What’s up, Wisecrack?
Helen again.
This summer, audiences got an arguably unnecessary addition to one of cinema’s most perfect
trilogies with Toy Story 4.
The original three films about a band of spunky, sentient children’s playthings grappled
with surprisingly deep questions about love, loss, identity, being forgotten, moving on
and more.
This was a pinnacle achievement in children’s cinema - in which sequels often feel like
clumsy, narratively gratuitous cash grabs.
So we went into this fourth film wondering - is there really anything left for the series
to say, or are we just pandering to Randy Newman fans at this point?
Let’s investigate in this Wisecrack Edition on Toy Story 4: Deep or Dumb?
And, of course, spoilers ahead.
Alright guys, let’s dive into a recap.
Toy Story 4 starts with a flashback to the young Andy days, as Woody watches Bo Peep
being given away.
She asks him to come with her, but he decides “bros before Bo’s” and stays with Andy.
Flash forward to teenage Andy giving Woody and co. to a hyperactive kid named Bonnie.
Even as Bonnie becomes increasingly less interested in Woody, his loyalty leads him to follow
her to kindergarten, where he helps her create Forky, which is exactly what it sounds like:
A spork with mismatched googly-eyes and pipe cleaner arms.
Bonnie effing loves Forky, but Forky thinks he’s trash and keeps trying end it all in
the nearest rubbish bin.
Woody has to prevent Forky from trashing himself when Bonnie’s family heads out on an RV
trip.
Mishaps ensue, and Forky is promptly kidnapped in an antique store by a sinister doll, Gabby
Gabby and her horrifying marionette minions.
Lost on a playground, a hapless Woody runs into his old boo, Bo Peep, who is stanning
the “lost toy” lifestyle.
Together, the gang sets out on an elaborate quest to rescue Bonnie’s beloved plastic
spork from Gabby Gabby.
Only it turns out Gabby Gabby just wants Woody’s voice box to replace her defective one so
she can convince a little girl to love her.
Woody agrees to give up his voice box, the marionette performs some quick black market
surgery, and, in exchange, Woody gets Forky back.
Everything culminates at the carnival grounds where Woody finds his calling as a Lost Toy
and decides that, this time, he’ll stay with Bo.
They then devote themselves to helping toys find their own way.
The end.
Now, Pixar is known for making some of the best written and most thoughtful films out
there, and the Toy Story movies are no exception.
So we think it’s worth asking if Woody’s emotional journey is about more than regretting
a breakup with a hot shepard.
We’ve come up with three possible interpretations of the film to run by you guys.
Our first argument: Toy Story 4 is a tale of existential awakening.
Briefly, Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual free will and our power
to make choices that determine the course of our lives.
The first three films have brushed against existential themes, asking what it means to
be a toy who loves and is loved, or no longer loved.
But in this fourth film it really goes there.
See, nearly every character in the film has some kind of conflict with their “inner
voice” that governs their decision making process.
Buzz struggles to make sense of his factory-issued dialogue, while Woody grapples with his own
conscience to parse what he should do from what he wants to do.
Meanwhile, Forky’s poor, plastic spork brain insists that he is trash, and Gabby Gabby
longs to fix her voice box so she can speak the words her toymakers intended her to.
To grasp how the inner voice speaks to a key element of existentialism, we’re looking
to one bespectacled French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sartre believed that we are all radically free and, because of that, it's up to us to
determine who we become based on our choices.
YOU choose the path you walk, the ice cream flavor you eat, and the YouTube videos you
watch, algorithm be damned!
In his essay “Existentialism is a Humanism”, Sartre famously wrote that “existence precedes
essence,” explaining that “first of all man exists, turns up, appears on the scene,
and only afterwards, defines himself.”
Basically, there is no “essence” that defines you from birth.
You first exist, then your essence is defined by your choices.
You aren’t born the kind of person who wears pleated khakis for fun, you become that when
you choose to wear your school uniform to parties.
These choices define your character.
In this way, we can see Bo Peep as the consummate existentialist.
She’s broken free from her obligations as a toy belonging to children, and no longer
feels compelled to live by any outside creed.
This separation from the rules and expectations of her past is symbolized in her freeing herself
from the lamp that she came with.
She runs amuck, exploring the world and playing with whatever kids she wants.
Most importantly, she doesn’t blame anyone for her choices - She is accountable to no
one and holds no one accountable for herself.
She is free.
The other characters are all struggling with non-existential thinking - they define themselves
not by the individual choices they make, but by their essence as toys as defined by their
quote unquote inner voice.
This is apparent in Woody’s single-minded devotion to Bonnie.
He sees it as his duty to serve her, even though she’s clearly no longer interested
in playing with him.
Regardless, he feels like he can’t make the choice to be a toy without a kid.
Similarly, Forky sees himself as essentially made from trash, and thus identifies entirely
as said trash, rather than a toy.
This line of thought is especially apparent in the toys that were born “defective.”
For Gabby-Gabby, whose voice box doesn’t work, her failure to fully embody her designed
functionality makes her sub par, and justifies her sometimes-cruel actions.
Or take Duke Kaboom, who, in not being able to jump through his hoop, failed to live up
to the impossible expectations set by his commercials.
That failure, we see, has become an excuse to do nothing with his life but weep and bemoan
what could have been.
For these two characters, their inability to embody an aspect of their supposed essence,
haunts them.
They define themselves not by the choices they make, but by a perceived lack with which
they were born, and thus are miserable.
Now, because Sartre believed that the choices we make determine our essence, he also was
big on the idea of personal responsibility - or as he puts it:
This might sound fun at first - don’t we all want to be in control of our own lives
and eat ice cream for breakfast?
It’s not that simple though - because a dude’s choices determine his destiny, he
“is responsible for everything he does.”
So when you get cavities, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
As a result, Sartre doesn’t see freedom as a fun walk in the park - in fact, he writes
that “man is condemned to be free.”
A lot of people find that freedom hard to take, which is why, you know… cults.
This conflict around accepting personal responsibility for your choices is probably best embodied
by Buzz Lightyear.
Whenever he’s faced with a tough decision, Buzz presses one of his buttons and waits
for his “programming” to issue a command - calling this his “inner voice.”
Rather than take responsibility for his choices, he simply outsources them.
This can occasionally help him get out of a jam:
“What would Woody do?”
“Eh, jump out of a moving vehicle.”
“What would Woody do?”
“There’s a secret mission, in uncharted space, let’s go!”
but doesn’t always yield the most helpful advice:
“Scanning perimeter.”
“Lasers at full power-” “Buzz, what are you doing?”
“I’m thinking.”
This is also reflected in Woody’s preoccupation with his inner voice.
While Buzz’s inner voice was literally manufactured by a factory, Woody’s was developed after
years of believing that a toy only exists for the joy of a kid.
As a result, he sees his duties as clearly defined: He has to help Bonnie however he
can.
As he puts it:
“I need to do this that little voice inside me would never leave me alone if I gave up.”
This is despite the fact that Bonnie’s really over him.
Here, we could say that Woody is acting in “bad faith” or what Sartre would refer
to as the state of pretending that you’re not free.
In a burn-happy quote, Sartre says:
In the first scene of the film, Woody pretends that he doesn’t have the freedom to leave
Andy behind and run away with Bo Peep.
Sartre would say that he does, and the only thing that stopped him was his choice not
to.
Throughout the course of the film, we watch as each character basically becomes…, through
a Sartrean lens, kind of, really human?...
coming to terms with their own autonomy and freedom to make choices.
That’s right, toys are resolving their existential crises onscreen, what have you done today?
Most importantly, Woody chooses to stay with Bo Peep, thus embracing his radical freedom
and rejecting his supposed essential “purpose” of being a child’s plaything.
Even though leaving his child behind once seemed unfathomable, he realizes that he can,
and so, he does.
Existential crisis averted!
Importantly, Buzz too has his own free will affirmed during a critical moment - He needs
Bonnie to bring the family back to the antique store to rescue Woody and Forky, but she just
won’t notice that she left her backpack behind.
After his buttons fail to guide him, he uses his own voice:
“Your backpack is in the antique store, let’s go!”
“Oh no!
My backpack!”
Here, Buzz recognizes that he can’t rely on his factory-issued “inner voice,” and
is forced to take action to save the day- to make a choice.
When we first meet GabbyGabby, she has an almost religious attachment to her own mythos,
reading her illustrated companion book as if its a biblical text and treating tea-time
with her inattentive “God”, Harmony, as if it is a spiritual rite.
Her life is defined by her desire to please Harmony, and she goes to extraordinary lengths
to do so.
But then, even when her voice box is fixed, she's still rejected by her, and the narrative
in the book is proven false.
With the help of Woody and Bo, she learns that she’s not at the mercy of the Gabby
Gabby mythos- that it’s up to her to define herself and her worth through the choices
she makes.
Similarly, Sartre’s whole schtick is predicated on the belief that God does not exist.
Because there is no bearded dude in the sky controlling our lives, it must be up to us
to choose our own path.
When Gabby Gabby encounters the lost little girl at the fair, she chooses to offer herself
up for adoption.
Sure, she’s submitting to the ownership model that Woody’s about to leave behind,
but she’s openly choosing it over the alternative.
Similarly, Ducky and Bunny, the lovable Key and Peele carnival toys go from wanting to
passively be chosen by a child who will love them to becoming super-active freedom fighters,
busting other stuffed animals out of the carnival-booth purgatory they loathed.
Meanwhile, Duke Kaboom, at the urging of Woody and Bo, chooses to leap on his motorcycle,
first four feet then forty, in spite of the fact that he won’t land perfectly like he’s
supposed to in the commercial.
He’s learned to no longer live by the standards dictated by his design.
That, friends, is called freedom.
And we can’t forget Forky - easily the weirdest character in the Toy Story canon.
Early on, Forky identifies as trash - he was made to be a spork, and should have wound
up in the warm, warm embrace of the garbage: “I am not a toy, I’m a spork!”
“Be quiet!”
“ I was made for soup, salad, maybe chili, and then the trash!
I’m litter, freedom!”
However, with the help of Woody, he realizes that he isn’t a slave to his inner voice
- He can establish a new identity as a toy who is loved by Bonnie.
He’s so thoroughly inculcated to his own freedoms that, by the end of the film, he’s
even prepared to pass on some of that existential wisdom to his new love interest.
“We are all toys.
Unique, beautiful, toys.”
Each character’s narrative arc shows them grow from a character who accepts the destiny
thrust upon them, to an almost eerily human-like being who makes choices that have consequences,
and thus exhibits autonomy over their own existence.
That’s pretty beautiful.
We’d grade this interpretation a cool A, and say that, viewed through this lens, the
film is deep with a capital D.
So now that we’ve gotten the existential mind-fuck out of the way, its time for our
second interpretation: that Bo Peep is the Miltonian Satan.
I know.
Hear us out.
In the world of these toys, children are basically God-like creatures who they spend their lives
serving.
They live their lives for their children, just as a religious person might live their
life for God.
In fact, the god-liness of children in this world is made pretty literal with the introduction
of Forky, an inanimate object who Bonnie, through the sheer power of childish wonder,
whimsy and a couple of googly-eyes, brings to life.
It’s also worth noting the almost religious reverence that the toys have for their children:
“No, I can’t, sir.
Bo, I need to get back to my kid.”
“What!
You got a kid?”
“Yeah…”
“Way to beat the odds, soldier.”
Recall the way Gabby Gabby reads her book like a bible.
Similarly, Duke spends all his time bemoaning the way he let down his former child owner,
and when he performs a life-threatening stunt, it is his child’s face that appears to him,
like a divine mirage.
In this context, Bo Peep has committed the ultimate sin: she’s rejected children, and
in doing so, rejected God.
In John Milton’s famous epic Paradise Lost, a prideful Satan is depicted as being cast
out from heaven and condemned to Hell after a failed rebellion against God.
He didn’t accept God’s dominion over him, and thought all angels should rule as Gods
themselves.
Similarly, Bo Peep didn’t want to belong to a child anymore, she wanted to be her own
master.
When she and Woody reunite after years, he assumes that she must be devastated not to
have a child.
Instead, she seems free, almost ecstatic.
Perhaps fittingly, moments earlier, the pair fall down a hill - Is it a stretch to see
this then, as Woody’ satanic-like “fall” from his role as the eternally devout toy?
Hmm… maybe.
There’s more though: Satan is practically defined by his predilections as a tempter.
In Goethe’s Faust, a devil tries to convince Faust to sell his soul in exchange for all
worldly pleasures, telling him to:
Similarly, Bo Peep lures Woody away from the quiet, safe world he has known all his life.
She embodies temptation, compelling Woody with promises of exciting carnivals and far-flung
lands.
If we do take this interpretation seriously, it’s also worth noting the fun reversal
of traditional Christian imagery - Bo Peep is a shepherd, just like Jesus… except she’s
leading toys away from the flock.
She’s really the anti-shepherd encouraging everyone to go their own way in life, free
of the responsibility they all feel to their sometimes-unappreciative children.
Now before you raise your eyebrows too high, know that we’d only grade this interpretation
a square C+.
If you can’t quite picture Bo Peep wearing devil horns, that’s ok.
We’ve got one more interpretation for you.
We see some definite psychological complexes exhibited by Forky and it helps explain why
he desperately wants to bathe in trash.
To understand this, let’s look at Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank.
Now, Freud describes birth, or leaving the womb, as the "first experience of anxiety
and thus the source and prototype of ... anxiety.”
His one-time colleague Otto Rank took it further, suggesting that birth isn’t just anxiety-inducing…
it’s actually traumatic, the greatest trauma of life, in fact.
Think about it - you go from the reasonably chill, quiet world of your mom’s womb (sorry)
to a weird outside world where your mom’s screaming, fluorescent lights are shining
and then some doctor spanks your butt.
Not the kind of activity you want to repeat.
So now consider that Forky’s “birth” of sorts took place in the kindergarten classroom
when he was clumsily pieced together by Bonnie from disparate pieces of trash.
As indicated by the first noise he makes when he becomes vocal,
“Ahhhhhhh!”
Forky’s birth seems to have been at least a little traumatic.
Rank notes that the resulting trauma from birth leads us to long for a return to our
primal state, noting that “every pleasure has as its final aim the re-establishment
of the intrauterine primal pleasure.”
Basically, we have a desire to return to the womb, even though we definitely would not
fit anymore.
As a result, we experience infantile regression, which means that we’ll seek out replacements
for our mom’s womb in various objects or other people, which a Freudian might say is
the reason a Freudian might say is the reason you enjoy jacuzzis, sorry.
Anyway, we see some hardcore infantile regression coming from Forky, who desperately seeks to
return to his own “womb,” which is to say, the trash.
In what becomes one of the film’s funniest bits, Forky gleefully throws himself into
every trash can he can find.
He reverently calls out for trash the way a child might call out for their own mother,
and exhibits the same kind of clingy longing that a newborn might.
When Woody asks him why he’s so obsessed with trash cans, he gives an answer that would
certainly raise Otto Rank’s eyebrow:
“It’s warm…”
“Ew.”
“And cozy…”
“I guess.”
“And safe!
Like somebody’s whispering in your ear ‘Everything’s gonna be okay.’”
If that’s not infantile regression, I don’t know what is!
Okay but real talk, we’ll give Forky’s garbage womb interpretation a solid C.
Now, whether or not you buy any of these ways of reading the film, I think we can all agree
that Pixar created another extremely thoughtful, emotionally powerful film with Toy Story 4.
And at least for our favorite reading, it seems like the geniuses at Pixar have created
a toy-sized mirror for some of the anxieties we may be facing in an increasingly secular
world.
But what do you guys think?
Do you buy that Toy Story is an existentialist saga, or do you think it’s more in line
with our not-so-secret desire to crawl back into a nice big womb?
Let us know in the comments.
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Be sure to click that subscribe button and, as always, peace!