Okay, I really enjoyed this movie. It was funny, well-done, genuinely scary at times, and my eyes welled up at the expected moments.
But I have complaints.
(Contains spoilers).
1. The femme-baiting of Ken. Quoting Professor What If?: “As for Ken, he is depicted as a closeted gay fashionista with a fondness for writing in sparkly purple ink with curly-Q flourishes. Played for adult in-jokes, Ken huffily insists “I am not a girl toy, I am not!” when an uber-masculine robot–type toy suggests as much during a heated poker match. In the typical way homophobia is paired with misogyny, the jokes about Ken suggest that the worst things a male can be are a female or a homosexual.”
Seriously, being a girly little boy sucks. It’s five or ten years of fairly unrelenting torture by your peers combined with a definite note of disappointment from parents. I don’t think every kid’s movie has to contain a “it’s okay not to be a boy’s boy” preachyness, but it would be cool if they’d refrain from mockery. Even when it is funny.1
2. Yet another film that’s mainly about white boys. There’s nothing wrong with any one film being about white guys, but it’s part of an larger, and dreary, pattern.2
3. There’s just something so… 1950s3 white suburbia about everything in this film. (You can say the same about many Pixar films).
4. So how many toys did that big baby doll destroy before it changed its heart at the end? 3? 10? 20? Sure, it’s a mass-murderer — but it joined up the good guys at the end, so HEY! All is forgiven! What sort of bad sport allows mass murder to be a barrier to a brand new friendship?
5. I hate that thing where we see the protagonist toys hiding by ducking below the curb. And then the big baby doll hears something and starts walking towards their hiding spot. And we see that there’s nothing at all obscuring the baby doll’s view of the area around the curb where our heroes are hiding, so they can’t move out of their hiding spot. As soon as big baby moves to where they are, so it can see over the curb, they’ll be nicked.
So how did they escape? Well, apparently they teleported to another hiding place or something. That’s just CHEATING, Pixar! BAD filmmakers!
6. The premise of the film is that toys are sentient and the worst tragedy they ever experience is when their owners grow up and stop playing with toys. This resonates with the parents in the audience for the obvious reasons. But… if the premise of the movie were true, then the way humans treat toys would be monstrous. Why don’t the toys rebel? Why does the movie approve of them not rebelling?
Seriously, how about a film in which the toys were plotting to kidnap Andy and chain him hand and foot and force him to play with them? Sure, that’s horrible, but at least they’d be fighting back. Or, even better, maybe they can try to find a life for themselves not based around being played with (or abused) by human masters? They sort of do this, briefly, when they think the day care center is the promised land… but even this slight bit of independence is shown by the filmmakers to be a false utopia. (Woody is the most morally upright of the toys… and the film demonstrates this by having him be the toy that most passionately believes that toys must accept whatever fate their owners deliver.)
No, there’s only one happiness available to these toys, and that’s for the protagonists to meekly accept their place in the order of things — owned by a new master, who in ten years or so will at best give all these toys away or store them in the attic or very likely throw them away.
And the toys, like the filmmakers, can’t imagine a better world than this. The toy’s existence is pathetic and can’t be anything else.4
7. I know that I’m overthinking this, but really, it bugs me. Compare this to Monsters, Inc or The Incredibles. In both those films, the happy ending involved the status quo changing. The monsters overthrow their cruel corporate overlord and replace the meanness of scaring children with the joy of making children laugh. The Incredibles take up being superheroes as a family, instead of hiding who they are. (Well, still hiding, but hiding less, anyway.) But the Toys? Their big victory is setting the clock backwards ten years, so they can live in a blissful illusion of being loved and treasured for another brief moment before this one outgrows them, too, and then it’s back to the dumpster for them. Am I wrong to find that depressing?
- Yes, I thought a lot of the jokes were funny. I’ve never understood “is it funny or is it offensive” debates, as if the answer can’t be “both.” [↩]
- And if pointing this out makes me a joyless feminist, then at least I’m not alone. [↩]
- Well, 1960s, really. But the 1950s actually took place in the 1960s, if you know what I mean. [↩]
- I swiped that sentence from Maia. [↩]
nope. i found it depressing, too. in fact, i left the theater and told my boyfriend that very thing, that yeah, it’s a happy ending. but it’s a temporary happy ending, because bonnie’s gonna grow up too, and then what? but being a toy is all about passivity. and sometimes the occasional arbitrary action.
to add onto your mentioning Ken, there was another disappointing sexist moment for me: the removal of Mrs. Potato Head’s mouth–every time by a male character. it’s hilarious because she’s a naggy woman! ahahaha! it’s a man’s job to silence her! ugh.
With respect, I disagree about Ken. He’s clearly into Barbie, to the point where he’s willing to betray his comrades, so I don’t think he can be called gay. He’s not even very femme, he just…loves clothes as an end unto themselves.
I thought it was a clever way of toying (HAH!) with the super-normative world view presented by Barbie toys. Ken is supposed to be a symbol of perfect masculinity, but the environment in which he’s made to inhabit undermines that role.
I agree that the Toy Story movies aren’t as challenging as other Pixar films. I was kind of hoping the last scene would imply that the toys were only coming to life in Andy’s imagination, and at the end he would finally have to come to grips with that, but I guess that’s asking too much.
Lastly, how can Buzz fart if he’s a toy? Does he eat??
I thought it was neat and funny (and in character for a doll of his background) that Ken was really, really, really into clothes. What bugged me was the gag at the end, with the note in the super-feminine handwriting that people assumed was from Barbie, and then when they realized it was from Ken the other dolls coughed significantly and looked embarrassed.
I admit, Disney has certainly done a lot worse — Chi Fu in Mulan, for instance — but they definitely made some missteps with Ken’s character.
Agreed about the patheticity of passivity and issue-dodging, but then I was one of the kids who wondered if Wilbur really escaped becoming bacon indefinitely [Charlotte’s Web]. It doesn’t help that I was pressured to give up certain toys and books before I was ready [and am hunting down duplicates.]
Oh yes, and the bathroom humor belongs only among fully animate, biological beings, for crying out loud. [That’s one of the reasons I like inanimates, but anyway.]
Might have more to say after the movie comes out on video and I can borrow it.
With the disclaimer that I haven’t seen the movie and likely won’t until it hits Netflix,
strikes me as the modern white liberal fantasy, of sorts.
I disagree about Big Baby, specifically because the character is presented as a BABY, with the mindset of roughly a one-year-old. It’s not murdering toys because it’s an evil person, but because its abusive parental figure tells it to do so, and it doesn’t know any better. The Nuremberg Defense isn’t valid for adults, but it does apply to children who are too young to have developed independent morals or empathy. I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all to send the message that you can become a good person even if your parent(s) tried to make you otherwise.
I also think you’re a little off-base re point #6. The first movie specifically addressed the question of cruel owners — in fact, the major plot point of that is Woody and Buzz’s escape from the neighborhood juvenile delinquent Sid. In this movie, the mauling experienced by the toys in the toddler room is because those kids are simply too young to know how to treat toys gently. I liked how the toys resolved it at the end of the movie by treating it as an arena sport like boxing, with toys able to “tag out” when they’d gotten enough roughhousing, and presumably rotate in and out of the older kids’ room. The day care center is only a false utopia because of the dictatorial bear’s mismanagement; once the bear is removed and toys treat each other with consideration and kindness, that’s shown to be reality. (And yay for the perception that day care centers are fun places for kids, rather than institutions where bad mothers send their children to be raised by others.)
My nitpick: I hate the way Mush Mouth Down South Accent == Evil. Regionalism is a pretty minor -ism compared to, say, racism or ableism, but as a lifelong southerner with a definite accent, the stereotype rankles.
What I wanna know is – what happened to Bo Peep?
@Kevin Moore–
one of the toys mentions that they’ve lost lots of other friends, Bo Peep included. i think it’s implied that she’s been donated. these toys are all that are left of Andy’s childhood, most of the others having been given away at some point.
Hmm. Well, I’ll give defending the movie a try, though some of these points are hard to refute on any grounds. Let’s start with 5): Maybe Baby DID see them. Maybe, rather than immediately attack, it reported back to Lotso, who decided to continue observing to find out how extensive the jailbreak was. And that led to the, um, subsequent torture of Chatter Telephone (another element that really speaks against forgiving Lotso’s gang so easily). This is a pretty handwavey argument on my part, but they had to realize something was up at some point in order to be present by the time Woody et al hit the dumpster, right?
As for 2), it strikes me as a “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” sort of choice on the part of the writers. Just declaring certain toys to be gender-specific causes a backlash, so declaring some to be specific ethnicities would probably have elicited its own accusations of racism or pandering. On the other hand, what they did was essentially, as you said, equate Caucausian-accented toys as the universal norm, which is probably the worse choice. At least the other way, they could be seen as acknowledging the problem rather than sweeping it under the rug.
And last, I’ll try for a hail-mary argument that combines a response for 4, 6, and 7. In part, the “let’s all be friends” arises out of the same feel-good nonsense that’s present in nearly all of the 3-D animated movie series–it’s how a zebra and a lion can be best buds in the Madagascar series, for example. Now, I was going to close out with an argument the toys don’t look at their mortality in the same way we do ours, and consequently, they are more forgiving towards their owners and towards other toys. And while I think that’s true to an extent, it’s certainly not what we see when Buzz et al decide to NOT passively await being thrown out in garbage at the curb. So scrap that part.
Instead, though, I will argue that in lieu of a toy revolution or Andy learning the “truth,” the writers opted for an ending that presented a more realistic model for their child (and adult) audiences. No, your toys aren’t going to come to life and tell you take better care of them. That’s a choice you have to make for yourself. And given the two extremes that the movie presents–the massive garbage dump and the daycare/Bonnie’s house–I’d say it makes pretty clear that Andy’s choice was the ethically responsible, and personally rewarding, choice. And given the reliance on disposable products in today’s economy, I still think it’s a message worth making.
What really amused me, though, is that my theatre included an ad for the Toy Story 3 videogame, in which one of the developers states that “kids today don’t really play with toys, anyway.” Kind of spoiled the mood, yeah?
‘Filthy Grandeur’? ‘Person of Consequence’??? – truly, in the land of Blog the age of false modesty has passed. (Am I the only one old enough to remember all the ‘nobody reallys’ and ‘oudemias’ and ‘nomen nescios’ of yesteryear? Used to be all the rage.)
@ Tom Nolan–
my name is from a poem. and i’m not sure how either of our names is at all relevant to this post.
One thing to keep in mind re: the toys lead pathetic lives and should rebel is that Toy Story is at heart a VERY old-fashioned story. It’s in the tradition of the Velveteen Rabbit, which gets burned (technically ALIVE) at the end, or the Little Toy Soldier that waits forever for the dead boy who played with him to come back someday. These kinds of stories are almost unbearably sad, but that’s good– it gives kids a place to think about love, loyalty, and facing the scary day when they’re going to have to move on from the play room.
@FilthyGrandeur — The implication I got from Woody’s “poor Bo Peep” and the moment of silence that followed was that Bo Peep met some horrible end. Garbage? Fire cracker? Run over by backing up car? Given that kids have a tendency to strip, shave, draw on and dismember their toys, the possibilities are endless.
Before mentioning Bo Peep, Woody was listing the other absent toys. When someone mentioned Bo Peep, he sighed and looked dejected, and then he said that they have gone on to “good owners,” which I thought was inclusive of Bo Peep.
The implication I received from his pause and moment of silence is that he was especially sad that Bo Peep departed because he was fond of her and they had an affectionate relationship as was shown in the first scene of the first film. I don’t know how “toy affection” is supposed to work, but it apparently seems to be present with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and Barbie and Ken, etc.
I dunno, Bonnie was pretty imaginative and Barbie was pretty clever at helping them escape and this line was fucking awesome:
“Authorities should derive from the consent of the governed, not from threat of force.”
Ah, yes, the eternal question: “Should entertainment reflect culture or should it shape culture?” And, of course, the answer depends on whether you see entertainment as a mirror or a chisel.
I also really enjoyed this movie. I’m 28 years old and saw it in a theater full of 30- to 50-somethings.
On 1) I was disappointed with the handwriting gag at the end. The other toys’ embarrassment did seem to imply that there was something wrong with Ken. Before that I had no problem with the boy toy vs. girl toy thing. I found it pretty funny, and it only seemed to exist in the minds of the Sunnyside toys. I also think its great that one of Andy’s favorite toys is a bad-ass cowgirl, whom he imagined riding up on a horse saving the cowboy at the opening of the movie.
On 2) I don’t know if you’re referring to Andy’s ethnicity or you’re including the toys, but I never imagined them all to be white. I can’t say I assigned races to the animal and alien toys. I think one’s need to do that maybe says something about one’s own views on race. If I had to wager a guess though I’d at least have to make Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head white ethnics of some kind (maybe Eastern Eurpoean?) I certainly wouldn’t call it a cast of WASPs.
On 3) Not sure about the 1950’s/60’s thing. It’s an idealized slice of life, for sure. But the point is the toys. I took much more from Andy on his laptop and his little sister with the white iPod cords coming from her ears than I did from the suburbia theme. That and the rainbow coalition of kids running around Sunnyside was sufficiently modern America for me.
All in all, a super smart movie. The “consent of the governed” line and Ken & Barbie’s “I. Love. You.” exchange were great.
The femme-baiting jokes about Ken were annoying, but wasn’t there at least an attempt at a countervailing message? Ken has the character arc where he moves from being an evil henchman to the main villain, to being the kind, decent leader of the reformed day care center. And throughout, he butches up when he’s being evil (say, in the poker game), but whenever he’s behaving decently or emotionally connecting to another character, he lets his femmy (straight, but femmy) side show through.
I thought it was kind of interesting that they made a comically femme character a partial villain, but didn’t make him a standard campy evil guy — that the evil side was associated with less campiness.
When it comes to Kens fem-me side and fem-me baiting jokes, for a little girl growing up (in the 80’s and 90’s at least) you wanted barbie and all her accessories, but you also needed ken! He was a girls toy technically.. However, how many of the little girls brothers join in and play with there sisters if they got to be Ken? I loved playing barbies as a little girl and was ecstatic when I got Ken.. a barbie dream house and her jeep! Once I got Ken my older brother even got into playing barbies with me, but of course He would get ken and the car because he was a “man”. You ask my brother today.. remember the days we used to play barbies? and he will totally Deni it! The whole joke is based off of that very thing. He might be a girls toy but he is not a girl and was played with by both.
You can say what you want about the Toy Story 3 movie but it really was a good pixar film and stayed true to the first two toy story movies.