Post-Loll: When Somebody Loved Me

Kids will inevitably grow up and go to DANCE PARTY which can ONLY be a biting comment on today’s druq-fuelled society </M Whitehouse frothing at mouth>

Disruptive? Appalling? Bizarre and wrong-headed morals? I have no words.

I’m sorry, Pete, but your reading of the films—from what I can glean, because you’re not laying it out particularly clearly*—seems to me a spectacular case of Missing The Point.

From the start, the TOY STORY movies were about transience—the new displacing the old. It’s a tight thematic weave, and it shows up everywhere, from the first scene of 1—where the toys are dreading Andy’s birthday party and the arrival of new toys—to the last line of 2 (“It was fun while it lasted”). Buzz displaces Woody as favorite; the family moves house; the puppy displaces the baby in the interim between movies; “Woody’s Roundup” gives way to science fiction in the wake of Sputnik; et bleedin’ cetera.

The movies work on a lot of levels, but they’re very fundamentally parables about the inevitability of change, and the importance of accepting same and defining for yourself a new place in the new landscape. That accounts, I think, for their resonance with children across a wide range of ages—who recognize themselves at various spots along a continuum of change and growth—as well as with parents, who are navigating their own shifting relationships with their kids.

My oldest is in early adolescence, and mingled with the pride of seeing her grow into a sharp, funny, creative young woman there’s a pang of loss for the direct, uncomplicated love of childhood. But things change. It’s the most fundamental truth, but also the hardest to accept. The TOY STORY movies don’t flinch from that, and that’s why, to my thinking, they’re miles better than any of the other Pixar movies, with their facile, easy-to-swallow “family is great” / “believe in yourself” messages.**

* Be it noted I haven’t yet finished listening to the ep of Lollards in question—you may lay it out in more detail there; there may be a follow-up post once I’ve digested your point.

** except possibly THE INCREDIBLES, which I find both hugely entertaining and politically problematic; while it’s the match of TOY STORY for emotional complexity, it’s also kind of repugnant.

Perhaps my problem with the films (yet again, absolutely underlining that I think both films are as terrific as everyone else does) is routed in where your sympathy lies. Perhaps I overly identify with Woody, being a wooden toy myself, but I get an ontological problem with the set-up of the films. OK OK, I know they are fiction, and kid-lit at that, but the devoted subjugation of the toys to their masters is probably at the heart of my distrust. These are funny, sparky intelligent toys – for their goal in life to be “to be played with” seems such a shame. It gives me a subtext (and I know I am our on a huge limb here) that in the end the greatest satisfaction in life comes from doing what you are supposed to do, to surrendering your free will to THE MASTER.

But I am probably reaching a bit there. My actual dislike of Jessie’s song is its over-sentimentality, it beats to death a theme which I already got from its well written script.

You’re right about the issues of change and lack of permanence in the films, and they are pretty well tackled themes. However the creative play aspect does bug me, because it is in the end what Sid the neighbour is demonised for. Perhaps there is a fine line between breaking / destroying something and creative play – but Sid just seems cleverer, more interesting despite his own merciless bullying from his sister. Perhaps he is “taking it out” on the toys, but then he doesn’t know they are alive!

Apologies for lack of clarity, I have always felt uneasy about these two films (despite loving them) and it is an disquiet I have as yet not found an adequate way to express. It may just be that I hate Randy Newman!

Also: you seem to be assuming that the toys, as the main protagonists, are stand-ins for the audience. And I think the movies are a lot sneakier than that.

Instead of toys = kids, and kids = masters—i.e. parents—I think it’s exactly the opposite: kids = kids, and toys = parents—in the sense that their function is to love the kids unconditionally, to suffer all indignities with patience, to be there when the kids need them and to give way graciously when that’s no longer the case.

I think, in watching the films, kids don’t want to be Woody—they just wish they had one just like him (brilliant for merchandising purposes, obv—the characters come pre-commodified!). I would argue, therefore, that the films are an exercise in empathy, rather than a vicarious acting-out.

(MONSTERS INC. does much the same thing—inviting the audience to identify with characters who are fundamentally unlike themselves; familiar figures, but on the other side of the power divide. Or imagine a school story, written for kids but told from the POV of a teacher.)

That’s why Woody’s “revenge” near the end of 1 was so off-note and terrifying; Woody becomes, suddenly, the threatening drunken Dad, and there is no place of safety (“We’re always watching you, Sid…”)