“I’m pretty sure you love me, too” Race, Romance, and Attachment in Elemental

The latest Disney/Pixar creation Elemental is a delight. It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s got great music and fantastic imagination. I’ve only watched it 800 times (and counting) with my toddler, who insists we watch the “Fire Movie” again and again and again. 

Wade and Ember riding the Water Train

The story was inspired by the director Peter Sohn’s life, who was born in New York to parents who had immigrated from Korea. It’s also the first Disney/Pixar film to focus on romance…actually, ever, as far as I can tell. Toy Story broke the mold in 1995 by finding ways to tell stories that were emotionally resonant without centering on the concept of romance. Elemental is about family, identity, cultural roots, learning from differences, and more, but it’s also about love. 

Namely, it’s about Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis), whose parents immigrated to Element City from Fireland to seek new opportunities and a better life. Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) is her love interest, a “Water guy” with rich parents and a long, comfortable history in Element City. Ember is coded as Asian, though Fireland is an invented place. Wade is coded as white. Element City’s infrastructure appears to be made by and for Water people, with concessions made later for other elements. For example, the water train that runs through the city splashes abundantly wherever it goes. Ember needs an umbrella on her at all times so she isn’t splashed (and killed) by the train’s runoff. 

Ember and her family eventually get comfortable in Firetown with their store, The Fireplace, attended by Fire people who want a taste of home (Lava Java, Kol Nuts, and the like). But their world is peppered with microaggressions from the other elements that they encounter from the first day they arrive. “Watch it, Sparky!” an Air person shouts after bumping into Ember’s father, Bernie. Bernie and his wife, Cinder, are named as such simply because the customs officer letting them into Element City couldn’t pronounce their real names. When Ember sits down to dinner with Wade’s family, his uncle Harold tells Ember, “I just have to say that you speak so well and clear!” In the awkward silence afterward, Ember laughs and says, “It’s amazing what speaking the same language your whole life can do!” 

Ember and her family deal with the stresses of racism in daily life in a way that Wade’s family never has to. Ember and Wade are both at an age where they are thinking about what they want to do with their lives. Wade struggles with motivation, especially after his father's death, but Ember has the pressure of her entire family system on her shoulders. Her parents left Fireland despite the disapproval of their family, all so she could have a better life. She does not feel free enough to follow her dreams, let alone date a “Water guy.” 

As I watch this movie with my almost three-year-old son for the 801st time, I am thinking about it as a model of romantic love for him. I grew up watching leading men who were violent, distant, cool, vaguely handsome without much else going on for them, and/or who rarely showed their emotions. Wade is transparent, honest, open, and cries as a personality trait. His family plays something called the Crying Game where the challenge is not to cry.

I like Wade a lot as a model for masculine romance. He is genuine and empathetic and is deeply moved by beauty. He also has a cardinal trait of secure attachment: when Ember tries to run from him, he never assumes it’s because he’s not good enough or because she doesn’t like him. He never reverts back to his insecurities as the reason he’s getting hurt. 

Wade’s mom, Brook Ripple, played by Catherine O’Hara, at the Crying Game

Here’s a quick primer on attachment if you are new to the theory. In the 1960s and 1960s, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth discovered that children develop attachment styles very early on in order to aid in their survival. We need attachments as little children because we’re unable to survive on our own. Our caregivers are literally our survival figures, so the way we attach to them really matters. 

Secure attachment is generally created in childhood when one’s caregivers are consistent enough. Studies show that attuned presence 30% of the time is enough for someone to develop secure attachment. This is an ideal attachment style to go through life with. It generally means you like being close with others and closeness doesn’t freak you out. It’s not too hard to manage emotions, and, under stress, you seek out connection with safe people. See, for example, Wade Ripple. 

Many of us have some form of insecure attachment, however. Anxious insecure attachment shows up as an intense need to feel close, but high anxiety comes with that closeness. Under stress, fears of rejection or abandonment intensify, and you may need a lot of reassurance from loved ones to feel okay. 

Avoidant insecure attachment looks like someone who is more comfortable alone, who needs space to manage emotions, and who tends to withdraw under stress. Closeness definitely freaks you out, if you have avoidant attachment. See, for example, Ember Lumen. 

Disorganized attachment is a third insecure attachment style that generally involves both high anxiety around relationships and an avoidance of relationships (that may be conscious and/or unconscious). It basically means there was no strategy in childhood that worked to get the child’s needs met. Adult relationships can be extra challenging for those with disorganized attachment (though certainly not impossible). 

Attachment styles are basically strategies for managing relational stress. We don’t always display these styles, our styles can change, and we can have different styles with different people. When this theory was first coming out, it felt a lot like another reason to blame the mother. Yes, if the main attachment figure, which is often the mother, is abusive or neglectful, that’s likely to create an insecure attachment style. But there are so many factors in a given life beyond moms, including intergenerational trauma and cultural and social factors, that can create the conditions for developing these attachment styles. If I know anything about moms, it’s that they are usually trying their best. 

Ember likes Wade, but she struggles with how disruptive he is to her family system. When he gets too close, when he threatens the stability of her tight, stressed family, she runs away from him and back to them. 

Her parents, Bernie and Cinder, have their issues, but they are generally loving and present. They have everything that would be needed for secure attachment. Ember’s avoidant attachment was likely triggered not because of abuse or neglect, but because of the systemic racism of Element City and the many scenarios where her loving parents were unable to make a situation better or safer for her. When Ember was still in utero, Bernie and pregnant Cinder were wandering the streets trying to find a place to rent, and doors were slammed in their faces over and over again. 

Bernie (Ronnie Del Carmen) hugs Ember (Leah Lewis)

Then there’s Wade. His family is loving, but they have also experienced very little stress on their family system. Water people were the first to arrive in Element City, and their primacy is never questioned. He falls in love with Ember with a gentle naïveté. He keeps insisting that it could work, that fire and water could mix, that everything is going to be okay. There is a moment when he says to Ember—in front of a full crowd of Fire people, nonetheless: “I love you, Ember Lumen. And I’m pretty sure you love me, too.” Only someone with secure attachment—like really secure attachment—could say such a thing. 

He’s right. Ember does love Wade. But she says she doesn’t. She humiliates him in front of everyone, telling him she doesn’t love him and that he should go away. And here is another moment that I love for my little son watching this model of romance: Wade listens to her. He does go away. He’s appropriately sad, but he doesn’t try to take it out on her or seek revenge (and I’m aware how low the bar is, here, for the dating world in general). He stays present with his own emotions and reaches back out to help her when she appears to be in danger. He asks nothing of her, but never tries to pretend he doesn’t feel something that he does. 

Earned secure attachment is secure attachment that’s gained later in life. In learning that Wade is safe, that he doesn’t have to threaten her family system, and that, importantly, her parents can learn to accept him, Ember is able to soften and allow him to get close to her. The best way for someone with insecure attachment to become secure is to be with someone who is steady, consistent, kind, and honest. The trick is getting past the avoidant or anxious attachment that tries to push that very person away. 

Every now and again, Ember expresses what I’ve been thinking of as the “ick.” This is a feeling that comes up when someone trying to date us is too kind, too earnest, too straightforward in their love of us. When we learned in childhood that love comes with anxiety, abandonment, rejection, inconsistency, and so on, we see these secure behaviors as alien, even threatening. They give us the “ick.” Ember can’t help but show a little disgust when Wade and his family cry at the drop of a hat. Many of us have to negotiate between the gut feeling that tells us someone is wrong for us and the gut feeling that tells us that someone is right for us and that just feels really weird because of what we’ve been through. 

Elements do mix after all.

Now let’s be clear that Elemental is a fantasy. It’s a beautiful exploration of how the intimacy of love is affected by the actual world around us. White people in the real world certainly have more privileges and a longer history of racial safety than others do, but that doesn’t mean white people can’t have major stressors in their racial, cultural, and family systems. Racialized people obviously experience more racism, which is a stressor in and of itself, but resilience can also be passed down intergenerationally. Social and community support can make a huge difference in a child’s experience of safety and consistency no matter what’s going on around them. 

The story in Element City is that the Water people arrived first, then the Earth people, then the Air people. Fire people didn’t even make it to the mural at the Element City gates. Water people—at least as the mural shows—have never been challenged, never had to fight for anyone for space, did not colonize the land from anyone else. This is simple, clear privilege, and concepts like place, home, primacy, ownership, colonialism, and so on are much more complex in the real world. But it’s worth considering how our love relationships might be affected by what kind of family system we live within and how it’s been affected (or not) by the social and racial pressures of our day-to-day lives. For now, I love Elemental as the obsessive toddler choice of the moment. Let’s sit down and watch the “Fire Movie” again.