Those of you weirdos that read About pages may remember this one:
If you can name more than five hobbits or ever wondered if Toy Story is actually a philosophical debate between Aristotelian teleology and existentialism, welcome, I think you’ll like it in here (if they don’t throw you in a madhouse first).
Me, a lifetime ago
A promise is a promise. So here is what Pixar’s most famous trilogy can teach us about life, the universe, and everything.
And yes, I said “trilogy”.
To Fulfill One’s Purpose
The guiding rule of the Toy Story universe is simple: things want to fulfill the purpose for which they are made (this concept has been attributed to Steve Jobs, but that is likely not true1). If you are, say, a glass of water, you want to be full and drank from, and will become sad if you are empty. If you are a toy, you want to be played with. Not only does this bring the toys immense joy2, but it gives them purpose.
Aristotle called it the telos: the good which a being seeks, also called its final cause. A cause, in the Aristotelian sense, is what makes a being itself, and not something else entirely. There are four of them:
The material cause is what a thing is made of. If we take a bronze statue, for example, its material cause is bronze.
Matter, in this sense, is the substratum from which something is made, and which remains after its form is changed. If we were to take our statue and melt it, we could turn it into, say, a shield, and it would still be the same bronze.
The formal cause is the shape of the being. This cause is closely related to the essence of a thing. As long as an object has the right “statue-like” shape, we call it a statue; irrespectively of whether it is made of wood, metal, glass, or plastic. Taking our statue again: if we were to melt it and turn it into a shield, it would still be the same bronze (material cause), but since the shape (formal cause) has changed, it is no longer the same being.
The efficient cause is what puts that being into existence: in our example, the artistry of the sculptor. The efficient cause is the one who applies the form over the matter.
The final cause is “what is it made for”, the good for the sake of which that being exists. Statues have the final cause of honoring those represented by them, or of being aesthetically admired.
The final cause/telos, thus, is not arbitrary, but integral to the nature of a being.
This is the subtext the first movie. Buzz thinks he is a space ranger, that his telos is fighting evil in the galaxy. When he finds out that he is a toy, he spiralls into depression and self-doubt.
In perhaps the best scene in the movie, Buzz is tied to a rocket, which Sid will explode the following day, while Woody, stuck under a heavy box, finally lets go of his pride and pleads for help:
WOODY
Oh, come on, Buzz. I...Buzz, I
can't do this without you. I need
your help.
BUZZ
I can't help. I can't help anyone.
WOODY
Why, sure you can, Buzz. You can
get me out of here and then I'll
get that rocket off you, and we'll
make a break for Andy's house.
BUZZ
Andy's house. Sid's house. What's
the difference.
WOODY
Oh, Buzz, you've had a big fall.
You must not be thinking clearly.
BUZZ
No, Woody, for the first time I am
thinking clearly.
(looking at himself)
You were right all along. I'm not
a Space Ranger. I'm just a toy. A
stupid little insignificant toy.
To lose one’s purpose is to lose one’s identity. Buzz Lightyear does not know who he is anymore. He still thinks he should be a space ranger; instead, he is just a piece of molded plastic. And that is far worse than being a space ranger.
Right?
WOODY
Whoa, hey -- wait a minute. Being
a toy is a lot better than being a
Space Ranger.
This is not a white lie. Woody is not trying to cheer Buzz up so they can escape. He believes that.
BUZZ
Yeah, right.
WOODY
No, it is. Look, over in that
house is a kid who thinks you are
the greatest, and it's not because
you're a Space Ranger, pal, it's
because you're a TOY! You are HIS
toy.
You’re a toy. You’re his toy. A simple enough statement, but it underpins Woody’s worldview3. Buzz doesn’t have to be a space ranger. He is a toy; his telos is to be played with by a child. But of course, a child is an abstraction: his purpose is to be Andy’s toy. And he is damn good at it:
BUZZ
But why would Andy want me?
WOODY
Why would Andy want you?! Look at
you! You're a Buzz Lightyear. Any
other toy would give up his moving
parts just to be you. You've got
wings, you glow in the dark, you
talk, your helmet does that -- that
whoosh thing -- you are a COOL toy.
Buzz may not be able to shoot laser or fly through space. But he fulfills his telos as a toy perfectly. And if things sought as an end in themselves are better than things sough as an end to other things (another Aristotelian idea4), is there really more Buzz could have asked for than for his purpose to be — to give joy, and be loved?
In respect to purpose, Woody’s arc is lighter than Buzz’s (we will get his struggle with telos in the next movie). His journey is mostly about jealously, the unwillingness to share Andy’s love. But this scene shows that part of the jealously comes from the sense that, if he doesn’t get Andy’s love, this means there is something wrong with him. That he can’t fulfill his telos as well as someone else, and is thus broken.
WOODY
(continued; depressed)
As a matter of fact you're too cool.
I mean -- I mean what chance does a
toy like me have against a Buzz
Lightyear action figure? All I can
do is...
Woody pulls his own pull-string.
WOODY (VOICE BOX)
There's a snake in my boots!
Woody bows his head.
WOODY
Why would Andy ever want to play
with me, when he's got you?
(beat)
I'm the one that should be strapped
to that rocket.
As we close on the first Toy Story, notice a nice touch: Buzz comes closer to his space ranger ambitions after he has abandoned them. When he and Woody are on a rocket about to explode, and Buzz flaps out his wings and takes he and Woody safely to Andy’s car. For a moment, Buzz Lightyear does fly — because, by that point, he was willing to say it was just falling with style.
(Im)mortality and Angst
While the first Toy Story shares somewhat evenly the time and focus between its two starts, Toy Story 2 shows who the real protagonist is. It is Woody's turn to struggle with his telos, and though he is not as delusional as Buzz was, his fall is deeper.
A toy’s telos is being played with — that is, to be loved — by a child. But what happens when that child grows up, and leaves their toys behind? What happens when meaning is threatened not by turning away from one’s nature, but by a limitation imposed by that very nature?
The movie introduces this idea through Wheezy and through a (weird-ass) nightmare sequence. But the gut punch comes with Jessie, the cowgirl doll. When She Loved Me, the matriarch of Pixar’s many tear-jerker moments, shows how Jessie goes from meaning the world to a little girl, to being forgotten by her. It is heartbreaking, in equal measures because of its inevitability and because of its banality — the most important thing in Jessie’s life was taken away from her not in with a bang, but with a whisper. Jessie is the living embodiment of what Andy and Woody’s relationship is bound to come to.
Though the guiding rule of the Toy Story universe — beings want to fulfill their telos — is quite Aristotelian, the psychology of its character has a touch of Existentialism. Like toys in the real world, Woody and the gang have a well-defined essence: they are (all together now) objects made to be played with by children. But they are not just toys; they are also people. They not only exist, but they know they exist. And the essence of a person is much harder to define than that of an object.
Existentialists like Sartre would say, in fact, that it is impossible to define the essence of a person: there is no such thing as “human nature”5. Instead, for humans, “existence precedes essence”. That is, we exist, like all other beings; unlike them, however, we also know we exist, which means we can imagine, dread, hope, conjure possibilities — we can think of the world as it is not. (For example, think of a man mourning the destruction of a building. Objectively speaking, Sartre would say, nothing has been lost, merely transformed. But the man’s pain comes from the fact that he is thinking of the wrecked building as it is not — he is thinking of the image of the building in its former glory.)6
Any “essence” humans may come to have, thus, is given to ourselves by ourselves through our choices. In another very quotable Sartrism: we are condemned to be free. That freedom — that capability of thinking of what is not, and act on it — produces anxiety, the infamous Existantial Angst.
While I do not think Toy Story compells an Existentialist view, in which sentient beings have no intrinsic essence (neither do I agree with it, if anyone cares), still, the Existential Angst, the dread caused by the lack (perceived or real) of an essence, is usefull in describing what is going on through Woody’s head.
And a lot is going on though his head. Though Woody begins wanting to come back to Andy at all costs, Jessie and Pete’s philosophy starts to get to him. Telos is integral to identity. To lose one is to lose the other. If one day Andy won’t play with Woody anymore, then what is Woody’s purpose? What is he, if not a toy?
Pete and Jessie seem to offer him an answer: he is a relic. Woody finds out (as do we) that he is the star of an old black-and-white puppet show, Woody's Roundup. He and the other toys from the show have been sold to a museum in Japan, where they will be displayed forever. Thus Woody can escape being forgotten by his owner. He can escape the mortality proper to his nature.
But this immortality is a cold one. It would mean to “watch kids from behind a glass, and never be loved again”. Woody must decide if it is worth it loving someone, knowing that this love is bound to end; or if it is better to live in perpetuity, and never feel love fully.
When Buzz and the others arrive to “rescue” Woody — who by that point had decided to stay with Jessie, Pete, and Bullseye — , we get a nice reversal of the first movie. Now it is Buzz who must defend the value of a toy’s life. But this time, talking is not enough. Buzz starts to leave, and Woody, dismayed, sits while Woody's Roundup plays on the TV.
Then, to his surprise, the Woody on the TV starts to sing:
TV WOODY
Now, remember, deputies. The real
treasures are your friends and
family. Before I go, kids, I want
to share somethin' special with
you... for the times when I'm not
around.
STINKY PETE
Good going, Woody! I thought they'd
never leave.
Then they hear Woody's TV self singing "You've Got a Friend in Me", much to their surprise.
TV WOODY
You've got a friend in me~
You've got a friend in me~
Woody walks sadly to the TV.
STINKY PETE
Woody?
TV WOODY
You've got troubles~
Well, I've got 'em too~
There isn't anything I wouldn't do
for you~
In the vent, Buzz hears the song.
TV WOODY
We stick together and see it through 'cause~
You've got a friend in me~
Some other folks might be a little bit
smarter than I am~
Then a kid appears on the TV. Woody watches as the kid hugs his TV self.
In another scene that mirrors Buzz’s revelation in the first movie, Woody scrapes his boot (which had been painted over as part of a restoration) and sees the name written there: ANDY7.
Woody sighs and realizes that Buzz and The Gang were right all along.
WOODY
What am I doing?
Then like a bolt, Woody stands up from the tape and runs towards the vent.
WOODY
BUZZ! Wait! Wait!
Woody not only decides to go back to Andy, but he convinces Jessie and Bullseye to come with him. He has chosen love — even if the end of that road is suffering.
Notice, however, one thing: though the scrapping of the boot to reveal “ANDY” suggests strongly that Woody’s love for his child is the main component in changing his mind, it is not the only component. Look once more to TV-Woody’s words:
Now, remember, deputies. The real treasures are your friends and family. [my emphasis]
You could argue that friends in the sentence above makes Woody think of Andy — in both this movie and the last one, You’ve Got a Friend in Me plays in the context of a child and their toy. But Andy and Woody’s relationship is not, strictly speaking, a friendship. Friendship is by excellence the love between equals; a horizontal love, in which both participants stare not at each other, but together at some third goal8. The relationship of the toys and Andy is a vertical one, much more akin to a parent and his child: the toys constantly speak of how they need to “be there for Andy”, and how their job is to make sure Andy grows up happily.
Therefore, when Woody hears that song on TV, his thoughts will drift to Andy, sure. But they will as well drift to Buzz and the gang, his friends.
When all this is over, I’ll still have my good friend Buzz Lightyear. To infinity and beyond.
This will be important as we enter the last movie of the trilogy.
Far too human
Toy Story 3 takes the fear implicit in the first movie and explicit in the second one and materializes it: Andy has grown up. Now seventeen, he is about to leave for college, leaving the toys to wonder what to do next. Some, like the plastic soldiers, leave, stating that “Andy has grown up. Mission accomplished”. Woody, always loyal to his telos, insists that they should move to the attic, until Andy — presumably with his own children — needs them once more.
The others are comforted a little by this idea, but not for long: Andy decides to take Woody with him to college, separating him from the other toys. However, a series of accidents lands all the toys on Sunnyside, a seemingly paradisiacal daycare where they can be finally played with again.
Sunnyside, however, soon proves to be a toy-dictadorship, under the iron (but fluffy) fist of its leader, Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear, and most of movie is dedicated to the gang’s elaborate escape from Sunnyside. There is much to analyse here: how Lotso’s power-hungry nihilism acts a foil to Woody’s worldview9; the famous trash-compactor scene, where the toys accepts the inevitable and prepared to die10. But what I want to talk about is what happens next, after they are rescued from fire and smoke, and return to Andy.
That’s it, right? The toys came back. Woody is going off to college, Buzz and the gang will be up on the attic. They will still see each other a couple of times a year, when Andy comes back for Christmas and whatnot. Everyone lives happily ever after.
Right?
Here comes the movie’s master stroke. Woody has said his goodbyes to his friends and is ready to go to college, when Andy and his mom walk into the room.
MOM
Did you say goodbye to Molly?
ANDY
Mom, we’ve said goodbye like ten
times!
Mom stops, suddenly overwhelmed. The room is empty.
MOM
Oh, Andy...!
Andy, beside her, is abashed.
ANDY (O.C.)
Mom...! It’s okay...
IN THE COLLEGE BOX
Woody quietly peeks out the hand holes.
POV -- Woody can half-see Mom hug Andy.
MOM
I know, it’s just... I wish I could
always be with you.
ANDY
You will be, Mom.
ON WOODY
He turns and glances off, noticing something. THE PHOTO of young Andy, playing with Woody and the other Toys.
TRACK IN ON
Woody. Mom and Andy’s words echo in his head.
WOODY POV -- His GAZE SHIFTS from Andy-holding-Woody to Woody-with-the-other-Toys.
Woody is a toy. His telos, his purpose in life, is to be played with. But this is a relationship which, by its very nature, cannot last forever. No more than a parent’s care for their child can last forever. This is a kind of love, as C. S. Lewis once wrote, whose purpose is to become useless — the highest goal of the lover is that his beloved may one day not need him.
The (let us say it clear already) love of a parent and child is bright-burning — but it comes through a relationship which must change fundamentally as time goes on. So in a way the soldiers were right: Andy has grown up. He has had toys who loved him and whom he loved. Mission accomplished.
But Woody is not just a toy. He is a person. And as a person, he has other telos: other forms of love in which he can participate. Like friendship.
In the first movie, You’ve Got a Friend in Me was used as a symbol of Woody and Andy’s love — in a scene that is, in retrospective, the last of the happy times, where love flowed unconditionally and undisturbed between them. In the second one, the same song is used, but this time it talks as much of Woody’s relationship with Andy as with the other Toys. Now, in the third one, the transition is complete, at that moment when Woody gazes from the picture of Andy with him to him with his friends.
So Woody makes a decision. He arranges so that Andy will take him and the other toys to Bonnie’s house, where they will be played with again. You could argue that this is the most important element in the finale: the toys having a new owner. But I disagree. Bonny didn’t need new toys: she had plenty already. And the tracking shot above makes it clear that the important, for Woody, is not being played with, but keeping the gang together.
Taken as a whole, Toy Story is one big venture into the meaning of life. Woody begins the trilogy thinking he knows his place in the world; each movie will test this belief a little more. And Woody gets on the other side with a changed mind. Despite what he screamed at Buzz in the first movie, they were never (just) toys. They are people. And they are friends.
To infinity and beyond.
Alvy Ray Smith, one of Pixar’s cofounders, says very bluntly in his book A Biography of the Pixel:
The Movie [Toy Story] was not Steve Jobs’s idea, as sometimes misreported. Jobs was running NeXT. He never talked about movies. It was Disney’s idea and our dream and goal since the 1970’s.
The movies do a great job of showcasing this intuitively. In the second movie, an angry Jessie tells Woody:
Let me guess. Andy is a real special kid. And to him you’re his buddy, his best friend. And when Andy plays with you it’s like — (beat) even though you’re not moving, you feel like you’re alive. Because that’s how he sees you.
Jessie, here, is the first to describe the feeling of being played with from the toy’s perspective, but as soon as she does, the audience knows what she means.
Every scene where Andy is playing — specially, playing with Woody — is joyful and usually accompanied by uplifting music. We are put in the same state of unashamed joy of a child; we are also in the state of unashamed joy the toys experience. In Toy Story 3, in particular, the music swells when Bonnie plays with Woody, who by that point had been gathering dust for years. We understand fully the depth of that moment for him, even in a scene where he is stiff and dead-eyed the whole time.
Look also at the subtle callback to the much more famous, much more memeable “YOU. ARE. A. TOY!” Back then, Woody was trying to smack sense into Buzz; now he is trying to uplift him.
This is seen more clearly in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Every art, every inquiry, and likewise every deliberated action — he says — is done with view to some end. For example, the art of making saddles is done with view to the art of horsemanship; which is done with view to military prowess; which is done with view to victory in war; which is done with view to peace; which is done with view to happiness.
Everything we do, we do seeking some good (saddles, victory, happiness). But the goods are not all equal in worth: those which are sough for themselves are better than those which are sough for with view to others. So victory is better than horsemanship; for if you have victory already, you need no horsemanship. The better of all (human) goods is thus happiness — because happiness is not sought with view to anything but itself.
For my religious readers, it might be good to remind that Sartre was an atheist. When humans create, say, a statue, they imprint on it a somewhat clear essence. But no God means humans themselves are not created, therefore there is no one to give them an essence.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
For the metaphor hunters: notice that Woody is scraping the veneer of immaculate perfection his new life as a museum object entailed, and choosing instead the messy, rough — but made out of love — layer beneath. A layer which had never been gone, only hidden.
“Hence we picture lovers face to face but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead.”
— C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
For a breakdown of how Lotso works as a villain, see Why Lotso is a Terrifying Villain [Toy Story 3].
Some dismiss the trash-compactor sequence as emotionally manipulative; of course a Pixar movie would not really kill its heroes in the last twenty minutes, and thus the scene is just an attempt to squeeze some cheap tears from the audience.
Guilty as charged, I’m inclined to say: it would be a good world if movies’s worst sin was that they made their audience cry. But in truth, the threat of death is just the first layer of this scene. The first layer, of course, supports all the others, but that does not mean it is the most interesting, or important, one.
Toy Story is a series with deals with the lost of meaning — with metaphorical death. What could be more appropriate as an externalization of this lost than actual death? Even better, death is specifically materialized as a trash incinerator. The fate that, according to Lotso, awaits each and every toy: to go from a supposed object of love to a meaningless piece of plastic, meant only to be forgotten in a pile of trash or destroyed altogether. The scene is not impactful (just) because we think our favorite characters might die. It is impactful because we see these characters faced with the most blatant, inescapable, and final expression of their worst fears, and they react to it by peacefully accepting it, and holding those they love one final time.
This is the best analysis of Toy Story I've ever read. And yes, it is a trilogy.
Just like the last movie, this text profundly impacted me.