Buzz Lightyear: A Sketch in Cultural Sociology
Marcus Maloney
Doctoral Candidate
La Trobe University
Sociology Department
Address:
5/2 Newton Court,
St Kilda, Victoria 3182
Phone number:
0438 832 043
Email:
[email protected]
Abstract
As the first animated feature film to be fully rendered in CGI, Pixar’s Toy Story holds an
assured place in the annals of popular culture. However, there remains little in the way of
substantial scholarly analysis of the film’s narrative content. This ostensibly light-hearted
story about Buzz Lightyear, a delusional toy spaceman forced to accept life as “just a toy”,
conveys an enduring dilemma at the heart of modernity: how to make sense of life in the
apparent absence of a unified and propitious cultural narrative. Essentially, it is a problem of
finding meaning in secular existence. Toy Story is didactic, no less for adults than for
children. Indeed, the film’s Weberian lesson is quite straightforward: in an era in which “the
ultimate and most sublime values” have retreated, and seem increasingly absurd to modern
sensibilities, meaning resides “only within the smallest and intimate circles, in personal
human situations, in pianissimo…”
Key words: Popular culture, narrative, meaning, social theory, Pixar, Toy Story.
Word count (including abstract and references): 2994
1
Buzz Lightyear: a Sketch in Cultural Sociology
Abstract
As the first animated feature film to be fully rendered in CGI, Pixar’s Toy Story holds an
assured place in the annals of popular culture. However, there remains little in the way of
substantial scholarly analysis of the film’s narrative content. This ostensibly light-hearted
story about Buzz Lightyear, a delusional toy spaceman forced to accept life as “just a toy”,
conveys an enduring dilemma at the heart of modernity: how to make sense of life in the
apparent absence of a unified and propitious cultural narrative. Essentially, it is a problem of
finding meaning in secular existence. Toy Story is didactic, no less for adults than for
children. Indeed, the film’s Weberian lesson is quite straightforward: in an era in which “the
ultimate and most sublime values” have retreated, and seem increasingly absurd to modern
sensibilities, meaning resides “only within the smallest and intimate circles, in personal
human situations, in pianissimo…”
Introduction
In 2015, the animated feature film, Toy Story (Lasseter dir. 1995), will enjoy the 20th
anniversary of its cinematic release. As the first feature film from renowned animation studio,
Pixar, and the first animated feature to be fully rendered in computer generated imagery
(CGI), Toy Story holds an assured place in the annals of popular culture. However, there
remains little in the way of substantial scholarly analysis of the film’s narrative content; a
surprising omission given the sort of academic levelling which has come to place studies of
Buffy alongside those of Baudelaire. This brief paper will take one tentative step towards
“filling the gap” in popular cultural inquiry, and offer a sketch of the narrative facets
underlying Toy Story’s significance. In short, this ostensibly light-hearted story about Buzz
2
Lightyear, a delusional toy spaceman forced to accept life as “just a toy”, conveys an
enduring dilemma at the heart of modernity: how to make sense of life in the apparent
absence of a unified and propitious cultural narrative.
Dilemmas of Meaning from Giddens to Weber
The capacity of people to make coherent sense of their lives amidst the “stormy seas” (BeckGernsheim 2002: 39) of modernity remains a central focus in sociology. Essentially, it is a
problem of meaning: an ongoing concern about the extent to which modern culture, in its
ever-increasing fragmentation and plurality, adequately bestows a clear sense of purpose and
significance on everyday life. It is a principal thread in the analyses—each divergent in a
number of other key respects—of three leading contemporary sociologists. In Modernity and
Self-Identity, Anthony Giddens (1991) argues this problem of “ontological security” to be a
defining feature of the contemporary, or “late-modern”, sociocultural landscape: “Personal
meaninglessness – the feeling that life has nothing worthwhile to offer – becomes a
fundamental psychic problem in circumstances of late modernity” (Giddens 1991: 9). Far
bleaker in his overall appraisal of contemporary life, Zygmunt Bauman (2007) believes that
we have been irrevocably set adrift in a new “liquid” modernity: “These days patterns and
configurations are no longer ‘given’, let alone ‘self-evident’; there are just too many of them,
clashing with one another and contradicting one another’s commandments” (Bauman 2007:
7). In Reflexive Modernization, Ulrich Beck (1994: 7) sees much the same thing:
...collective and group-specific sources of meaning (for instance, class
consciousness or faith in progress) in industrial society culture are suffering from
exhaustion, break up and disenchantment… Their loss leads to the imposition of
all definition effort upon the individuals.
3
As significant as each theorist has proven to our understanding of the contemporary zeitgeist,
this line of thought shared between Giddens, Bauman and Beck nonetheless echoes a core
apprehension of one of sociology’s founding fathers, Max Weber. For Weber, dilemmas of
meaning are the Faustian cost of the indomitable rise of scientific rationalism—or
rationalisation, to use his now canonical sociological term. The key work is Science as a
Vocation in which Weber (1946: 155) portrays modernity as an era characterised “above all,
by the ‘disenchantment of the world’”. Here, Weber maintains that, however useful the
material products of scientific endeavour, science itself has become increasingly
impenetrable to, and thus unedifying for, ordinary people: “Tolstoi has given the simplest
answer, with the words: ‘Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to the question,
the only question that is important to us: “What shall we do and how shall we live?” ’”
(Weber 1946: 143). Situated within the relentless modern “enrichment of culture by ideas,
knowledge, and problems” (Weber 1946: 140), the individual human struggles to feel any
sense of his or her own unique totality. This, then, for Weber, is the bedrock of the problem
in focus here: where the orienting principles of religion once stood, conferring upon
individual lives a certainty of purpose and significance, now stands rationalism offering no
such guidance.
Genre Background
As cultural text, Toy Story cannot be properly understood without reference to The Walt
Disney Studios and its legacy. Indeed, the studio essentially instigated the animated feature
film genre: though precursors exist, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) was
the first of such films to reach a wide and enduring audience. Snow White’s immense and
unexpected success “pioneered a great new entertainment field” (The Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences 2013) over which Disney maintained hegemony for decades; a
4
period which saw a series of equally noteworthy “classics” including Pinocchio (1940),
Dumbo (1941), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1959). To quote Paul Wells (2002:
122): “Disney was absolutely intrinsic to the emergence and acceptance of an authentic
‘popular culture’ in the post-war era”.
Disney’s genesis was grounded in wistful modern notions of what Bauman (2007: 29) refers
to as “a state of perfection to be reached tomorrow”. Walt Disney, the studio’s spirited and
complex patriarch, was unabashedly utopian, once declaring with full sincerity, “I can’t
believe that there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of
making dreams come true” (Disney cited in Jackson 2006: 55). The classic Disney films
which together established the genre are similarly informed by a desire to transcend things as
they are: a boy-puppet who realises his dream to become a human boy (Pinocchio); a
ridiculed big-eared elephant who uses his ears to fly (Dumbo); and a downtrodden stepdaughter remade a princess (Cinderella), to name a few. It is a philosophy best encapsulated
in Disney’s unofficial anthem, “When You Wish upon a Star” (Harline and Washington
1940), a lilting ballad first sung to Pinocchio by his insect guide, Jiminy Cricket:
When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you
By the 1980s, audiences had grown tired of Disney’s animated fairy tales; a decline in
relevance which could be clearly charted in box office receipts. A 1980 statement by then-
5
Director of Creativity, Thomas Wilhite (cited in Whitefield 1980: 11), placed narrative
engagement at the heart of the problem: “we haven’t been as meaningful (a competitor) as we
should be... There’s no lack of quality in the execution of things here, but we need to improve
the quality of our stories”. It was a decade of uncertainty which saw the once indomitable
studio essentially caught between the imperatives of its own legacy and the inevitable need
for renewal. Disney regained its former pre-eminence with 1989’s The Little Mermaid: a film
with a decidedly classic-era tone featuring a final scene built upon CGI technology developed
by a fledgling Pixar. The Little Mermaid was followed by a series of similarly successful
offerings, each one also benefitting from a marriage of hand-drawn and CGI techniques.
The “Disney Renaissance” (Puig 2010) was relatively short-lived: whilst 1994’s The Lion
King proved a resounding success, the following year saw the release of Pixar’s Disneyfunded Toy Story. The film was unprecedented in both execution and narrative: instigating a
new animation medium and, as will be shown, upending the genre’s staid theme of wondrous
self-fulfilment. Indeed, Toy Story was deemed so unusual by toy manufacturers with whom
Disney had longstanding merchandising agreements that some declined involvement with the
film (Price 2008: 142). Toy Story’s subsequent success represented a paradigm shift in
animated filmmaking: to the surprise of many investors, analysts and critics, family audiences
had fully embraced both Pixar’s CGI aesthetic and, more crucially, its complex reimagining
of the Disney narrative (Price 2008: 151 - 156).
To Infinity and Beyond?
Toy Story is about a community of sentient toys living in the bedroom of a young boy named
Andy. The film’s opening event is Andy’s birthday on which he receives Buzz Lightyear, a
“Space Ranger” with dazzling electronic lights and sound effects, and impressive retractable
6
wings. Buzz’s most striking feature, however, lies in his delusional belief that he is a real
spaceman whose ship—the toy’s cardboard and cellophane box—has landed on some distant
alien planet. Buzz invokes the science-fiction heroes of radio serial and pulp-fiction; his now
widely recognised motto conveying a sense of utopian promise with clear echoes of Walt
Disney: “To infinity, and beyond!” Following Buzz’s arrival, Toy Story essentially charts the
evolving relationship between the toy spaceman, the community in which he finds himself,
and its leader, Woody the Cowboy.
Much is evoked in Buzz Lightyear, a character deemed by Empire Magazine (2013) to be
Pixar’s greatest, and the 94th greatest film character of all time. First and foremost, he is a
deftly satirical rendition of the science fiction hero. Buzz’s name invokes both Flash Gordon
and Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker, thereby instilling in the audience an immediate cross-era
sense of the iconic. The character’s appearance further renders him a sort of innate “pop
icon”: an intentionally unremarkable masculine stereotype marked precisely by the bland
familiarity of his square jaw and space suit. The voice casting is similarly effective: Tim
Allen, the comedian most widely recognised prior to Toy Story as the bumbling, everyman
father in the sitcom, Home Improvement (1991 - 1999), brings an implicit air of goodhumoured masculine failure to his performance. In sum, the delusional Buzz is a wry
expression of a popular cultural weariness with cinematic tropes and archetypes: a space age
Quixote for the cheerful modern cynic.
Buzz, however, is more than merely an expression of worn out genre expectations; he is the
satirical embodiment of an entire worldview. The reference already close at hand is Walt
Disney, the utopian capitalist given to the belief that “if you can dream it, you can do it”
(cited in Williams and Denney 2004: 49). Crucial to this study, Walt Disney’s voice is but
7
one wistfully robust expression of a modern cultural attachment to Enlightenment notions of
social progress and human perfectibility. It is an intellectual tradition to which Buzz also
belongs; the science fiction hero being particularly representative of its techno-scientific
dimensions. His impassioned call “to infinity, and beyond!” captures the utopian sentiment at
the heart of such thought: the restless drive towards ever-expanding horizons; the secular
desire for a mortal Heaven. An early scene in which the toys stand in collective awe of Buzz
and his various state-of-the-art faculties calls to mind the crowds of visitors to the Crystal
Palace in the mid-19th century: ordinary people in collective wonderment over redemptive
future visions. Indeed, the humanity to which Buzz thinks he is in service is God-like in its
transcendence: a “Galactic Alliance” presiding over the universe with benevolent intent. That
Buzz is delusional speaks largely for itself: modern dilemmas of meaning have found their
way into family entertainment.
Buzz’s tragic realisation of his authentic self takes place near the end of Toy Story when he
and Woody find themselves trapped in the neighbours’ house and in the clutches of Sid, the
film’s toy-torturing boy villain. While attempting to escape Sid’s house, Buzz and Woody
separate; for Buzz, what follows represents the moment in which the toy spaceman finds
himself “confronted by questions which challenge the fundamental premises” (Beck 1994: 1)
of his archetypal modern being. Hiding behind the first door he can find, Buzz is drawn to a
voice emanating from a television at the other end of the room: “Calling Buzz Lightyear!
Come in, Buzz Lightyear. This is Star Command!” Relieved to have finally made contact
with his beloved Galactic Alliance, Buzz dutifully responds and makes his way further into
the room, eyes fixed firmly on the television screen. It is a commercial for Buzz Lightyear
action figures: “The world’s greatest superhero! Now the world’s greatest toy!”
8
Buzz falls silent as the voice-over lists each of his impressive features and a shrieking young
boy plays with his likeness. Confronted by incontrovertible proof of his prosaic authenticity,
Buzz’s bewildered expression speaks to an increasing, and altogether tragic, “breaking down”
(Beck 1994: 1) of modern self. The voice-over concludes with the proud declaration, “And
best of all, high pressure space wings!” And then, as Buzz’s radiant, glow-in-the-dark
likeness flies through televisual space, a disclaimer at the bottom of the screen advises
potential customers, “NOT A FLYING TOY”. Finally, the commercial ends with the searing
image of a shopping isle fully stocked with identical Buzz Lightyears each in their spaceshipshaped boxes. The absurd truth is now inescapable: the heroic Space Ranger is but one of a
countless number of meaningless mass productions. Opening a small compartment door on
his arm, Buzz sees the commonplace mark of consumerism: “Made in Taiwan”.
Spying an open window in the distance, the toy spaceman is consumed by a sudden desire to
prove, once and for all, that he can fly “to infinity, and beyond!” It is the final act of selfdenial: launching himself into the air, Buzz enjoys a brief moment of weightlessness before
falling ineptly to the bottom of the stairwell. The audience is then offered the quietly
devastating sight of the once-indomitable Buzz lying helpless on the floor, lights blinking and
one arm removed from its socket. Echoing Bauman’s (2007: 29) “swift decline of the modern
illusion”, Buzz has become Pinocchio in reverse—the hero is just a toy. The scene finds
musical accompaniment in the mournful Randy Newman ballad, I Will Go Sailing No More.
Newman’s lyrics see the “wish upon a star” message turned on its head:
Out among the stars I sail, way beyond the moon
In my silver ship I sail, a dream that ended to soon
Now I know exactly who I am and what I’m here for
9
And I will go sailing no more.
Just a Toy
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, things end happily in Toy Story. Buzz and Woody manage to escape
Sid’s house and return home, and the toy-torturing boy-villain gets his comeuppance at the
hands of his own gruesomely victimised toy collection. However, for a genre hitherto known
for “making dreams come true”, Buzz’s own cheerful resolution is anything but facile: faced
with a complete dissolution of “biographical continuity” (Giddens 1991: 53)—“I’m a sham”,
he laments—the Space Ranger must ultimately find new meaning in being “just a toy” within
his modest community of fellow toys. Essentially, Buzz undergoes a sort of reverse
transfiguration: an ignoble dissolution of the exalted self from which all that remains is his
prosaic authenticity—naked, and inescapable. It is secular humanism without the grandiose
pretentions; modern life stripped of the redemptive illusions variously offered up in religion’s
stead. Four years after Toy Story, on the eve of the millennium, Fight Club’s (Fincher dir.
1999) Tyler Durden would merely echo the sentiment already powerfully conveyed in Buzz’s
story: “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires,
and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact”.
Toy Story is didactic, no less for adults than for children. Indeed, the film’s Weberian lesson
is quite straightforward: in an era in which “the ultimate and most sublime values” have
retreated, and seem increasingly absurd to modern sensibilities, meaning resides “only within
the smallest and intimate circles, in personal human situations, in pianissimo…” (Weber
1946: 155). It is a narrative rich in symbolic affirmation of Beck’s claim that “faith in
progress [is] suffering from exhaustion, break up and disenchantment”. The commercial in
10
which Buzz sees his true reflection boasts a reversal of such turgid efforts: “The world’s
greatest superhero! Now the world’s greatest toy!” When Randy Newman sings, “I will go
sailing no more”, the songwriter essentially sounds the death knell of the grand, striving
values to which Disney temporarily spoke with preeminent force.
11
References
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (2013) ‘Honorary Award’, viewed 10
May 2013,
http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/about/awards/honorary.html.
Bauman, Z. (2007) Liquid Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (1994) ‘The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive
Modernization’, pp. 1 - 55 in U. Beck, A. Giddens and S. Lash (eds.) Reflexive
Modernization, California: Stanford University Press.
Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Reinventing the Family: In Search of New Lifestyles, Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Empire Magazine (2013) ‘The 100 Greatest Movie Characters’, viewed 15 May 2013,
http://www.empireonline.com/100-greatest-movie-characters/default.asp?c=94
Fincher, D. (dir.) (1999) Fight Club, 20th Century Fox.
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity, California: Stanford University Press.
Harline L. and Washington, N. (1940) When you Wish upon a Star, London: EMI.
Jackson K.M. (ed.) (2006) Walt Disney: Conversations, Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi.
Lasseter, J. (dir.) (1995) Toy Story, Pixar.
Puig, C. (2010) ‘“Waking Sleeping Beauty” Documentary Takes Animated Look at Disney
Renaissance’, USA Today, viewed 20 May 2013,
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/movies/reviews/2010-03-26beauty26_ST_N.htm.
Price, D.A. (2008) The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company, New York: Random House.
Weber, M. (1946) ‘Science as a Vocation’, pp. 129 - 156 in H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills
(eds.) From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York: Oxford University Press.
Wells, P. (2002) Animation and America, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Whitefield, D. (1980) ‘Profits, Parks and Products Boom but Disney Strives to Bolster Movie
Image’, pp. 11 – 13, Los Angeles Times, 4 February.
Williams, P. and Denney, J.D. (2004) How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic
Every Day of Your Life, Florida: Health Communications.