The fourth part in the Toy Story series, that hit the cinemas recently, is a reminder of the fact that some movies are a hard-hitting projection and metaphor of one’s life. Targetted at children and adults alike, this series takes on the role of fairytales of yore that came with a moral, or a message, on how to view/live life well. From hints of satire on the way we behave to the portrayal of society, the world within this series is writ large with precision and accuracy. Perhaps that is what should make us reflect on whether it is:
“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgement. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.”
— Ratatouille (2007)
And what a piece of junk and ‘trash’ these toys are! Teaching us meaningful lessons of life since 1995 (Toy Story 1). Children’s fables have always served the purpose of teaching something to the listener/reader regardless of his/her age. Usually, they are narrated in the form of a fairytale that carries a certain message. Sometimes that message is meant for kids, other times that moral might be universal and for all ages. But there comes a time when you outgrow such children’s stories and stop seeing them for all that they represent, which are the ultimate truths of life. You remember the stories but forget the lessons. You can narrate those stories to your kids but don’t apply those morals to your own life. You hear the narrative but fail to introspect and think about what it really means. You see them for what they are disguised as. You fail to see what they were meant to be. Profound truths of life can be baby wrapped and presented as a kids movie and both the parent and the child can go home with something to think about.
Isn’t that what cinema should be all about? This is 2019, and we are literally showing anything and everything that can be shown but probably should not be. From frontal to full nudity to incest, the freedom of expression has taken an altogether dark turn in this 21st Century Fox universe. In a world where there will always be negative elements outnumbering the genuinely positive ones; where there will always be age inappropriate sexual innuendos for children to latch onto; where adult movies are more but adult morals are less; where children are maturing faster than they can reach double digits in years on their time on this earth, in such a dark dystopian world these fun, yet enlightening, experiences should be made mandatory for kids by parents at least if not implemented by schools. Schools waste so much time in teaching things that have no place or purpose in the life of an individual. Why not inculcate something that will be both fun and educational in the life of a young school student?
That is what Disney and Pixar have been doing ever since their conception. Every movie a gem. Every movie a lesson in how to live your life the right way. Every single dialogue a satire on the way we live our lives. Every single portrayal of society writ large with precision and accuracy both. Toy Story is one such story whose fourth part came out a few weeks ago. The franchise is based on the anthropomorphic concept that all toys, unbeknownst to humans, are secretly alive. It follows the narrative of Woody, a toy cowboy (voiced by the legendary Tom Hanks) with a human consciousness. And what follows in the next three sequels, is a beautiful representation of all that we go through in our lives — our attachment to our loved ones, our existential crises, our disappointments and rejections, our misunderstandings, our understanding what life is all about and so much more. For some toys, this might take four movie installments. For other ‘toys’, like us, this might take several lifetimes. For children like me watching this movie in the 90s and 2000’s, this was just a story of a cowboy and a space ranger and their adventures. I spent so much time playing their video game on my windows 98/XP. I slept with my Buzz Lightyear ‘Happy Meal’ toy every night for several months after which I discarded it. I was Andy. Only now, I realise watching its fourth edition that I might have been Andy then but I am Woody now. A Woody who is disillusioned with the world we live in. A Woody desperate to find meaning in life, in relationships, in experiences, in everything. But then, we are all Woody just in different stages of our progression. Only when we have experienced everything there is to experience on this planet will we reach the end of our franchise and conclude our existence.
The Toy Story movies have depicted so many things we humans are dealing with in this day and age. It’s almost a social satire presented in the most inoffensive way possible. We see glimpses of dilemmas of existential crisis, mourning the loss of a loved one when he dies/grows up and relocates. We even see euthanasia being talked about when Wheezy tells Woody, “What’s the point in prolonging the inevitable? We’re all just one stitch away from here to there.” They even had their own version of “Not today” made famous by Game of Thrones almost a quarter of a century later. We also see Carl Jung’s theory of ‘wounded healers’ in effect in Toy Story 1 with the damaged toys of Sid, Andy’s sadistic neighbour kid, being the ones to repair the toys that Sid breaks.
The Toy Story world is a perfect microcosm of the society we live in. Over a span of centuries, man has come to realise that whatever he thinks he knows at that particular time and period, is either false or incomplete truth. In the 21st century, we’ve come at a point where we know the actual truth about most things. The things that still confound us are the ones we need to figure out in order to progress further as a race. One of those things that has been plaguing society more and more in the last couple of decades are mental illnesses. According to Park’s textbook of Preventive and Social Medicine, DALYs (Disability Adjusted Life Years) is a measure of overall disease burden , expressed as the number of years lost due to ill health, disability or early death. Mental illnesses feature high up on that scale with depression accounting for 52 million DALYs. Some commentators have expressed doubt over whether the disease burden surveys fully capture the impact of mental illness, due to factors including the ceiling effects.
Mental illnesses will remain an enigma for the next couple of decades at least. We’ve learnt how to stop their symptoms but we haven’t learnt how to cure them from their roots. Maybe it’s because we’ve been looking at all the wrong places. Maybe we’ve been looking at mental illnesses the wrong way. Just like we were looking at earth being the centre of the universe and ready to burn anyone at the stake who proclaimed the contrary. We hail Galileo and Copernicus and know that Ptolemy was wrong. But people living in that era did not think so.
Another such visionary (albeit ironically being almost blind) whose views were so radical and ahead of his time was writer, philosopher, social satirist Aldous Huxley, grandson of the great anthropologist Thomas Huxley. Some of his concerns way back in 1958 that are all coming true one by one include: the difficulties and dangers of world overpopulation; the tendency toward distinctly hierarchical social organisation; the crucial importance of evaluating the use of technology in mass societies susceptible to persuasion; the tendency to promote modern politicians to a naive public as well-marketed commodities. His views on mental illnesses are something to deeply ponder on as well. He says: “The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal, not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”
Buzz Lightyear jumping off a railing in Sid’s house in an attempt to fly and breaking his arm is a direct reference to the most common occurrence of delusions of grandeur where people feel they’re Jesus or Noah (of Noah’s Ark) and jump off their balcony. When he realises that he is not in fact THE Buzz Lightyear but a miniature replica of ‘Him’, he is devastated and goes into depression. But, of course, since it is a kids movie that spells the end of that little narrative (although in Toy Story 2 it is again revisited when he encounters another identical toy who’s not yet ‘awakened’ and hopes that he wasn’t this ‘deluded’ back then) and we move on to other things (with Buzz still depressed but when Woody makes him understand that he is the best toy around he comes back to his natural self). But the writers either intentionally/unintentionally put in this scene to again tell us the reality of life and the fact that we are all just puppets mimicking a version of God.
Medical science has gone leaps and bounds in the research, development and effective treatment of mental illnesses that manifest in such bizarre situations in so many people. But there’s something to deeply think about the fact that the so called faulty misfiring neurochemicals produce the same urges and responses in millions of people just differing in their intensity and context (depending on the conditioning they have had in their current lifetime). Mental illnesses have been manifesting since time immemorial. If they really were disadvantages as per the ‘Natural Selection Theory’ of Darwin why have they not been wiped out in the subsequent gene pool? Why are they producing the exact same symptoms in millions of people almost the same way?
One things for sure, there are other worlds out there. We just can’t see them. Science believes we will find them if we keep going farther into outer space. But what science hasn’t found, spirituality has. You don’t need to go far. You need to go deeper. Within. And you’ll find the ultimate truth of the universe. That we aren’t who we think we are. We’re not the most evolved beings in the universe. We’re not trash either. We are merely puppets. We are toys. Here on this earth for a limited time to serve a set purpose. And that purpose is to find out the meaning of life. When we do that we will be free from this constant carousel of going from one vessel/body to another (or in the toys’ case one owner to another). Free from the tangles of this superficial worldly life. Free to pursue something bigger. Something larger than life. And this time, it won’t be a delusion. It would be our reality. All our realities. This ain’t no toy’s story. This is our story. And we’re living it, one sequel at a time. To infinity and beyond!
The writer is a doctor by profession and writer by passion
