Chronic Murmuring

Toy Story 2

This week, in response to Miles' chicken pox outbreak, I decided to rent Toy Story 2 for him. He'd never really seen any full feature film - not even a Disney film. This is mainly because, we don't own any, and then secondly, he's so young and we're trying to move away from the tendency we sometimes have of using the television to babysit Miles. But, because he was sick, I wanted to get a movie for him and I to watch together.

If you haven't seen Toy Story 2, you should. You should see it whether you have any children in your life or not, because it's a great movie. The graphics are weird. The mannerisms of the dolls, the texture of their skin and clothes, look more real than anything I've ever seen in a cartoon. Pixar has shown themselves to be an important force in children's entertainment by consistently creating movies which are visually astonishing and entertaining. It's no wonder that Disney has begun laying off, en masse, its traditional two-dimensional cartoon artists. For one, the computer-generated cartoons cost less to make, but are as profitable as the traditional hand-drawn cartoons.

So, this week alone, I've watched the movie at least three times. Okay, five times, but who's counting? But it was only yesterday afternoon, after watching it again, that I was finally able to articulate how disturbing the movie is. It is superficially a movie about love, friendship and courage, but at a deeper level, it is quite dark and disturbing. (Spoiler alert!)

The backdrop of the movie is a certain uneasiness caused by the realization that children eventually outgrow their toys. As they grow up, they either grow tired of their older toys due to shifts in their tastes towards more mature toys appropriate to their age, they lose interest in a toy because it breaks, or they outgrow toys altogether. Early in the movie, Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) is agitated because he cannot find his cowboy hat. This is important to him because his owner, Andy - a seven-year-old boy - is leaving for Cowboy Camp that evening, and Woody is worried that Andy won't take him without his cowboy hat. To help him, Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen) has all the toys in Andy's room looking for the hat. Eventually, the hat is found and everyone is relieved, especially Woody.

In this early scene, the audience can sense the capricious nature of children's tastes. When one of Woody's seams is torn during exciting play with Andy and the other toys, Andy decides to leave Woody at home while he goes to Cowboy Camp. Woody is placed on the "top shelf" - apparently where broken toys go - and watches sadly through the window as Andy leaves for camp. While up there, he finds his old friend, Squeeky - a squeeky Penguin doll who had disappeared months earlier when his "squeaker" (the device in the doll's throat that made a squeaking noise whenever the doll was squeezed) had broken. Andy's mom had told Andy that she was taking Squeeky to get him fixed, but in fact, she had lied. She had only told him that, we learn, to calm him down. She had no intention of fixing a broken squeaker - finding a replacement toy is much cheaper, undoubtedly, than to purchase a squeaker and manage the difficult task of replacing it. Squeeky tells Woody that life, for a toy, is ultimately meaningless because at any given moment, toys are always only one broken seam or one broken squeaker away from ending up in dreaded "Yard Sale." And of course, at that moment, Woody looks out the window and sees that Andy's mom is having a yard sale. Within moments, she appears in his room with an empty box, and begins filling it with broken toys and games that Andy has outgrown. Squeaky, sadly, is one of the ones that she grabs. And thus begins the exciting story of Woody setting out to rescue his friend, and in the process, getting taken by a thieving toy store salesman who realizes that Woody is actually a valuable old "Howdy Doody"-type of 1950s era doll.

Several times in the movie, the fears of toys are highlighted, and they are, I have to admit, legitimate fears and quite horrifying. Their worst fear is being separated from their owner. Why? Because life is only worth living when you're being loved by a kid. This is the part of the movie(s) that is beautiful, nostalgic and romantic. Yet it's very difficult to make this theme stick, since as the movie shows us repeatedly, toys are cursed with never growing up, nor having much control over their lives, which is problematic given the certainty that their owners will, in fact, abandon them. So, for instance, we see Woody have a nightmare in which Andy returns home from Cowboy Camp early, pull Woody down from the top shelf to play with him, then stop once he realizes that Woody is "broken." He tosses Woody into a giant trash can with thousands of other broken toy parts. Later, in the movie, we are introduced to a girl cowboy toy named Jessie - a part of Woody's circa 1950s "Roundup Crew." She, along with a horse named Bullseye and an unopened toy named Stinky Pete, the old prospector, have been in storage for decades, and it has been a traumatic experience. This is all about to change, though, since Woody's been discovered. Now the toystore manager can finally sell his entire Woody's Roundup collection of merchandise to a Japanes toy museum, where Jessie, Woody, Pete and Bullseye will live for eternity being adored - but never touched - by millions of children. They will never have to endure the harsh years of loneliness and darkness caused by being abandoned by children or being placed in storage. Jessie then recounts a deeply sad story about her owner, Emily, whom she loved immensely. Emily had, like every young child, played with her dolls daily. But slowly, she started to grow up, and as that happened, Jessie was forgotten. She fell under the bed at one point, where she stayed for what seemed like years. Emily, on the other hand, became interested in boys, progressed into high school, and eventually grew up altogether. Looking for something under the bed, Emily finds her old childhood friend, and for a moment, it's pure bliss for Jessie as she rides with her owner in the car, tucked close to Emily's body. But the story only ends painfully, for Emily actually throws Jessie away by placing her in an anonymous donation box and drives away.

The movie ends, in my opinion, somewhat glibly. I mean, it has to, right? It's a kid's movie. Woody decides that even though he knows his days are numbered, he wants to be there to watch Andy grow up regardless. He wouldn't miss seeing him through those last days of childhood for the world. And besides, he'll have the company of other toys, like his best friend Buzz, to keep him company when that day comes.

Yet, this is completely unsatisfying for me as a viewer. The bottom line is, Andy will grow up, he will abandon Woody, and there is no guarantee at all that Woody will be passed onto some other child along with all the other toys, including Buzz. More than likely, he will end up in the yard sale, or broken, or thrown away, and he'll be separated forever from Buzz and his friends. Toys are different from people in the movie because unlike people, they do not grow up, they are not autonomous, and they do not die. They can be broken, but they do not die. So they must live eternity here on earth, and must spend most of that time - unless they are extremely lucky, which is not presented as likely situation given the fickle tastes of children - alone. The story tries at various points to say that meaningfulness of life can be created if the quality of time spent with one's owner is maximized. In other words, if one has a child who loves him, and has some friends, then that will be enough to make life worth living. But apparently, from watching Jessie's experience, this is factually not true. Jessie had a great life with her owner, Emily. Emily genuinely loved Jessie - as much as Andy loves Woody, if not moreso. Yet the end still came, and she ended up in the prison of pitch black storage, for decades. Decades, she spent, trapped in a box, unable to see anything, unable to move, unable to communicate with another toy. The quality of her relationship Emily was, we come to see, unable to comfort her in any way during those silent, dark, eternal nights.

This is where the story is ultimately disturbing, and I'll add just one more thing before summarizing my thoughts. You can say that the movie is merely meant to be about toys, and is not intended to be anything else, but I personally think that that is not true. I believe we are meant to see ourselves in the toys, at least partially. The themes of both movies are things like friendship, love, loyalty - themes which hit us all, as people, not as impartial observers of a strange little world. There's a sense in which we are to see our own lives in the lives of these dolls. So my question is, what exactly is Toy Story 2 saying?

I don't want to push this too far, but suffice it to say, it's a movie about hopelessness. From the perspective of the toys themselves, life is utterly impersonal and cruel. Their owners will forget them! They will abandon them, betray them, throw them away! And it's clear from the movie - it's explicitly stated numerous times - that the meaning of life is to be loved by these children, and then secondly, to have community with other toys. And yet, while this is the only thing to satisfy a toy in anyway, they must live with the knowledge that their owners do not really care about them. The love is apparently one-sided. They can only have any purpose in the context of a child loving them and being incorporated into that child's imaginary world, but that is with certainty briefly experienced. Most of their lives will be spent alone, in insecurity, isolation, and fear.

I think that on a subtle level, the movie cannot help but reflect the secular humantist worldview of Disney. There is no God; there is no heaven or hell; there is only the now. And life is meaningful insofar as you can make it meaninful, and consistent with their sentimentalism, that comes through friendship and being loved. Yet, it's utterly irrational, and the movie does not, in my opinion, really solve the problem that they've introduced in the first place. Not to be glib, but the portrait of life contained in Toy Story 2 is deeply disturbing, despite being an overall great movie. It's horrifying, actually. All one can hope from life is to end up at the bottom of a trash can or locked in a cardboard box for eternity. How, knowing that that day is coming, can any of the toys sit around, sing songs, dance, and go about their normal lives? How can that not paralyze them with fear and immobility?

And then I realized - isn't this essentially the Disney version of death? Death waits for us all. Yet there is nothing in Disney to conquer death. Here, the great enemy is merely the growing up of children. But it's ultimately a story about death, its immutability, and the hopelessness of life in light of it. The truth is, I think a person can endure the difficulties described in this movie like insecurity, imprisonment, loneliness, etc. only if he or she knows that one day, he will be reunited with the child and the friends he loves. I could never go on living, the more I meditate on this movie, if all that life had to offer me was the end shown in this movie. I would not be able to dance or sing at all. None of the moral platitudes in the movie about friendship, courage and loyalty would make any sense to me in light of that ultimate end. I would try and find some way to distenegrate myself so as to ensure death and a loss of consciousness, rather than endure the unknown and the chance that I'll end up somewhere alone, with my mind intact.

The reason I wrote all this was because I began the week mainly noting all the points of contact the movie had with Christianity, at least topically. The love of a child, the community of friends, the value of friendship, etc. These all reminded me, generally speaking, of communion with Christ and the Church. But then the more I watched it, the more problematic that seemed. Has God abandoned us? Is this the framework out of which the movie is operating us? The movie recognizes that we only have meaning in life in the context of the stories given to us by the owner, and experienced communally with others, yet the owner is ultimately fickle, and possibly even cruel - not cruel in any outright sense, but cruel because the owners forget us and don't take us seriously. We are merely toys to them. They use us up, break us, then forget us. We are not valuable, ultimately, because of who we are, and therefore are forgotten.

This is the part where I must interject my own religious views - the only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that this is not how I am viewed by God or Jesus Christ. Yes, it is true, life is only worth living if you are being loved by God and among friends. But it is not true that God abandons us. Death is certain, but the wonderful news of the gospel is that God loved us so much that he killed death, and therefore took away its "sting." I will be reconciled with my owner one day, and I'll live eternity not in darkness, insecure and alone, but rather with hordes of people and friends before my living owner. It'll be great.

Posted by scott at January 23, 2004 07:40 AM | TrackBack