Let no one find surprising my interest in seeing Toy Story 4, latest in a long series of endearing and nostalgic films about the secret lives of sentient playthings. Let no one find my interest in the digital technology (now 25 years old) by which these films are realized to be less than professionally inevitable.
And keep in mind that I keep a tight focus on the impact of technology upon culture, and know that I consider Steve Jobs’ acquisition and nurture of Pixar to be a far greater achievement than NeXT or the 1980s Apple. I’d put Toy Story ahead of the original Mac and even the iPod in the pantheon of technocultural icons.
All of that said, I beg preemptory forgiveness for the following analysis.
Toy Story 4 takes us where no Toy Story has gone before – into the cryptic but fecund mysteries of sex.
The story opens in the Toy Story past, nine years before the present day, where Woody and Buzz and the other toys now live with a little girl named Bonnie (following Andy’s departure for college). This flashback scene finds Bo Peep, a toy belonging to Andy’s younger sister Molly, about to be given away to another child. This causes both Bo Peep and Woody great distress, and it is rapidly evident that there is something going on between these two. Their tragic parting is, in a word, bittersweet.
An exchange between a mother and child sitting behind me in the theater illuminated this new facet of the secret lives of toys.
“Mommy, why is Woody the only toy who is sad that Bo Peep is leaving?”
“I’m sure the others are sad, too, honey. But Woody is extra-sad, because he and Bo Peep have a... special relationship.”
“Do you mean best friends, like me and Susie Parker down the street?”
“Not exactly, honey. The subtext of the scene suggests that Woody and Bo Peep are intimate partners.”
“Mommy?”
“Yes, honey?”
“What’s ‘intimate’?”
“’Intimate’ means that Woody and Bo Peep express their feelings for one another through physical affinity, honey. You know how your daddy and I close our door after we tuck you in at night? It’s like that.”
“Oh. Mommy?”
“Yes, honey?”
“What’s ‘subtext’?”
Setting aside my own inner conflict between the boldness of this new narrative leap and the unfettered emotional purity of the franchise to date, I absorbed the events which then unfolded with practiced academic eye, curious to see how Woody and Bo Peep, apparently free of chastity’s shackles, might evolve.
Nine years have passed since the parting of Woody and Bo Peep, and the gang of toys has shifted its collective tribal loyalty to Bonnie, whose first day of kindergarten has arrived. Woody feels compelled to secretly accompany her, to ensure a trauma-free transition for the little girl. Shy and frightened in the face of non-inclusion, Bonnie cowers in a corner of the school room, her social isolation rapidly eroding her poise and self-concept.
Woody improvises, intervening when another child takes Bonnie’s art supplies by serving up random items from a nearby trash can: a used spork, a pipe cleaner, a popsicle stick, two googly eyes. From these scraps, Bonnie creates “Forky”, a new toy which (per the rules of the Toy Story universe) immediately becomes conscious. Bonnie forgets her sequestration and immerses herself in the delights of a new friend.
Let us pause at this juncture and consider how this scene informs our perception of Woody. For almost two decades, he has been the group’s alpha male, socially dominant and subtly authoritarian in matters of tribal survival (recall his initial confrontations with Buzz, the interloping male challenger). Now, however, Woody has gentled considerably, transitioning from alpha male to nurturant parent, intently focused on Bonnie’s social acceptance and emotional well-being.
May we credit this kinder, gentler Woody to Bo Peep’s influence? A strong case might be made.
But TS4 has greater challenges in store: as the unfolding plot shows Forky displaced during a family road trip, to Bonnie’s great distress, Woody again steps up, intent on returning Forky to his child. There in the charming town of Grand Basin, Woody encounters none other than his long-lost love.
But she is no longer the Bo Peep he remembers. For seven of the past nine years, she has been a ‘lost toy’, along with several others, making her own way in a world without the comfort and shelter of a child’s love.
This maverick existence has stripped Bo Peep of her feminine mystique. No longer demur, she is hard-edged and none too empathetic, embracing her lawless existence with a troubling gusto. When her appeals to Woody to abandon his quest for Forky and join her in the wild fall upon deaf ears, she and her party offer interim support, as they face off against the sinister Gabby Gabby and her disturbing-as-all-hell ventriloquist dummy minions in a second-hand antique shop.
[Men of a certain age will find diminutive reference to “Bo” subconsciously unsettling in this context, given the character’s physical prowess and perpetual glow; we can only point out that “Bo” was probably just as athletic, though not overtly so, as a herder of sheep, but suffered to downplay her fitness due to social pressure to dress in attire more agreeable to the societal patriarchy in which she existed at the time.]
Bo’s own ascent to alpha status, underscored by the icy authority she flexes with her own tribe, enshrouds an undeniable (and somewhat inexplicable) core of wit, controlled ferocity and competence - and we are tempted to recall Ripley in Alien, or perhaps Sarah Conner in the Terminator films (only not really). We are left wondering what trials and challenges, exactly, she may have suffered during her ‘lost’ years, and we may suspect that they forced upon her a steely self-reliance that has left no quarter for a child’s affections or a lover’s comforts.
All turns out just fine in the end, of course, this being a Pixar movie, and as Bo herself relocates her inner nurturer, returning to Woody’s aid after turning away, it is clear that while both characters have evolved considerably, they retain that intimate spark alluded to by the mommy sitting behind me. But we would be remiss to leave unnoted a mutual re-evaluation, each of the other and (more importantly) of self, as the events they have experienced have presented them with new roles – and new opportunity.
This resolution is not without its ambiguities, of course, for Woody faces uncertainties that dwarf his previous experiences combined – and makes him all the more reliant upon the prowess and enlightenment of his more-powerful lover. And it is telling that it is Buzz, surely intuiting that the ascent to alpha male status which he has so long desired is finally within his grasp, who grants Woody permission to pursue the next step in his own evolution.
And so, after tearful goodbyes, Buzz and the gang head home with Bonnie and Forky (who has now humbly embraced his destiny), while Woody sets out into the world of lost toys with Bo and their rag-tag band of dowdy adventurers.
Woody and Bo, then, expose us to some introspective truths as their shared journey resumes, truths that inform our increasingly fluid pursuit of connection, meaningful roles and personal destiny: that these truths do not emerge from socially-imposed identities or tribal expectations; that our need for the intimacies, acceptance and support of a partner in life need not fade in adverse circumstance; and that love between two people can survive and even thrive the traumatic throes of personal evolution.
As for the movie itself – there is an undeniable satisfaction to be found in the discovery of these themes and variations hiding within such an unassuming cultural confection, and one is left with feelings not only of exhilaration but contentedness. But it must be appreciated within the context of what can only be a fond farewell – for all of this truth and inspiration and contemplation come at an inexorable price: the end of innocence.
Comments