Abstract
Opening with a camera flight through a breathtaking arid Southwestern landscape, Toy Story 3 (2010) begins with a tracking shot of Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead as the two are about to rob a nineteenth-century train. Before the mischievous couple are able to flee the scene of the crime in a pink corvette, however, the Roundup Gang intervenes to stop the criminals from escaping with their loot. To divert Woody, Jessie, and Bullseye, the Potatoheads blast a nearby bridge to force the trio to save the lives of the innocent troll dolls on the train. As Buzz Lightyear intervenes in the nick of time to prevent a horrible disaster, the sheriff doll, the space-ranger action figure, and their friends continue to pursue the sinister duo. When Piggy Bank suddenly appears in his spaceship to help the two Potatoheads, Slinky Dog hopes to assist the Roundup Gang with his “built-in force field,” and Rex pronounces himself to be “the dinosaur who eats force-field dogs” (Toy Story 3), the opening sequence climaxes in a chaotic hodgepodge of nineteenth-century Western images and futuristic science fiction phantasmagorias.
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Notes
- 1.
The memory of long-gone childhood play will remain the only instance in which the different layers of fiction are not immediately separated. In contrast to its prequels, Toy Story 3 displays fewer moments of intertextual references or the use of irony—and except for the opening scene, the animated film does not blur its narrative and any fictional account within the diegesis. Even as space and time will play a crucial role, the film differentiates its various spaces meticulously just as the finitude of life is a fundamental motive of the plot. Furthermore, neither space nor time are compressed as the animated feature deviates from the postmodern poetics of its predecessors.
- 2.
The disregard Andy shows for his toys suggests that putting his toys in a trash bag and losing sight of their whereabouts had been motivated by more than a mere misunderstanding.
- 3.
President George W. Bush articulated these traditional visions of US intervention during his second inaugural speech multiple times stating at different moments that “[f]or a half a century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders […] For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny—prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder—violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom […] The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world […] So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world” (Bush, “Second Inaugural Address”).
- 4.
Although the female child contests male privilege and illustrates the inclusionary potential of the American jeremiad, the gender-inclusive narrative also exemplifies “the middle-class American way” as Bonnie (and Andy) lives in a suburban neighborhood with picket fences, a well-trimmed garden, and properly arranged bedding plants.
- 5.
A character from the film My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and mascot of the Japanese Studio Ghibli film company.
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Meinel, D. (2016). Animating a Yet Unimagined America? The Mediation of American Exceptionalism in Toy Story 3 (2010). In: Pixar's America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_10
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