Competing masculinities, homoeroticism and perverse subjectivities: a queer reading of Toy Story
So, what can a 1995 Disney-Pixar animation film tell us about Chilean post-dictatorship politics?
Here, I am trying to develop a queer feminist eye for reading materials such as films, as I am planning to include this kind of material in my actual research. As a short exercise, I do here a very exploratory and preliminary reading of Toy Story (John Lasseter, Pixar - Disney, 1995). The reason I picked this film is because it has become my toddler daughter's favorite, meaning I get to see it VERY often...and because it has very interesting narratives. I will not summarize the plot, so if you have not seen the movie, please read short summary at IMDB or Wikipedia. I welcome all kinds of suggestions and comments on how to refine this eye.
Competing Masculinities
This is mainly a story about masculinities in crisis. A cowboy toy —Woody— is in crisis when he feels he is being replaced by Buzz, the full-of-fancy-gadgets space ranger new toy, invoking a social eroticization of technology — all the other toys from Andy's room admire Buzz gadgets and are infatuated with it. Later in the film, Buzz has his own crisis when he realizes he is not the original Buzz Lightyear but only a toy "copy." These crises can be read in several ways, here are some: Woody's crisis could stand for the tensions caused by competing models of masculinities due to historical changes in the US. In this case, cultural artifacts like film help making sense of the transitions from one hegemonic model to another one. Toy Story re-stages then a pattern staged for a long time in the context of police television dramas, where often the "feds" are a threat to the masculinity of the local police, or a new cop finds himself in conflict with the senior cop style of doing things. This kind of "suturing" through differences given by generation or region I think are useful to the collective imagining of the nation.
On a different thread, Buzz falls apart when he finds out he is a toy action figure, just a copy of the (imaginary) original Buzz character. Buzz's frustration relate to the impossibility of fully embodying masculinity for any concrete men: since nobody "owns" the phallus masculinity needs to invoked through signifiers as a daily performance (Butler, 1990). However, after his crisis, Buzz seems to be liberated from the script that he was presupposed to perform by programming so we could read a rather make a positive reading of the after-crisis.
Homoeroticism
In terms of desire and sexuality, even though there is an explicit heterosexual love plot between Woody and Bo, the main love investments driving the plot seem to be male-to-male: Woody loves Andy, that is why he is so jealous about Buzz; and then through the story the main love relation at stake is actually between Woody and Buzz. What initially is a relation based on mistrust, jealousy competitiveness ends in a true loving friendship. In the sequel Toy Story 2 (where the plot revolves around Buzz going to rescue Woody) there is a scene where a sexually assertive Bo is trying to get a kiss from Woody, who complains: "Not in front of Buzz!" Going back to Buzz's super gadgets, Taylor has linked the exhibitionistic display of signs of potency like hardware and weaponry with the erotics of the military's performance of masculinity. Taylor describes how in military discourse there is an explicit heterosexual plot and yet at the same time, the eroticization of male violence suggests an undergoing homoerotic desire.
Perverse subjectivities
While Andy is the loving sweet good-to-his-toys boy, his neighbor Sid enjoys torturing toys — in his room, a group of tortured "mutant" toys, who have been torn apart and recomposed with mismatched parts, live hiding in the dark and are mistaken as cannibals by Buzz and Woody. In reality, as they find out later, these apparently scary toys are scared themselves and they are not cannibals: they help other toys not become mutants by fixing them. When the main characters decide to work together with the mutant toys, they are able to give the torturer kid a good scare, using their own "monsterhood" to regain their agency and show Sid that they are not dead passive objects, they are alive. Interestingly, Sid the torturer kid looks almost the same than Andy, only with braces and a skull t-shirt, suggesting that maybe the good and the bad character are, in fact, two parts of the same subject (I credit my partner Francisco for this observation). I am interested in this subnarrative to put it in dialogue with the notion of perverse subjectivities already discussed here. Let's remember how Frazier suggests that by embracing perverted subjectitivies as a subject position, one could resist the characterization of political practice as monstrous, and reclaim a subjectivity and agency in these terms: "...[one] who is able to look in the mirror to assemble the pieces of her memories, reconnect them with her scarred body, unpack the structure of domestic discipline and the story imposed upon her, and ultimately, by recognizing the gun, reclaiming the capacity to act". (277)
Here, I am trying to develop a queer feminist eye for reading materials such as films, as I am planning to include this kind of material in my actual research. As a short exercise, I do here a very exploratory and preliminary reading of Toy Story (John Lasseter, Pixar - Disney, 1995). The reason I picked this film is because it has become my toddler daughter's favorite, meaning I get to see it VERY often...and because it has very interesting narratives. I will not summarize the plot, so if you have not seen the movie, please read short summary at IMDB or Wikipedia. I welcome all kinds of suggestions and comments on how to refine this eye.
Competing Masculinities
This is mainly a story about masculinities in crisis. A cowboy toy —Woody— is in crisis when he feels he is being replaced by Buzz, the full-of-fancy-gadgets space ranger new toy, invoking a social eroticization of technology — all the other toys from Andy's room admire Buzz gadgets and are infatuated with it. Later in the film, Buzz has his own crisis when he realizes he is not the original Buzz Lightyear but only a toy "copy." These crises can be read in several ways, here are some: Woody's crisis could stand for the tensions caused by competing models of masculinities due to historical changes in the US. In this case, cultural artifacts like film help making sense of the transitions from one hegemonic model to another one. Toy Story re-stages then a pattern staged for a long time in the context of police television dramas, where often the "feds" are a threat to the masculinity of the local police, or a new cop finds himself in conflict with the senior cop style of doing things. This kind of "suturing" through differences given by generation or region I think are useful to the collective imagining of the nation.
On a different thread, Buzz falls apart when he finds out he is a toy action figure, just a copy of the (imaginary) original Buzz character. Buzz's frustration relate to the impossibility of fully embodying masculinity for any concrete men: since nobody "owns" the phallus masculinity needs to invoked through signifiers as a daily performance (Butler, 1990). However, after his crisis, Buzz seems to be liberated from the script that he was presupposed to perform by programming so we could read a rather make a positive reading of the after-crisis.
Homoeroticism
In terms of desire and sexuality, even though there is an explicit heterosexual love plot between Woody and Bo, the main love investments driving the plot seem to be male-to-male: Woody loves Andy, that is why he is so jealous about Buzz; and then through the story the main love relation at stake is actually between Woody and Buzz. What initially is a relation based on mistrust, jealousy competitiveness ends in a true loving friendship. In the sequel Toy Story 2 (where the plot revolves around Buzz going to rescue Woody) there is a scene where a sexually assertive Bo is trying to get a kiss from Woody, who complains: "Not in front of Buzz!" Going back to Buzz's super gadgets, Taylor has linked the exhibitionistic display of signs of potency like hardware and weaponry with the erotics of the military's performance of masculinity. Taylor describes how in military discourse there is an explicit heterosexual plot and yet at the same time, the eroticization of male violence suggests an undergoing homoerotic desire.
Perverse subjectivities
While Andy is the loving sweet good-to-his-toys boy, his neighbor Sid enjoys torturing toys — in his room, a group of tortured "mutant" toys, who have been torn apart and recomposed with mismatched parts, live hiding in the dark and are mistaken as cannibals by Buzz and Woody. In reality, as they find out later, these apparently scary toys are scared themselves and they are not cannibals: they help other toys not become mutants by fixing them. When the main characters decide to work together with the mutant toys, they are able to give the torturer kid a good scare, using their own "monsterhood" to regain their agency and show Sid that they are not dead passive objects, they are alive. Interestingly, Sid the torturer kid looks almost the same than Andy, only with braces and a skull t-shirt, suggesting that maybe the good and the bad character are, in fact, two parts of the same subject (I credit my partner Francisco for this observation). I am interested in this subnarrative to put it in dialogue with the notion of perverse subjectivities already discussed here. Let's remember how Frazier suggests that by embracing perverted subjectitivies as a subject position, one could resist the characterization of political practice as monstrous, and reclaim a subjectivity and agency in these terms: "...[one] who is able to look in the mirror to assemble the pieces of her memories, reconnect them with her scarred body, unpack the structure of domestic discipline and the story imposed upon her, and ultimately, by recognizing the gun, reclaiming the capacity to act". (277)
On a interesting side note, according to wikipedia, and adding up to competing masculinities: "Lasseter wanted the film to not be a musical, but a buddy film, with the story department drawing inspiration from films such as 48 Hrs. and The Defiant Ones".
ReplyDeletepienso que en lo que dices hay algún error de concepto. además del amor erótico también está el amor de amistad y pienso que este es precisamente el que caracteriza la relación de Woody y Buzz, por una parte, y Andy, por otra. Pienso que son dos amores reales, pero que no se pueden ni identificar ni confundir. De hecho, en la película de Toy Story está muy bien definida la amistad a través de su canción tema.
ReplyDeleteHola Jaumefv! Gracias por tu comentario y disculpa la demora en contestarte :)
ReplyDeleteCreo que precisamente la idea de un "queer reading" — una lectura intencionadamente "amariconada"— es alborotar los límites entre categorías que asumimos totalmente estables, por ejemplo el amor erótico heterosexual (y su posible 'desviación homosexual') y la amistad. Es decir, que no pongo en duda que la narrativa principal aquí habla de ese amor de amistad al que refieres. Sin embargo, una lectura queer resiste aceptar que ese es el único deseo que circula en la historia y parte del supuesto inverso al heteronormativo: ahí donde hay amor, erótico o de amistad, ha de haber deseo homosexual. Así como una lectura queer fuerza y estira los limites de las categoría heterosexual y homosexual, aquí intenté estirar los límites del amor erótico y amor amistad para ver dónde éstos intersectan, a pesar de que tú afirmas que no se pueden confundir.