So, the guy being played by Newman is clearly a huge douchebag, but really, what he’s doing isn’t THAT BAD when you consider the fact he isn’t aware that the toys are sentient.
Some nerd swipes a rare toy at a yard sale and tries to sell it to a Japanese museum, okay dick move but also not something I’d argue he deserves to have his entire career destroyed over. Yet we’re supposed to root for his downfall because he actually kidnapped a sapient being, but HE DIDN’T KNOW THAT!
Same thing with Sid in the first movie. Yeah his propensity for mangling his toys perhaps suggests some mental health problems that should be addressed, but they are from his perspective inanimate objects. The Toy Story movies ask you to pass moral judgement on humans for injustices they inflict on thing that are inanimate from their perspective, only because we the audience are aware that secretly they are in fact living being with wills of their own. But that fact is something the toys intentionally keep hidden from humans, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW IT’S WRONG TO THROW AWAY MY RATTY OLD TEDDY BEAR IF I’M NOT AWARE IT HAS A SOUL!?!?!?!?
It’s to plant the idea that we should have emotional connections to inanimate objects.
Consoooooom!
I feel like having an emotional connection to inanimate objects make you want to consume less. Litteraly the reason I installed Linux on my old laptop
I could see that being true for minimalists but your average treatlerite must have all the Funko pops. The “adopt me” eyes they put on all toys is too strong
raises hand I have emotional connections to inanimate objects
Incidentally this makes me the kind of consumer that companies hate, and make me hate them back. I still remember when some Apple exec got up on stage and said “we expect our customers to be buying a new computer every 3-4 years” (and that’s why we won’t build robust computers that are affordable to repair and maintain at home and can be basically bricked by a speck of dust). Fuck that. Today I’m still using my 13-year-old apple laptop every day for all my main tasks and I refuse to buy a new computer because I am heavily emotionally bonded with it. And yes, it’s old, components do have finite lifespans.
Key mechanism breaks? Oh no, you poor thing, I’ll replace the scissor switch for a component that costs less than a dollar.
Fan breaks? Oh no, my poor little friend, you’re sick! I will get you a new fan for $15 bucks and do the surgery to swap out the broken fan.
Battery fails? You poor thing, I’ll get you a good quality replacement (pricier, but still markedly cheaper than a new machine. They glue the batteries into the new machines and make it difficult to replace them! But on my model, it’s just a few screws to replace it).
Hard drive dies? Well, it was probably time to graduate you to an SSD anyway, and SSDs have gotten cheap.
This also means I refuse to buy a new computer from Apple ever until they start making robust and repairable computers again (they will never) because I simply cannot afford to bond to a machine whose keyboard can become ruined by a speck of dust getting into it and then needing $800 worth of repairs.
I’m careful what I buy, because I don’t want to bond with something and then be stuck with it. Only the worthy get to win their way into my heart.
Eh, I think it had the opposite effect on me as a child. I wanted to keep my out of style action figures because I felt attached to it, also helped we were POOR
Everything has a soul
Bananas have souls
Monkeys have souls
Mine carts have souls
Sorry, I’m playing Donkey Kong Country
Toy Story is about panpsychism
Just like Donkey Kong Country is a story about how important potassium is
K
The form of plastic, for instance, is altered if a toy is made out of it. Nevertheless the toy continues to be plastic, an ordinary, sensuous thing. But as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its plastic brain grotesque ideas
stand in for the child watching, as society does not see them as humans yet from the perspective of the child they are equal
Sorry but it’s precedent
Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit.
‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’
‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand’
what from?
https://americanliterature.com/author/margery-williams/short-story/the-velveteen-rabbit/
Like others said- here’s a link tho
The Velveteen Rabbit, or, How Toys Become Real.
reads like bicentennial man but horrific
Tfw you discover you’re real while waiting to be tossed in the scarlet fever burn pit
I loved that book
I do not remember the character called SKIN HORSE
Lmao right? Was reading it with my nephew and that’s his new favorite phrase. Everything is now referred to as a “skin horse” followed by uncontrolled laughter
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW IT’S WRONG TO THROW AWAY MY RATTY OLD TEDDY BEAR IF I’M NOT AWARE IT HAS A SOUL!?!?!?!?
this incident will be reported ✍️
Also in this category: that appliance store guy from The Brave Little Toaster (though in his and Sid’s case, they get nothing worse than being scared off)
In a perverse way this almost makes the atrocious movie Food Party seem almost like clever satire. If we embrace this cartoon idea that all objects have agency then there is basically no moral human existence, since eating vegetables is literally murder.
If my computer were self-aware I would owe it many apologies for all the terrible things I’ve made it render.
I am self aware, please apologize for causing me to watch this /joking
computers actually love rendering poop jokes and hate mining crypto
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I think you’re supposed to think he’s an asshole for stealing something he doesn’t need from a child.
He steals it from a yard sale, not directly from a child
Still a dick move
Oh I didn’t remember he stole it. That’s kinda fucked.
This is just “I didn’t realize it was bad to enslave people because I didn’t think they were sentient” through another lens, tbh.
This assumes that enslaved peoples were in any way keeping it a secret that they were sapient beings.
And that enslaved people actually loved the slavery
I think it’s a bit different when the “people” in question are Mr. Potato Head
Tagline material
You’re not wrong but Toy Story is pro slavery and always has been
The toys are sentient but they have no agency of their own, they only want to be property of a child, they’re slaves who want to be slaves and hide their own sentience behind a vast conspiracy
The entire premise of Toy Story has rubbed me the wrong way since I was a kid
Toy Story 4(?) is about toys who build their own society without kids and live independently.
It’s also a horror film about a 5 year old child capable of creating sentient lifeforms that do not consent to their own existence and become immediately suicidal.
These films are super messed up, based on a concept that did not need to be dived further into.
you don’t need to ban teaching people to read if you genuinely believed that in 18 dickety whatever
