elfs | Toy Story 3, from an SFnal perspective...

On the other hand, as much as I enjoyed Toy Story 3, I couldn't help but wince at the entire premise. As someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about the consequences of free will, agency, and creatures with different goals from those of we evolved, the story comes across as more of a horror story and a cautionary tale.

That's not te say that I didn't suspend my critical facilities sufficiently to enjoy it, and like the rest of my family I cried at the end. But after I turned my critical thinking facilities back on, I started to see the movie in a different light.

The basic premise of the Toy Story series is simple: as very small children, we imbue all objects with a certain amount of agency-- a capacity to change the world as they will. As we grow up, we learn that some things don't have agency, and eventually we get around to the point of learning that "only people have the capacity for agency"-- and sometimes we turn this around and argue "only things with the capacity for agency are people."

Somewhere in this stage we get toys, and we extend to them with a certain expectation of agency, and doing so is how we learn to distinguish some fantasy from reality, as well as agency from some naturalistic pantheism that imbues everything with agency.

In the Toy Story universe, toys have agency. Perhaps they retain the agency imbued upon them by their children or, as is sometimes implied, they gain a measure of agency through being loved and appreciated by their children. Whatever agency they have, the rules of the universe are such that it must never appear to the humans that toys have agency; toys are rendered inert by the presence of a human. Only in the absence of human beings to toys start to show their full capacity for agency.

(There is, of course, the "Sid Exception," where Woody, through apparently either superhuman (supertoyish?) effort or through some divine providence, revealed his agency to Sid long enough to garner some measure of revenge for Sid's long-suffering toys.)

Throughout the Toy Story series we the audience are asked to do what children do-- accept that Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the others have not just agency, but something more profound: humanity. They have feelings, hopes and fears for the future, and a real love and concern for one another, and for Andy, their human owner.

And yet we also accept, without questioning it, that they have an owner. That they are toys, things made of plastic and cloth and metal and stuffing, destined some day to break down and be discarded.

And while we're being asked to care about Woody & company, we witness many other toys around them, especially in the third film, experiencing existential horrors of their own. There is the eternal threat of "ending up in the landfill," which is apparently the toyish idea of Hell-- and in the third film we see someone tossed into the dumpster and headed to the landfill, with a mere shrug of the shoulders. "That's what happens to toys when they get too worn out. Poor fella," one says.

Andy, being a good owner, finally finds an appropriate home for his toys in the end. Most toys aren't so lucky. Most toys don't have quite so loving a god. (In fact, this point is made all the more strongly when the nemesis character, about to have his moment of triumph, shouts at Andy's toys, "Where is your child now?") Most toys' existences end first with despair, and then with horror.

(Toy Story 2 makes the point that there's an utterly relentless pressure to upgrade and expand the child's toy collection, and that most toys do end up unloved and ultimately sent to the landfill. The life of the average toy in the Toy Story is little better than that expected of someone in a Jonthan Edwards sermon. Indeed, most toys really are living in Ted Chiang's Hell is the Absence of God.)

And yet this all seems acceptable because the rules under which these toys live makes it acceptable. They're not entirely human-- they lack agency in our presence. They're not Darwinian-- they lack any capacity for reproduction or struggle. In fact, unlike us, the entirety of their existence is about purpose (paging Agent Smith, Agent Smith to the white courtesy telephone, please) and dedication toward a singular human being. (Woody, in fact makes this point hard in Toy Story 3, to the point that he suffers less than the others do because he never loses faith in Andy's essential love for his toys.)

Toy Story 3 can be seen as a loving tribute to toys and childhood.

It can also be seen as the most brilliant first wave of a propaganda campaign designed to get us to accept the coming of more advanced toys, ones with agency, with free will, and still accept that they're "just toys," items destined to someday break down, and be thrown away. Toy Story 3 is a reminder that Supertoys Last All Summer Long.

In many ways, the allegory to our existence, our incapacity to see those outside our own monkeysphere as deserving of the full benefit of respect couldn't be stronger. On the other hand, it begs the question of when, if ever, we'll invite our next generation of supertoys into it.