Toy Story: How Pixar Reinvented the Animated Feature
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Summers, Sam. " From Shelf to Screen: Toys as a Site of Intertextuality." Toy Story: How Pixar Reinvented the Animated Feature. By Susan Smith, Noel Brown and Sam Summers. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. 127–140. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501324949.ch-008>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 01:34 UTC. Copyright © Susan Smith, Sam Summers and Noel Brown 2018. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 1 27 Chapter 8 F ROM SHELF TO SCREEN: TOYS AS A SITE OF INTERTEXTUALITY Sam Summers Intertextuality, as defi ned by Julia Kristeva, is ‘the passage from one sign sys- tem to another’,1 or rather, the inherent interconnectedness of all signs and, by extension, all texts. ‘Any text’, she claims, ‘is constructed as a mosaic of quota- tions; any text is the absorption and transformation of another’. 2 It is true that no text is created or received in a vacuum, and all authors and readers bring with them their past experiences, whether textual or otherwise. A text such as Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), though, explicitly activates and draws upon these links more than most. Noel Brown’s chapter in this book highlights some of the cultural references found in the fi lm’s script, and the ways in which these intertextual gags contribute towards its dual address by reaching out to mul- tiple demographics. Here, though, I focus on the connections established by the toys themselves, and in particular the meanings they can create for a child audience. With its combination of world- famous products licensed from com- panies such as Hasbro and Mattel, and original characters who can not help but bring to mind other real- world toy box fi xtures, Toy Story goes out of its way to make sure that it includes recognizable toys that any kid watching can own or play with. In this chapter, I look at the various eff ects and uses of this particu- lar form of intertextuality in the fi lm, which range from world- building and establishing tone to informing thematic concerns. Crucial to all of these func- tions is the fact that, while toys can be understood as texts themselves, their inclusion in the fi lm amounts to more than a quotation of one work of fi ction appearing in another. Rather than alluding to another fi lm, book or song, the hypertext to which Toy Story refers is reality itself, with the toys functioning as quotations from the ‘real world’. It is this desire to anchor itself to the everyday life of its audience which runs through the various uses of intertextuality here, setting the fi lm apart from other animated works which use anachronistic or otherwise contextually inappropriate intertexts to place themselves at a remove from reality. 99781501324918_pi-240.indd781501324918_pi-240.indd 112727 111/8/20171/8/2017 22:49:33:49:33 PPMM 128 128 Sam Summers Th ere are three main ways in which the toys of Toy Story are tethered to those that exist in the real world. Foremost, there are the specifi c characters who literally represent existing commodities, their appearance sanctioned by the relevant manufacturers, allowing them to be imported directly and more- or- less unchanged into the fi lms. Offi cially licensed toys in the fi rst Toy Story include Mr. Potato Head from Hasbro, Slinky Dog from James Industries, Etch A Sketch from the Ohio Art Company, Troll Doll from the Troll Company and Toddle Tots from the Little Tykes Company, while Mattell’s Barbie and Ken, Fisher- Price’s Chatter Telephone and a Totoro plush from Studio Ghibli join in the sequels. Th ese toys were licensed to appear in the franchise fol- lowing negotiations with their respective rights- holders, requiring the manu- facturer’s approval of the character’s on- screen actions, characterization and role in the story. 3 Th e arrangement is a mutually benefi cial one, with the toys’ profi les receiving a signifi cant boost from the fi lms’ success: Mr. Potato Head saw a reported 800 per cent increase in sales following Toy Story , while Etch A Sketch sold a remarkable 4,000 per cent more units. 4 Second, there are the generic toys which are well- known and widely recognizable staples of many children’s bedrooms, but whose rights are not tied up with any particular com- pany. Traditional playthings, such as the little green army men or Hamm the piggy bank, fall into this category, as does Rex, who stands in for the many hundreds of plastic dinosaurs around the world. Th e use of these longstanding, public- domain fi gures helped to boost the ranks of Andy’s toys without the need to consult copyright holders, while still remaining faithful to the kinds of items one could conceivably fi nd in a real toy box. Deviating further from spe- cifi c depictions is the third category, archetypal toys, wholly fi ctional characters created by Pixar to serve as analogues for well- known products for which they could not secure the rights. Perhaps most explicitly, Sid’s ill- fated ‘Combat Carl’ is a clear ersatz G. I. Joe, whom Hasbro would not allow to appear in Toy Story . 5 Other examples include ‘Mr. Spell’, a version of Texas Instruments’ Speak & Spell, and Lots- O’- Huggin’ Bear, a villainous take- off of Kenner’s Care Bears from the third fi lm. In fact, as I explore later on, Buzz and Woody themselves play heavily on the conventions of character- based action fi gure fads. Given the list above, it should not need pointing out that Toy Story employs its intertextual connections in an entirely diff erent manner to the rapid- fi re pop culture comedy found in Shrek (Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, 2001) and its sequels and imitators. While DreamWorks’ ogre frequently encounters modern music, products and brands wholly at odds with the series’ medieval fairy- tale setting, all of the toys in Toy Story are perfectly at home in the fi ctional world of Andy’s room. In Shrek , these inclusions are intentionally illogical. Th ey act to create dissonance in the service of comedy, spoofi ng fairy stories by loudly disrupting the genre’s lexical code. In the Pixar fi lm, however, they have an oppositional eff ect, and one which functions with much more subtlety. Th e use of real- life toys to populate the diegesis anchors it to our own world, making it clear that the story takes place in a familiar setting. Th is is 99781501324918_pi-240.indd781501324918_pi-240.indd 112828 111/8/20171/8/2017 22:49:33:49:33 PPMM 1 29 Toys as a Site of Intertextuality 129 important because it is one of many factors which sets Toy Story apart from the prevailing trends of the animated features which came before it. In addition to its groundbreaking and unique technology and visual aesthetics, its story of toys inhabiting a recognizably contemporary suburban environment stands in contrast to the fantastical stories which dominated the market at the time. By 1995, the output of market leaders Disney and their closest competitor, Don Bluth, consisted mostly of fairy tales, historical epics and talking animal pic- tures. Th e makers of Toy Story were not only able to more closely mimic reality with their computer animation, but were also apparently determined to make it clear that the world inhabited by Andy is meant to be a version of our own. Th is is something that can be taken for granted in the average live- action fi lm, in which the world is photographed and transposed directly on to the screen, but this is not the case in animation, where the diegesis is constructed from scratch, and can only ever constitute at best a representation of reality. Toy Story , then, makes use of its intertextual reference points to immedi- ately present the animated world as a familiar one; the fi rst toy seen on screen is not Woody, the fi ctitious protagonist, but Mr. Potato Head, possibly the most well- known of the real- world toys in Andy’s room. Th e next shot features the Toddle Tots and the Troll Doll, mixed in with generic toys such as Hamm and archetypes such as Rocky the plastic pro- wrestler. Th e familiar is depicted alongside the ersatz, neatly establishing the recognizable setting while slowly acclimatizing the audience to the fact that not all of the movie’s characters will be taken from reality. Only then are we introduced to Woody, his unfamiliarity mitigated by the fact that he is brought into a recognizable context; the audi- ence are encouraged to discern for themselves his place in the plastic ecosystem based on information they bring with them to the cinema. Th is kind of world- building – surrounding original protagonists with a supporting cast drawn from recognizable fi gures – can be seen in other animated fi lms which take texts and commodities as their subject matter. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988), for instance, Roger Rabbit, his sidekick Baby Herman and his wife Jessica are ‘toons’ who live in a version of Hollywood populated by such icons of ‘Golden Age’ animation as Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Wreck-It Ralph (Rich Moore, 2012), meanwhile, follows the vil- lain of a fi ctional arcade game called Fix- It Felix, Jr. , who interacts with actual videogame heroes such as Sonic and Q*Bert, as well as attending a support group full of famous gaming antagonists.