The Pixar Theory of Labor

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.theawl.com/2015/07/the-pixar-theory-of-labor

To live is to work is to live.
by James Douglas July 15, 2015

http://www.theawl.com/2015/07/the-pixar-theory-of-labor




A lot of Pixar films come packaged with a quasi-humanist narrative hook that enables the public digestion of their work. Viewers nodded thoughtfully over WALL-E’s depiction of a future earth choked by the refuse of big-box retail, and of a human race infantilized and rendered obese by mindless consumption, while Brave was the first Pixar film to feature a female protagonist—a simple gesture, the long-overdueness of which did not do very much to diminish murmurs of appreciation. Pixar’s latest film and fifteenth feature, Inside Out, arrives with at least three female-coded lead roles, and an apparently sincere desire to render with sensitivity the interior life of a young girl.

That interior life is realized as a theme park-esque inner world, surrounding a gleaming control room (“Headquarters”) in which five personified emotions—Joy, the gung-ho leader; Anger; Fear; Disgust; and the little-liked Sadness—each play a role in governing the personality of a human girl, Riley, who is undergoing a traumatic move to San Francisco, where her dad seems to be establishing some sort of tech start-up. When Joy and Sadness are accidentally lost in the outskirts of Riley’s mind, they have to find their way back to Headquarters before her emotional sensibility is destabilized for good.

A lot of narrative business hinges on Joy learning to accept Sadness’s place within the ecosystem of Riley’s mind. Sadness—frumpy, dissolute, low-energy—is a bit of a drag. Her very existence seems contrary to Joy’s key project, which is to ensure Riley is happy all the time; Sadness can’t seem to help turning even Riley’s happy golden memories a glum shade of blue. As per the logic of any buddy comedy, the two eventually learn to get along, and Sadness eventually proves her worth by helping to restore Riley’s emotional equilibrium.

This is another matter of some regard in the public response to Inside Out. With the figure of Sadness, the film appears to permit the existence of negative emotions within a broader portrait of mental health, even to the point of validating depressive feelings. Corporate entertainment—the thinking seems to go—seeks to ensure that its audience is kept mindlessly, vapidly content—but here is an exception, from the House of Mouse, no less. This evidence of humane, even progressive, thinking on the part of its writers and directors helps to contribute to the public perception of Pixar as an enlightened production house—still part of corporate Disney, for sure, but somehow authentic in spite of it. New York Times critic A. O. Scott even compared WALL-E’s vision of a ruined earth to Werner Herzog at his most pessimistic.

FULL story at link.

[yallerdawg]

1. A "subliminal" message for our children?

It is in the nature of modern capitalism that corporations, especially ones of a certain size and influence, glaze a veneer of enlightenment over a brutal, instrumental value system. This is why Facebook and Google go on worldwide fishing expeditions for new users, but frame it publicly as bringing the internet and opportunity to the developing world; it’s why Whole Foods tells its customers they’re helping to save the planet by buying organically farmed produce, but often neglects to specify how far that produce has been shipped. Pixar has created a stable of films for children that is founded on narratives of self-actualization—of characters branching out, embracing freedom, hitting personal goals, and living their best lives. But this self-actualization is almost exclusively expressed in terms of labor, resulting in a filmography that consistently conflates individual flourishing with the embrace of unremitting work.

Is there any other production house operating today that is more obsessed with narratives of the workplace and employment? The basic Pixar story is that of an individual seeking to establish, refine, or preserve their function as an instrument within a system of labor. The only way Pixar is able to conceptualize a protagonist is to assign them a job (or a conspicuous lack of one) and arrange the mechanisms of plot to ensure that they fulfill that job...