Toy Story 3.
Jul. 3rd, 2010 17:38![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladySo I really, really liked the first two Toy Story movies, and I really like Pixar movies. This is not the post in which I compare and contrast Ghibli and Pixar and talk about the problematic aspects of both; but that's coming! And I'm not going to give this movie a free pass by any means, but upfront, I have to say, I loved this movie.
So, yes. Toy owner Andy is all grown up and heading off to college, and his toys are faced with a dilemma: should they be hoping to go to Sunnyside Daycare, or to be put up in a box in the attic? The issue is forced when they are nearly accidentally thrown out and then are donated to Sunnyside anyway, despite Andy wanting to put them up into the attic. At the daycare, not everything is as it seems, and the fact that Woody, who was on the "going to college" pile of stuff, decides to leave his friends behind in favor of Andy doesn't put the toys in any better position. But when Woody does find out the awful truth of Sunnyside, thanks to an imaginative girl named Bonny and her toys, he does the right thing, and goes back to help them. What happens next pushes the toys to their limits.
I loved this movie. Why can't the Hollywood studios make movies like Ghilbi and Pixar do, that are so effortlessly thrilling and involving? There's nothing like being in a packed theater full of people wearing the same 3D glasses and all having the same thrilled, terrified, and excited reactions to what's happening up on the big screen--and for a change the 3D in this movie was well done and tastefully integrated into the movie itself, which is always great. Too, what the toys go through is a real rollercoaster ride, with a lot of homages to great movies past along the way, and I really liked what the movie did with the characters.
Pixar doesn't really know what to do with girls and women, though now that computer animation has advanced enough to animate humans we pretty much have definitive confirmation that Andy's mom is a single mom, which is awesome, and some of the female characters really shine here, particularly Barbie and Bonnie. Barbie in particular is great; she chooses her friends when it matters and declaims about the rights of the governed not to be terrorized (I may or may not have shouted "Barbie I love you!" at that point) and in general is just awesome. If Barbie had been that awesome as an actual toy I would have loved Barbie. Also, Ken is great too, eventually. (All of his outfits in the movie have at one point actually been sold by Mattel, FYI.) And Bonnie is great as well, in a non-stereotypically gendered way; she doesn't have a bedroom coated in pink like Andy's sister and acts out stories that don't conform to clichés about what girls like and do. So yay!
That said, and this could very well be just the first Pixar film in which I noticed it consciously, but I was incredibly disappointed to realize that in Toy Story 3 the studio follows its parent company Disney into its well-worn paths of vocal stereotyping. In other words, I'm talking about Lotso, who is (spoilers!) the villain of the piece and who is voiced by Ned Beatty with a noticeable Southern accent.
Disney has a long history of stigmatizing all non-mainstream U.S. Englishes (MUSE) in its movies, going all the way back to Snow White; characters with non-U.S. "accents" and non-MUSE "accents" are far more likely to be villainous, buffoons, or simply lightweights--I'm drawing here on Chapter 5, "Teaching Children How to Discriminate", of Rosina Lippi-Green's excellent and accessible book English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States, which I recommend to anyone with an interest in the subject; Lippi-Green writes clearly and succinctly, with lots of helpful charts and figures. To quote the conclusion of her Disney study,
I'm sure the thought in casting Beatty as Lotso was "oo, contrast between Southern hospitality implicit in accent with Lotso's villainy and strawberry scent is so ironic!", but there's a lot of stereotypes that ought not be perpetuated right there, and the way Lotso's arc plays out only digs the hole deeper. Especially given Pixar's outsize influence, they ought to think more carefully about what their stories are saying below the level of text.
And finally, on a more meditative level, I think in a lot of ways Pixar here, or more precisely its male auteurs, are showing their age in an interesting way. I wondered as Andy's mom gave him a box and said, "Everything in your room has to go in the attic or out, either trash or donations, before you go to college!" how many young people actually have that experience these days, particularly given the state of the economy. I'm at the high edge of the so-called "Toy Story generation", and I moved back in with my parents a year after I graduated undergrad, and I never really packed up my stuff while I was in undergrad; people simply don't live like that in Andy's apparent socioeconomic bracket. Also, as I watched Bonnie with her toys, I had to wonder, How many kids really play like this nowadays? The Toy Story movies certainly acknowledge the presence of video games and the like--Rex and Trixie surfing the Internet and playing PS2 together is gold--but they don't really seem to grapple with the fact that the kids I know don't seem to make up stories and narratives the way Bonnie does with her toys, or the way I did with my Legos 15-20 years ago (oh, Legos, I ♥ you). Do I just know atypical kids? ETA: Evidently I do. /eta I sort of doubt it, but tell me if I'm wrong.
These reservations aside, awesome movie. If all movies were this good I would be broke from going to see them.
P.S. All the scenes with the octopus made the fandom part of my brain go some strange, wrong places. Where is the off switch for my fandom brain? Oh wait there is none.
So, yes. Toy owner Andy is all grown up and heading off to college, and his toys are faced with a dilemma: should they be hoping to go to Sunnyside Daycare, or to be put up in a box in the attic? The issue is forced when they are nearly accidentally thrown out and then are donated to Sunnyside anyway, despite Andy wanting to put them up into the attic. At the daycare, not everything is as it seems, and the fact that Woody, who was on the "going to college" pile of stuff, decides to leave his friends behind in favor of Andy doesn't put the toys in any better position. But when Woody does find out the awful truth of Sunnyside, thanks to an imaginative girl named Bonny and her toys, he does the right thing, and goes back to help them. What happens next pushes the toys to their limits.
I loved this movie. Why can't the Hollywood studios make movies like Ghilbi and Pixar do, that are so effortlessly thrilling and involving? There's nothing like being in a packed theater full of people wearing the same 3D glasses and all having the same thrilled, terrified, and excited reactions to what's happening up on the big screen--and for a change the 3D in this movie was well done and tastefully integrated into the movie itself, which is always great. Too, what the toys go through is a real rollercoaster ride, with a lot of homages to great movies past along the way, and I really liked what the movie did with the characters.
Pixar doesn't really know what to do with girls and women, though now that computer animation has advanced enough to animate humans we pretty much have definitive confirmation that Andy's mom is a single mom, which is awesome, and some of the female characters really shine here, particularly Barbie and Bonnie. Barbie in particular is great; she chooses her friends when it matters and declaims about the rights of the governed not to be terrorized (I may or may not have shouted "Barbie I love you!" at that point) and in general is just awesome. If Barbie had been that awesome as an actual toy I would have loved Barbie. Also, Ken is great too, eventually. (All of his outfits in the movie have at one point actually been sold by Mattel, FYI.) And Bonnie is great as well, in a non-stereotypically gendered way; she doesn't have a bedroom coated in pink like Andy's sister and acts out stories that don't conform to clichés about what girls like and do. So yay!
That said, and this could very well be just the first Pixar film in which I noticed it consciously, but I was incredibly disappointed to realize that in Toy Story 3 the studio follows its parent company Disney into its well-worn paths of vocal stereotyping. In other words, I'm talking about Lotso, who is (spoilers!) the villain of the piece and who is voiced by Ned Beatty with a noticeable Southern accent.
Disney has a long history of stigmatizing all non-mainstream U.S. Englishes (MUSE) in its movies, going all the way back to Snow White; characters with non-U.S. "accents" and non-MUSE "accents" are far more likely to be villainous, buffoons, or simply lightweights--I'm drawing here on Chapter 5, "Teaching Children How to Discriminate", of Rosina Lippi-Green's excellent and accessible book English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States, which I recommend to anyone with an interest in the subject; Lippi-Green writes clearly and succinctly, with lots of helpful charts and figures. To quote the conclusion of her Disney study,
Characters with strongly positive actions and motivations are overwhelmingly speakers of socially mainstream varieties of English. Conversely, characters with strongly negative actions and motivations often speak varieties of ENglish linked to specific geographical regions and marginalized social groups. Perhaps even more importantly, those characters who have the widest variety of life choices and possibilities availabe to them are male, and they are speakers of MUSE or a non-stigmatized variety of British English.
I'm sure the thought in casting Beatty as Lotso was "oo, contrast between Southern hospitality implicit in accent with Lotso's villainy and strawberry scent is so ironic!", but there's a lot of stereotypes that ought not be perpetuated right there, and the way Lotso's arc plays out only digs the hole deeper. Especially given Pixar's outsize influence, they ought to think more carefully about what their stories are saying below the level of text.
And finally, on a more meditative level, I think in a lot of ways Pixar here, or more precisely its male auteurs, are showing their age in an interesting way. I wondered as Andy's mom gave him a box and said, "Everything in your room has to go in the attic or out, either trash or donations, before you go to college!" how many young people actually have that experience these days, particularly given the state of the economy. I'm at the high edge of the so-called "Toy Story generation", and I moved back in with my parents a year after I graduated undergrad, and I never really packed up my stuff while I was in undergrad; people simply don't live like that in Andy's apparent socioeconomic bracket. Also, as I watched Bonnie with her toys, I had to wonder, How many kids really play like this nowadays? The Toy Story movies certainly acknowledge the presence of video games and the like--Rex and Trixie surfing the Internet and playing PS2 together is gold--but they don't really seem to grapple with the fact that the kids I know don't seem to make up stories and narratives the way Bonnie does with her toys, or the way I did with my Legos 15-20 years ago (oh, Legos, I ♥ you). Do I just know atypical kids? ETA: Evidently I do. /eta
These reservations aside, awesome movie. If all movies were this good I would be broke from going to see them.
P.S. All the scenes with the octopus made the fandom part of my brain go some strange, wrong places. Where is the off switch for my fandom brain? Oh wait there is none.