Toy Story 3 in 3D: More serious than you’d think
Watching Toy Story 3 in glorious 3D raises several ontological questions. For instance, do toys ever die, or do they live indefinitely, forever in fear of being discarded? Why can Slink, the dachshund with an expandable, slinky abdomen, talk but Bullseye, Woody’s horse, cannot? What’s with truckers tying stuffed animals to the grilles of their trucks?
By Ana Heller on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 - 485 words.
Toy Story 3
Watching Toy Story 3 in glorious 3D raises several ontological questions: Do toys ever die, or do they live indefinitely, forever in fear of being discarded? Why can Slink, the dachshund with an expandable, slinky abdomen, talk but Bullseye, Woody’s horse, cannot? What’s with truckers tying stuffed animals to the grilles of their trucks?
Some speculation reveals acceptable answers: Slink is an entity unto himself whereas Bullseye is an accessory—their functions as toys are different. There’s a good piece from the Times that explains this strangest of truckers’ predilections (the toys are called “mongo.”) However, the mystery of a toy’s lifespan goes unsolved.
One peculiar aspect of 3D as a medium is that it is at once futuristic and retro, like the Jetsons or Blade Runner or Jell-O. As with any cinematic experience, watching a movie in 3D places the viewer in suspended, weightless time—neither here nor there. Perhaps even more so with 3D, as the medium is so visually stimulating to make you forget yourself further. Similarly, the time setting of Toy Story 3 feels loose—neither especially present nor past (there are computers and instant messaging, for example). The story, could take place anywhere, anytime, and Andy could be any boy going off to college. This everyman sense of Toy Story 3 imbues the movie with a timeless quality, making it a good candidate for 3D, despite the fact that its technical use of the medium accomplishes less than Up or Avatar.
With references to Cool Hand Luke and Shakespeare, the film more than nods in the direction of adults. Toy Story 3 feels more like a film for adults that happens to be animated, maybe intended for people Andy’s age and up. Certainly little ones won’t benefit from scenes in which Buzz speaks subtitled Spanish if they can’t yet read. Other tongue-in-cheek references, for example to the filmmakers’ earlier works like Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro, are enjoyable for adults to pick out. Indeed, the sentimental story of growing up and growing old speaks more to adults than to children.
The scene at the dump, not to give too much away, is a nice reflection on this theme of renewal—the massive impact of all that rubbish speaks to the wastefulness of a culture that throws away slightly-used toys and the final arc of the story could even be read as a campaign for recycling.
If the young character Bonnie is meant to represent the continuation of childhood, passing the torch from one generation to the next, then I have but one comment on this portrayal of children: where do these children play, the ones whose ebullience and vigorous fun seems untainted by the self-awareness that appears to be modern children’s birthright? I’d like to think that all children play like this but only, like the toys, when nobody’s watching.
(+2 rating, 2 votes)
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Ana Heller
United States
Ana is a writer currently living in California.
http://thehypnotistcollector.comArticles by this author
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Toy Story 3 in 3D: More serious than you'd think
Watching Toy Story 3 in glorious 3D raises several ontological questions. For instance, do toys ever die, or do they live indefinitely, forever in fear of being discarded? Why can Slink, the dachshund with an expandable, slinky abdomen, talk but Bullseye, Woody’s horse, cannot? What’s with truckers tying stuffed animals to the grilles of their trucks?
I see several ideas in this film. First, the relationship Andy to the toys is formed out of the current ideology of childhood as a time of innocence, simplicity, and relative peace, of living in a fantasy world. Going off to college symbolizes entering the life/death wheel of karma, of leaving the innocence and fantasy behind. Of course, childhood these days is filled with violence in the media, in music and movies, and innocence is rare in a world where pornography is as common as comic books once were. Fantasies are constrained by bureaucratization of children's lives, from preschool through high school, where inputs are measured against outcomes on standardized tests, attempts are made to mold children into the future roles foreseen for them by parents or teachers, and psychological manipulation, bribery and meds replace older the older methods of violence or threats of violence by parents and teachers in the effort to control the children, and all hope of existential freedom is to be surrendered in the face of the inevitably greater power of the adults. Children's time is also more filled with planned activities, from playgroup to dance or karate classes, to supervised after-school programs and summer camp. This film is really a fantasy of a world that no longer exists and hasn't in a long time for many children in America, and is only retained in this form–fantasy.
A second concept in this film, even if there only because the film is set in the location of time and space it is–modern America–is the representation of the commodity-form rising up and confronting its "owner" as a thing-in-itself. Alienated from the consciousness that produced the toys, in the backstory to the film, the toys appear to have their own consciousnesses, which of course is the projections of the consciousness that formed their identities, that is, in Andy's mind. In a way, then, this story is a parable about the fate of the commodity-form in modern capitalist society, and how that conflicts with the desire of the consciousness for something eternal in the river of commodities that rush by us from the new ones coming at us from upstream, grabbed at the emporia to become "ours," and then they lose value as fashion or technological changes, or breakdown from shoddiness, sweep them past us, downstream towards the dump–their fate in this world.
That desire for something lasting in the realm of commodities is really the desire for something lasting in ourselves, as so much of one's self is invested in the commodities of our lives, a desire for something permanent in the impermanence of the commodity-form that is at the heart of our material culture and the alienation that is implied in it.
Toy Story is the story of that search for meaning in the commodity-form and the culture, or cult if you will, of the commodity; to what extent it is found and thus has a happy ending, it is a fantasy. For the reality we all live with is that the meaninglessness of the commodity-form is ultimately the great tragedy of the alienated meaninglessness of our own lives in the modern world.
It’s just a movie.
Toy Story 3 Jigsaw IN BIG SCREEN –> http://newgreenways.net/toy_stroy_3.htm
Bo Peep isn’t even meant to be a toy, she’s a part of a lamp and her sheep make noise. So it doesn’t make sense that the horse can’t talk because he’s an accessory to woody…
Also, in TS2 Stinky Pete tells Woody that they’ve got an eternity to spend together in the museum, so I think they live indefinitely unless they are melted and or burned up as in the kid in the first one who killed toys by blowing them up.
Scientific studies have proved this over and over