Toy Story 3 (2010)

Synopsis:

The third installment of Disney's franchise about sentient toys that live to serve their owners, Toy Story 3 finds the cast of characters in the same position as the appliances from The Brave Little Toaster. With their master heading to college and the prospects  limited to either being left in the attic, thrown away, or donated, things look very grim indeed. When a series of unfortunate mistakes lead to increasingly desperate circumstances for Andy's toys,  Woody finds his loyalty to the others outweighs his need to be near Andy as he leaves for college. But as the toys move through this transition, they serve as subtle metaphors for larger themes; as they encounter another society of toys with "no masters," and face certain doom in the end, a happy ending emerges, with those connotations left by the wayside. Life begins anew for them all, though we are left unraveling the meanings of what has happened.

Analysis:

Toys, and the way children play with them, is a fascinating history of semi-idolatry and fetishism; I mean that in the anthropological sense of imbuing ordinary objects with magical powers. Yet while these plastic and cloth objects are representative of greater, more powerful forces, identities and concepts, their status as material objects to be kept, stored, given away and destroyed makes them fearful of the masters who control their fate; and creates a special divine status for those who they pledge their loyalty to, and ultimately owe their existence. The symbols of the gods are now playthings of their own gods. Whereas Woody would have been the archtype of the Hero, and a doll may represent a supernatural force, he's instead an apostle of Andy, a higher power he serves with all his being.

Woody's faith in Andy puts him at odds with the other toys several times during the story; though they all start as faithful followers in his home, the transition to a world without him (where "God is Dead") leads them to doubt he ever cared for them. When they arrive at a daycare run by a totalitarian stuffed bear, they are dazzled by a society of toys with "no masters" who boast of equality and plenty for all toys, but quickly find that they are in Darwin's nightmare, as the Nietzsche-esqe order of things puts newcomers on the bottom of the foodchain. Andy's old toys are despondant, but Woody is driven to help them because of his good nature, and his faith in Andy. Though he never recants that faith, he finds it challenged through the story. Near the end, when their destruction is  immanent, all the toys suddenly find an acceptance of their fate, and are rewarded "from on high" by the mystical Aliens from Pizza Planet and their deific "claw." However, the trickster, rebellious and godless Lotso the Bear is doomed to a Sisyphean existence of pleasing a reminiscent dump truck driver (who used to own a toy like him) by remaining fastened to the grill of his vehicle.

Ultimately, toys must know their place; they should remain loyal to their masters, and purposeful in their function, as playthings of the gods, rather than propose to live for themselves. Woody's good apostle-hood is rewarded, as him and his brood find glory in Elysian fields at the home of Bonnie. As Pindar wrote:

And those that have three times kept to their oaths,
Keeping their souls clean and pure,
Never letting their hearts be defiled by the taint
Of evil and injustice,
And barbaric venality,
They are led by Zeus to the end:
To the palace of Kronos

The story is something of a Hero's quest, in a transition to the afterlife. Woody leads his followers, the veritable Argonauts (all heros) to their final destination. Although he is destined for a greater reward (going with Andy to college), he chooses to leave the bosom of his god to make sure that his friends are justly treated. Because of his efforts to save them from damnation and torment in the trash, they are all rewarded with an idyllic future in which their purpose is rekindled, and their lives start over again. This is reminiscent of the conclusion of CS Lewis's Narnian chronicles, where loyalty to Aslan is rewarded by going to his country, and the cry is "Further Up and Further In!" as "it was only the beginning of the true story, which goes on forever, and in which every chapter is better than the one before."

Disney has cleverly adopted the themes of religious self-determination into a story in which the faithful are rewarded an ever-after that suits their purpose, the atheistic Lotso who is punished for his cleverness and individualistic purposes, and the toys in purgatory remain at the mercy of the pantheon of children who come and go from Sunnyside every day.

Summary:

Toy Story was a very enjoyable, yet hard to decipher film. The meanings are deep and murky, but they reflect the struggles of primitive societies. Anthropomorphizing toys makes for a tricky interpretation as to what the movie means for people (are we symbols of the gods desires as the toys are?) but the animation is delightfully distracting and the situations are believable. Or at least as believable as a society of sentient playthings running amok can be.

The Blind Side (2009)

Synopsis:

The Blind Side is based on a book of the same name, which itself is based on the true story of Michael Oher. A disadvantaged youth from Memphis, Tennessee, he made the unlikely transition from homeless poverty to college football player with charitable benefactors who helped him there.

Michael Oher was taken in by the Touhey's and studied hard for several months before getting into a prestigious private school,  where he worked hard to excel at football and become a player that attracted recruiters from several colleges. His amazing move from the streets to a being a sports star in the NFL inspired Michael Lewis to write about his story, and producers to create "The Blind Side" - which is about as divorced from reality as Oher's true story is unlikely.

Analysis:

All apologies to the real Michael Oher, WB and Quinton Aaron have turned the character into a magical-negro/idiot-savant. Michael (in this film) drifts through life with puppy dog eyes, dumbly stares at the floor and remains nearly mute as white people chatter about their "Christian duty" to look out for him. When he chucks articulate scraps of writing in the trash bin, teachers cluck about spelling. When he is distracted by balloons, the coach bellows. Yet, as he dumbly comes to understand football through the instructions of Ms. Touhey, who tells him it's just like protecting the family, he suddenly becomes a prodigy. And apparently it's the only thing he's good for - all the improvement in his grades is merely to make sure he gets to go on to an athletic scholarship.

The Touhey's themselves are the quintessential essence of patronizing white people. In several scenes, they establish their cultural competency to reach across social divisions through savvy language. SJ, a "precocious" child casually uses spanish words and is the first of the family to reach out to Michael. The Touhey's become something akin to a 15th century patron, as they nurture Michael into a great football player. Ms. Touhey is something like a psychotic, distaff version of Coach Yoast out of Remember the Titans, with a mouthy whelp playing opposite to the "cute-as-a-button" Sheryl Yoast. She bullies and cajoles her family around with the presence of a "big-momma" though her body more resembles a trophy wife for the fast-food entrepreneur, Mr. Touhey. Yet she never seems to miss a beat, as she ventures into the obvious ghetto looking for Michael, mouths off to a child-services worker after she decides she's been waiting too long, and interjects herself into the coaching process.

There is an element of unearthly aberrancy reverberating through the film that would make most sane people uncomfortable in real life. One scene, played in the trailer and at a peak of the film, is where Ms. Touhey confronts her prejudiced friends with their mild offensiveness (which was meek compared to what one would expect in the real world). After she shames them for being un-christian, one profusely appeals to her charity, saying it's remarkable what she's doing for that boy, and how she's "changing his life." Humbly and tearfully, she says, "No, he's changing mine." - Really? The Touheys I saw at the beginning of the film were pretty much the same ones at the end of the movie (with the obvious addition). No family strife was resolved, no deep-seated issues were addressed. In fact, Michael adapts to Touheys about as easily as an orchid living off the shredded bark of it's parent tree.

The second scene is where Michael first comes to the Touheys house on thanksgiving and examines a coffee table book with the iconic Norman Rockwell painting "Freedom From Want." A nice white family, sitting around a bountiful table; what a stark contrast from the place Michael comes from, inhabited by crack addicts like his mother, orphans like his brother, and seedy dealers (like the only other major black character in this film). When dinner is served, the family grabs it and returns to the couch to watch football; but Michael goes to the table and dutifully eats. Ms. Touhey sees this and commands the family to join him. As their daughter reaches her hand across the table to Michael, I was reminded of Uncle Ruckus from the Boondocks meeting Ronald Reagan in heaven - as the gipper reached out to touch him, Uncle Ruckus becomes white, and is struck with a mix of euphoria and redemptive jubilation. You almost expect Michael to break his silence and shout "THANK YOU WHITE GOD!" during the dinner prayer.

Summary:

Apparently, Executives at WB are still saying "What, make a holiday movie about racial issues that isn't framed in a way that makes white people colonialistic and black people helpless beasts?" I don't care if it's a true story; the characters are not real people. Real people are a little more complicated than the cardboard cutouts in The Blind Side.

The Blind Side will make liberals feel good about helping despondent black kids who are victims of circumstance. It'll make conservatives feel good by the subtle nod to the white man's burden and the sports-centric theme of the film. And black people? Hopefully they'll have a nice white family out there willing to cross the tracks to take care of them. Again, the film is about as divorced from reality as you can get.

The short version is best phrased by some guy on Yahoo answers, who said, "This is a movie about white people, for white people, that lets white people feel good about themselves because this one white woman did something decent."

Taken (2008)

Synopsis:

Liam Nielsen adopts a very Harrison Ford-ish role as a Bryan Mills, a concerned father (who just so happens to be a superspy). We learn that he faces the typical problems of most hard-working men; in his service to his country, his wife has left him for a more worldly, suave man with servants and a mansion. He is unable to connect with his daughter after so many years of loyal service in the CIA (which he reminisces about politely with his fellow ex-spies during a manly cookout) during which the neglect he showed his family drove them away. Consequently, when he buys a karaoke machine (appealing to her childhood dream of stardom), and his daughter's stepfather buys her a pony, he feels inadequate and pathetic.

Conveniently, he finds himself useful soon afterward, as daughter is kidnapped by sleazy Albanian sex traffickers. Even as she hyperventilates in panic and terror, in his rugged and capable voice he instructs her to yell out details on her attackers as she is abducted. While the movie progresses, we see the special "talents" Bryan possesses amount to tracking down bad guys, beating them up and/or killing them, and making nifty torture chambers and triage materials on the fly. As he drives his daughter to the airport, he tells her he was a "preventor," who stopped bad things from happening - but in this movie he does little "preventing" and much "permitting" or "causing."

Through a good deal of investigative work, Bryan eventually discovers where his daughter is, hijacks a car, jumps onto the boat (surprising, as I was expecting him to merely jump the car onto the boat) where a bloated ornate sheik is ready to corrupt her slender young American body. As he holds a knife to her throat, he begins to talk, "We can negotia-" and Bryan puts a bullet between his eyes. Aparently, the plane ride home was very therapeutic, because Bryan's daughter hugs him twice and then hops in a car with her mother and (wealthier) father-in-law. We then see Bryan taking his daughter to meet a pop star for singing lessons before the movie ends.

Analysis:

Bryan's quest in this movie is a reaffirmation of purpose - he gave up his job to be with his family, who ironically left him, and when his daughter is in danger, it is only by taking up the role he left behind. He draws power from the theme of "a father's love" and that of an American dealing with shady foreigners (concepts explored in earlier Harrison Ford films like Frantic, Airforce One, Firewall, Patriot Games and Mel Gibson movies like Ransom and Edge of Darkness). He is desperately trying to regain his lost masculinity by asserting himself in the only role he knows; that of a tough-as-nails, ruthless CIA man, who fights for justice. After all, what can be more noble than a father's search for his missing daughter? He is the literal defender of her virginity in this film.

Though, as I said, few of his actions could be construed as preventative or defensive. Bryan murders about 35 people in the film, between leaving his daughter's kidnapper screaming in a chair wired with electricity, to shooting a bourgeois man in the face as he dumbly calls their sex trafficking operation "just business." Of course, his vigilance is understandable, but vigilante pre-meditated murder is only really legal in Texas (and appropriately for this film, uncountable CIA targeted killings around the globe as well).

Bryan's behavior also echoes familiar overtones of the US foreign policy of "don't-get-in-my-way." When Bryan discovers an old French government friend is involved in the trafficking business, he drops by and shoots his friend's wife during dinner, after they've put the children to bed. Granted, he does tell his friend to ask the wife for his forgiveness, but not before he snarls how it would have never happened if the Frenchman had cared more about Bryan's daughter than the dirty money he received from the traffickers. In this exchange is perhaps a subtle reflection of the anti-French sentiment in the US following their opposition to the second gulf war.

Ultimately, the film teaches us how violence is necessary when your daughter's life and purity is on the line, and everyone else is an "other." The stereotypical foreigners who stand in the way must be met with bullets. Other fathers watching from the curtains as their daughter's date comes and goes have likely felt the same. The absurdity of the situation which calls for Bryan to leap from a bridge and land on the perverted Arabs pleasure yacht is lost beneath the timeliness of the issue of trafficking, and the age old protective nature of fathers. Yet just as the faceless thugs who die have meaningless lives, so do the sex slaves Bryan passes up while searching for his daughter. He comes across her friend in a house he is searching, finds her dead, and methodically moves on. He rescues one girl so that he can find where she received a sweater previously owned by his daughter. And at the end, two girls are ready in white for the obese sheik, but we only see his daughter saved.

Summary:

Taken is another macho romp through exotic locales with lots of bodies that fall by the wayside, like Collateral Damage, or Clear and Present Danger, but it combines the combat overtones with personal and family issues. Like the slew of films that came out in the 90s dealing with the neglect of families by chief-breadwinners who were too tired to play with their kids when they got home from their job, Taken revisits that family a decade or so later. Bryan is ready to be a responsible father, but his wife is so dang testy. And his daughter is so darn irresponsible! But this didn't stop him from leaving Beirut during a covert operation to be at her birthday party, and it won't stop him from being concerned about her wild tour through Europe with U2, which fortunately turns into a chance for dad to flex his muscles. Irresponsible women, he thinks! In this film, they are all divorcees, cute teenagers, and sex zombies (except for his French friend's wife, who's apparently a brainless target).

In the end, everything is a-ok, because his daughter is able to meet a popular singer and pursue her dreams of being an entertainer. Meanwhile, Interpol is still looking for a man who went on a violent rampage through Paris which exposed several trafficking rings to French officials. And we are left wondering, what does Bryan love more; his daughter? Or the icy demeanor he posses through which reality floats past his eyes, blood spills through his hands, as his daughter laughingly rushes in the opposite direction? Most likely, he's left with haunting words his wife spits at him through botox lips in a rare moment of truth; "You've made a mess of your life in the service of your country."