Toy Stories
Toys are made to be played with. Toys want to be played with. Toys need to be played with. If they’re abandoned, or even sense the possibility of abandonment, that neediness escalates. It becomes the thing that defines every toy.
Maybe that’s what the Toy Story series is all about. Toy Story 5, the latest in the franchise, tones it down, but the neediness never disappears. When Jessie the Cowgirl remembers being forgotten and then sold by her original owner in Toy Story 2, with golden sunlight flashing through the leaves above, it is so plaintive that I ache.
Ryo Hanmura’s Cardboard Box (trans. David Lewis) is a short story that shares some things in common with the Toy Story films. Like Pixar’s toys, the cardboard boxes know what they were made for. They also want what they were made for. They want to be filled. No time is wasted explaining how or why these objects can think or feel, because that’s not important. They just can and do. And eventually, in an unexpected way, their needs are met.
One of my favourite scenes in the series is from Toy Story 4, where Woody is played with for the first time in years by a new kid named Bonnie. When she hugs him tight, he smiles, and you can feel the warmth spread through him. Just like Hanmura’s boxes, he is filled with something he was made for, and something he needs. It goes beyond anything functional. A toy’s needs, like a box’s, are deep and emotional. But are they the same as a human’s needs?
One thing I love about the Toy Story series is that the toys are not a direct metaphor for any specific human thing. They are comparable and applicable to humans and their experiences, but these films are still about the toys as toys. This makes their neediness so much more specific, and because of that, more effective. The unreality of the toys makes them all the more real.
The toys are alive, but not like humans are alive. It fits with the animators’ attempts to give a sense of life to computer animation. From what I understand, actual humans were still difficult and expensive to animate back then, so Pixar worked with their limitations and made movies about toys and bugs. (As someone with her own limitations, stuff like this inspires me.) Sid’s drab house, with its ugly green walls, is the perfect place for Buzz to finally understand that he is just a toy. A house in the Toy Story world is completely inanimate. It has no life at all, and Sid’s house is especially lifeless. Thanks to the early CGI animation, everything in the first film looks a little lifeless, and this suits the sad scenes so well.
Kids bring toys to life through play. Animators bring inanimate objects to life in similar ways. Isn’t so much of fiction about playing with dolls?