Toy Story 3

It's been a long time since I last posted - longer than I would like - but between interning with the Michigan State Bar, attempting to tackle my summer reading list (I have finished Insectopedia, and am now working on Memoirs of Hadrian) exploring the UP with Mara and paying a visit to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival I've been quite busy. Beyond that, my mode of living seems to have shifted this summer. Usually I find myself unable to not reflect on my life. At the very least (and I think this is somewhat related - mostly because my tools for self-analysis are directly transported from what I've learned about analyzing texts; a notion that, as I write it, strikes me as slightly disturbing, all the more so because "analysis" derives from the Greek ανα-λυειν, meaning to take up and destroy, which is sometimes what I find my analysis doing to my experience), I'm always looking forward and impatiently anticipating what's coming next. It's the same force that compels a reader in the grip of a thrilling novel to continue reading, no matter how many hours past their bedtime it is (I don't mean to imply that my life is thrilling). This summer has been entirely different though. I find myself much more content to live in the moment and enjoy events simply, without reflecting on them afterwards. None of this is to say that I'm not looking forward to events over the summer (or even in the fall), or that I've been intellectually unengaged. It is tempting to conclude that I'm so content right now that I feel no desire for the future, or need to reflect, but I don't think that's it either. And, as this post itself attests to, that state of mind may be gone already, and so I will never quite suss out what inspired it. Fittingly enough, this current fit of self-examination was brought on by a narrative text (and a masterful one at that): Toy Story 3.

I sat down to watch Toy Story 3 last night with Mara and her mother Janet, a tub of popcorn and box of Junior Mints at the ready (both remained untouched for longer than usual; we had all just consumed generous portions of Italian food). Having read the laudatory Times review and noted what people were saying on Rotten Tomatoes, my expectations were high. And the movie didn't disappoint. I found it whimsical, hilarious, poignant and profound. I won't delve too much into the plot of the film, because that wasn't the interesting part. This movie, more so than the previous two (It's been a while since I've seen them), confronted the question of why toys are meaningful to us. Of course, through a sort of categorical metonymy, toys can be understood to stand in for a certain type of material object: those that had much value in the past, but are no longer quite as loved (I actually think that the film-makers try to cast an even wider net - there is an interesting scene to this effect near the end of the movie where Woody watches on while Andy's mother bids him farewell before he drives off to college).

Almost everyone experiences reluctance when asked to throw out objects from their past, and on the surface it seems a logical response. But I think that it's actually a bizarre reaction. Why do these objects hold value for us? Objectively, old toys have very little value. They're usually beat up and outdated. They have little functional value to older children, who (probably) don't play with toys at all. The meaning, I think, lies in the relationship that these objects have with the past, and the access that they give us to earlier stages of our life. Objects from the past definitely have value as aids to memory. Much in the same way that photos provide us with a portal to the past, even in a physical sense (the light captured through the aperture creates a chemical reaction - a physical process), objects from our past allow us access to what has already happened. While photographs document, old toys strike me much more as totems (I would almost call them magical items) that can be used to summon lost memories and mental states. I think that this status, as an aid to memory, is the basis of our ongoing relationship with old objects that have "personal value." Toy Story 3 presents a picture of our relationship with toys that is much more closely modeled on human relationships and, I would argue, not quite accurate (though certainly necessary in a movie that personifies toys).

One of the greatest anxieties in the film - one that, in real life, is not limited only to toys - is the notion of being replaced. During a noir-style flashback, one toy recalls how, having been accidentally left along the side of the road, he and and his compatriots struggled back to their original owner and found that she had replaced one of them with an exact replica. The toy turns away, disillusioned and heartbroken. I don't think that it's too much of a stretch to read into this scene the concerns of a self-aware consumer culture. How much meaning can objects, and our relationships with them, have if it is all replaceable? Beyond that, if we cede that we define ourselves (partially or totally) through what we buy, what does it say about our conceptions of our own identities if they are constructed out of identical parts? I think that the notion of these objects as aids to memory and physical connections with our past provides a satisfying answer. If that toy had returned to its owner it still would have had value and meaning for her. In that same vein, it is important to note that initially we are the ones who imbue objects with meaning, not vice versa. A purchased object, particularly a toy, seems to me to be always already a subjective object, one that is unique from all others because of what its owner attributes to or connects with it (and the memories and emotions that attach to an object accumulate over time).

Tangentially: having lost my favorite pair of sunglasses, I found them under the pilates machine in Mara's room, and am very happy about it.