Thursday 25 July 2013

Sunday 21 July 2013

Toy Story Trilogy - the meaning



The final segment of Pixar’s generation-spanning Toy Story trilogy has rightly attracted a great deal of praise for pulling off the rare feat of making a heart warming film that stays just the right side of sentimental without ever veering into histrionics or cliché. A number of theories have sprung up on what the stories themselves actually symbolise. In The Guardian, respected film critic Peter Bradshaw suggests that the discarding of one’s childhood toys represents our mordant fear of being rejected by our own children in our twilight years.

Elsewhere, some people seem to think it’s an endorsement of the pro-life, Papal approved side of 21st centuryliving.

With the kind of what the heck enthusiasm I used to reserve for swallowing shit E’s in the 1990’s, I’ve decided to throw my own two pennorth into the ring. Never mind the fact that with my paltry A-level in Film Studies (grade A, suck on that Kermode) and a knowledge of cinema summed up by only six visits to the pictures (the pictures!!) this century, I’m as well-qualified to comment on film theory as Martine McCutcheon is on the Korea crisis. That doesn’t matter. For, as Simon Cowell surely said of Amanda Holden, “qualified, schmalified”

My theory is basically that Toy Story is essentially a film about the mortality of masculinity. It’s a theory that evolved over a number of half-drunken minutes contemplating the marketing possibilities of my almost-written film Titantric, in which Leonardo Di Caprio fucks a boat for hours without coming. Don’t tell me that won’t work, he’s in a film where he walks around in people’s heads right now. Ludicrous. And don’t tell me you’ve never found yourself looking longingly at a catamaran and found yourself in a need for a cold compress.

Basically, how it works is this. Andy is the modern American male in crisis, we barely hear him talk but we do hear the voice of that most recognisably Everyman of contemporary American culture, Tom Hanks. Tom is the voice of a cowboy, Woody. Now we can all go on about Woody representing some kind of homespun version of traditional Americana but he’s not. Woody is a penis. He’s Andy’s favourite toy in the first film, always playing with him. But what comes along to threaten his love of playing with his old chap. Buzz Lightyear. Buzz is drink, Buzz is drugs. Buzz is the distraction, the shiny new plaything. Andy  goes from thinking about his old chap all day to reaching for the stars. There’s probably something important here about all of this being meta-textual and what have you but I’m on a roll now, this bong is starting to kick in and you’ll just have to bear with me.

Woody’s not physically attached to Andy but he might as well by, his dilemmas all spring from separation from his owner. Fear of castration and all that, a fear better symbolised by Woody’s continual losing of the hat. Yeah, yeah it’s Indiana Jones again I know but Indy’s hat symbolised a longing for being buttfucked. I read it in Take A Break. When Woody loses his hat, it’s a metaphor for being castrated.

Buzz is so clearly a cipher for hedonism. Like the erectile pun of Woody, Buzz’s name springs from the spine-tingling adrenalin rush one can only get from sitting around in the same clothes for five days straight smoking something you think might have been called “Summer Storm” but are now beginning to wonder if he didn’t actually say “Domestos”. Who in all three adventures goes mad, Buzz does. Buzz is the one who most clearly wrestles with his ego, his id. Buzz is the one who gets to go all Mexican, express his feminine side, and of course, convince himself of his ability to fly. He’s a space cadet.

Back in a sec, I just kicked over some Lilt. Fuck it, I’ll do it tomorrow.

The trilogy is basically still a story about growing up but it’s not so much the transition from childhood to maturity, as the rite of passage we must all make in between impregnating our first wanksock and gassing ourselves in a garage before the grandchildren come round for tea. It’s the hell of domesticity that Woody and the gang find themselves in constant battle with, despite the fact that that gang contains Mr and Mrs Potato Head whose love for each other is depicted in an endless display of self-harm, accidental disfigurement and transubstantive tortilla-based shape shifting. Suck on that, Mike Leigh, suck on that.

Anyway, that’s it. Andy’s toys represent all the conflicting fun urges he could be acting upon. Apart from Woody and Buzz, there’s cars (Bullseye), girls (Jessie), munchies (Ham), erm green dinosaurs. Look, I know I’m right. Science is just what they think they know and all that. And the journeys the toys make in each film represent the various forces stopping Andy from getting as much drunken action as he can be. In the first film they have to escape from the neighbours (SOCIETY) the second they have to escape from a wicked businessman (WORK) and the last, they have to escape other toys (PEER PRESSURE). When Andy says goodbye to the toys, it is a genuinely sad moment, because Andy is basically finished as a human being. He’s off to college. He’s off to get a mortgage, a middle management job with Pepsi Burger. His life is over. Cry much? I know I did.

And where's Andy's dad in all this? That's right, he's absent. Missing, presumed extinct, like those other great American male icons - the cowboy and the astronaut.

Next week, I’ll be discussing The Cannonball Run with a view to expounding on my theory that Burt Reynolds moustache grew thicker and more lustrous after Deliverance and that’s because he basically liked the squeal piggy bum rape stuff.


Monday 8 July 2013

Tiger Man


No one escaped the clutches of Tiger Man.
            Tiger Man, with his striped face, and his orange cloak. Tiger Man, with his monkey sidekick and deadly foes; his array of weaponry and gadgets, his vehicles and accessories.  
            That song.
            Malcolm and Arthur, eight and six, sat in the back seat; each clutching a Tiger Man, each of them lost in some private Tiger Man game for they had long ago realised that, even in the seemingly limitless world of imaginative play there was only one Tiger Man.
            The city’s a jungle and the people are scared. They need a hero, a man who’s prepared.
            Tiger Man was going to be at Fairleader Shopping Centre from noon. Half hours drive, piece of cake.
            Can we please go and see Tiger Man?
            We have to see Tiger Man.
            Are we going yet?
            Are we there yet?
            Why aren’t we moving?

Their mother, Karen, sat in the front passenger seat. 
            Bill was driving, though he hadn’t actually trod even slightly on the accelerator in ten minutes.
            All because of a fucking cloak.
            If we hadn’t had to go back to get Tiger Man’s cloak we’d be there now.
            It was Arthur’s Tiger Cloak.
            No it wasn’t.
            It doesn’t matter.
            Look what you’ve started.
            I’m just saying.
            Are we going to miss Tiger Man?

That question hung heavily in the stale air of the car. Bill exhaled heavily knowing any answer given was a potential minefield.
            No, we’ll get there.
            Karen shot her husband a look. She had lots of those. Like Tiger Man and his endless conveyor belt of merchandise, her face was a smorgasbord of expressions, an unfathomable sea of glances, nods, frowns and winks that no one could ever truly be certain of navigating safely past.
            This particular look was somewhere past agreement but a little south of outright reproach, Bill felt. A tightening of the lips, a slight hooding of the eyes, but yet something sympathetic might be discerned by an experienced and optimistic traveller in those lands.
            To take on the forces of darkness and greed. Tiger Man’s the one that the villains should heed.  
            You can’t make Tiger Man fly.
            This was Malcolm.
            Yeah I can.
            Where’s his booster boots?
            He doesn’t need them in this game.
            He can’t fly without the boots.
            He can.
            No he can’t.
            Mum.
            Can you please be quiet please?
            There was beeping from up ahead. Distant but persistent, like a brass band at rehearsals.
            He’s quick to the chase and he doesn’t know fear, Watch Out Hoods! Tiger Man’s here!
            Why don’t you get out and have a look, see what the problem is.
            Bill closed his eyes and let out a sigh. He knew he shouldn’t but it was all he could do.
            One day, he thought, one day I’ll get out.
            Because by the time I get up to the end, the traffic will start moving and I’ll cause another hold up.
            I’ll go. Is that it? Do you want me to go?
            No. Just. I’ll go. Just hang on a sec.
            It had begun to rain. There was nothing on the radio about a hold up. Bill glanced to his right, to the car stuck in the same direction as his. A far more expensive car but the same dynamic within, two boys off to see Tiger Man, the tense parents up front.
            Bill wound down his window. In the other car a button was pressed to the same end.
            Do you know what the problem is?
            The woman spoke.
            There’s an accident up at the next junction, bad one. Radio said there’s a three mile tailback. We’re going to be here a while, I think.
            I hope not. We’re off to see Tiger Man.
            And us. Well, we hope.
            Silent looks of concern were exchanged, sly diagonal looks across the tarmac. They were strangers, united by a longing for Tiger Man. 
            Bill undid his seatbelt and turned to look at the boys. Malcolm was reading the ingredients off the side of a Tiger Juice carton. Arthur was whispering quietly to his toy.
            Are we going to miss Tiger Man, Daddy?
            I don’t know. We’re stuck here.
            We’re going to try, ok, kids?
            Why don’t you get out and have a look?
            It’s Tiger Man. It’s Tiger Man.
            Bill felt a tension rising in his chest, a raw congestion in his entire being. What to do, what to say? To lie, to guess, to give them hope, to take hope away. Life is a series of failed appointments and missed opportunities, he said to himself.  There was no way they would be seeing Tiger Man now. Their hearts would be broken. They'd get over it eventually. After a long teary drive home and some ice cream.
           
He closes his eyes and remembers a film he’d seen once, a long time ago, where a man floated up into the sky out of a traffic jam. He can recall nothing else about the film, just that image.  
            It’s Tiger Man. It’s Tiger Man. 
           He grips the wheel and begins to scream.