Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Most Terrifying Film I've Ever Seen

We're always on the look out for films to watch as a family here at Casa McKinty and one good way of finding those films is to look at the IMDB list of top 100 family movies. We've gradually made our way through that list, but the elephant in the room is the film sitting there at the very top. No it's not Dumbo (all that talk of elephants threw you didn't it?) its Toy Story 2, a film I'm reluctant to show to the kids because I found it to be the stuff of nightmares. I was quite unnerved by Toy Story because of its scary premise and the fundamental ontological and existential doubts generated by this premise, but Toy Story 2 was an even more harrowing experience. 
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Toy Story is about a boy growing up and playing less and less with his toys as he finds other interests. Somehow these toys have become sentient and because the boy no longer cares for them they are condemned to spend years living a life of sadness and neglect until they eventually get thrown out. Thrown out, yes, but they don't actually die do they? No apparently they just kind of live on forever in their plastic bodies, moving from landfill to landfill, long since driven mad by their own longings and loneliness, until they finally get smothered at the bottom of one the Dying Earth's garbage heaps. Two billion years of existential torture will pass until the sun expands and vaporises the planet bringing merciful release from these cruel and completely undeserved torments.
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Toy Story 2 is an even more challenging and unpleasant film. We learn that toys come alive in their boxes and can spend their entire existence in these boxes if they are purchased by a collector. What a nightmare buried alive scenario that is! But thats not all. We also see toys attacked by animals, abused by humans, we see toys fight with one another and then play dead when a God-like human enters. We see toys dismembered and disfigured and put together again in slipshop Frankenstein fashion. Remember these are sentient creatures who suffer just like you and me. They live in fear and they can feel pain. I don't think Toy Story 2 is supposed to be an allegory but it reminded me of the arbitrariness of life for civilians under Nazi occupation. Two of the writers on Toy Story were Joss Whedon and Andrew Stanton neither of whom are strangers to existential or moral questions. But at least with Buffy or Wall-E there is a candle of hope in the abyss. In Toy Story 2 the abyss is the world itself and that world is unjust, cruel, random, pitiless, and ultimately pointless. There are pockets of love and affection yes but these fleeting moments must be small comfort in the eons of loneliness and tears.
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I'll admit that I don't really understand the metaphysical conceit of the Toy Story films. Toys come to life through the love of children? That can't be right because on many occasions unloved toys just out of the factory and in shops are also alive. How does this happen? Is it just because they are toys? If I draw two eyes on a white sock will it also gain sentience? If I draw a face on a brick will the brick be alive in the Toy Story universe? If I draw a nose and mouth on my hand will my hand have become sentient? And once created do these toys need no mental or physical sustenance? How does this not deny the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Are some toys born evil like Chucky the Doll? Can a toy go bad? Do they have free will? How does a toy fall from grace? And why do they conceal their sentience from us? Even the bad toys in Toy Story never act up in the presence of a human. What are they afraid of? Did the God who gave them life threaten to take it away if the secret ever came out?
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Ok, ok, like my horror movie blogpost two posts ago, I understand that Toy Story and Toy Story 2 (there's no way I'm seeing Toy Story 3) are only movies and that we are supposed to suspend disbelief and just enjoy, but I'm afraid that I cant do that. Some of the images of Toy Story have become incorporated into my visions of hell - the toys worshipping the great claw that comes to pick them up from their dark nether world, toys waiting forever in dusty boxes like brain damaged coma patients, toys ripped apart by careless children and dogs...These are grim and Orwellian ideas and worse I think than anything dreamed up by Dante or Bosch. Nope the kids can watch these films on their own, I'm not getting involved...