Screen Machine

Review: Toy Story 3

In Play Time, Jacques Tati imagined a society where every human interaction is regimented by the architecture of modern capitalism, all boxed spaces and straight lines, to which the field of “play” serves as a radical antidote: the second half of the film sees the city’s inhabitants literally tearing the city apart when a raucous crowd of nightclub patrons get gloriously out of hand.

“Play” is conceived very differently in Toy Story 3, the latest corporate assault on childhood from the technical wizards of Pixar. The filmmakers evince no interest in “play” as radical, creative or open-ended. Instead, they are obsessed with constructing notions of “appropriate play”. Hence, the young Andy becomes normalised through using his toys to construct a retro-masculine fantasy based in Western movies while Bonnie, the pre-school-aged girl introduced in this instalment, is depicted using her toys to construct a feminine tea party fantasy. In the Toy Story franchise, any use of toys that does not adhere to the ideology of the toy’s design (Woody = the Law, Barbie = submissive femininity) is coded as sinister subversion. Thus, the biggest threat to the toys in this episode is that they might be played with by kids who are not age-appropriate. Also remember that the worst thing about the villain of the first Toy Story, Sid, was that he dared to pull his toys apart and refigure them for his own purposes.

Sid aside, there appears to be no one in the Toy Story 3 universe who exists outside of identities determined by large corporations. Andy has developed over the years into the perfect sexless, charming man ready for an anonymous college degree (we are given access to his childhood development via home videos that seem more like secret footage of a re-education camp). His little sister is reading Tween magazine as a good consumer her age should. Everything is in its right place. This is a universe where the Max of Where the Wild Things Are couldn’t possible have a tantrum and withdraw into a dark fantasy world of monsters, where Charlie Brown would never rail against the commercialism of the holiday season. This is a universe where toys have a specific function: to facilitate the “normal” development of children into infantilised adult consumers.

Maybe one of the most interesting things we discover about the toys this time around is that despite not having genitalia, they are really hung up on gender identity issues. This comes to a head in a scene where the Ken doll is seen to be wearing women’s shoes – a pair of pink high heels – and the film cuts to a toy (a bookworm toy if you must know) who shakes his head in disapproval. Even magical plastic toys are not immune to gender panic it seems.

The toys may be anthropomorphised but they are not gifted with souls so much as they are presented as a bunch of neurotic junkies desperate for their next hit of Play, giving normalised play an emotional/moral imperative. If you don’t play cops and robbers with Woody, you are now literally breaking someone’s heart. This is capitalism with a literal human face.

This nostalgia that the film creates for a very conservative, limited idea of “childhood” must be sustained by creating the illusion of a world that is totally functional and benevolent. Sure enough, in the Toy Story universe everyone is prosperous, the mail always comes on time and the streets are lined with white picket fences. Ironically though, it is in Toy Story 3 that the filmmakers provide us with a wonderful allegory of capitalist exploitation at work. The toys find themselves at a day-care centre where everything seems fine but find themselves prisoners forced to entertain the bad kids while the villainous toys live in the lap of luxury with the older, gentler kids. The film’s villain, Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear, reasons that someone needs to do the hard work to support the comfort of the privileged toys’ lifestyle. So, much of Toy Story 3’s drama focuses on revealing a system of oppression but outside of this microcosm of the day-care centre, the filmmakers do their best to deny that the all-American childhood is rooted in exploitation, that the toys are made in sweatshops, that this depicted way of life exists within an instable global economy.

The filmmakers make a point of aligning their work with Hayao Miyazaki (he is thanked in the credits and a Totoro toy makes a cameo in the film) but in this regard there is really no comparison between Miyazaki’s films and the Toy Story franchise. Miyazaki’s films generally don’t shy away from revealing the chaos underlying various societies, whether it manifests in ecological disaster (in Ponyo and Princess Mononoke), war (in Howl’s Moving Castle) or economic recession (in Spirited Away).

The film ends on a sentimental note with Andy passing on his toys to another child. It is entirely affecting. I won’t deny that Pixar are always, without exception, adept at film “craft”. But it is at its most emotional point that Toy Story 3 is at its most ideological. Andy is not content to merely give his toys away. He makes a point of explaining the toys to the child (“Here is Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead. You’ve gotta keep them together because they’re madly in love.”) and in doing so is articulating to her the appropriate forms of play. Note that as we weep for Andy saying goodbye to his toys and his nostalgic attachment to them we are also becoming invested in the circumscription of the next child’s creative space.

Brad Nguyen is a co-editor of Screen Machine. He studied Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne, was the film reviewer for Triple R Breakfasters and has written for Senses of Cinema.

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