vacation by building large elaborate structures such as roller coasters and spaceships. Candace, the almost-antagonist of the show and their older sister, attempts to snitch on Phineas and Ferb to their mom but fails to do so because in every episode, their invention gets destroyed before she gets home.
Throughout the show, we see Candace as the classic representation of a moody teenager: She’s obsessed with a boy, she’s mean to her younger siblings and she has a no-one-understands-me complex. But I always sympathized with Candace. I thought there was more to her.
So you can imagine the joy I felt when I found out about the new movie, “Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe,” in which Candace is the protagonist, and we finally get to see her perspective. Watching this movie, I realized that not only did I relate to Candace personally, but her space adventure has more meaning than I anticipated.
As an actor, I’ve always struggled with the knowledge that while I may have my own artistic ambitions, the money-first nature of the entertainment business will not always allow me to pursue them. As artists and as people, we have to reconcile our visions and dreams with the harsh realities of what actually sells. “Candace Against the Universe” provides insight into how we can do what we want — and be happy with where that takes us — without getting pulled away from our dreams by the promise of fame and fortune. (by the way I’m pretty much going to talk about everything that happened in this movie, so if you haven’t seen it and don’t want spoilers, watch and come back.)
The movie begins with Candace’s perfect-day song sequence (á la “Legally Blonde”) ruined by Phineas and Ferb’s newest invention, which she fails to bust them for. Candace breaks down and sings a song about how everyone has always focused on how special her brothers are and no one pays attention to her throughout her life. Which honestly, girl, same. We all feel like that sometimes, pushed aside and antagonized for being annoyed by it. Next, Candace gets abducted by aliens (because it’s a children’s movie), and they tell her that she is their “chosen one” because her body contains the rare element remarkalonium. We see Candace finally get to step into the spotlight and be special.
Candace reminded me of a man I consider a mentor. For the purposes of this article, let’s call him Ted. Ted grew up in Chicago’s suburbs in a family of lawyers (pretty much everyone in his family, three generations back, has been a lawyer). His older sister was in law school when he entered high school and their parents praised her for her academic success. On the other hand, Ted never earned higher than a “C” all of high school and graduated by the skin of his teeth. He wasn’t going to be a lawyer.
The day after he graduated, he moved to New York to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He became really close friends with an actor who encouraged him to audition for a teen romance TV show through his job at a restaurant. Not expecting much, Ted auditioned for the show. He got the part. And from that show, he booked another. And another. And another. Pretty soon, he was booking more jobs than he could keep up with. Ted thought that he finally belonged. He found his remarkalonium, the element that made him special.
Anyway, back to Candace. After spending a couple of hours as the chosen one, Candace began to question her status. The aliens told her that the remarkalonium that she possessed was the ability to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide. They needed to power their special plant, so they trapped Candace and handcuffed her to a treadmill so she would produce more carbon dioxide. Candace realized she was trapped and had to escape this planet and go back home. And with the help of Phineas and Ferb, she found out that she had been special all along and didn’t need a group of extraterrestrial creatures to tell her that. Awww. Roll credits.
Like Candace, Ted began to feel trapped. He was doing the same rom-coms, playing essentially the same character for years. He wasn’t going anywhere. And like Candace, he had to escape. So he took a leap of faith and started his own theater company. It was scary and stressful at first, but Ted finally got to do what he had been longing for so long. He was writing, producing, directing and acting in plays that mattered to him. Plays that said something about the world that he wanted to share with his audience. Ted realized that he didn’t need fame. He didn’t need to be “the chosen one” to be special. He was special all on his own. Awww. Roll credits.
“Candace Against the Universe” isn’t a story about a girl who has to go through a space adventure to realize that she’s special. Well, it is. But to me, it’s about so much more than that. It’s about the life of an artist and the instability of feeling unspecial and craving that little place in the universe where you’re the most special. It’s about realizing that you don’t need others to validate you. It’s about choosing what you want to do, and what really matters over pursuing popularity and fame.
Anna Velychko is a freshman writing about art and pop culture. Her column, “Unquirky,” runs every other Wednesday.