Shortly after World War II, W. H. Auden published “The Age of Anxiety,” a poem about the search for identity, meaning and connection in an increasingly mechanized world. It centers on four drinkers in a bar, each of whom goes on a private mythic journey in his or her mind, only to find themselves back in their mundane situation, unchanged. Auden reflects on the predicament of the spiritually dispossessed, the socially alienated, the addicted:
We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
Auden’s phrase “age of anxiety” has since become ubiquitous in cultural commentary. We have developed a diffuse anxiety about anxiety, especially a worry that it is claiming our children. The quest to explain this crisis has centered frequently on their use of screens and the internet, especially social media. By allowing devices into our lives and those of our children, we fear, we have corroded our fundamental humanity. In this regard, Pixar’s exploration of our own age of anxiety, this summer’s “Toy Story 5,” attempts to climb a very specific “cross of the moment.”
The “Toy Story” franchise may be better positioned to address this cross than any other vehicle, having entertained generations of children since the release of the original film in 1995. “Toy Story 5” revisits the first film’s tension between old and new. In our long-ago introduction to the main characters, cowboy sheriff Woody suffered envy when plastic spaceman Buzz (partially a nod to Aldrin, but also to a marketing-produced feeding frenzy) appeared on the scene. Woody was an essentially conservative character, true to form as the mythical American sheriff who represents order in a chaotic land. The sight of a laser-shooting interloper who doesn’t recognize the sheriff’s authority unnerved Woody personally, but not the audience.
This time around, however, the garish newcomer to the toys’ world represents a genuine concern to adult viewers, and for more reasons than one.
When Bonnie, the toys’ beloved owner, struggles to make friends with neighboring kids, Sheriff Jessie, the new leader of the gang, slips out of the house to investigate. What Jessie learns to her horror is that modern children have been captured by screens, or “devices,” which seduce them to engage compulsively in video games and social media. Because toys thrive on physical and imaginative engagement from the child (being played with is their raison d’etre), from their perspective, the effect of screen capture on this new generation of children is an existential threat. “You’re dead where you lie,” moans one discarded plaything. “The age of toys is over!” cries another.
The panic and betrayal the discarded toys feel is one I’ve encountered myself from friends with creative careers, including animation for none other than Disney, Pixar’s parent company. They see the skills and vision they have worked for years to develop being replaced by artificial intelligence. Needless to say, this threat isn’t isolated to creative work, and no one knows how deep A.I.-driven job displacement will be across the spectrum of human labor. It’s played for laughs here, but the widespread fear of suddenly finding oneself unnecessary is real.
The film doesn’t dwell overly long on the toys’ fears for their own obsolescence, however. Sheriff Jessie’s main concern is for the demise of imagination itself, which she understands as a proxy for the human spirit. (“Soul,” another Pixar film, presents the creative “flow state” of play as something close to the meaning of life.) Jessie sees firsthand that screen-captured children are lost to a horrifying zombification, failing to truly engage with each other, even while constantly texting or gaming online.
The writers maximize dramatic tension by presenting Bonnie as a holdout against the mesmerizing screen invasion. That changes when her parents buy her a networked device to help her “make friends” online. Lilypad is basically an iPad in a frog casing. Initially framed as a super-intelligent villain, Lily more or less instantly lures Bonnie into a realm of online games and chat threads (the Pond). But beneath the bright addictive colors and message alerts, this playground is actually a swamp—a twin of the bar that Auden’s alienated drinkers slump against, talking constantly but never quite communicating with each other.
Intriguingly, as the film progresses, even Lily realizes her existence is a threat to Bonnie’s soul. Filled with remorse but lacking the ability to repent, she discards herself in the trash in hopeless self-disgust. Sheriff Jessie, however, believes Lily and the film’s other electronic devices can be redeemed, just as Bonnie can be saved from becoming another screen zombie. Once a screen-hater (and, like her predecessor Woody, suspicious of electronic toys), Jessie has an epiphany that any technology (toy, robot or screen) can promote human flourishing if engaged with in the right way.
Everything ends well, of course. But there is an unresolved tension here between what the film wants to say and what it feels it has to say. Pixar is inextricably tied to Steve Jobs, who was instrumental in launching it as an independent studio in 1986. Jobs and his other venture, Apple, haunt other Pixar films, especially the eco-catastrophe fable “Wall-E.” There, the titular, wonky, rusting, junk-collecting hero is contrasted to the sleek, super-advanced robot Eve, which was actually designed by Apple’s chief design officer, Jony Ive.
Andrew Stanton directed both “Toy Story 5” and “Wall-E,” and both films share an overt fear of screen capture and spiritual death as crass materialism progresses unchecked. The films share similar contradictions, too, in that advanced technology is both the cause of, and solution to, the crises facing mankind. (On the other hand, there are inversions: In “Wall-E” the effect of species-wide screen capture is infantilization; humans are giant obese babies in floating prams sucking from bottles all day. Conversely, the effect of Lilypad and her ilk is to make children grow up too quickly.)
“Toy Story 5” never quite escapes the tangle of this attempt to do two opposing things. It sets itself up for a mea culpa, acknowledging the obvious downstream damage caused by Steve Jobs’ iPad empire. But Pixar is also a part of Disney’s online video and gaming empire. (You can buy Lily for your own children.) Therefore, by the third act, we learn that such a cybernetic legacy is fundamentally redeemable, and maybe even salvific. (A short coda after the end credits shows a Bluetooth-connected fleet of Buzz Lightyear drones descending from a cloud like angels, bestowing themselves into the hands of astonished children in a playground. Is this scene meant to be chilling or heartwarming? It’s like a Rorschach test.)
What to make of a film that bravely acknowledges a form of collective guilt (both corporate and communal) but then rescinds the confession because maybe the mesmeric and addictive systems of technocracy could be used to good effect?
I watched “Toy Story 5” with my children, aged 6, 10, 12 and 14. They all enjoyed it, which is quite the achievement on the filmmakers’ part. But what haunted me was that online Pond. It intimated that I, the adult and would-be example-setter, have slid down into a swampy space that I do not genuinely want to leave, even though I know it is dark and slimy under the bright-colored lures.
I suspect many adult viewers will recognize our complicity in the ensorcelling of our youth. Even with the best of intentions, every minute we spend there changes us. In short order, that swamp has corroded much in our society, from the grand scale of our institutions to the small scale of our neighborhoods. It has foregrounded the art of networking and backgrounded our friendships. This is not a new problem, but rather an acceleration of a uniquely modern one.
C. S. Lewis, in The Four Loves, lamented that friendship is a kind of love that is regarded “in the modern world [as] quite marginal; not a main course in life’s banquet.” This is especially true and damaging if we overlook friendship not in favor of familial or romantic bonds, but because we have bypassed the banquet altogether and stay glued to the screen, like the isolated children in “Toy Story 5.” I’m reminded of another poem of Auden’s, this one written during the war. “September 1, 1939” features another bar scene:
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
That poem includes a haunting line, which sums up what “Toy Story 5” was trying to say before it got sidelined by corporate apologia: “We must love one another or die.”
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