PIXAR’S

AMERICA
The Re-Animation of
American Myths
and Symbols

DIETMAR MEINEL
Pixar’s America
 Dietmar Meinel

Pixar’s America
The Re-Animation of American Myths and Symbols
Dietmar Meinel
Department of Anglophone Studies
University of Duisburg-Essen
Essen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

ISBN 978-3-319-31633-8 ISBN 978-3-319-31634-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950070

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For my Friends
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In many ways, the following words of gratitude cannot do justice to the

immense support, encouragement, and inspiration I have received from so
many people in the writing of this book. While writing is a rather solitary
endeavor, the intellectual work behind it never is. The assistance, care,
and sustenance of an amazing community brought the following pages,
indeed the writer of these lines, into being. I am grateful and indebted to
all of you.
First and foremost, I thank Winfried Fluck. His thinking shaped the
very idea of the book and his intellectual rigor enabled me to develop a
voice of my own. In particular his insistent encouragement to explore the
aesthetic and narrative complexity of the cinematic material became an
essential tenet of this book and my work in general. Similarly, with her
keen observations and her sharp theoretical thinking, Laura Bieger pro-
foundly influenced the content of this book, from its structure to its close
readings. As a scholar and an instructor Laura fostered my intellectual
vocation—from my very first seminar as an undergraduate to the comple-
tion of this book. I am also grateful to Donald Pease whose sense of pro-
fession taught me an unprecedented passion for intellectual exchange. His
generosity in wholeheartedly engaging with my work from the beginning
of the project onward provided me with confidence during moments of
doubt; his dedication to my journey also offered me opportunities and
experiences which I hold dear.
Ahu Tanrisever and Sonja Longolius read and commented on indi-
vidual chapters at our wonderful reading group meetings; my cohort at
the Graduate School of North American Studies—Ben Robbins, Dorian

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Kantor, Florian Plum, Kate Schweißhelm, Lina Tegtmeyer, Natalia

Klimina, Nathan Vanderpool, Rebecca Brückmann, and Ruth Steinhoff—
lifted me up when spirit, health, or faith were low. The Graduate School
of North American Studies and the John F. Kennedy Institute gave me
the opportunity to write my thesis in an intellectually stimulating environ-
ment in Berlin, Germany, and abroad. With her heart-warming presence
and her patience, Gabi Bodmeier often saved me from my bureaucratic
incompetence.
At the Department of Anglophone Studies of the University of
Duisburg-Essen, I am indebted to Barbara Buchenau for her faith in and
support of my work. Of my friends and colleagues at the University of
Duisburg-Essen, to all of whom I am grateful for creating a stimulating
and supportive environment, I particularly acknowledge Elena Furlanetto,
Zohra Hassan, and Courtney Moffett-Bateau. Their astuteness, knowl-
edge, and openness have taught me to thrive as an intellectual and as a
person.
At Palgrave Macmillan I have been lucky to find highly profes-
sional support for the book, and thank in particular Lina Aboujieb and
Hariharan Venugopal. I am especially grateful for the thoughtful and per-
ceptive comments provided by the anonymous reviewers. Earlier versions
of Chaps. 6, 7, and 8 were previously published in Animation Studies,
Volume 8 (2013), NECSUS European Journal for Media Studies (Spring
2014), and European Journal of American Culture, Volume 33, Issue 3
(2014), respectively. A section of the introduction appeared in the volume
Rereading the Machine in the Garden (2014) edited by Eric Erbacher,
Nicole Maruo-Schröder, and Florian Sedlmeier. I am grateful for the per-
mission to reproduce material here.
The friendship of many wonderful people has inspired and uplifted me
during the research and writing. I deeply appreciate their belief in me. My
parents and my sister supported me even when my path appeared hazard-
ous and disheartening. I thank Hajo and Kay, for without you, none of
this would exist.
 CONTENTS

1 Exceptional Animation: An Introduction 1

From Failure to Fame: The Pixar Studio
and Digital Animation 3
Animating Revolt or Monstrous Beings? 9
All Ages Admitted 19
“Every Line Drawn, Object Moved, and Shape Changed” 20
Animating the Myths and Symbols of American Culture 22
Remediating the Myths and Symbols of American Culture 28

2 “You Better Play Nice”: Digital Enchantment

and the Performance of Toyness in Toy Story (1995) 45
Fearful Sheriff Dolls and Oblivious Space-Ranger Action Figures 47
Stupid, Little, Insignificant Toys 50
The Space-Traveling American Adam 52
The Enchanting Performance of Toyness 55

3 An Animated Toast to the Ephemeral:

The Multicultural Logic of Late Capitalism
in Toy Story 2 (1999) 61
The Multicultural Myth of Woody, Buzz, and Bill 63
A Postmodern Toy Story 66
The Digital Logic of Late Capitalism 70
A Toast to the Ephemeral 71

ix
x CONTENTS

4 A Story of Social Justice? The Liberal Consensus

in Monsters, Inc. (2001) 75
Monsters of Plenty 77
The Liberal Consensus of Monstropolis 79
A Good Society of Monsters: Individualism, Meritocracy,
and Affirmative Government 83
Animating the Good Society? 85
The Green, One-Eyed Schlemiel 88

5 “From Rags to Moderate Riches”:

The American Dream in Ratatouille (2007) 97
Pixar’s Animated American Dream 100
Class, Space, and the Animated Dream 105
Hyper-White Food Critics and Non-White Chefs:
The Villains in Ratatouille 107
Learning to Perform: Middle Class,
the Ratatouille Restaurant, and (the Aesthetics of)
Ordinary Whiteness 109
An Exceptionalist Rat? 112

6 “Space. The Final Fun-tier”: Returning Home

to the Frontier in WALL-E (2008) 119
The Significance of the Post-Apocalyptic Frontier 120
Mediating the Frontier: Consumerism, Nostalgia,
and Digital Cinematography 122
Gendered Robots: Male Garbage Compressors
and Female Drones 124
The Brave, New World Aboard the Axiom 127
Earth. The Final Frontier 130

7 Empire Is Out There!? The Spirit of Imperialism

in Up (2009) 139
The Imperial Fantasies of James, Carl, and Charles 142
Adventure Is in Here: Rewriting the Imperial Fantasy 147
The Spirit of the Informal Empire 150
 CONTENTS xi

8 “And when everyone is super … no one will be”:

The End of the American Myth in 
The Incredibles (2004) 163
“Celebrating Mediocrity” 165
The Incredibles: A Voluntary Association 166
Victimizing the White, Male Superhero Body 171
From Heroine to Homemaker … to Heroine, Again 173
Leaving Suburbia 175

9 Driving in Circles: The American Puritan Jeremiad

in Cars (2006) 187
Narratives of Individual and National Decline 190
Imagined Pasts: The Jeremiad and the Golden
Age of the 1950s 195
Imagined Spaces: The American South 198
The Sound of American Myths and Symbols 200

10 Animating a Yet Unimagined America? The Mediation

of American Exceptionalism in Toy Story 3 (2010) 207
Errand into the Daycare Wilderness 210
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Garbage Incinerator 214
A Yet Unimagined America? 215

Bibliography 219

Index 231
 CHAPTER 1

Exceptional Animation: An Introduction

“It’s a Pixar World. We’re Just Living in It.”

Roberta Smith

From anxious sheriff dolls, obnoxious race cars, bleeping and buzz-
ing garbage compressors to irritable old men; from cities powered with
the screams of children, rat-infested cottages to post-apocalyptic garbage
landscapes; from the elaborate sounds of “speaking whale” to the immo-
bilizing shout of “squirrel!,” the world of Pixar expands “to infinity, and
beyond.” As soon as the little desk lamp Luxor Jr. hops onto the screen,
audiences of all ages eagerly await to be drawn into an oddly familiar, yet
unexpectedly distinct, universe. As Pixar’s digital animation is so beloved,
even ill-tempered ogres, singing princesses, and sabre-toothed squirrels
obsessed with acorns are often assumed to populate their world as well.
When Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith co-founded Pixar Inc. along
with thirty-eight other founding members and investor Steve Jobs in 1986,
however, the world was not Pixar. Actually, outside the film industry, few
people had heard of the small company and its previous work. Even in
Hollywood, many would have probably been hard-pressed to describe
what these few individuals contributed to the blockbuster trilogy Star Wars
(1977–1983) or why high-tech entrepreneur Steve Jobs invested five mil-
lion dollars in some forty computer scientists with PhDs. About ten years
later, as audiences of all ages flocked to the theaters to see the first film pro-
duced entirely with the use of computers, the world had begun changing.
© The Author(s) 2016 1
D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_1
2 D. MEINEL

As personal computers, cell phones, and the internet came to be an integral

part of everyday life, in hindsight, a digitally produced film seemed to be
the logical consequence of the increasing technological interpenetration of
human life. And an additional ten years later, as the Museum of Modern
Art opened its venues to host a show about digital animation, the curators
opted to dedicate their entire space to the work of the Pixar Animation
Studios. When The Disney Company bought the studio for 7.4 billion
dollars only two years later, Pixar and its worlds had become the pinnacle
of contemporary American culture. Today, another ten years later, an entire
generation of young people have grown up watching the adventures of
the sheriff doll Woody and the space-ranger action figure Buzz, traveling
Route 66 with race-car Lightning McQueen, or experiencing global envi-
ronmental annihilation with the cleaning robot WALL-E along with their
parents and grandparents. Today, indeed, we live in a Pixar world.
Notwithstanding the immense critical and popular acclaim of the ani-
mation studio, scholars have only gradually engaged with digital anima-
tion and primarily published essays or dedicated single book chapters to
Pixar. While the perception, as Roberta Smith wrote in 2005, “that there
is nothing to say in print about the artistic implications, stylistic differ-
ences (and shifts in quality) or social significance of Pixar’s films or their
place in the animation continuum is little short of ludicrous,” may not
be entirely true today, book-length analyses of the Pixar worlds continue
to be few and far between. This book aims to bridge this gap and situate
the animated films in their broader cultural, political, and social context.
With interventionist sheriff dolls and space-ranger action figures liberat-
ing oppressed toys, exceptionally talented rodents hoping to fulfill their
dreams, aging wilderness explorers fighting for South American freedom,
or Mid-Western small town values forming an all-American champion,
these cinematic texts particularly draw on popular myths and symbols of
American culture. As the following chapters examine, whether comment-
ing on the American Dream in light of white privilege, the frontier myth
in light of traditional gender roles, or the notion of voluntary associations
in light of neoliberal transformations, these close readings analyze two
interdependent notions: the (aesthetic and narrative) refashioning of tra-
ditional American figures, motifs, and tropes for contemporary sensibili-
ties, and their politics of animation. This book hopes to explore the ways
in which Pixar films come to re-animate and remediate prominent myths
and symbols of American culture in all their aesthetic, ideological, and
narrative complexity.
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 3

FROM FAILURE TO FAME: THE PIXAR STUDIO AND DIGITAL

ANIMATION
In the late 1970s, the notion of digital technology, from personal comput-
ers to smartphones or the internet, may have been the prominent theme
of a science fiction novel or, at best, constituted a fringe phenomenon
peripheral to most people. The idea of integrating computer-generated
imagery into films or even animating an entire movie using computers
must have seemed similarly unthinkable. To invest tens of millions of
dollars into a film to project previously unimaginable worlds on the sil-
ver screen was not a viable option for film companies at that time, as all
larger studios still reeled financially from the breakup of the lucrative yet
monopolistic Hollywood system. As Pixar Inc. (which would later become
Pixar Animation Studios) developed within a rapidly transforming cultural
industry shaped by novel technological advances and business models, to
write about the Pixar Animation Studios entails writing about the develop-
ment of digital technology, blockbuster Hollywood cinema, and animated
film of the last forty years. But even as the Pixar company may be one of
the pinnacles of contemporary popular culture, without the technological
savvy, the creative vision, and the commercial gamble of Ed Catmull, John
Lasseter, and Steve Jobs, this story could not have been told.
Almost all histories of the development of the contemporary Hollywood
blockbuster system begin with the surprising success of the first Star Wars
(1977) film in which audiences were captivated by the adventures happen-
ing in a galaxy far, far away. While the narrative told the familiar, fairy-tale
inspired story of the battle between the forces of good and evil, most
viewers flocked to the movie theaters time and time again to experience
fantastic extraterrestrial worlds and dynamic space fights. Even though
audiences and critics celebrated George Lucas, director and producer
of the film, for his artistic vision, most of the captivating space scenes
depended on two novel technological inventions, “a computer-controlled
camera that allowed for dynamic special-effect shots and an elaborate opti-
cal compositing system [that] gave the movie an unprecedented feeling
of realism” (Paik 19). To further develop and profit from this integration
of film-making and computer technology, George Lucas founded a com-
puter division at his film company in 1979 to develop a digital video edit-
ing system, a digital audio system, and a digital film scanner and printer
(cf. Paik 20). For this Graphics Group, Lucas hired Ed Catmull, a young
and aspiring computer graphics researcher from the New York Institute
4 D. MEINEL

of Technology with a PhD in computer science, to lead the Lucasfilm

Computer Division. The small group of digital software and hardware pio-
neers Catmull assembled to develop digital film production tools for audio
mixing, film compositing, and film editing would eventually become the
first cohort of the Pixar company (cf. Price 35).
Instead of limiting their work to the development of digital instruments
for film production, however, Catmull and his team were determined to
explore the visual and narrative potential of digital programming from the
beginning. But as George Lucas did not trust the potential of digitally pro-
duced special effects or computer-generated imagery, Catmull had to find
and develop projects to demonstrate the capabilities of digital animation.
Although the team was successful in producing some scenes for Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan (1982) and the highly celebrated short film Andre and
Wall B. (1984), “Lucas thought the film was awful […] [which] reinforced
his feeling that his Computer Division shouldn’t be making films […] [and
gave] him a low impression of computer animation” (Price 59). Facing con-
tinuous doubts about the potential of computer-animated film from within
his company, by 1985 Catmull hoped for a buy-out of his small section.
In need of a potential investor, the Computer Division eventually con-
vinced Steve Jobs to acquire a computer graphics section which, in 1986,
was not generating profits. Recently fired from his position as executive
vice president at Apple, Steve Jobs had the time, vision, and money to
invest in the idea of digital graphics that, in his words, “could be used
to make products that would be extremely mainstream. Not tangible,
manufactured products, but something more like software—intellectual
products” (Jobs quoted in Paik 51). Whether the ambition to monetize
the digital potential of computer software was a brainchild in hindsight
or born out of the work the Computer Division had done in produc-
ing extraordinary digital imagery such as computer-animated knights for
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) can never be settled entirely. At first, how-
ever, Jobs decided to continue fostering the development of his acquisi-
tion into a hardware company, since Catmull and his team had created a
computer “that could scan movie film, combine special-effects images with
live-action footage […] and record the results back onto film” (Price 62).
Named after its first device, Pixar Inc. was supposed to do what Macintosh
had done for the personal computer: “Graphics computers would start
in the hands of a few early adopters and then make their way into a vast
mainstream market” (Jobs quoted in Price 85).
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 5

But the Pixar Image Computer could never fulfill these expectations.
Plagued with technological inconveniences and limited commercial suc-
cess, the computer became a funding sink for Pixar and Jobs. Although
in dire financial distress, Pixar stayed in business because in the late 1980s
the company had expanded its portfolio by developing film software
and producing TV commercials. For example, the Computer Animation
Production System (CAPS) computer program, useful to color ink-and-
paint cells, was an immediate success with the Disney Studios. Later, the
RenderMan and IceMan software—developed to enable the rendering
of 3-D graphics and the digital processing of photographs—eventually
came to transform computer animation and special effect productions.
Even as the programs established Pixar as a leader in technological innova-
tion, their 3-D rendering and image processing software remained “niche
product[s]” (Price 100). With their technological knowledge and experi-
ence, however, Pixar was able to gain a foothold in the market for televi-
sion advertisements—having acquired some reputation for their software,
the company produced several TV commercials. Starting in 1989, Pixar
was able to create and increase revenue in this way to offset its losses in the
hardware and software business. But by 1991 the annual deficits compelled
Jobs to shut down the hardware production entirely and to concentrate
all of the company’s resources on expanding its software development and
advertising productions.
While the RenderMan software continues to define Pixar’s technologi-
cal superiority in the present, its days of producing commercials are long
gone. Today, audiences love, cherish, and admire Pixar for its many feature-
length computer-animated films. While the first-ever full-length computer-
animated film Toy Story (1995) delivered the company from its financial
distress in 1995, in those early years only a few people believed in Pixar
as a film company: Ed Catmull possessed the technological vision, Steve
Jobs provided the funding (although Jobs did not believe in the idea of a
cinematic endeavor [cf. Price 104]), and John Lasseter offered the creative
talent. A former student at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArt),
Lasseter had been trained in the late 1970s by those artists he admired
most: longtime Disney animators. Although Disney employed Lasseter
in the early 1980s, his growing fascination and passion for digital anima-
tion found no resonance at the studio.1 When his superiors persistently
ignored the ideas of the young animator and eventually shelved his project
The Brave Little Toaster, in January 1984 a frustrated Lasseter joined the
Graphics Group at Lucasfilm. His collaboration with Catmull proved to
6 D. MEINEL

be the creative foundation of the company’s later success. Supported by

Catmull in his attempts to explore the technological boundaries of com-
puter animation, Lasseter produced several short films throughout the
1980s, each of which contributed to Pixar’s growing esteem in the film
industry, demonstrated the ever-increasing possibilities of digital technol-
ogy, and allowed Pixar to establish their commercial business. Beginning
with Luxo Jr. (1984), Pixar continuously produced short animations and
eventually won the Oscar for Tin Toy in the category of best animated
short film in 1988. While these films showcased the potential of Pixar’s
rendering software and functioned to advertise their technological capa-
bilities, they also helped to gradually position Pixar as a film brand. With
the financial dedication of Steve Jobs, Pixar accumulated technological and
artistic capital which eventually paid off in the early 1990s when the previ-
ously disinclined Disney Studios began to float the idea of a cooperation
for a full-length theatrical release. With the support and know-how of the
animation studio in Hollywood at that time, Catmull, Jobs, and Lasseter
had finally set Pixar on its course to become the culturally, commercially,
and technologically leading computer animation studio of the present.
Teetering on the brink of financial collapse and wrestling for nearly ten
years with finding a profitable business model, Pixar Inc. had attempted
to develop graphics computers for the mass market, invented sophisti-
cated rendering software, dabbled in television advertising, and produced
critically acclaimed shorts until finding its path. Although Ed Catmull’s
technological vision, John Lasseter’s creative talent, and Steve Jobs’ busi-
ness acumen had primarily shaped this improbable course, the liberty and
the opportunity to re-position a company in various competitive markets
over the course of a decade from a cutting-edge technology developer to
a profitable entertainment business may be hard to imagine outside the
cultural, economic, political, and social atmosphere of California, Silicon
Valley, and Hollywood. Even as the people at Pixar pursued a clear vision
of producing an entire feature film digitally, the success of a computer-
animation film studio in 1995 needs to be situated within the broader
context of a transforming film industry, the renaissance of animated film,
and consolidation of The Disney Company in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the tumultuous early years of the company, the first cohort at Pixar
already established the predominant ideas for which the animation stu-
dio would become famous. As Pixar developed cutting-edge animation
software and hardware from the beginning, the studio could offer novel
cinematic experiences previously unseen on the silver screen. This strategy
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 7

to stir interest in films through novel visual imagery coincided with and
profited immensely from the shift to the blockbuster production system
in Hollywood in the late 1970s. With Jaws (1975), the Indiana Jones
(1981–1989) and the Star Wars (1977–1983) trilogies, Steven Spielberg
and George Lucas had fundamentally transformed the film business—and
the people at Pixar were deeply shaped by (and had shaped) the transition
from the New Hollywood period to the blockbuster era, as James Clarke
reasons in The Films of Pixar Animation Studio (2013):

In understanding the allure of the Pixar movie, there’s a rewarding connec-

tion to make with the fantasy-film successes of a number of films produced
in the 1970s and 1980s. These are films that many of the Pixar staff would
be very familiar with, informing their sense of characterisation, plot, tone
and subject choice. Indeed, of the filmmakers synonymous with the fantasy
film, we must cite George Lucas and Steven Spielberg—and, critically, both
expressed strong feelings towards the tradition of the Disney studio’s ani-
mated films of the 1940s and 1950s. (Clarke 38)2

Parallel to a thriving film industry invested in refining their blockbuster

formula, from the mid-1980s Hollywood also experienced a renaissance
in animation. Films such as the Spielberg-produced An American Tail
(1986) and the Spielberg and Lucas co-produced The Land Before Time
(1988) were surprise box office hits and invigorated the genre with novel
appeal.3 At that time, The Walt Disney Company, however, seemed to
have lost its ability to produce appealing animation films—during the
1970s and early 1980s the studio had slipped into a creative and economic
slumber after the death of its founder, Walt Disney. From a cultural, com-
mercial, and innovation perspective, the Disney tradition so fundamen-
tal in shaping the film industry for decades had lost its allure. Only after
Michael Eisner became CEO of the company in 1984 and installed Jeffrey
Katzenberg as the chairman of Disney’s motion picture division did the
company begin to release critically acclaimed and financially successful ani-
mated films again. Beginning with The Little Mermaid (1989), in short
succession Disney was able to release films which helped recover its finan-
cial and cultural capital: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The
Lion King (1994), and Pocahontas (1995) not just (re-)established The
Walt Disney Company as a major entertainment business, but also4 rekin-
dled the popular fascination with the animation genre (cf. Clarke 36–37).
While this renaissance prepared audiences for a computer-animated
viewing experience, the Disney tradition also profoundly shaped the artistic
8 D. MEINEL

aspirations and ideals at Pixar, beyond the individual training and involve-
ment of John Lasseter and his admiration for The Walt Disney Company.
In their first collaboration with Disney, Toy Story (1995), the Pixar employ-
ees learned a huge amount from their cel-animation heirs, appropriating
the financial, organizational, and artistic approaches to a point where sev-
eral of Disney’s senior executives professed “that Pixar had made a film
that contained more of the ‘heart’ of traditional Disney animated films
than they themselves were making at that time” (Price 155–156). In her
enthusiastic review of the film for The New  York Times, journalist Janet
Maslin welcomed this dedication to the Disney animation tradition as “[t]
he computer-animated Toy Story, a parent-tickling delight, is a work of
incredible cleverness in the best two-tiered Disney tradition” (Maslin).
In fact, many film critics celebrated Toy Story for “the purity, the ecstatic
freedom of imagination, that’s the hallmark of the greatest children’s
films” and its appeal to an all-age audience: in the words of Entertainment
Weekly, its “spring-loaded allusive prankishness […] will tickle adults even
more than it does kids” (Gleiberman). This fascination with Toy Story fur-
ther included the technological savvy of the production with its combi-
nation of “three-dimensional reality and freedom of movement that is
liberating and new” (Ebert). Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger
Ebert described his viewing experience as “a visionary roller-coaster ride”
and foretold “the dawn of a new era of movie animation” (Ebert).
With the immense critical and commercial success of Toy Story, Pixar
blazed a trail for computer-animated film and quickly inspired other film stu-
dios to launch or develop their animation department. The last twenty years,
therefore, have seen a tremendous increase in computer-animated films as
these movies matured into a viable and lucrative avenue for profit in the
industry. Within the diverse and popular field of computer-animated films
today, Pixar competes with a variety of other studios for audience attention
at the box office. While in the 1990s Pixar profited from the novelty of com-
puter animation, the last two decades have seen intensified competition in the
market: 20th Century Fox has produced the tetralogy Ice Age (2002–2012),
Sony Picture Animation Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and a sequel
(2009, 2013), Universal Pictures Despicable Me and two sequels (2010,
2013, 2015), and Walt Disney Animation Studios Tangled (2010), Wreck-It
Ralph (2012), and Frozen (2013). Among the numerous competitors to
Pixar, the DreamWorks Studios with their Shrek (2001–2010) tetralogy and
the Madagascar (2005–2012) trilogy5 have been particularly successful in
developing a recognizable and individual brand of animation. From its first
animated feature, Antz (1998), DreamWorks explicitly intended “to pro-
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 9

duce films that were hipper, smarter, and less sentimental than the tradi-
tional Disney animated film, aimed at an audience of children assumed to be
more intelligent and sophisticated than Disney had apparently long assumed
children to be” (Booker, Hidden Messages 142). While DreamWorks may
seem similarly well suited for an exploration of the aesthetic and narrative
complexity of animated films, just as all previous examples speak to the flour-
ishing and diversity of computer-animated films independent of any particu-
lar production company, this book concentrates exclusively on Pixar—not
because the studio still maintains a leading position at the box office6 or in
the technological field but because Pixar has, over the decades since its foun-
dation, developed into a synonym for animated film.
While commercially still the most successful studio, Pixar has also
become a cultural icon unmatched by its rivals. The technological innova-
tion and aesthetic appeal of the company has not merely created a highly
visible brand and household name for animation; in its exhibition on digi-
tal animation, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exalted the Pixar
Animation Studios to canonical status. As Roberta Smith summarizes
the Pixar: 20 Years of Animation exhibition in The New York Times: the
MoMA “has mounted the largest, most object-oriented exhibition in its
history devoted to film: a show about the runaway phenomenon of digital
animation. Well, some digital animation. O.K., the digital animation of
one hugely successful, pioneering company, the Pixar Animation Studios”
(Smith). In addition to the numerous feature-length and short films, the
MoMA also exhibited “more than 500 drawings, collages, storyboards
and three-dimensional models by some 80 artists” (Smith) to display the
variety of visual designs and art integral to (Pixar’s) animated film produc-
tions. Since the show traveled to Great Britain, Japan, Australia, Finland,
South Korea, Mexico, and Taiwan—and its follow-up exhibition Pixar: 25
Years of Animation went to Germany, China, and Italy (cf. Pixar: 25 Years
of Animation 182)—the retrospective celebrated the studio as a mediator
of high art, innovative technology, and commercial success globally.7

ANIMATING REVOLT OR MONSTROUS BEINGS?

Fundamentally shaped by American popular culture, the Hollywood film
industry, and the Disney animation tradition, Pixar not only met with
favorable reception. By the late 1990s, after first amazement at the novel
visual technology had vanished, the studio increasingly encountered
questions and doubts about the moral and political integrity of its films.
Particularly when The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar Animation
10 D. MEINEL

Studios in 2006 for 7.4 billion dollars and John Lasseter became chief
creative officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation and principal cre-
ative advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering (a section working closely with
the Walt Disney theme park division), people increasingly perceived the
previously independent studio as “convey[ing] an ideology that is rather
similar to the mainstream ideology of Disney films” (Booker Hidden
Messages 78). Although not yet charged with disneyfying (or pixarfying)
popular culture,8 the Pixar Animation Studios encountered increasing dis-
approval which accused their films of simplification, superficiality, sanitiza-
tion, and trivialization. For example, in his Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden
Messages of Children’s Films (2010), Keith M. Booker condemns Pixar’s
A Bug’s Life (1998) for expressing conventional and conservative ideas:

The film […] delivers a message about the power of collective action and
even potentially yields a radical class-oriented political message, with the ants
playing the role of the exploited proletariat and the grasshoppers playing the
role of the bourgeoisie, who feed on the labor of the workers without doing
any productive work of their own. The ant victory thus becomes a virtual
workers’ revolution except, of course, that the film itself is not at all inter-
ested in delivering this message, instead focusing on the very mainstream
American story of the lone individual (Flik) who makes good and saves the
day, delivering independence to the ants (who maintain their own royalist
internal political structure). The political issues raised by A Bug’s Life are
thus unlikely to deliver an effective radical message to young viewers. (82)

While such assessments exemplify the increasingly dismissive tone towards

Pixar, others celebrated Pixar as an independent, technologically innova-
tive, and artistically savvy film company. Because of the non-fairy tale set-
ting, the explicit avoidance of “cartoony” appearances (cf. Clarke 18), the
disregard for trademark musical numbers, and the portrayal of “adultlike
characters with adultlike problems” (Price 155), people also embraced and
applauded the Pixar films for opposing the conventional aesthetics and
normative politics of representation often associated with Disney (cf. Price
151–152). The cinematography with its photorealist quality exemplifies
this more adult approach to animation, as John Lasseter and his team
opted to use “many live-action aesthetic techniques, such as the use of
shallow focus, whereby foreground characters are placed in focus and the
background is indistinct, thereby allowing the audience to concentrate on
the characters above all else at a given moment” (Clarke 16). When critics,
therefore, either wholeheartedly celebrate Pixar productions as “offer[ing]
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 11

hope, imagination, beauty and a degree of purity and innocence that is

countercultural in our age” (Velarde 9) or scorn the films for utterly failing
to articulate a profound message of change, this dichotomous assessment
of the Pixar Animation Studios rehearses broader debates surrounding the
function and potential of (animated) film and of popular culture in general.
The medium of hand-drawn film animation provoked such contradic-
tory and opposing evaluations right from its early inception in the 1920s.
Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein, for example, considered Walt Disney
and his work to be “the greatest contribution of the American people to
art” (1), because his films “are a revolt against partitioning and legislating,
against spiritual stagnation and greyness” (4). In exploiting the creative and
imaginary potential of animation, Eisenstein maintains, Disney provides the
suffering and oppressed millions in the factories with a sense of escape from
the monotony of menial work at the assembly lines. The unruliness of the
animated animals, their uncontainable forms, and the disobedience of the
drawn lines provide optimism to those facing the drab, gray realities of an
alienating and exploitative capitalist system (cf. 4). Walter Benjamin simi-
larly applauded actor performances in general and the early Mickey Mouse
productions in particular (1928–1937), because both offered people the
opportunity to assess notions of humanity in the face of increasing com-
modification of life. “[T]he majority of city dwellers, throughout the work-
day in offices and factories,” Benjamin writes, “have to relinquish their
humanity in the face of an apparatus. In the evening these same masses fill
the cinemas, to witness the film actor taking revenge on their behalf not
only by asserting his humanity (or what appears to them as such) against the
apparatus, but by placing that apparatus in the service of his triumph” (ital-
ics in original, 31). While the film star allegorically symbolized a triumph
of the people over their subjugation by modern technology (the factory,
the office, etc.) through modern technology (the film), the unruly perfor-
mances and physical disruptiveness of a Mickey Mouse prepare its human
audiences for the survival of this form of civilization, reasoned Benjamin (cf.
338). In this anarchic, disobedient, and uncontrollable animated mouse,
“the public recognizes its own life” (Benjamin 338) and, hence, a liberat-
ing potential.
With the introduction of color to film in the 1930s and the increasingly
“gloomy and sinister fire-magic” of the Mickey Mouse shorts, however,
Benjamin also perceived a threat to animation (Benjamin 51). Severely
disturbed by the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy, Benjamin wrestled
with the power of popular art forms to strengthen or challenge these
12 D. MEINEL

political (mass) movements. Because “[t]he logical outcome of fascism is an

aestheticizing of political life” (italics in original, Benjamin 41), the aes-
theticizing quality of colored animation gradually erased its anarchic and
disobedient features and exemplified “how easily fascism takes over ‘revo-
lutionary’ innovations in this field too” (Benjamin 51). Although similarly
interested in the transformations animation went through in the 1930s,
David E.  James in The Most Typical Avant-Garde (2005) attributes the
demise of unruly narratives, disobedient figures, and social subversiveness
in the Disney films to “the increasing rationalization of [Disney’s] tech-
niques necessitated by his own industrial development” (271). The grow-
ing complexity of film sound, color, multiplane camera, and the expansion
of production led Disney to introduce the division of labor into his studio,
as his highly specialized workers began to manufacture films in a system
which used Fordist principles of standardized assembly line production to
maximize efficiency (cf. Booker, Hidden Messages 34–35). By 1937 the
Disney animations were mirroring this standardization of the production
process, as “animals had been endowed with the emotional and psycholog-
ical characteristics of humans, and the Disney style had solidified around
codes parallel to those of the live-action commercial feature, abandoning
the medium’s utopian potential and establishing realism as the norm in
animation” (James 271). The release of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs
(1937) marked the highpoint of this development (cf. James 271–272),
concluded Disney’s transition into “a corporate film factory,” and initiated
“the end of Disney as a pioneer in the exploration of genuinely new artistic
territory” (Booker, Hidden Messages 15). Scholars subscribed to this view
of Disney and (hand-drawn) animation well into the next millennium (cf.
Giroux, The Mouse That Roared).
Benjamin’s fear of fascism did not play a vital role in debates surround-
ing animation, but the idea that animated animals, objects, and figures
could transport normative ideas about culture and society gained momen-
tum with the global expansion of American popular culture in general
and the Disney Studios in particular. In their Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1944/2002) Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno famously decried
the totalitarianism of the culture industry as a form of mass deception.
For the German intellectuals, popular culture, from jazz music to radio
shows and films, entrapped “the defrauded masses” in a capitalist system
of exploitation and seduced the people to “insist unwaveringly on the
ideology by which they are enslaved” (Horkheimer and Adorno 106). In
their dismissal of all forms of popular culture, Horkheimer and Adorno
explicitly refer to Donald Duck as one symbol of this mass delusion
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 13

(cf. Horkheimer and Adorno 106) that a later generation of scholars

trained in critical theory continues to elaborate.
In How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic
(1975), Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart not merely seem to refer to
the Dialectic of Enlightenment in their title but develop a more detailed
criticism of the American culture industry and its perpetuation of imperial-
ist ideologies particularly in Disney comics. They maintained that Disney,
exploiting the potential of hand-drawn cartoons,

uses animals to trap children, not to liberate them. The language he employs
is nothing less than a form of manipulation. He invites children into a world
which appears to offer freedom of movement and creation, into which they
enter fearlessly, identifying with creatures as affectionate, trustful, and irre-
sponsible as themselves, of whom no betrayal is to be expected, and with
whom they can safely play and mingle. Then, once the little readers are
caught within the pages of the comic, the doors close behind them. The
animals become transformed, under the same zoological form and the same
smiling mask, into monstrous human beings. (Dorfman and Mattelart 41)

For Dorfman and Mattelart this entrapment extends beyond its young
audience as the “‘American Dream of Life’” (95) imposes its “monstrous”
view of other cultures and countries upon their (reading) inhabitants. In
this logic, Latin Americans, for example, come to see themselves as infan-
tile and unruly due to their illustration as infantile and unruly in Disney
comics. Following a Marxist perspective, Dorfman and Mattelart conclude
that “Disney expels the productive and historical forces from his comics
[as much as] imperialism thwarts real production and historical evolu-
tion in the underdeveloped world” (97–98). With their often compelling
reasoning, Dorfman and Mattelart fostered a Cultural Studies tradition
of reading cartoons and comics—and mainstream American culture—as
imperial texts promoting cultural, political, and social norms.
This Marxist analysis developed within an academic tradition that under-
stood popular culture to be an essential part of an ideological apparatus.
The work of Louis Althusser in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with its
notion of interpellation, not only came to mold the study of culture at that
time but fundamentally shaped the study of popular films for later genera-
tions. For the French theorist, ideological (and state) apparatuses interpel-
lated individuals into subject positions as these “cram every ‘citizen’ with
daily doses of nationalism, chauvinism, liberalism, [and] moralism” and
“drum into [the children] […] a certain amount of ‘know-how’ wrapped
in the ruling ideology” (On Ideology 28–29).
14 D. MEINEL

Film scholars would refine this notion of a mimetic transfer of meaning

from apparatus to subject to suit the particular conditions of film con-
sumption at the movie theater. Seen in this light, mainstream culture and
Hollywood films would mimetically transfer their imperialist or normative
ideas onto their viewers through the apparatus of the cinema. As Winfried
Fluck notes, the entire movie theater experience came to be understood
in terms of an ideological apparatus since “[t]he ideological effect no lon-
ger resides in the content of the film, but in its cinematic mode of rep-
resentation—its implied spectator position, its ‘transparent’ images and
its characteristic forms of narration and editing” (“Aesthetic Experience
of the Image” 26). Laura Mulvey, in her seminal essay “Visual Pleasures
and Narrative Cinema” (1975), not merely presumed a mimetic relation-
ship between film and ideology, but understood the experience of the film
theater, the visual and narrative conventions of Hollywood cinema—what
would be seen eventually as the entire film apparatus—to interpellate indi-
vidual spectators into a subject position. As the viewing and reception of
Hollywood film became “the site where the ideological effect takes hold
almost imperceptively and, therefore, most effectively” (Fluck, “Aesthetic
Experience of the Image” 28), the imperialist reading of Disney cartoons
by Dorfman and Mattelart expanded into a critical assessment of popular
(animation) film in general.
This sense of an all-pervasive imperial ideology gained particular trac-
tion in American Studies in the following decades as scholars engaged with
the Cultures of United States Imperialism (1993). The contributors to the
seminal essay-collection edited by Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease analyzed
and questioned “the multiple histories of continental and overseas expan-
sion, conquest, conflict, and resistance which have shaped the cultures of
the United States and the cultures of those it has dominated within and
beyond its geopolitical boundaries” (Kaplan, “Left Alone with America”
4). These “New Americanists” further maintained that US imperialism
could not be comprehended merely by disclosing and analyzing impe-
rial practices abroad, but had to be situated within similar procedures at
home.9 American culture, in their view, profoundly contributed to the dis-
semination and pervasiveness of US imperialism by perpetuating fantasies
of American superiority.10 In portraying America as the bearer of liberty
and democracy, canonical and popular texts define the United States as
inherently anti-imperial—a country that opposes the expansionist poli-
tics of its imperialist rivals such as the Soviet Union (cf. Kaplan, “Left
Alone with America” 12). America had been exempt from the historical
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 15

trajectories of social instability and lapses into totalitarianism, this excep-

tionalist logic maintained, because the United States had not experienced
a feudal past or possessed a landed aristocracy. Formed at an expanding
frontier that fostered a liberal individualism, this “empire of liberty” had
been immune to “the inner, dialectical engine of history” (Rodgers 29).
From the Monroe Doctrine to the frontier thesis, the absence of class
tensions, and the American Dream, intellectuals and the greater pub-
lic grouped these individual (at times even competing) notions about
American culture under the umbrella phrase “American exceptionalism,”
as the New Americanists assert. In consequence, this exceptionalism helps
to frame American imperial expansions as humanitarian interventions to
protect or expand liberty, justice, and democracy, in contrast to the totali-
tarian motivation of other evil empires. Thanks to its wide appeal, in this
view, popular culture transmits these imperialist ideas and interpellates
citizen-subjects into an exceptionalist ideology.
In a Marxist understanding of popular culture, then, the Disney pro-
ductions and those of their subsidiaries such as Pixar Animation Studios
with their 100 million dollar films qualify as essential instruments of
American exceptionalism, since mainstream texts, in this view, promote
the cultures of US imperialism (while subversion and opposition would be
located exclusively at the social, political, and cultural margins) (cf. Voelz
188). Seen from this perspective, Pixar exemplifies the threat of cinematic
interpellation, as the animation studio markets its seemingly naïve and
harmless entertainment products to the most susceptible of their all-age
audience: children. As mainstream popular products, then, the sheriff doll
and the space-ranger action figure in Toy Story (1995) or the American
explorers in Up (2009) interpellate their viewers into an exceptionalist
and imperialist ideology.11 Indeed, with its portrayal of Carl and Charles as
fearless adventurers journeying into a South American wilderness to pur-
sue their masculine fantasies, Up may exemplarily illustrate this imperial
ideology by animating a contemporary version of the Monroe Doctrine.12
Whether considering the imperialist motifs in Up, the portrayal of white
privilege in Ratatouille, or the animation of conventional gender roles in
WALL-E, scholarship from critical theory to the New Americanists offers
vital approaches to interrogate the norms and ideologies in Pixar films.
This book, therefore, aims to question these seemingly innocent con-
sumer products as problematic cultural, political, and social texts. Yet, can
we attribute the international box office and home video success of Pixar
films exclusively to the ignorance of the unenlightened masses dubbed
16 D. MEINEL

into an American ideology and willfully spending their money on cultural

products that “cram” an imperialist or exceptionalist ideology down their
throats without being dismissive (and condescending) towards millions
of viewers worldwide? Does not the disobedience, revolt, and unruliness
Eisenstein and Benjamin attributed to early hand-drawn animation con-
tinue to survive in present-day computer animation in spite of or in an
uneasy closeness with discriminatory norms and conventions?
In recent years, scholarship has shifted from the interpellatory poten-
tial of popular culture and mainstream Hollywood film to highlight acts
of appropriation and meaning-production in the process of consumption.
In “Circulating Empires: Colonial Authority and the Immoral, Subversive
Problem of American Film,” for example, Brian Larkin considers the ways in
which the cinema apparatus (in the form of American films and the anonym-
ity of movie theater experience) threatened the pervasiveness of British impe-
rial rule in India around 1900. Although the British imperial administration
considered films as vital tools to promote an ideology of white superiority
and non-white inferiority (cf. Larkin 158), with its depiction of underprivi-
leged, poor whites the increasingly popular Hollywood films were feared to
jeopardize British hegemony. Their wide-ranging portrayals of “‘backstage’
images of white culture and morality […] undercut the dichotomy separat-
ing ‘depraved’ natives from ‘civilized’ rulers” (Larkin 158) and imperiled the
prevalent racial hierarchies of British imperialism. In making the previously
“visual unavailability” (Larkin 171) of white colonizers “‘available to the
native gaze’” (Arora in Larkin 171), the space of the screening, the movie
theater, further complicated seemingly stable colonial dichotomies. The
colonized subject experienced a form of empowerment through the act of
seeing, while remaining concealed from the policing of the imperial gaze in
the poorly lit cinema.13 As these examples from British India suggest, Larkin
concludes, “[t]he cinematic experience is never simply an abstract exchange
of meaning between a technology and its addressee” (178).
In her contribution to Globalizing American Studies, Elizabeth
Thompson also explores the appropriation of Hollywood film within local,
regional, and transnational contexts. She examines the reception of Gone
with the Wind (1939) throughout Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria during World
War II to maintain that audiences linked the themes of the film to their
social, political, economic, and cultural experiences; “historical context,”
Thompson contends, “shaped reception of Hollywood’s universal vernac-
ular” (185). As the turmoil of World War II destabilized the established
political system of the region, “the reign of the old landowning elite was
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 17

crumbling under the wartime pressure of labor, nationalist, and Islamic

movements that gave voice to popular grievances” (Thompson 197).
Middle and working class audiences found vivid images in the Hollywood
production for their hopes and ambitions “to overturn the patriarchal
world of privilege ruled by landed elites and to capture the state at inde-
pendence” (Thompson 197).14 The links between life in Egypt, Lebanon,
and Syria in the first half of the twentieth century and the cinematic rep-
resentation of the US American South in the 1860s, Thompson asserts,
were made possible by “[t]he global vernacular invented by Hollywood
[which] opened GWTW to contested local readings” (202). In Beirut,
Cairo, and Damascus the popular cinematographic text helped to establish
“a vital and separate public sphere” (Thompson 202).
Lastly, in his essay “Watching Shrek in Teheran” (2010), Brian Edwards
juxtaposes the popularity of Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiorastami in the
United States with the widespread appeal of the Hollywood animated film
Shrek (2001) in Iran. The director of films like Taste of Cherry (1997) is
embraced for his nuanced yet critical perspective on Iranian society and
the Islamic political regime in the West, while at the same time dismissed
as “an art director whose films are far removed from politics or any sense
of contemporaneity” and as “another pawn in the West’s media game”
(Edwards 5) in Iran. Another product of this Western media game, Shrek,
on the other hand, is a part of the vital Iranian film culture. Thanks to its
various (illegally) dubbed Farsi versions and its appropriation to a distinct
cultural context, the DreamWorks production enjoys immense popularity
and, in many respects, “isn’t an American film at all” (2).15 Indeed, Shrek
in Iran and Kiorastami in America “resonate in ways that their producers
could hardly have predicted” as “[t]he Iranian Shrek and the American
Kiorastami do not represent, in their new homes, what they represent in
the film worlds where they originated” (Edwards 8). Larkin, Thompson,
and Edwards exemplify transnational approaches to the study of popular
film which do not conceptualize American silent films, Gone with the Wind,
or Shrek as forms of cultural imperialism. Instead, transnational scholarship
explores the various ways in which audiences appropriate the meaning of
cinematic texts to their individual experience and environment.
From the movie theaters in colonial India to the cinema palaces of
North Africa and private screenings in Iran, these examples encourage the
understanding of films in terms of the interactive practices they generate.
Whether participating in the public sphere of a twentieth-century movie
theater or watching illegal copies downloaded from the internet on a
18 D. MEINEL

laptop in the twenty-first century, spectators link films to their cultural,

economic, historical, political, and social context to produce meaning that
is useful in their own world. The transnational approach to the study of
Hollywood film, then, does not deem popular cultural productions to be
seamlessly hailing their audiences into an ideology. Rather, scholars con-
ceptualize cinematic texts as tools to help create identities. In her presi-
dential address to the American Studies Association in 2004, Shelly Fisher
Fishkin advocated a transnational shift in the field to enable scholars to
comprehend American culture and literature “from vantage points beyond
its borders” (20) and within broader networks.16 In almost contrary fash-
ion to the notion of ideological interpellation, transnational approaches to
the study of culture consider reading and viewing as interactive practices
and audiences as competent producers of textual meaning.
Consequently, a transnational approach to Pixar Animation Studios
encourages us to locate the company within international financial struc-
tures, to examine the involvement of the multi-ethnic production staff
working on an animated feature film, to study its international reception
in various regions or cultures, and to explore the appropriation of its glob-
ally disseminated animation films within local, regional, and transnational
contexts—a transnational approach to the study of Pixar eventually allows
us to see its products as “social, political, linguistic, cultural, and economic
crossroads” (Fisher Fishkin 22). Close readings from a transnational per-
spective, therefore, foster an analysis of the illustration of global environ-
mental pollution in WALL-E, the Pan-American and postcolonial context
of Up, and the international community of toys in Toy Story 3 to probe the
contingencies of the “naturalness” of borders, boundaries, binaries, and
nations Fisher Fishkin so adamantly envisions.
Scholarship tends to conceptualize popular culture either as an ideological
apparatus interpellating individuals into a subject position or as a liberating
practice fostering its audiences to produce the meaning of texts. In anima-
tion studies, these competing views celebrate computer-animated films for
their “subtle as well as overt connections between communitarian revolt and
queer embodiment” (Halberstam 29) and question their normative quality
when these films “prefer family to collectivity, human individuality to social
bonding, extraordinary individuals to diverse communities” (Halberstam
46–47). The closeness of traditional gender portrayals and environmental
consciousness in WALL-E or the proximity of the wilderness explorer and
a queer transnational community in Up, however, compel us to read each
Pixar film as simultaneously “animating revolt” and as “monstrous beings.”
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 19

ALL AGES ADMITTED

With their extensive references to literature written by Maurice Sendak,
Chris van Allsburg, or Dr. Seuss, the films of the Pixar Animation Studios
explicitly draw on a rich literary canon to illustrate and populate their
world (cf. Clarke 24). Since the marketing strategies for these Pixar prod-
ucts and the tied-in merchandizing industry additionally address pre-teen
consumers explicitly (cf. Booker, Hidden Messages 98), the public often
perceive Pixar films as products primarily made for children. Journalists
have strengthened this assessment in their reviews of, for example, Toy
Story, suggesting that “[c]hildren will enjoy a new take on the irresistible
idea of toys coming to life” (Maslin) and that “[f]or the kids in the audi-
ence, a movie like this will work because it tells a fun story, contains a lot
of humor, and is exciting to watch” (Ebert). These writers were, however,
also quick to laud the maturity of the film as “[o]lder viewers may be even
more absorbed, because Toy Story […] achieves a three-dimensional reality
and freedom of movement that is liberating and new” (Ebert) and “will
tickle adults even more than it does kids” (Gleiberman).
Surprisingly, scholarly writing about Pixar tends to omit the studio’s all-
age appeal. Instead, as a corporation in the business of generating profits
off the dreams and fantasies of children, Keith M. Booker believes, “one
cannot expect [Pixar] to be too critical of capitalist marketing practices”
(Hidden Messages 98). For Booker, an animated film such as WALL-E
exemplifies “Hollywood sentimentality” and fails to express a critique
thereof because “[t]he whole phenomenon of film-linked merchandising
[…] makes it clear that, from at least the 1930s, with Disney’s extensive
co-marketing of Mickey Mouse, children’s films have been designed to
help children develop the kind of consumerist mentality upon which the
U.S. economy crucially depends” (Hidden Messages 109). This assessment
stands in stark contrast to the complexity applauded by journalists and
the awe which Pixar inspired. Similarly, neither for Benjamin, Eisenstein,
nor the curators of the MoMA exhibition did the corporate nature of
animation or the (assumed) gullibility of its (presumed) audience preclude
the subversive potential in animation; “a cynical reading of the world of
animation,” Jack Halberstam reasons in his dismissal of the presumed
(consumerist) indoctrination at work in Pixar films, “will always return
to the notion that difficult topics are raised and contained in children’s
films precisely so that they do not have to be discussed elsewhere” (52).
But a closer examination of these cinematic texts transcends notions of
20 D. MEINEL

“revolting animations” since Pixar films “also offer us the real and compel-
ling possibility of animating revolt,” Halberstam vehemently asserts (52).
Particularly the aesthetics of animation and the intertextual complexity
of Pixar films encourage us to question whether these texts do operate
merely as indoctrinations of a young and naïve audience.
When the obese spaceship captain in WALL-E, for example, leaves his
hovercraft chair for the first time in his life, the extra-diegetic music of Also
Sprach Zarathustra accompanies (t)his step. While the low-angle camera
shot of the captain further illustrates the magnitude of this emancipatory
act, the scene may appear comical in its visual and musical exaggeration of
normal movement, but the music also refers to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey (1968). In his film, Kubrick famously accompanies a montage
of human development from the first use of tools to space travel with the
piece by Richard Strauss. Due to its intertextual reference to 2001: A Space
Odyssey, the scene in WALL-E adds an additional layer to this tongue-in-
cheek moment; yet, the initial steps of the spaceship captain also possess
an earnest quality since his act initiates the emancipation of humanity from
its technological subordination in WALL-E and, hence, refers to a similar
theme in 2001.17 The intertextual use of the musical score, then, produces
multiple readings and exemplifies an aesthetic complexity appealing to an all-
age audience. While this may explain Pixar’s broad popular appeal (and com-
mercial success), the intricacy of the narrative and aesthetic layers is hardly
suited for the immediate transfer of (corporate) Hollywood sentimentalities.

“EVERY LINE DRAWN, OBJECT MOVED, AND SHAPE

CHANGED”
While the music, the camera work, the editing process, the voice-acting, and
the character performances fundamentally shape the aesthetic quality of ani-
mated film, most scholars concentrate on the visible aspects of animation as
examples of its subversive potential: “The antinormative nature of animated
film,” Halberstam writes, “arises out of the wacky juxtapositions found in
animated worlds between bodies, groups, and environments. And the mul-
tigendered forms sprout from the strangeness of voice–body combinations,
the imaginative rendering of character, and the permeability of the relation
between background and foreground in any given animated scene” (181–
182).18 Historically, scholars and intellectuals had always located the subver-
sive potential of animation in its fantastical features; Walter Benjamin and
Sergei Eisenstein ascribed a rebellious quality to the ubiquitous employment
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 21

of anthropomorphized animals and objects against a dehumanizing apparatus

and against “spiritual stagnation and greyness.”
Today, as “the aesthetic possibilities afforded by CGI both recall and
enhance the ‘openness’ of the language of animation as an interrogative
tool” (Wells 154), animation scholars attribute this potential even to the
“quasi-realist context” and aesthetics of computer-animated films. For
Wells in Animation and America (2002), however, this observation is part
of a broader understanding of animation that is not limited to the disrup-
tive quality of particular characters or objects:

[A]nimation in all of its production contexts has the capacity to subvert,

critically comment upon, and re-determine views of culture and social
practice […] More than any other means of creative expression animation
embodies a simultaneity of (creatively) re-constructing the order of things
at the very moment of critically de-constructing them […] every line drawn,
object moved, and shape changed is a destabilisation of received knowledge,
and in the case of animation in the United States reveals what it is to be an
American citizen, and how the “melting pot” has figuratively and literally
become the “kaleidoscope” of nation and nationality. In enunciating itself,
animation enunciates America: history, mythology, freedom. (16–17)

In his assessment of animation, Wells no longer locates its subversive

potential in a particular form or figure, but attributes an inherent disrup-
tiveness to animation—its lines, shapes, and objects. Just as any other cul-
tural text, animation may manufacture and inscribe normative ideas, but
these “are always subverted by the aesthetic which prioritizes its own terms
and conditions as its mode of mythmaking and means of construction”
(Wells  159). Due to its distinct aesthetics, then, animation transcends
notions of any unmediated ideological interpellation.
In our contemporary age of digitally enhanced photographs and the
extensive use of computer-generated imagery in most blockbuster produc-
tion, no image can be treated as a mere representation; not just animations
as Wells maintains, but all films, to appropriate his formulation, “encour-
age the view that they inhabit a space which is no longer stable, either at
the social and aesthetic ‘textual’ level or at the technological ‘extra-textual’
level and, consequently, they are mediations of the bridge between the
textual and extra-textual” (160).19 Cinematic texts—indeed all texts—
come to mediate their historical context because their aesthetics foster an
openness (or instability) of meaning, aesthetic theory maintains.
22 D. MEINEL

For Jacques Rancière no text or object allows for an exclusively mimetic

interpretation, since audiences can never entirely distinguish its aesthetic
(or textual) from its representative (or extra-textual) layers: as producers of
documentaries conceptualize, arrange, and frame their work in accordance
with various aesthetic preferences, even these seemingly unambiguous texts
do not mimetically represent a social phenomenon (cf. The Emancipated
Spectator). Making it impossible to differentiate the aesthetic from the rep-
resentational due to the dormant presence of one within the other, “[t]
hese combinations create forms of pensiveness of the image that refute the
opposition between studium and punctum, between the operative character
of art and the immediacy of the image” (italics in original, Rancière 125).
While Rancière concentrates on the ambiguity embedded within cul-
tural texts, Winfried Fluck exploits a similar line of thought to describe
the inadequacy of understanding the consumption of cultural texts as a
simple transfer of meaning. For Fluck, meaning is produced in a fusion of
the imaginary of the recipient and the numerous cultural, political, and
social references available in a text (cf. Romance With America). As audi-
ences create the meaning of a text in the act of reading or seeing, the
“double reference” of fictional texts “creates an object that is never stable
and identical with itself” (Fluck, “Aesthetic Experience of the Image” 18)
and enables infinite interpretations of texts among different people as well
as by the same person at different times. Hence both scholars maintain
that the aesthetic and textual references of a text work upon each other to
produce an instability of meaning within the text and for the recipient. In
contrast to evaluative assessments of culture and literature, these scholars
remind us that every text possesses normative and disruptive qualities.

ANIMATING THE MYTHS AND SYMBOLS OF AMERICAN

CULTURE
In asserting that “every line drawn, object moved, and shape changed
is a destabilisation of received knowledge, and in the case of animation
in the United States reveals what it is to be an American citizen,” Paul
Wells not only describes the importance of the aesthetic in animation but
also situates animation within a broader socio-cultural context. Whether
“the melting pot,” “the kaleidoscope nation,” or “freedom,” Wells links
animation to American myths and simultaneously mythologizes the
United States (cf. Wells 17).20 While his perspective refers to the notion
of American exceptionality, we can wonder as to whether only in the
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 23

context of American diversity was an animation culture possible—after all,

many societies can be described as multicultures—or inquire as to whom
America offered freedom. Animation in America, therefore, may not draw
on these popular notions about the United States due to some inher-
ent correspondence between the art form and the culture. Rather, from
Walt Disney to John Lasseter, animators—as many other artists and entre-
preneurs—illustrated their fantastic worlds in familiar fashion to address
broad audiences. Looking at the commercial failures Pixar experienced in
the 1980s (and thinking of the Disney animation tradition and the block-
buster Hollywood culture), this learnt understanding of consumer expec-
tations offers another explanation as to why we may find well-known
figures, motifs, and themes in Pixar films. Although the precise linkage
between animation and America continues to be open to debate, when
Toy Story narrates the adventures of a sheriff doll and a space-ranger action
figure, when a rat dreams of becoming a cook in Ratatouille, when a
robotic entity develops a personality in a garbage wilderness in WALL-E,
or when an American explorer liberates a South American paradise from
European imperial encroachment in Up, these Pixar films certainly ani-
mate familiar myths and symbols of American culture.
The notion of myths and symbols shaping American culture, as Paul
Wells reminds us, dates to the early period of animation when the art
form seemed to express or correspond to a particularly American experi-
ence. While numerous animators and producers shaped and advanced the
medium, in the 1930s Walt Disney and his animation studio established
themselves as the leading company in the field—and by the 1950s, Walt
Disney Productions had expanded into producing live-action films and
TV shows. Disney entertained America and created a mythical America
in the process—most visibly in its theme park which included the “Main
Street, U.S.A.,” “Adventureland,” “Frontierland,” “Fantasyland,” and
“Tomorrowland” attractions.
For a young generation of scholars in the 1940s and 1950s, this mythol-
ogization of America in culture and literature presented the opportunity
to critically engage with a consumerist culture while simultaneously assert-
ing a distinct quality of American literature. In light of the dissolution of
the European cultures in Fascism, Communism, and war in the 1930s
and 1940s, American literary and history scholars attempted to explain
the (seemingly) stable liberal order of the United States. These intellectu-
als gradually understood the United States to be exempt from the social
tensions governing other nations which would eventually erupt in violent
24 D. MEINEL

revolutions and totalitarian regimes: “Other nations,” this view maintained,

“went through the throes of the twice-born, but the Americans, by the
chance conditions of their founding, had slipped free of the underlying
motor of historical change” (Rodgers 29). When the United States even-
tually emerged as a global superpower from the implosion of the former
European empires after World War II, American literary scholars rational-
ized its seemingly exceptional status with reference to nineteenth-century
writers. In their view, the literary works of the nineteenth century (and their
intellectual work in the twentieth century) questioned “the popular affir-
mation of industrial progress disseminated by spokesmen for the dominant
economic and political elites” in favor of “the less tangible aesthetic, moral,
and environmental ‘qualities of life’” (Marx 383).21
Whereas earlier scholars (and historians in particular) embedded the
United States within the broader contexts of European empires or the
West,22 “[t]he generation which launched its work in the 1940s was the
first to take exceptionalism as an American given” (Rodgers 26). Whether
in drawing on, for example, a Puritan heritage or the American Revolution,
American scholars found a stable, moderate society not mired in the class-
conflicts defining its European forebears. Indeed, Cold War scholars came
to see the American Revolution of 1776 as a singular historical event in
comparison to France in 1789, Russia in 1917, or Germany in 1933—par-
ticularly as the terror, oppression, and violence following these “revolu-
tions” made the American experience seem to be a modest transformation
of a political system and suggested an American exceptionality in the eyes
of post-War historians (cf. Rodgers 28–29).
In this sense, Cold War American Studies scholars imagined American
history as a coherent and linear trajectory from its seventeenth-century
beginning to the 1950s which coalesced “a series of disparate historical
epochs, beginning with the Puritans” (Pease, “American Studies” 63) into a
singular narrative.23 Considered as testimonials of American exceptionality,
these dissimilar events were linked together by a set of absences—“a landed
aristocracy, a feudal monarchy, a territorial empire, a society hierarchized by
class, a deeply anchored socialist tradition” (Pease, “Exceptionalism” 109)—
and a collection of presences—“a predominant middle class, tolerance for
diversity, upward mobility, hospitality towards immigrants, a shared con-
stitutional faith, and liberal individualism” (Pease, Exceptionalism 8). This
retrospective incorporation of dissimilar events and developments of the
American past into one coherent yet selective history (cf. Pease, “American
Studies” 61) helped to establish and popularize a view of the United States
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 25

as a just, fair, and stable society free from social tensions—particularly in

contrast to the Communist regime of Soviet Russia. In the Cold War with
this evil empire, American exceptionality justified American imperial inter-
ventions (not only) in that period as a liberating and democratizing project.
Historically, then, American exceptionalism is situated within the context
of the political turmoil of the 1930s, the demise of the European empires
in World War II, and the (ideological struggle of the) Cold War. This ascent
to global superpower, then, shaped popular and professional understanding
of American history while American literary scholars attempted to explain
the nation’s exceptional role in the world.
As the young field of American Studies moved away from examina-
tions of the shared networks shaping European and American culture, for
its aspiring (literary) scholars the Puritan notion of “a city upon a hill”
was “no longer a mid-Atlantic hope, or even Boston; it was now America
itself” (Rodgers 27). Whether F.O. Matthiessen in American Renaissance:
Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941), Arthur
M.  Schlesinger, Jr. in The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949)
and The Politics of Hope (1962), Henry Nash Smith in Virgin Land: The
American West as Symbol and Myth (1950), David Potter in People of Plenty:
Economic Abundance and the American Character (1954), Louis Hartz in
The Liberal Tradition in America (1955), R.W.B. Lewis in The American
Adam: Innocence and Tragedy in the Nineteenth Century (1955), Perry
Miller in Errand into the Wilderness (1956), Leo Marx in The Machine
in the Garden (1964), or Alan Trachtenberg in Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and
Symbol (1965), these scholars established “a substantive consensus on the
nature of American experience, and a methodological consensus on ways
to study that experience,” as Gene Wise explains (306). From the frontier
thesis to the Monroe Doctrine, the writing of Alexis de Tocqueville, or the
American Dream, these scholars drew on and incorporated a wide variety
of ideas, myths, motifs, and symbols of American culture into a coherent
notion of American society. In his seminal work The Machine in the Garden,
for example, Leo Marx famously describes the sudden appearance of the
machine in a pastoral landscape as “the root conflict” (365) in American
society. Both, the garden and the machine, function as “master symbols”
(Marx, Machine in the Garden 345) of American culture, “dramatize the
great issue of our culture,” and represent “the most final of all generaliza-
tions about America” (Marx, Machine in the Garden 353) because of their
prominence in nineteenth-century literary culture.24
26 D. MEINEL

When WALL-E (2008) concludes with shots of two robots blissfully

wandering the paradisiacal garden of Earth, the film seems to illustrate
nineteenth-century popular versions of the assimilation of technological
progress into the pastoral and what Leo Marx has described as the myth
of the machine in the garden. But whereas for Marx the contradictions
between the fantasy of the middle landscape and the economic, political,
and social experience of the nineteenth century25—the tensions between
nature and technology—could not be amended due to the increas-
ing anachronism of the machine-in-the-garden trope (cf. Machine in the
Garden 364), the twenty-first-century animated film revives this myth.
When the robot transforms Earth into a hospitable planet by cleaning up
the human-made garbage, when it later liberates humanity from its con-
finement in space, and when it thereby ensures the (re)creation of the
pastoral garden at the end of the film, WALL-E appears to be evoking a
nostalgic longing for a pre-industrial past and an anachronistic yearning for
the fantasy of the middle landscape. For Marx, an “organic” integration of
the machine into the pastoral “enabled the nation to continue defining its
purpose as the pursuit of rural happiness while devoting itself to productiv-
ity, wealth, and power” (Machine in the Garden 226) as the nationalist and
imperialist appropriation of the machine in the garden developed into “a
reactionary or false ideology […] helping to mask the real problems of an
industrial civilization” (Machine in the Garden 7). With the harmonious
integration of the robots into an explicitly American garden, the closing
shots of WALL-E seem to further illustrate the triumphant nationalist and
imperialist notions of the nineteenth-century myth. Even as the machine
had gradually conquered the garden throughout the course of the nine-
teenth century, so much so that “our inherited symbols of order and beauty
have been divested of meaning […] [and] the American hero is either dead
or totally alienated from society, alone and powerless” (Machine in the
Garden 364), in WALL-E the American hero not only liberates humanity
from its technological bondage but is personified by the machine.
The animated film, then, appropriates the symbols of the machine and the
garden to tell a story of global environmental annihilation and restoration
in a twenty-first-century medium. As a film programmed on computers,
WALL-E mediates these issues and anxieties through a narrative which
inverts the machine-in-the-garden myth as the garden is not threatened but
manufactured by the machine—in the twofold sense of WALL-E fostering
the creation of the garden and the computer (machine) producing the
pastoral imagery in WALL-E. In this sense, the myth of the machine in the
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 27

garden maintains popular appeal in a twenty-first-century science fiction

film; while the animation of the machine and the garden exemplify the per-
sistence of these Marxian tropes, the inversion of the machine-in-the-garden
myth also demonstrates its fundamental transformation in the present. In this
twofold sense of adaptation and alteration, the Pixar films come to animate
and mediate the myth and symbols of American culture.
Following the rationale of The Machine in the Garden, the romanti-
cization of the pastoral landscape at the end of WALL-E—what quali-
fies as a form of “sentimental pastoralism” (Marx, Machine in the Garden
10)—seems to fail to critically explore (or offer practical solutions to) the
mounting environmental challenges posed by an expanding consumer-
ism and the illiberal consequences of an increasing technologization of
everyday life so central to the film. A myth-and-symbol perspective, then,
enables us to read WALL-E as an escapist retreat from the complexity of
modern life with its celebration of the traditional American hero and the
revival of the pastoral garden.26
Since the 1970s, however, academics have similarly emphasized the
“reactionary or false ideology” embedded in books such as The Machine in
the Garden. Robert Sklar, for example, questions whether “the analysis of
a literary work […] [can] give an interpretation of the nature of a society”
(600) as Marx and his intellectual peers presumed. Particularly because of
their concentration on what they considered to be canonical literature, the
myth-and-symbol scholars favored one privileged group of writers while
perpetuating the marginalization of others (cf. Sklar 599). In exclusively
analyzing the writings of a handful of white male authors, Marx and his
colleagues failed to recognize cultural diversity, which would have made
any assertion of a coherent national culture or literature difficult to sustain
(cf. Ickstadt 549). This criticism did not necessarily dispute the challenges
posed by an increasing rationalization of human life. Rather, revisionist
approaches to American Studies questioned whether a set of tropes, such
as the machine in the garden, could be representative of American soci-
ety—and whether canonical authors could actually offer a “radical resis-
tance” against the rationalization of human life as the “[h]ighbrow writers
in the tradition of the American Renaissance […] [were] described as rac-
ist, sexist, imperialistic and complicit with the system” (Fluck, Romance
with America 79). For the following generation of American Studies
scholars, then, Marx and his peers had failed to see that their assumptions
helped to promote those ideologies embedded in canonical literature or
what Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease have described as Cultures of United
28 D. MEINEL

States Imperialism (1993). Eventually, “scholars from a younger genera-

tion uttered political discontent with the existing paradigm, in large part
because of its very paradigmatic nature, which was interpreted as restric-
tive and exclusionary” (Voelz 20).27
As WALL-E introduces a gun-wielding, technologically superior female
robot—and its male American hero-to-be as a cleaning machine captivated
by Hollywood musicals who longs for romantic love—this Pixar film ani-
mates its myths and symbols of American culture in a decidedly popular for-
mat and addresses contemporary sensibilities with its portrayal of seemingly
inverted gender roles. As excessive consumption leads to the environmen-
tal annihilation of Earth, WALL-E further develops an eco-critical narrative
from a transnational perspective to warn about the global consequences of
Western lifestyles and foregrounds the ways in which borders are crossed
and blurred rather than neatly drawn around a homogeneous garden. This
preliminary reading of WALL-E, then, suggests merely one example of the
ways in which Pixar films incorporate contemporary themes—from gender
equality to white privilege, questions of a just society, aging and obsoles-
cence, and environmental devastation—into their animation of traditional
myths and symbols of American culture. In these cinematic texts, the nar-
rative layers as well as the animated aesthetics shape this mediation of dis-
parate, even incongruous, political ideas and cultural motifs.

REMEDIATING THE MYTHS AND SYMBOLS OF AMERICAN

CULTURE
From the opening shot of the very first Pixar movie, the animation stu-
dio films appropriate elements of traditional live-action cinema. Toy Story
(1995), for example, begins with the cowboy sheriff Woody riding through
the sublime space of Monument Valley before the camera zooms out of
this establishing shot to reveal that the cowboy sheriff is merely a doll
on the back of a young boy who happens to walk in front of a landscape
painting of Monument Valley. With their sophisticated computer graph-
ics, these films refashion established cinematic conventions to “introduce
into animation a consistent Hollywood-style camera technique” (Bolter
and Grusin 149), continuity editing, mise-en-scène, dialogues, and sound
to produce a sense of authenticity and realism of the digital text audi-
ences consider and experience as authentic and realistic (cf. Bolter and
Grusin 147): aesthetically, computer-animated films are able “to compete
with the ‘realism’ of the Hollywood style” today (Bolter and Grusin 150).
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 29

The sophisticated animation of traditional camera work and the play with
viewing expectations in Toy Story illustrates merely one aesthetic practice
the Pixar directors, animators, editors, sound designers, and voice-actors
appropriate to remediate “very much the look of live-action film” (Bolter
and Grusin 148).28
With their animation of the American Adam, the frontier myth, or the
American Dream, Pixar movies not only remediate live-action films but sim-
ilarly figures, motifs, myths, and symbols of American culture. The adapta-
tion of and reference to other cultural texts or myths is, as Jay David Bolter
and Richard Grusin assert, a quintessential and extensive practice in popular
culture and Hollywood film even as the initial source may not be expli-
cated or quoted in this “borrowing” or “repurposing” (45). “[T]o take a
‘property’ from one medium and reuse it in another” (45), the two media
scholars further qualify in Remediation: Understanding New Media (1999),
necessitates a “redefinition” of the content even as “there may be no con-
scious interplay between media” (45). As well-known and cherished figures
of popular culture, then, the sheriff and the astronaut, the frontier pioneer,
and the wilderness explorer refer to the American Adam, the frontier thesis,
and the Monroe Doctrine even as Toy Story, WALL-E, and Up may not
explicitly announce these figures and motifs—or their producers deliber-
ately intended to appropriate these. “Borrowing” and “repurposing” the
myths and symbols of American culture, the Pixar films address a wide view-
ership, yet evade merely duplicating the embedded normative traditions.
Despite the appropriation of realist cinematic conventions, however,
the talking toys, the urban working class monsters, and the talented
rodents “could still not be mistaken for live actors” (Bolter and Grusin
147). The fascination of animated films lies with their ability to produce
fictional worlds that appear real in many respects yet never completely veil
their animated quality whether as a consequence of their imaginative nar-
ratives and settings or of their visibly animated aesthetics.29 Even before
audiences settle into their seats or start their video devices, they already
expect to experience a fictional film that stirs excitement and fascination
with its awe-inspiring computer-animated approximation of a photore-
alistic world, as film trailers, advertising campaigns, reviews, and word-
of-mouth information brand Pixar films as digitally produced fictional
texts.30 As the artistic elements of—and commercial interests in—an ani-
mated Hollywood blockbuster production draw attention to its (novel)
technological quality, the aesthetics as well as the para-textual elements
of these mainstream productions not only establish their fictional quality
30 D. MEINEL

but similarly highlight the animatedness of these films, from individual

figures and motifs to myths and symbols. Since Woody the Western sher-
iff doll, for example, is visibly neither embodied by a Gary Cooper or a
John Wayne, his animatedness—and that of the entire film—prohibits
any mimetic understanding of the myths and symbols Toy Story refers to.
The animated aesthetics and the digital remediation, therefore, indicate
the openness (and distinctiveness) of these cinematic texts.
As the animatedness of “every line drawn, object moved, and shape
changed” attests to the fictionality of the myth and symbols the Pixar
films refashion, this book explores the remediation of a series of tradi-
tional tropes of American culture for present-day sensibilities. Rather
than seeking to establish a definite set of myths and symbols to define
American culture, the individual readings explore the ways in which Pixar
films animate contemporary American culture. When the following chap-
ters examine the American Dream in light of white privilege, the frontier
myth in light of traditional gender roles, or the notion of voluntary asso-
ciations in light of neoliberal transformations, these close readings explore
the refashioning of American myths and symbols in mainstream popular
culture with reference to their politics of representation. This book, there-
fore, explores the ways in which Pixar films come to re-animate prominent
myths and symbols of American culture in all their aesthetic, ideological,
and narrative complexity.
———
The following chapters will closely examine nine Pixar films in light of
their animation of particular myths or symbols while analyzing their prin-
cipal aesthetic practices to explore the remediation of American culture.
The second chapter, “‘You Better Play Nice’: Digital Enchantment and
the Performance of Toyness in Toy Story (1995),” probes into post-Cold
War discourses about American culture and the aesthetics of animation.
Toy Story tells the story of two highly dissimilar male characters who have
to learn to overcome their individual shortcomings for the greater good.
With their dichotomous physique and their competing attitudes, the sher-
iff Western doll Woody and the space-ranger action figure Buzz embody
opposing forms of masculinity. In centering its narrative on an anxiety-
ridden sheriff doll and an ignorant space-ranger action figure, Toy Story also
tells a story about the failings of two iconic figures of American culture.
While Woody transcends his fears of obsoleteness and aging to embrace his
designated role as the communal leader, I read Buzz’s transformation from
naïve innocence to shrewd awareness of a complex world in the tradition
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 31

of the American Adam. The maturation of the space-traveling American

Adam entails a journey into the dark, hostile territory of the toy-mutilat-
ing neighbor Sid. As Woody and Buzz learn to cooperate in the encoun-
ter with a common adversary, the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action
figure eventually liberate an oppressed, visibly different, and intellectually
inferior group of toys from a ruthless despot. Although Toy Story seems
to offer a narrative of national consensus presented in the familiar tropes
of US imperialism, in maintaining the illusion of lifeless playthings and
preserving an inanimate appearance before humans, the sheriff doll and
the space-traveling American Adam highlight the performativity of their
(national) identities. In contrast to live-action films, their decidedly com-
puter-animated aesthetics and its sense of visual enchantment—an idea I
appropriate from Rita Felski’s Uses of Literature (2008)—further indicate
the remediation of these traditional symbols of American culture.
The third chapter, “An Animated Toast to the Ephemeral: The
Multicultural Logic of Late Capitalism in Toy Story 2 (1999),” continues
to look at many themes from the previous chapter. Since seriality fosters
not only repetition but also augmentation of the familiar, Toy Story 2 revis-
its the issue of social cohesion, yet intensifies its use of an aesthetic and
narrative playfulness. Rather than celebrating the myths and symbols of
American culture, the film illustrates their ephemerality by appropriating
a postmodern poetics. With its cherishing of social diversity supervised by
the sheriff doll, Toy Story 2 illustrates the white, male privilege engrained in
the liberal multiculturalism of the 1990s. Aesthetically, however, the film
animates its multiculture using postmodern poetics, from the introduction
of a variety of Buzz Lightyear action figures in search of individuality to
the collapse of distinct cinematic spaces into one zone, the compression
of time, and the use of satire, camp, and intertextual references. In read-
ing the disparate themes of liberal multiculturalism and postmodernism
in light of the increasing diversity of a globalized economy, this chap-
ter highlights the role American popular culture and animated film play
in expanding international market shares. But as the sheriff doll and the
space-ranger action figure opt for lives as consumable objects and toast
their ephemeral existence at the end of the film, Toy Story 2 illustrates
the temporality and finitude of American myths and symbols in a self-
referential and self-ironic fashion.
In contrast to the preoccupation with digital representation of familiar
exceptionalist figures—the sheriff and the astronaut—in the previous chap-
ters, the fourth chapter, “A Story of Social Justice? The Liberal Consensus
32 D. MEINEL

in Monsters, Inc. (2001),” asks in what ways the absence of visual refer-
ences to familiar figures of American culture shape the re-animation of
these myths. Set in a world populated by a highly diverse and dissimilar
cast of fantastic monsters, Monsters, Inc. tells a story of increasing social
imbalance in Monstropolis as an escalating energy crisis and sprawling
corruption undermine its material abundance and its principle of egalitar-
ian meritocracy. Portrayed in a decidedly 1950s look, the animated film
harkens back to the liberal consensus of the post-World War II United
States and celebrates its version of “the good society”—a balance between
individual success and equal opportunity for all ensured by an affirma-
tive government—through the figure of the ingenious, incorruptible, and
hard-working protagonist Sulley. The blue monster with his millions of
independently animated hair strands visibly represents the model individ-
ual of the liberal consensus particularly in contrast to his comically inept,
morally questionable, and unmanly sidekick, the green monster Mike.
When the green monster humorously suggests extracting energy from the
laughter—and not the fear—of children, his comment eventually resolves
the power shortages in Monstropolis, saves his fellow workers from unem-
ployment, and rescues millions of children from their regular nightmares.
Mike’s entertaining quips and mishaps capture the unruly potential of the
schlemiel figure as his light-hearted attitude, moral ambiguity, and buf-
foonery ridicule and deconstruct the meritocracy mantra of the liberal
consensus. Visually, however, this green schlemiel presents but one of
the many flamboyant monsters. Even though the film may find novel and
unprecedented visual representations for the liberal consensus in the illus-
tration of Sulley, thanks to the potential of digital animation, the numerous
crawling or flying, slimy or grubby, colorful or translucent, multi-eyed,
many-headed, tentacle-swinging nonhuman inhabitants of Monstropolis
speak to the complex aesthetic remediation of the animated myth.
In following the path of the gifted rat Remy who begins as a poor out-
cast to human society but eventually fulfills his dream of running his res-
taurant, Ratatouille (2007) recounts a familiar version of the rags-to-riches
myth. Rather than the acquisition of wealth, however, the animated film
deviates from materialist versions of the American Dream by highlighting
the moral trials and tribulations Remy encounters and by portraying small
business entrepreneurship as the gratifying end of the success myth. In
introducing the protagonist as a talented worker and an aspiring self-made
person who will not be tempted by stealing food, the film further draws
on American Dream narratives popularized by the Horatio Alger stories
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 33

in the nineteenth century. To tell Remy’s social advancement, the film

further uses traditional narrative and visual cues to portray lower, middle,
and upper class. Although these representations are, furthermore, linked
to normative depictions of race and ethnicity, I argue that Ratatouille
eventually mediates the white heteronorms of the American Dream thanks
to the visibly different Remy, the nature of voice-acting performances, and
the advertising practices of blockbuster productions. In contrast to the
previous chapters, the fifth chapter, “‘From Rags to Moderate Riches’:
The American Dream in Ratatouille (2007),” focuses on the role of voice-
acting as a genuine feature of (digital) animation because dialogues are
often recorded prior to the completion of the film and performers signifi-
cantly shape character creation in the process. Since actors—rather than
characters—also participate in extensive advertising campaigns, this chap-
ter examines voice-acting as one defining aesthetic element of animated
films and explores the para-textual importance of the star persona to high-
light the remediation of the American Dream in Ratatouille.
“‘Space. The Final Fun-tier’: Returning Home to the Frontier in
WALL-E (2008)” (Chap. 6) continues the examination of traditional
cinematic practices in computer-animated film. In working closely with
award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins and by appropriating
live-action camera aesthetics, WALL-E (2008) asks viewers to consider the
consequences of simulating traditional camera work in a digital text which
retells the frontier myth. Set in a post-apocalyptic twenty-ninth century,
in which humanity has left an uninhabitable Earth because its waste and
garbage production led to global environmental destruction, WALL-E
opens by chronicling the daily routine of the last cleaning robot left on the
planet. Exhibiting a broad range of emotions, this WALL-E has developed
beyond its programmed function of garbage compression—the garbage
wilderness has transformed the little robot as much as his arduous garbage
compression transformed the landscape. This juxtaposition of ecological
annihilation and hypermodern technology to foster self-reliant individual-
ism, I argue, recurs to Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis which
described the formation of an American identity as a process where wil-
derness and civilization, Native and European cultures meet. In a twist of
the twentieth-century popular frontier trope, however, space has become
a secluded, dystopian place of mindless consumption, physical decay, tech-
nological dependency, and conformity, while the old frontier vision of
an unsettled landscape (on Earth) emerges through the image of a post-
apocalyptic environment worth settling. This digital re-animation of the
34 D. MEINEL

frontier thesis in the twenty-first century, I maintain, continues the paro-

chial tradition of this American myth—normative gender representations,
white, male individualism, and a coherent national identity—and juxta-
poses these with images of global (and trans-species) cooperation in the
face of environmental annihilation. As a digital text produced completely
on computers and without traditional film equipment, I conclude, the
Pixar production appropriates live-action film strategies and a handheld
camera aesthetic—out-of-focus shots, frantic zooming, and shaky camera
movements—to further remediate the American frontier myth.
The next Pixar release, Up (2009), tells the story of wilderness explorer
Charles Muntz in his search for a rare bird species in the South American
valley of Paradise Falls and widower Carl Frederickson hoping to mend
the pain of losing his wife by fulfilling their lifelong dream of traveling
to the same valley. As the wilderness explorer and the retiree unyield-
ingly pursue their fantasies of adventure in South America, I situate this
animated tale in the historical context of the Monroe Doctrine (1823)
which asserted the privilege of the United States to exclusively intervene
in this “Western hemisphere” and denied any European nation-state the
right to interfere. Consequently, the Monroe Doctrine oscillated between
anticolonialism (vis-à-vis Europe) and imperialism (vis-à-vis the Americas)
while disavowing the imperialist dimension of US policies. Although its
outdated model of (separated Eastern and Western) hemispheres does
not suit the contemporary globalized world, the rationale of the Monroe
Doctrine continues to inform contemporary US imperial practices. This
datedness as well as the logic of imperialism present two vantage points
from which I analyze Up. The outmoded dimension of the doctrine mir-
rors the film narrative which, after all, chronicles the struggle of two very
aged men relentlessly pursuing their (imperial) fantasies—the animation
film, therefore, revolves precisely around questions of aging, obsoleteness,
and adapting to the contemporary world. In the seventh chapter, “Empire
is Out There!? The Spirit of Imperialism in Up (2009),” I argue that Up
attempts to expose the destructive qualities of imperialism represented
by Charles and to supplant its hierarchical, monocultural social structure
with an egalitarian, transcultural (and trans-species) community embod-
ied by Carl and his new-found friends. Although the Pixar film describes
the logic of pursuing imperial fantasies as leading to a life of social isola-
tion, psychological mania, and violent death, I argue that its representa-
tion of gender, mobility, and space also incorporates informal features of
US Empire and notions of manifest domesticity. Although Up animates
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 35

established imperialist figures and symbols, the aging wilderness explorer

and the prominent zeppelin imagery illustrate their unmistaken datedness.
The various symbols of US imperialism, thus, not merely animate tradi-
tional notions of Empire but remediate the contradictory nature of the
(anti-)imperial myth in the twenty-first century.
Whereas the previous chapters explored the aesthetic and narrative
remediation of various myths and symbols of American culture, the eighth
chapter, “‘And when everyone is super… no one will be’: The End of
the American Myth in The Incredibles (2004),” looks at their dissolution.
In The Incredibles the superhero couple Bob and Helen along with their
three children battle the menacing robots of a megalomaniac supervil-
lain as much as the constraints of a society which deems all exceptionally
gifted individuals a liability. With the public coercing superheroes to be
“like everyone else,” with corporative life demanding the surrender of tal-
ent, individuality, and the greater good to the lubrication of the business
machine, and with the supervillain hoping to “make everyone super so
that no one is,” The Incredibles exposes the threat of conformity. In por-
traying a “tyranny of the majority” and locating the courage for dissent in
a “voluntary association,” The Incredibles remediates central ideas of Alexis
de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835). In working together, I
maintain, the exceptional individuals not only bond to become an excep-
tional family but also transcend traditional gender roles. Similarly, as the
film portrays suburban life to be drab, monotonous, and confining, the
destruction of the Incredibles’ home symbolizes another moment of lib-
eration from the tyranny of the majority. However, the obliteration of the
house—along with the derision of the gray flannel suit and the home-
maker ideal earlier in the film—also signals the severance of the superhero
family from the historical context which defined voluntary associations.
The separation of the Incredibles from a distinct American space encour-
ages viewers to read the obliteration of the suburban home also as a shift
to an economic paradigm of boundless movement (of people, money, and
goods). An indispensable assertion of Democracy in America considered
voluntary associations to be social configurations possible only in America,
but the dislocation of the Incredibles detaches the family from any distinct
American context, and thus suggests the end of this American myth.
The ninth chapter, “Driving in Circles: The American Puritan Jeremiad
in Cars (2006),” further deviates from the previous film analyses by read-
ing Cars as a forthright reproduction of 1950s norms. From the jeremiad
structure down to the digital visualization and the soundtrack, this chapter
36 D. MEINEL

maintains, Cars functions as an aesthetically captivating but highly traditional

text that animates an idealized past of white, male privilege. As an animated
story about the decades-long decline of the small town of Radiator Springs,
about the narcissism of the all-American athlete Lightning McQueen, and
about their transformation, Cars appropriates a familiar narrative structure
of decline and renewal. Due to the romanticization of the past, the con-
demnation of the present as a “withering Eden,” and the celebration of
“the good things to come” once that mythical past is retrieved, this chapter
situates the animated film in the American jeremiad literary tradition. But
whereas the denunciation of the present necessitated a transformation of
the future in the jeremiad, the cinematically emotive longing for the 1950s
in Cars ends up re-animating white, male privilege. Illustrated as a personal
and communal form of mobility, the practice of driving the long-forgotten
Route system symbolizes the mythical past and the opportunity to amend
the failings of the present. During his involuntary stay at Radiator Springs,
the self-absorbed race car Lightning McQueen ushers in the transforma-
tion of his emblematic narcissism, hones his talents to become a true racing
champion, and restores the small town to its past beauty in the process. The
film intimately ties mobility and speed to a sense of liberty—visually, with
the use of fast edits and, musically, with highly popular country and rock
songs. The compilation of various iconic songs from past decades not only
contributed to the immense commercial success of the soundtrack (unpar-
alleled for a Pixar film) but speaks to the sonic remediation of individual-
ism, liberty, and mobility. Although the animated film follows a jeremiad
narrative logic, the idealization of the US South as the site of a mythical
past, the use of nineteenth-century landscape painting traditions to portray
small-town life, and the representation of mobility in gender-normative
and race-normative forms eventually fail to animate the hope for “the good
things to come.”
Up to this point, my close readings examine the re-animation of long-
standing myths of American culture. The last chapter, “Animating a Yet
Unimagined America? The Mediation of American Exceptionalism in Toy
Story 3 (2010),” addresses the similarities and differences between these
myths and symbols, American exceptionalism, and political discourse by
reading Toy Story 3 as a jeremiad narrative in light of the State of Exception
and the War on Terror. Some ten years after the first two films, Toy Story
3 opens with Woody and Buzz being carelessly discarded in a garbage bag
as their adolescent owner prepares to leave for college. Although issues
of obsolescence characterize the beginning of Toy Story 3, its concluding
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 37

shots return to blissful scenes of a content child playing with her toys. I
read this irretrievable loss of an ideal community and its restoration at
the end of the animated film as an American jeremiad narrative. Being
exiled from their home(land), Woody, Buzz, and their friends depart on
an errand during which the toys encounter numerous threats, from a
totalitarian daycare center to the trials and tribulations of a local landfill.
While the former represents a hostile wilderness with its scenes of toy
torture, the latter approximates a sense of divine retribution illustrated
by the scorching flames of a colossal garbage incinerator. Following the
American jeremiad tradition, however, these perils are not destructive but
corrective as Woody and his friends eventually settle in a new home(land).
In contrast to the circular logic of Cars, Toy Story 3 alters its initial com-
munal ideal to offer a narrative of progress: Woody and his friends’ new
owner, Bonnie, embodies this notion of progress as her character symbol-
izes the transformation of the male-centeredness of the Toy Story franchise.
With its illustration of the American jeremiad narrative, Toy Story 3 offers
the closing example of the ways in which Pixar films re-animate popular
myths and symbols of American culture. As cowboy dolls and space-ranger
action figures mingle happily with Japanese film studio mascots, German-
British hedgehog dolls, queer unicorns, and sad clowns in a little girl’s
garden, the aesthetic and narrative remediation of the digital jeremiad also
transcends the confinements of the discourse of American exceptionalism.

NOTES
1. Despite his frustrating experiences at Disney, from his early days Lasseter
has been an avid follower of Walt Disney’s animation credos. From the idea
of giving life to inanimate objects to the emphasis on story, Lasseter had
absorbed the Disney formula and often expanded its core ideas (cf. Price
92, 155).
2. Pixar’s location in Silicon Valley and at the heart of the emerging digital
industry in the United States may further explain the passionate enthusi-
asm for technological innovation and digital film-making (cf. Price 152).
3. Their director, Don Bluth, had worked for Disney as an animator before
becoming an independent film-maker.
4. Television shows such as Beavis and Butt Head (1992–1997) or The
Simpsons (1987–present) similarly contributed to the renaissance of ani-
mation as a popular form of entertainment. Both shows also paved the way
for maturer settings, characters, and narratives beyond the fairy-tale stories
still prominent in Disney animation at that time.
38 D. MEINEL

5. These films do not represent the complete animated film catalogue of these
companies. I have rather restricted myself to an eclectic list of particularly
successful releases which have each earned their studios approximately a
hundred million dollars of profit (or more) in the North American mar-
ket alone (cf. boxofficemojo.com).
6. Out of the ten commercially most successful films at the domestic American
box office, Pixar Animation Studios produced five (and ten out of the
twenty most successful) (cf. boxofficemojo.com).
7. The MoMA exhibition—as much as journalistic and scholarly writing and,
indeed, this introduction—further contributed to a corporate perspective
on the individual Pixar films. Toy Story, The Incredibles, and WALL-E tend
to be lumped under the label of Pixar rather than screened, read, and ana-
lyzed as the works of John Lasseter, Brad Bird, or Andrew Stanton. Instead
of conceiving this inaccuracy as a fundamental flaw in analyzing animated
films, however, the secondary interest in individual artists, animators, direc-
tors, writers, or voice-actors speaks to the aesthetic, narrative, and techno-
logical coherence of the studio releases. In his comparison of Disney and
Pixar, Keith M. Booker describes the latter as a corporate auteur, because all
its animated films shared a highly recognizable and identifiable quality (cf.
Hidden Messages 35). The approach to Pixar as a corporate auteur aptly
captures the cinematic similarities among the various productions: “Pixar is
a studio whose name has become a highly recognisable brand and […] that
name has become a reason for trust on the part of the audience. There is a
sense of not just a certain kind, and level, of technical quality (slickness) and
accomplishment but also a sense that the ideology of the film will satisfy the
audience’s ‘need’ to witness a story. As such, Pixar is a powerful example of
studio as author” (Clarke 35).
8. In The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art, and Commerce of Walt Disney
(1986), Richard Schickel describes disneyfication as the “shameless process
by which everything the [Disney] Studio later touched, no matter how
unique the vision of the original from which the Studio worked, was
reduced to the limited terms Disney and his people could understand.
Magic, mystery, individuality […] were consistently destroyed when a lit-
erary work passed through this machine that had been taught there was
only one correct way to draw” (225).
9. The New Americanists critically engaged with the prevalent Cold War
exceptionalism and the hysterical celebration of national superiority after
1991. With the demise of the Soviet Union and the ensuing restructuring
of the former communist countries in compliance with Western ideals of
democracy and (laissez-faire) capitalism, the United States appeared to be
the last global superpower. When neoconservative Francis Fukuyama pos-
tulated The End of History and the Last Man (1992) and celebrated the
triumph of the American liberal model, the New Americanists responded
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 39

to a crucial moment when imperial politics intersected with their (former)

field.
10. Their principal supposition, thus, attributed representations with power. As
Johannes Voelz explains in Transcendental Resistance (2010), power, for
the New Americanists, is “wielded through culture […] [and] culture
wields power […] through representation” (5).
11. For Jack Halberstam, the “overemphasis on nuclear family” and the “nor-
mative investment in coupled romance” (italics in original, Halberstam 47)
in some Pixar films further contribute to their normative quality. Similarly,
Keith M.  Booker considers most animated figures to be flat characters
since these “adhere strictly to type and find it difficult or inadvisable to go
against their basic natures” (Hidden Messages 178).
12. As Up opens with the young Carl marveling in fascination at the silver
screen and blissfully absorbing its portrayal of the heroic wilderness
explorer Charles Muntz, the film also suggests a metafictional or self-refer-
ential reading. After all, Up begins with the interpellation of an imperial
fantasy through the cinema apparatus but concludes with an older Carl
who has eventually transcended the ideology. The film, therefore, tells a
story about the process of dis-interpellation in the form of the blockbuster
Hollywood film.
13. For Larkin, British imperialists even became objects of their own imperial
gaze as they attempted to understand the consequences of the “backstage
images of white culture” by examining the representations of whiteness
through the eyes of their Indian subjects (cf. Larkin 172–174).
14. Similarly, as “[t]he safar barlik (wartime privation) was a deep trauma, a
shame that was never spoken about in public” (Thompson 197), Gone with
the Wind resonated with these experiences and allowed people to engage
with their past hardships as “wartime conditions in Damascus, Beirut, and
Cairo [were] similar to those in 1864 Atlanta” (Thompson 197).
15. In a culture in which people constantly have to negotiate between publicly
expected behavior and the limited (often dangerous) freedom enjoyed in
their private homes, the complex cultural practices of negotiating spaces of
individual self-expression and experiences vis-à-vis a dominant ideology
(radical Islam) mirror a film experience which cannot be subsumed under
the hail of interpellation (of mainstream Hollywood film). Rather, as
Edwards is cautious not to simplify the political situation in Iran, he
emphasizes processes of adaptation, interpretation, and negotiation during
the (literal and metaphorical) appropriation of film to and within different
contexts.
16. Beginning each section of her transnational manifest with the words “[a]s
the transnational becomes more central to American studies,” Fisher Fishkin
lists a variety of transnational interventions into the field. This inventory
registers the importance of “comparative study of race and racism”
40 D. MEINEL

(Fisher Fishkin 23), the impact of “Spanish-language literary traditions […]

[on] American literature” (Fisher-Fishkin 27), the issue of environmental
pollution (cf. Fisher Fishkin 31), the conceptualization of the United States
as “social, political, linguistic, cultural, and economic crossroads” (Fisher
Fishkin 22), the demand to explore “borderlands both inside and outside
the United States” (Fisher Fishkin 31), and the “privileged position” of US-
based American Studies scholarship (Fisher Fishkin 36) to name but a few
areas. Rather than articulating a transnational theory, then, Fisher Fishkin
expresses a programmatic outlook for a transnational American Studies to
interrogate the presumed “‘naturalness’ of some of the borders, boundaries,
and binaries that we may not have questioned very much in the past […]
[and to] probe the ways in which they may have been contingent and con-
structed” (22).
17. In WALL-E, the board computer of the human ship has also usurped total-
itarian control over human life and is illustrated as a large steering wheel
with a prominent red eye—a visual reference to the homicidal computer
HAL in 2001.
18. However, Halberstam later also qualifies that “radical animation” is not sim-
ply about critical engagements with “globalization or neoliberalism, individu-
ality or conformity” but also “about what has been animated and how, what
technology has been crafted, and what stories arise from the contact between
that technology and the many animation engineers who use it collaboratively
to craft a new narrative” (184).
19. In The Films of Pixar Animation Studio (2013), James Clarke even sug-
gests understanding animated movies as “the most cinematic kind of film
[…] [a]fter all, animation can ‘only’ exist as a film” (25).
20. In explaining the success of animation in America with references to the
nation as “the most inherently contradictory country in the world”
(Animation in America 170), Wells further draws on notions of American
exceptionality.
21. While American culture, as Fluck describes this perspective, “seems to per-
petuate certain foundational myths such as the belief in progress or the
regenerative potential of the frontier,” early American Studies scholars
assert, “on a covert level, the major works of American literature are char-
acterized by a unique potential for radical resistance, of saying ‘No! in
Thunder’” (“Theories of American Culture” 63) to the commodification
of modern life.
22. “Writing in a culture saturated with exceptionalist convictions, in short, pro-
fessional historians did not unquestionably swallow the exceptionalist prem-
ises. They did not because they were Hegelians (like Bancroft), or elitists
(like Hart), because they knew worlds far beyond America (Oxford radical-
ism for Beard, student Berlin for Du Bois), or because (like Andrews,
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 41

burrowing deep in English sources) the facts did not seem to add up for
them in exceptionalist patterns” (Rodgers 26).
23. While these scholars ignored the institution of slavery and the devastations
of the Civil War as disruptive examples of a coherent American history, they
framed European history in a similarly contingent way: “The exceptionalist
historians’ hands might be deep in the archives in America, but a part of
their mind was fixed elsewhere: on Paris in 1793 with its guillotine working
at fever pitch, Leningrad as the Winter Palace was stormed in 1917, or
Berlin with its streets full of brownshirts in 1933. It was only against this
selective history of Europe, amalgamating other nations’ histories into a
single theme that proved the distinctiveness of their own, that the American
past seemed stable […] an exemption from the rule” (Rodgers 29). To vali-
date their exceptionalist vision of the United States, Cold War intellectuals
from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. to Henry Steele Commager, Louis Hartz, and
Daniel Bell appropriated the works of European writers (Hector St. John
de Crèvecœur’s Letters From an American Farmer [1782] or Alexis de
Tocqueville’s Democracy in America [1835]) to substantiate the notion of
an American nation exempt from those historical developments which
shape all other (European) countries. When Cold War historians did address
narratives of exceptionality in other cultures, these scholars found similar
notions in all Western empires of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth
centuries to legitimize their imperial enterprises. In this view, however, the
United States did not function as another imperial Western nation, because,
in the eyes of Cold War scholars, the country never (intended to) acquire(d)
colonies in the first place (cf. Pease, “Re-Mapping” 19).
24. In his essay “‘Paradigm Dramas’ in American Studies: A Cultural and
Institutional History of the Movement” (1979), Wise summarized and
polemicized the shared assumptions of these scholars in the following manner:
“(a) There is an ‘American Mind.’ That mind is more or less homogeneous
[…] (b) What distinguishes the American Mind is its location in the ‘New’
World. Because of this, Americans are characteristically hopeful, innocent,
individualistic, pragmatic, idealistic […]. (c) The American Mind […] comes
to most coherent expression in the country’s leading thinkers […]. (d) The
American Mind is an enduring form in our intellectual history […]. (e) […]
America is revealed most profoundly in its ‘high’ culture” (Wise 306–307).
This summary of early American Studies omits the attempts and desire to
“describe American culture as a modern culture with a specific potential for
subversion and negation” (Fluck, “Theories of American Culture” 62).
American literature was not only shaped by myths and symbols for American
Studies scholars in the 1950s, since its major works were particularly “charac-
terized by a unique potential for radical resistance, of saying ‘No! in Thunder’”
(Fluck, “Theories of American Culture” 63).
42 D. MEINEL

25. According to Marx, the cultural, social, and political transformations

brought about by industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth cen-
tury were negotiated in literature through the contrastive imagery of a
“terrain either unspoiled or, if cultivated, rural” (Machine in the Garden 9)
and a raucous, soiled machine. Although initially debunked as a symbol of
despair which represented the increasing alienation of the individual from
his or her passions, morals, and social environment (cf. Marx, Machine in
the Garden 176–179), with the advent of the locomotive the machine
began to be celebrated in a jubilant, triumphant, and nationalist rhetoric as
a potent symbol of economic wealth, political egalitarianism, democratic
expansion, and social progress (cf. Marx Machine in the Garden 187, 190).
After it became a fairly common feature of daily life in the 1830s, Marx
goes on to argue, the machine was invested with the faith in “peace, equal-
ity, freedom, and happiness” (Machine in the Garden 191–192) in popular
culture and envisioned as a means “to transform a wilderness into a society
of the middle landscape” (Machine in the Garden 150) once released from
European confinement. Illustrations of the machine melting organically
into the countryside portrayed the former as an integral part of the pasto-
ral; in these literary and visual texts “machine technology […] belong[ed]
[…] in the middle landscape” (Machine in the Garden 220). The fusion of
the (fantasy of the) middle landscape with technology not merely exalted
the corporeal machine to “a transcendent symbol […] invested with politi-
cal and metaphysical ideality” (Marx, Machine in the Garden 206) but also
inscribed the physical object with an imperial quality as this American
machine was envisioned to “roll across Europe and Asia, liberating the
oppressed people of the Old World” and evolve into “a signal, in fact, for
the salvation of mankind” (Marx 206).
26. This persistence of “sentimental pastoralism” in a mainstream text would
not come as a surprise to Marx as only canonical or what he deemed “high
literary” writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, or Mark
Twain could expose the anachronism of the pastoral myth in the mechani-
cal age, or express a critique of the increasing rationalization of human life.
(Thoreau, according to Marx, feared that “there can be no redemption
from a system that makes men the tools of their tools,” Melville warned of
the “suicidal [qualities] […] to live ‘as in a musky meadow’ when in truth
one is aboard a vessel plunging into darkness,” and Twain was even unable
“to imagine a satisfactory resolution of the conflict figured by the machine’s
incursion into the garden” [Machine in the Garden 354–355].)
27. In spite of this compartmentalization of US American Studies into a period
before and after these transformations (cf. Marx, “On Recovering the ‘Ur’
Theory of American Studies”), the re-conceptualization of US American
Studies by the New Americanists continued the myth-and-symbol school
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 43

search for “possibilities of negation and subversion, or, […] the question
of the possibility of resistance” (Fluck, Romance with America 73).
28. For media study scholars Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, the techno-
logical advancement of computer animation and graphics enables creators
and producers to imitate traditional cinematic practices from camera move-
ment to deep, multilayered mise-en-scènes “that were difficult or impossible
to animate with purely manual techniques” (148).
29. For Bolter and Grusin, the experience of film as a fictional text and not as a
transparent depiction of the real constitutes the fascination of contempo-
rary cinema with its extensive use of computer-generation imagery. This
“hypermediacy” of the medium, they maintain, captivates audiences today
as viewers understand and cherish this remediation; their “amazement or
wonder requires an awareness of the medium” (158). Indeed, “the viewer
would not be amazed [...] [if] she would not know of the medium’s pres-
ence” (Bolter and Grusin 158).
30. Notwithstanding the technological innovativeness and digital animated-
ness of Pixar, its animated films also evade the potential of digital media to
refashion traditional cinematic conventions more radically—such as linear,
non-interactive storytelling—for economic purposes. The (re)mediation of
digital animation in a traditional format allows “Disney and other major
studios […] to maintain the structure of their industry and retain their
paying customers” (Bolter and Grusin 149).
 CHAPTER 2

“You Better Play Nice”: Digital

Enchantment and the Performance
of Toyness in Toy Story (1995)

The opening shot of the first Pixar animation film Toy Story (1995)shows the
Western sheriff doll Woody riding in front of the iconic vista of Monument
Valley. As the camera pans out, Monument Valley is revealed to be a large
painting in a suburban home and the horse Woody was presumably riding
to be his human owner Andy. In its first scene, the film continues to toy
with our perceptions when the child-play is shown twice from Woody’s
point of view. The camera shots thus foreshadow the narrative focus of Toy
Story of exploring the feelings and thoughts of toys rather than humans.
In their desire to bring happiness to children, Woody and his plastic
friends simulate a state of lifelessness in front of humans to maintain the
illusion of inanimate object. Although finding great pleasure and fulfill-
ment in doing this, the toys do not only lead delightful, untroubled lives.
At birthdays, for example, Andy’s toys look with fear toward the many
gifts and presents their owner receives, because any of the boxes could
contain a new toy which could replace one of the existing playthings.
These anxieties of obsoleteness eventually come to haunt the uncontested
leader of the toy community: the sheriff doll Woody whose continual fear
of plastic corrosion and his despair about the hostility of the outside world
already illustrate his cautious, timid, and worried attitude towards life.
With the arrival of the modern space-ranger action figure Buzz Lightyear
these anxieties increase further as the toy astronaut quickly becomes the
most popular plaything. While Andy eagerly redecorates his entire bed-
room by exchanging his Woody posters, his Woody bed sheds, and his
Woody drawings with similar Buzz Lightyear versions, the space-ranger

© The Author(s) 2016 45

D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_2
46 D. MEINEL

action figure turns out not to be the advanced and superior toy the dated
sheriff doll expected. Since Buzz only possesses a literal understanding of
the world, he is unable to differentiate between his toy identity and the
space-ranger persona the plastic figure embodies. Failing to comprehend
the complexity of toy life, Buzz engages with his social environment in a
factual sense as the mass-produced figure assumes himself to be the actual
Buzz Lightyear who crash-landed on an uncharted planet and literally
seeks to continue his intergalactic mission.
When (Toy Story) describes Buzz as “a surprise present from the closet”
(Toy Story) who awoke from “hypersleep” (Toy Story), and locates his posi-
tion on a “strange planet” (Toy Story) the space-ranger action figure ani-
mates the trope of the American Adam who also “spring[s] from nowhere,
outside time […] [and who] is thrust by circumstances into an actual
world and an actual age” (Lewis 89). For R.W.B. Lewis, this tension
between a pure, innocent, and mythical figure and the tangible, at times
even hostile, social sphere defines American fiction (cf. 89). At the begin-
ning of Toy Story, however, the jealous and envious sheriff doll appears
to present the “experience of evil” (Lewis 122) the innocent yet stubborn
space-traveling American Adam encounters. Eventually, the short, muscu-
lar Buzz and the tall, lean Woody – the two mythical figures of American
culture – end up constantly disagreeing, bickering, and fighting for the
first half of the film.
With their dichotomous physique and their contradictory attitudes, the
male protagonists embody not only competing forms of masculinity, but
also the two competing political camps dominant in the post-Cold War
United States. In The New American Exceptionalism (2009), Donald Pease
reasons that “[i]n the absence of an ending [of the Cold War] concordant
with the state’s official account of its beginning, two opposed state fantasies
emerged” (71), as the sudden implosion of the Soviet Union fostered previ-
ously externalized anxieties to rupture in the national realm. The liberal “New
Covenant” by President Clinton and Newt Gingrich’s conservative “Contract
With America” eventually re-inscribed “the rift that had emerged in the wake
of the cold war […] into an internal war that had opened up in between
two irreconcilable national factions” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism
95). In Toy Story, the encounter with a common adversary amends the irrec-
oncilable division between Woody and Buzz. Joining their talents to liber-
ate a mutilated and abused set of toys from the neighboring kid’s horrifying
experiments, Woody and Buzz master their inadequacies by emancipating an
oppressed, visibly different, and intellectually inferior group of toys.1
 “YOU BETTER PLAY NICE”: DIGITAL ENCHANTMENT 47

While this individual empowerment of the sheriff doll and the space-
ranger action figure may encourage a reading of Toy Story as a tale about
the animation of American exceptionality, the narrative premise and the
visibly digital aesthetics constantly foreground the imaginary nature of its
most prominent symbols. For instance, to maintain the illusion of lifeless
playthings, Woody, Buzz, and their friends always preserve an inanimate
appearance when interacting with humans. Similarly, the opening scene
not only foreshadows a story told from the perspective of a sheriff doll,
but by toying with the iconic imagery of Woody riding through a Western
landscape the film further illustrates their manufactured quality. Eventually,
even the enchanting digital aesthetics of this visibly programmed alternate
universe populated with endearing doll and heart-warming action figures
foregrounds the fictiveness of the myths and symbols of American culture.

FEARFUL SHERIFF DOLLS AND OBLIVIOUS SPACE-RANGER

ACTION FIGURES
In the world of toys, the sheriff doll Woody is the most popular plaything
for good reasons. By organizing playroom meetings, providing informa-
tion about the human world, coordinating communal efforts, and shar-
ing a friendly quip with everyone, Woody appears to be the ideal leader.
Even in moments of crisis, the sheriff doll acts responsibly and welcomes
new toys to the small community although these may eventually come
to replace others. Thus when Andy receives an impressive new plaything
at his birthday, Woody is the first to initiate contact with the mint space-
ranger action figure. Upon his arrival, however, this Buzz Lightyear action
figure exhibits a highly unusual behavior for a toy. The mass-produced
plastic space ranger assumes himself to be the actual Buzz Lightyear and
considers the novel environment of the children’s room to be a foreign,
potentially hostile planet. The cautious astronaut attempts to use his
“communicator” to reach “Star Command” for instructions, threatens the
curious toys with his “laser beam,” and assumes the paperboard carton in
which he was stored to be a real spaceship. Although Woody, amused at
first, patiently explains to the guest his toy identity, the stubborn Buzz dis-
trusts the information. This continual exchange eventually explodes when
the enraged sheriff dares the insistent astronaut to demonstrate his flying
abilities. Although Buzz jumps off a bedpost to immediately plummet to
the ground, his drop turns into a flight when the space ranger accidentally
bounces off different objects to soar to the ceiling and land safely again.
While Woody disparagingly sneers “[t]hat wasn’t flying, that was falling
48 D. MEINEL

with style” (Toy Story), the other toys praise the daring astronaut. This
scene establishes the initial rivalry between Woody and Buzz, foreshadows
the popularity the astronaut will eventually gain with the toys and with
Andy, and encapsulates the numerous differences between the doll and
the toy. Indeed, although the sheriff doll and the astronaut toy embody
prominent figures of American culture, the two characters represent com-
peting forms of masculinity and opposing camps of its political spectrum.
Similar to Buzz, Woody had also been introduced with a “flight”
through the air in the opening shots. Being catapulted by Andy, however,
the sheriff doll displays significantly less style in that fall as his limbs chaoti-
cally flap and flutter through the air and his head feverously bobs after the
landing. Actually, the tall, lean sheriff doll is unable to contain his body
throughout the entire film as he constantly waves, gestures, shakes, and
gesticulates with his skinny arms and oversized head. This nonthreatening
physique and the highly expressive demeanor are further complemented
by a witty, ironic humor,2 a blasé detachment,3 and the investment in “plas-
tic corrosion awareness” (Toy Story). In different respects, then, Woody
exhibits those qualities Brenton Malin defines in American Masculinity
Under Clinton (2005) as essential features of a “new male sensitivity” and
a “soft masculinity” (31, 45).4
Despite his physically and emotionally softer form of masculinity, the
film explicitly sexualizes Woody. Again, the sheriff doll does not actively
pursue a romance as the female sheepherder toy Bo Peep seduces the soft
male. When, in one of her rare appearances, she flirts with Woody and
asks the blushing, giggling, and grinning sheriff coyly whether she should
“get someone else to watch the sheep for me tonight” (Toy Story), the
sequence highlights the unassertive (hetero)sexual sensitivity characteristic
of the soft male figure (cf. Malin 56). These characters are often explicitly
hyper(hetero)sexualized, Malin reasons, to minimize anxieties about sen-
sitivity and softness as traces of feminization and homosexuality (cf. 45).
The sensitive, yet hyper(hetero)sexual features of the soft male are also
associated with President Clinton and characterize his liberal politics (cf.
Malin 57–59). While a direct correlation between this “new male sensitiv-
ity” and political agendas may appear somewhat volatile, Malin maintains
that “Clinton, for instance, both reacted to and reworked the imagery of
the Reagan/Bush presidency, offering a new (male) President that stressed
sensitivity and empathy, rather than toughness or strength” (57).
In contrast to the physical quirkiness and witty humor of the soft male
Woody, the space-ranger action figure with his bulky physicality, reserved
 “YOU BETTER PLAY NICE”: DIGITAL ENCHANTMENT 49

behavior, and humorless gullibility suggests a particular closeness to the

muscular action hero of the 1980s.5 When Woody catches a first glimpse of
the new toy, the camera pans upwards over an erect standing Buzz, linger-
ing on each part of his body in close detail. This shot, as much as his flight
scene, provides “a set of visual pleasures focused on the display of the male
body” (Tasker, Spectacular Bodies 2). To visually frame “masculinity as
spectacle” (Neale 2) already refers to the muscular male bodies populating
1980s action films. A later montage scene, in which Buzz teaches the inse-
cure dinosaur Rex to roar threateningly, begins repairing his “spaceship,”
and engages in an extensive workout program to stay in shape, further
highlights the hyper-masculine qualities of the space-ranger action figure.6
These physical performances underline “the values of self-control […] and
the practices of training and discipline which are extolled as central terms
in the definition of bodybuilding and in the image of the muscleman hero
of 1980s cinema” (Tasker, Spectacular Bodies 9). The visual features as
well as the character traits of the space-ranger action figure do not simply
exemplify the muscleman hero, to adopt Susan asserts Jeffords’ reading of
the 1980s action film protagonist, since “[t]he depiction of the indefati-
gable, muscular, and invincible masculine body became the linchpin of the
Reagan imaginary […] its ideologies and economies” (25).
Establishing two competing masculine ideals along with their respec-
tive liberal and conservative political notions, Toy Story thus necessitates an
exploration of how the animated film resolves their initial tension. From
the perspective of masculinity scholar Malin, the incorporation of a soft
masculinity and traditional forms of manliness mirrors the social atmo-
sphere of the mid-1990s in which “media producers […] rather than fully
embracing either the new, sensitive male or the old, tough male often
work[ed] to balance these seemingly conflicted images” (26). But the har-
monious friendship between the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action
figure at the end of the film also suggests the possibility of closure for the
rift between the two competing political camps. Whereas after the end of
the Cold War “American exceptionalism had ceased representing all the
people” (New American Exceptionalism 153) for Pease, the animated film
offers closure of this divide once both symbolic figures learn to cooperate.
Before the happy ending, then, the two model representatives of compet-
ing masculine ideals, political beliefs, and American culture have to con-
tend with their individual failures.
50 D. MEINEL

STUPID, LITTLE, INSIGNIFICANT TOYS

When the next-door neighbor Sid, a violent child who “tortures toys—just
for fun” (Toy Story), starts blowing up Combat Carl toys in the backyard,
Woody and Buzz begin to bicker about the distressing situation. For the
sheriff doll the situation is obviously futile as the Combat Carl can neither
be saved nor future violence be prevented. Sarcastically dismissing all of
Buzz’ ideas to save the toy, Woody appears to be weary and even cynical.
Later, he confesses to have grown timid, fearful, and disillusioned about
life, as the sheriff doll feels hopelessly outdated and superseded in a world of
modern action figures such as Buzz:

Look at you! You’re a Buzz Lightyear […] you’ve got wings! You glow in
the dark! You talk! Your helmet does that … that … “whoosh” thing! You
are a cool toy. As a matter of fact, you’re too cool […] I mean, what chance
does a toy like me have against a Buzz Lightyear action figure […] Why
would Andy ever want to play with me when he’s got you? (Toy Story)

This fear of obsolescence symbolizes the obsession with preserving the

existing state of affairs and the increasing vulnerability and cowardice in
the face of violent threats such as Sid.
With his spontaneous impulse “to do something” and his desire to
“teach that boy a lesson” (Toy Story), Buzz exhibits the opposite attitude.
While the other toys are barely able to stop the angered and determined
space-ranger action figure from immediately ending the neighbor’s mis-
demeanors, Buzz completely misreads the situation. Although the film
introduces Sid as a malevolent and threatening character,7 because the
space-ranger action figure takes everything at face value, Buzz mistakes the
wicked excitement of the boy for innocent pleasure; inquiring about “that
happy child” (Toy Story) the naïve action figure at first fails to recognize
Sid’s malevolent character. This ingenuousness fuels the daring fighting
spirit of the space-ranger action figure, but blinds him to the complexity
of the world. When his social environment and his experiences eventually
compel Buzz to accept his toyness, the disheartened action figure falls
into a suicidal stupor and moans in a state of depressive disillusion that
he is nothing more than “[a] stupid, little, insignificant toy” (Toy Story).
Whereas Woody has lost the spirit to engage with the challenges of the
world, Buzz cannot assess them properly and continually misapprehends
his environment; the sheriff doll and the astronaut action figure appear
 “YOU BETTER PLAY NICE”: DIGITAL ENCHANTMENT 51

to be highly unprepared for the adventures waiting outside of a sheltered

children’s room. Consequently, as their hostile antagonism and their indi-
vidual failings present two fractured, inadequate symbols of American cul-
ture, Toy Story animates “the incommensurability between Clinton’s New
Covenant and Gingrich’s reactionary contract” and the absence of “the
dynamic structure of American exceptionalism as a collectively shared state
fantasy” in the 1990s (Pease, New American Exceptionalism 97, 154).
When Woody and Buzz accidentally get lost in the human world and
fall into Sid’s torturing hands, the two toys end up in a seemingly perilous
and menacing space. Eagerly carried home by the excited boy, the sheriff
doll and space-ranger action figure first encounter a vicious toy-mutilating
dog before being stored in a room full of grotesquely maimed, disfigured,
and patched-up playthings: a fishing rod with legs, a frog on wheels, a baby
doll head with mechanical spider legs, and a toy torso glued to a skate-
board. In the scarcely lit room, Woody and Buzz witness the creation of
these toys the moment Sid indulges in his favorite pastime of toy surgery.
In this uncanny atmosphere, the horrors of a foreign, hostile territory full
of physically distorted, seemingly unintelligible beings trigger deep-seated
fears in the sheriff doll and the astronaut action figure. However, this
journey into a sort of “‘no-man’s land’” fosters “an experience of liminal-
ity” which eventually becomes “a rite of passage” (Ackerman 896) for the
two toys once Woody and Buzz witness the caring, kind character of the
mutilated toys and transcend their individual failings to liberate the good-
hearted but simple playthings from their oppressor.
For the sheriff doll, this transformation entails acknowledging his anxi-
eties of becoming obsolete and confessing his feelings of inferiority to
Buzz. In doing so, Woody realizes his selfish, fear-driven behavior as the
sheriff doll slowly comes to terms with the fact that he is not the only object
of desire for his owner anymore. Through this eye-opening moment,
Woody accepts his fate and eventually finds the courage to engage with
the new world of high-tech action figures and violent, toy-mutilating boys
by standing up for the innocent, helpless, and weak.
Buzz, on the other hand, does not transcend a fearful detachment
from the world as the space-ranger action figure eagerly engages with his
environment. Rather, his rite of passage consists of seeing the world (and
himself) in its complexity and ambiguity. From the very beginning, Buzz
failed to see and understand himself as a toy. While this naïveté invigorates
the routinized life of his fellow toys and his innocence boldly dares to chal-
lenge the horror Sid brings upon other toys, the simplicity of his world-
52 D. MEINEL

view leads Buzz to misapprehend his abilities and the threat Sid presents.
In portraying the maturation of the space-ranger action figure from inno-
cence to complexity, Toy Story revisits the myth of the American Adam.
Particularly since Buzz appears suddenly as “a surprise present from the
closet” (Toy Story), awakens from “hypersleep” (Toy Story), and situates
himself “off course en route to sector 12 […] [on a] strange planet” (Toy
Story), the space-ranger action figure animates the trope of the American
Adam in which “the hero seems to take his start outside time, or on the
very outer edges of it” (Lewis 91). Gaining consciousness in the bedroom
of a young boy, Buzz, furthermore, represents “a kind of primal innocence
in an innocent world” (Lewis 49). But as the action figure eventually dis-
covers, the world is not so innocent after all and the ensuing rite of passage
in Sid’s house determines in what way the space-ranging American Adam
will learn to master the complexity of the world.

THE SPACE-TRAVELING AMERICAN ADAM

In The American Adam: Innocence and Tragedy in the Nineteenth Century
(1955), R.W.B. Lewis characterizes the American Adam as “a figure of heroic
innocence and vast potentialities, poised at the start of a new history” (1).
This myth of “the hero of the new adventure […] emancipated from history,
happily bereft of ancestry, untouched and undefiled by the usual inheritances
of family and race […] self-reliant and self-propelling, ready to confront
whatever awaited him with the aid of his own unique and inherent resources”
(Lewis 5) emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the struggle
to articulate and to define an “American experience” (Lewis 6). Fusing the
biblical image of Adam in Paradise before the Fall with tropes of US national
identity, the figure of the American Adam established “[t]he national and
hence the individual conscience […] [as] unsullied by the past—America, in
the hopeful creed, had no past, but only a present and a future” (Lewis 7).
The trope of the American Adam, Lewis maintained, not only found
expression in the motive of the innocent hero. As the naïveté of the figure
would cause him to be unable to properly engage with the ambiguity and
the complexity of the world, the American Adam would end up helpless
“in a world infected by ancient evil” (Lewis 73). Instead, only through
the loss of innocence could a mature personality suited for a multifac-
eted world develop (cf. Lewis 58–59). From a theological perspective,
since “happiness may be predicated of the sin […] the world was enlarged
and enlightened through the figure of the Redeemer and the joy of the
 “YOU BETTER PLAY NICE”: DIGITAL ENCHANTMENT 53

Atonement” (Lewis 61); in literature the idealization of innocence gradu-

ally faded as the complexity of an American Adam figure “before and dur-
ing and after the Fall” (Lewis 111) gained prominence.
This Adam did not exist in a “New World Eden” anymore, but encoun-
tered a hostile or dangerous social world as “the situation very notably
darkens: qualities of evil and fear and destructiveness have entered;
self-sufficiency is questioned through terrible trials, and the stage is set for
tragedy” (Lewis 111). This passage entailed the danger of being lost in or
corrupted by the world, yet the trial also offered “some realization of the
entire self which it was worth losing one’s self to find; only the lost, indeed,
were likely to find it on their return journey” (Lewis 116). As a consequence,
the experience of mastering sin and surviving the Fall enriched the crude
notion of a naïve and innocent American Adam as the trial formed a matured,
more complex American Adam—one who adjusts to his period and thereby
gains control of his life (cf. Lewis 126). When Buzz journeys from the Eden
of the children’s room to the dark and hostile space of Sid’s house, the story
of the animated film mediates this American Adam narrative which explores
the consequences of an innocent and uncorrupted figure “enter[ing] the
world as it really is” (Lewis 91).
Trapped in a dark, hostile place and waiting for Sid to begin his disturb-
ing experimentation, Woody and Buzz immediately decide to escape at
the first opportunity. When Sid leaves the house, the two toys sneak out
of the room, but get separated the moment Sid’s toy-eating dog detects
them. Buzz finds temporary shelter in an adjacent room where he stum-
bles upon a TV commercial advertising Buzz Lightyear toys. Perplexed
by the images of a space-ranger action figure, Buzz stares in disbelief as
the commercial reveals each of his abilities to be a marketing strategy to
impress children: the laser is only a light beam, the communicator only
a sticker, and the wings only props as a flashy announcement repeatedly
states “NOT A FLYING TOY” (Toy Story). Stunned and confounded, the
numb space-ranger action figure decides to disprove his toyness one last
time by flying through an open window. As Buzz smashes to the ground
and breaks off his arm, this (literal) fall from innocence plunges the space
ranger into a deep depression. Although still functioning, Buzz continues
to exist in a suicidal stupor having given up his ambitions to stop the abuse
of his fellow toys at the hands of Sid.8
In this moment of peril, when the American Adam is physically and
spiritually broken, the house of the evil boy becomes equivalent to the wil-
derness in nineteenth-century literature: an “ambiguous setting of moral
54 D. MEINEL

drama, the scene of reversal and discovery” (Lewis 114). Upon seeing the
heavily injured Buzz and his severed arm, the mutilated toys appear from
out of their hiding and begin to weave the action figure together. In spite
of their initial presentation as eerie, distorted, and menacing playthings,
their aid reveals the deformed toys to be good-hearted and well-meaning.
Rather than toy versions of Sid, their benevolent altruism characterizes
them as abused victims desperately suffering from their malign owner.
This moment, however, does not yet conclude Buzz’s maturation,
since the action figure continues to decry the meaninglessness of his life as
“[a] stupid, little, insignificant toy” (Toy Story). Woody has to explain to
the depressed and disheartened space-ranger action figure the rationality
and significance of his existence: “Being a toy is a lot better than being
a space ranger. Look, over in that house is a kid who thinks you are the
greatest, and it is not because you are a space ranger, pal. It is because you
are a toy. You are his toy” (Toy Story). Thanks to the speech, Buzz even-
tually comprehends the complexity of his existence. The mass-produced
space-ranger action figure is not a valuable commodity because of his
many gadgets, his high-tech design, or his possible collector’s value, “but
because he brings hours of pleasure to a singular little boy much in need
of friendship” (Burningham 165). Rather than deriving from a particular
set of qualities, the uniqueness of the space-ranger action figure lies “in his
functional relationship to Andy” (Burningham 165). Through his fall, the
space-traveling American Adam transcends his literal understanding of the
world to see the many layers of his personality and the intricacies of bring-
ing happiness to a single child by performing his space-ranger toyness.
Similar to the nineteenth-century literary trope, this animated American
Adam needs the fall from innocence for his transformation.
With this conversion of the space-traveling American Adam from inno-
cence to mature individual, the film concludes the reformation of its two
symbols of American culture. Although still imprisoned, as the sun of a
new morning rises, Woody and Buzz have rediscovered the purpose of
their lives. Because “there’s a kid [Andy] over in that house who needs us”
(my italics, Toy Story), the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure
decide to break out of their jail. Thanks to their renewed spirit, Woody and
Buzz not merely escape Sid’s torture, but in the process liberate the muti-
lated toys. In this sense, the animated film portrays the spiritual regenera-
tion of its protagonists within a dark, foreign wilderness controlled by an
evil oppressor and populated by a visually different, intellectually inferior
group of people in need of a just and good redeemer. By defeating Sid and
 “YOU BETTER PLAY NICE”: DIGITAL ENCHANTMENT 55

liberating the other playthings, the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action
figure enact the familiar (imperial) trope of a supposedly just and neces-
sary US foreign intervention. However, as Woody and his friends perform
their inanimate toyness to maintain the illusion of lifeless playthings, Toy
Story illustrates the manufactured quality of these tropes and figures of
American culture. Its digital aesthetics, or enchantment as I maintain, fur-
ther exemplifies the fictiveness of the animated texts.

THE ENCHANTING PERFORMANCE OF TOYNESS

After Buzz learns from Woody to appreciate the complexity of toy life and
the sheriff doll acquires from the space-ranger action figure the courage
to engage with the world, both become what their characters symbolize
in popular US American culture: defenders of the weak and vulnerable.
When Sid decides to blow up Buzz with a huge rocket in the backyard,
Woody rallies the mutilated toys to help the sheriff doll save his friend.
In the garden, the toys ambush Sid as they emerge from mud puddles,
sand boxes, and garden tables to slowly move in on the increasingly terri-
fied boy. Woody further heightens their eerie the-living-dead performance
by speaking to the boy in his mechanical toy voice. Instructing the hor-
rified boy to “take good care of your toys, because if you don’t, we’ll
find out, Sid” (Toy Story), the sheriff doll begins to slowly turn his head
360 degrees and ends his unsettling performance by promising: “We toys
can see EVERYTHING!” (Toy Story). Immediately afterwards, Woody
snaps out of his lifeless toy disguise and warns the boy threateningly “So
play nice!” (Toy Story). Due to his intervention, Woody saves Buzz from
the exploding rocket and the mutilated toys from a boy who will never
harm a plaything again. This scene, then, concludes the initial conflict
between the two protagonists and establishes their friendship.9 But with
its portrayal of the oppressed, tormented toys and the two American fig-
ures as their saviors, the animated film also appropriates familiar imperial-
ist notions. The sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure travel to a
seemingly dark, hostile, and foreign territory to end up liberating a physi-
cally distorted, barely intelligible people from a ruthless despot. Lastly,
the scene also highlights the performativity of identity yet again. While
Woody and Buzz are willing to perform their toyness to ensure the hap-
piness of the good child Andy, the sheriff doll exposes his animated exis-
tence to punish the evil Sid. Because the film details the maturation and
cooperation of the Western sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure,
56 D. MEINEL

their deliberate enactment of a lifeless persona also defines these pertinent

symbols of American culture as intentional and performed in order to—as
Woody explained earlier—help a child growing up.
In the end, Toy Story solves the initial antagonism between the sheriff
doll and the space-ranger action figure as each male figure acknowledges
his fears and confesses these anxieties to his companion. Whereas the
soft-bodied Woody with his ironic and witty humor exhibits a disillu-
sioned, even fearful, attitude towards the world, the muscular Buzz with
his enthusiastic, fervent, and wholehearted attitude to do good evidences
a literal understanding of and a pertinacious ignorance about his environ-
ment. This rivalry between a sensitive new male and the traditional hard
body also translates into political terms. Since the former is linked to
liberal and the latter to conservative political views, Woody and Buzz also
illustrate the political climate of the 1990s characterized by Donald Pease
as an increasing conflict between “U.S. citizens who advocated the emer-
gence of a multicultural nation against citizens who remained loyal to the
imperatives of the National Security State” (New American Exceptionalism
71). With the sudden implosion of the Soviet Union the United States
had lost the ability “to project insuperable political contradictions outside
its domestic environs” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism 70) as these
contradictions increasingly found their expression internally: President
Clinton’s liberal multiculturalism and Newt Gingrich’s conservative
“Contract With America” represented the two national factions vying for
political power.
Whereas in the 1990s this division did not find any conclusion, Toy
Story offers closure for its two symbols. During their adventure, the sheriff
doll and the space-ranger action figure learn to transcend their individual
shortcomings while liberating an oppressed group of mutilated and mute
toys from their malevolent human tormentor. Although the animated film
thus highlights the necessity for Woody and Buzz to cooperate in order to
accomplish their objectives, Toy Story represents this narrative of a national
consensus in the familiar tropes of US imperialism. But since the sheriff and
the astronaut constantly (have to) perform their toyness and since the toys
“continually and explicitly question their own reality” (Ackerman 902),
the animated film illustrates the performative quality of these symbols.
The opening shot of Woody riding in front of Monument Valley encap-
sulates this (meta)fictional play prominent throughout Toy Story. With a
camera zoom, the film exposes its fabricated quality as the shot reveals the
sheriff figure to be a doll moving in front of a canvas. This shift in perspec-
 “YOU BETTER PLAY NICE”: DIGITAL ENCHANTMENT 57

tive exhibits the manufactured quality of the prototypical Western theme.

Indeed, since the animated film continually illustrates the performativity of
all toy identities,10 Toy Story foregrounds the fictiveness of the emblematic
symbols of American culture. Consequently, the film not merely reproduces
the American Adam trope and tells of his maturation from an innocent
state of blissful ignorance to a self-aware state of performed toyness, but
also suggests that American myths and symbols are, at their core, fantasies.
Although Andy may experience a blissful, innocent childhood, because the
sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure are “there for him” by eter-
nally performing their toyness, the film denies a similar experience to its
viewers. On the contrary, while the animated film may offer a narrative of
national integration and portrays American myths and symbols as essential
features of its imperialist foundation all for the sake of ensuring a happy
childhood, due to the playful (self-)awareness of its protagonists Toy Story
draws attention to the fictiveness of its myths and symbols.
The digital aesthetics of the animated film further foreground this imag-
inative quality. Even as Toy Story may aim for a realist mode of representa-
tion, because Woody and Buzz are not physically embodied by human
actors but visibly animated characters, these symbols of American culture
signal their fictive nature at once. In fact, animated texts foreshadow their
imaginary quality even before the opening shot since advertising, film
trailers, and other para-textual features disclose their visual fictiveness. As a
family entertainment product with its fabulous setting, its endearing char-
acters, and its mild emotional disturbance, Toy Story’s aesthetic and narra-
tive features exhibit a sense of enchantment. This “affirmation of wonder”
(58)—to appropriate Rita Felski’s formulation—in the animated film may
not only explain its popular appeal and commercial success, but also offer
a path to understand the continued fascination with American myths and
symbols in this digital text. Thanks to its entertaining aesthetic and narra-
tive elements, the American themes of the animated film “affirm wonder”
and thereby provide an “enlivening, energizing” (Felski 58) viewing expe-
rience. But, as Toy Story also foregrounds its fictiveness, the animated film
exemplifies what Rita Felski termed, in Uses of Literature (2008), “modern
enchantments”—literary and cultural texts “in which we are immersed
but not submerged, bewitched but not beguiled, suspensions of disbe-
lief that do not lose sight of the fictiveness of those fictions that enthrall
us” (Felski 75). This sense of enchantment, then, captures the twofold
experience of Toy Story. The animated film successfully mediates popular
American myths and symbols as an aesthetic and narrative spectacle which
58 D. MEINEL

continually signals its imaginary quality, so much so that “even as we are

enchanted we remain aware of our condition of enchantment, without
such knowledge diminishing or diluting the intensity of our involvement”
(74).
The maintenance of a fantasy for the sake of a blissful childhood leaves
open the question of what happens once the child outgrows its toys—and
in what ways this maturation will shape American myths and symbols. In
Toy Story 2 (1999) the fear of becoming obsolete continues to drive the
narrative the moment Andy accidentally damages his sheriff doll. Haunted
by such anxieties, Woody has to decide whether to accept the fact that
Andy will eventually abandon the sheriff doll or to retire to a Japanese
toy museum. While Toy Story 2 engages in these questions by exploring
the opposing notions of a singular, highly prized collectible and a cheap
mass-produced item of consumption, the sequel also further develops its
aesthetic and narrative practices of enchantment. Rather than celebrating
the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure whilst illustrating their
fictiveness, Toy Story 2 appropriates a postmodern poetics that renders its
American myths and symbols ephemeral.

NOTES
1. The Buzz Lightyear poster underscores his connection to (imperial) American
history as the print alludes to the famous J.M.  Flagg’s 1917 Uncle Sam
recruitment poster. In the animated film Buzz Lightyear replaces the figure of
Uncle Sam in the middle of the poster as its inscription demands: “I want you
to join the Space Rangers.”
2. Walking by an etch-a-sketch toy as if getting ready for a shootout, Woody
shouts: “Hey, Etch… Draw!” The toy quickly draws a picture of a revolver to
which Woody, mimicking a gun wound, responds: “Got me again! Etch,
you’ve been working on that draw. Fastest knobs in the west” (Toy Story).
3. To demonstrate his ferocity, the toy dinosaur Rex regularly attempts to scare
his friends. As Woody walks by the dinosaur, Rex jumps out of his hideout
and roars loudly, yet Woody responds unimpressed: “Hey, how ya doin’, Rex
… I was close to being scared that time” (Toy Story).
4. Leader of the community with a suave attitude and witty quips, this soft male
figure is appropriately voice-acted by Tom Hanks (cf. Wells 168).
5. Tellingly, Woody is a play doll made out of soft cotton fabric, while Buzz is a
hard plastic action figure.
 “YOU BETTER PLAY NICE”: DIGITAL ENCHANTMENT 59

6. Suitably, Buzz Lightyear is voiced by actor Tim Allen whose popularity was
founded on “his bluff machismo persona from the sit-com Home Improvement”
(Wells 168).
7. “[W]e can find some significance in the name ‘Sid,’ which functions (perhaps
unintentionally) as one of the many puns in the film. He is a particularly
‘vicious’ little boy whose uncannily familiar name, spiked haircut, ubiquitous
sneer, and black T-shirt (adorned only with a rather frightening icon of a
human skull) inevitably suggest his association with Sid Vicious—the most
violent member of the punk rock band the Sex Pistols—and thus with one of
the most infamous figures of postmodernism’s own picaresque genre ”
(Burningham 161).
8. This identity crisis is illustrated in gendered terms: After his crash, Sid’s little
sister finds the hyper-masculine Buzz and includes him in her tea party play—
dressed up in a pink apron and a blue lady’s hat with a flower. Depressed by the
discovery of his toyness, the drunk-sounding Buzz mumbles incoherently,
when Woody attempts to speak to him. After the space-ranger action figure
exclaims “I am Mrs. Nesbitt” (Toy Story 50:33), Woody even slaps his friend to
shake him out of his trance.
9. In order to travel home, Woody and Buzz light Sid’s rocket and soar through
the air. During their flight, Buzz proudly repeats Woody’s earlier observation
that “this is not flying, this is falling with style” (Toy Story) to which Woody
ecstatically responds with the space-ranger slogan: “To infinity and beyond”
(Toy Story).
10. During their first contact with Buzz, the toys demonstrate their self-awareness.
Being asked where they originated from—Buzz assumes himself to be on a
hostile planet inquiring about the home planets of these seemingly alien crea-
tures—Mr. Potato Head explains: “I’m from Playskool.” In his insecure and
neurotic fashion, the dinosaur Rex trumps this self-awareness by detailing the
complex financial buyouts and takeovers in the toy-manufacturing business to
offer an answer: “And I’m from Mattel. Well, I’m not really from Mattel, I’m
actually from a smaller company that was purchased by Mattel in a leveraged
buyout” (Toy Story).
 CHAPTER 3

An Animated Toast to the Ephemeral:

The Multicultural Logic of Late Capitalism
in Toy Story 2 (1999)

Where Woody taught Buzz the purpose of being a toy in Toy Story, the sheriff
doll has to face a similar dilemma about his role for Andy and his place in the
world in the sequel. When stolen by an obsessive and greedy doll collector,
the perplexed and enraged Woody quickly discovers an abundant collection
of merchandizing products bearing his counterfeit at the apartment of the
toy devotee. The yoyos, lunchboxes, guitars, soap bubble dispensers, record
players, radios, plates, and LPs all speak to the popularity of the Woody
character—and the complexity of his nature as a consumer item of capital-
ist production. After the sheriff doll meets more toys—the Prospector Pete,
cowgirl Sally, and Bullseye, the faithful horse—at his lofty and tidy peniten-
tiary, Woody also learns about his origin as one merchandizing product from
the highly popular 1950s TV program “Woody’s Roundup.” Although the
puppet show for children had been canceled after the Sputnik shock, more
than forty years later the sheriff doll has become a valuable collectible which
the toy collector stole from the uninformed Andy to complete his “Woody’s
Roundup Gang” set and sell the whole assemblage to a Japanese museum.
Whereas in Toy Story Buzz wrestled with the question of individuality in the
face of mechanical mass production, the discovery of being a rare and valu-
able collectible mesmerizes Woody at the beginning of Toy Story 2.
Reveling in his past prominence as a TV-show celebrity, the sheriff doll
presupposes that all the cultural artifacts were manufactured in his image
forgetting that he has been fabricated in the image of a TV-show doll. Woody
treats the TV show and its main protagonist, Sheriff Woody, as a document
of his true identity and the numerous merchandizing articles as features of

© The Author(s) 2016 61

D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_3
62 D. MEINEL

his genuine personality. Uttering in disbelief that all this “is me” (Toy Story
2), the sheriff doll “begins to speak in the slogans that are printed on almost
every image, slogans such as ‘Hey Howdy Hey’ that we have not heard him
use before” (Ackerman 904). In his mesmerized state, Woody forgets his sta-
tus as a commodity manufactured in the image of the TV-show Woody and
begins to consider himself to be the famous 1950s star.1 Similar to the ques-
tion of individuality in the face of endless copies Buzz continually encounters,
the genealogy of the sheriff doll and his status as a valuable collectible further
complicate the question of original and copy. This narrative strain represents
but one moment in which Toy Story 2 exhibits the postmodern tension of
“essence and appearance […] authenticity and inauthenticity […] signi-
fier and signified” (Jameson 12) and situates the film within what Frederic
Jameson characterizes as The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991).
In contrast to the first film, the postmodern features of the sequel do
not entail a mediation on the performativity of (toy) identity. Human char-
acters and the necessity for toys to perform their inanimateness play only
a minor role in this film. Even as the toy collector Al initially may appear
to be the antagonist in this film, he cannot compete with Sid’s wickedness
in the first film.2 Actually, Toy Story 2 quickly shifts away from the greedy
human and centers on a conflict among the toys. Jessie, Pete, and Bullseye,
the “Roundup Gang,” comprise one group who with their similar attire,
Southwestern vernacular, and shared history represent a monocultural group
of stereotypical Western characters. In contrast, the space-ranger action fig-
ure, Mr. Potatohead, Slinky Dog, and the T-Rex dinosaur toys who attempt
to rescue Woody from the hands of the toy collector are their random and
disordered opposite. These toys with their jumble of forms, their broad range
of color, and their cacophony of accents epitomize a multicultural diversity
contrary to the homogeneous Roundup collection set. When Woody is
compelled to decide whether to stay with his American frontier myth family
from the 1950s or his diverse group of friends, Toy Story 2 also mediates the
post-Cold War issue of “two irreconcilable national factions” (Pease, New
American Exceptionalism 95). In contrast to Toy Story, which brought the
protagonists of both factions together, the sequel portrays the multicultural
ideal as the only viable choice for Woody after Prospector Pete attempts to
threaten and coerce the other Roundup members into a life in the aseptic
confinements of the toy museum. Locked in a suitcase destined for Japan,
Woody can only escape eternity in a showcase when his cast of diverse friends
subdue Prospector Pete on the conveyor belts of the local airport and save
the sheriff doll before his imminent departure. In a final moment of Wild
 AN ANIMATED TOAST TO THE EPHEMERAL: THE MULTICULTURAL LOGIC 63

West bravado, the liberated Woody rides on his faithful horse Bullseye to
rescue cowgirl Sally from a plane about to take off. The narrative concludes
with a similarly theatrical and extravagant musical performance as the toys
celebrate their adventure while Woody and Buzz gleefully toast to a finite life
with Andy that will “be fun while it lasts” (Toy Story 2).
With its celebration of social diversity supervised by a white, male sheriff
doll and a white, male space-ranger action figure, the animated film illus-
trates the logic of the “New Covenant” inaugurated by President Clinton.
This notion of an inclusive multicultural nation which acknowledged diver-
sity as a pillar of American history did not contest white, male privilege
in the present but enabled, as Donald Pease asserts, “the state to open
up market relations with each ethnic group’s country or region of ori-
gin” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism 74). Indeed, as Toy Story 2 also
“self-consciously and consistently manipulat[es] questions about the status
of reality in both form and content” (Ackerman 907), the animated film
mediates a multicultural market imperative with the help of a variety of
postmodern visual and narrative features. As the sheriff doll and the space
ranger-action figure come to illustrate the narrative of white, male privilege
and encapsulate the postmodern poetics of the cinematic text, these sym-
bols of American culture eventually mediate the logic of late capitalism.
With its endearing yet psychologically fragmented sheriff doll and seem-
ingly infinite numbers of space-ranger action figures, with its playful albeit
intertextual script, and its artful though referential cinematography, Toy
Story 2 uses postmodern poetics of enchantment to animate its American
myths and symbols for contemporary sensibilities. But even as these myths
and symbols come to function as what Luc Boltansky and Eve Chiapello
describe as The New Spirit of Capitalism (2007), this process of adapta-
tion (and commodification) eventually foregrounds the ephemerality and
fictiveness of the American myths and symbols.

THE MULTICULTURAL MYTH OF WOODY, BUZZ, AND BILL

In his essay “The Spirit of Toys” (2005), Alan Ackerman reads the adven-
tures of the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure in Toy Story
2 not only as individual experiences but, simultaneously, as “mythic” or
“historical” (910). Since both “are not only represented but also repre-
sentative,” their personal journeys figure as “the redeeming of a particular
vision of an ideal America” (Ackerman 910). Although Ackerman does
not further describe this America when Woody and Buzz toast to their
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future with Andy at the end of Toy Story 2, the diverse group of playthings
illustrates this “ideal America”: Rex the Green Dinosaur, Slinky Dog, Mr.
and Mrs. Potatohead, Hamm the Piggy Bank, Bo Peep, Etch-A-Sketch,
Buzz Lightyear, sheriff Woody, Sally the Cowgirl, and Bullseye the faith-
ful horse. With their multiplicity of forms, colors, and accents, this varied
group of toys represents an America of diverse cultures and individuals.
By celebrating (toy) multiculturalism, Toy Story 2 animates the liberal
notion of the United States prominent in the 1990s. With his acknowl-
edgment that “America was an imperial society predominantly populated
by white settlers who pirated land, exploited and enslaved subaltern labor-
ers, bullied and sometimes murdered whoever got in their way,” President
Clinton fundamentally transformed “the terms of the cold war settle-
ment from liberal individualism to liberal multiculturalism” (Pease, New
American Exceptionalism 73, 71). By accepting the imperial features of
US history, the president further hoped that “victims and […] oppressors
[could] take up a different position in the future” (Pease, New American
Exceptionalism 73) through what Clinton deemed a “New Covenant.”
Contesting this 1990s multicultural ideal, Newt Gingrich and his
“Contract With America” hoped to sustain the monocultural ideology of
the Cold War state (cf. Pease, New American Exceptionalism 79). Venerating
and revering “the image of a totalized national community,” this version
of the US nation produced “a symbolic economy whereby the security
state compensated the citizenry’s willingness to substitute their democratic
rights and democratic values in exchange for the illusion of collective secu-
rity” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism 79). In Toy Story 2 the set of
nineteenth-century frontier-themed dolls from the 1950s—the sheriff, the
cowgirl, and the miner—represents this monocultural national fantasy. With
their shared visual proximity, the “Roundup Gang” differs noticeably from
the multicultural assembly of Woody and his friends. But the two groups do
not differ only visually, as both adhere to competing notions of (toy) life.
By having to decide whether to escape to Andy or continue his life as
an exhibition piece in a Japanese toy museum, Woody is eventually com-
pelled either to choose a life of playtime that holds the danger of being
injured and the prospect of being forgotten, or to opt for an aseptic, eter-
nal existence in a vitrine. Having had his arm ripped by Andy in an earlier
scene, the fear of being discarded forever causes the sheriff doll to waver
in his decision. In this moment of doubt, Prospector Pete vividly portrays
the bleak future all toys are awaiting: “Do you really think Andy is going
to take you to college, or on his honeymoon? Andy’s growing up, and
 AN ANIMATED TOAST TO THE EPHEMERAL: THE MULTICULTURAL LOGIC 65

there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s your choice, Woody. You can
go back, or you can stay with us and last forever” (Toy Story 2). From the
inside of his unopened box, the mint prospector doll touts his fearful views
about the “dangerous world out there for a toy” (Toy Story 2) assuring
Woody that “[c]hildren destroy toys. You’ll be ruined, forgotten, spend-
ing eternity rotting on some landfill” (Toy Story 2). With this dishearten-
ing attitude, the miner toy expresses a deep-seated desire for security. To
obtain this protection, Pete is willing to interfere with the escape attempts
of the other “Roundup Gang” members. His fears lead him to manipu-
late, threaten, and injure Woody and Sally to coerce both to stay with the
increasingly malicious doll. Consequently, in the historical context of the
1990s the prospector functions as the personification of the conservative
political faction—constantly concerned with preserving a bygone age—
and as a digital incarnation of the “negative common denominator” and
the fear of “internal threat” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism 74,
73) indispensable for the formation of Clinton’s multicultural liberalism.
In the narrative, the mining doll serves as the evil antagonist for Woody
and his diverse group of friends; in the context of post-Cold War America,
the prospector symbolizes those “dramatis personae within the national
scene […] [unable to] undertake the transition from the national to the
transnational order of things” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism 73).
By the end of the film, the “Roundup Gang” abandons the idea of liv-
ing eternally in a museum showcase as Sally and Bullseye decide to join
the diverse toy community of Andy’s room. Their escape from the toy col-
lector and Prospector Pete is made possible when Buzz and Woody work
together to outwit the human and overpower the doll villain. In a final act,
Woody even has to (literally) ride to the rescue of Sally in order to get her
off a departing jumbo jet. This daring feat not only portrays Woody as the
gallant hero for a damsel in distress—the scene also concludes the incom-
plete 1950s TV show “Woody’s Roundup Gang” in which the sheriff doll
could never save Sally, because the program was canceled before the final
episode. In this sense, Woody amends the past by performing the hero
character the sheriff doll had always been meant to be.
When at the conclusion of Toy Story 2 all the dolls and toys gleefully per-
form a musical number, this happy ending certainly suggests a reading of
the animated film as a celebration of multiculturalism. Since Woody and
Buzz continue to be the undisputed leaders of the community, however, the
cinematic text also solidifies white, male privilege. Similarly to the unaltered
social hierarchy of the diverse toy community, the liberal multiculturalism of
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the “New Covenant” also did not notably disrupt “the relationship between
[…] the ‘governmental belonging’ of white Americans and the ‘passive
belonging’ of nonwhites, [because] President Clinton conceptualized the
liberal multiculture as an initiative brought about by progressive white
American nationals, like himself” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism 72).
While the multicultural liberalism maintained established forms of social
hierarchy, for Donald Pease, the formation of a multicultural ideal particu-
larly helped to solidify and guarantee socio-economic advantages in a glo-
balized, neoliberal market order for the United States (cf. New American
Exceptionalism 72–74).
Hence the animated multiculturalism of Toy Story 2 not only perpetuates
white, male privilege but needs to be situated within the logic of late capi-
talism—as a look at its aesthetics of enchantment further suggests. When
Toy Story 2 introduces a variety of Buzz Lightyear action figures, when the
animated film condenses its various geographical sites into one space, and
when the cinematic text compresses time into the present moment, these
postmodern poetics encourage an assessment of its narrative and visual
facets in light of neoliberal capitalism. As the sheriff doll and the space-
ranger action figure cheerfully toast to a short-term, ephemeral life at the
end of their adventure even these symbols of American culture cannot
escape their fate as commodified objects.

A POSTMODERN TOY STORY

In the opening scene of Toy Story 2 a gritty Buzz Lightyear descends from
space and crash-lands on a rocky, sparse planet where he has to fight a massive
army of mechanical robots before making his way into the hidden fortress of
his arch-enemy Emperor Zurg. Inside the labyrinth of corridors, Buzz even-
tually encounters Zurg and a fierce battle ensues. At its climax, the Emperor
completely evaporates the space-ranger action figure and towers menacingly
over Buzz’s glimmering remains. A cut to a shot of a TV screen reveals the
death of the protagonist to be merely a video game played by the dinosaur
Rex and watched by Buzz, the action figure. Since the video game sequence is
visually indistinguishable from the remainder of the film, Toy Story 2 entangles
its viewers amid different layers of fiction and distorts the separation between
the film narrative and fantasies within the film: the video-game Buzz is visually
inseparable from the space-ranger action figure. The film playfully complicates
the issue of original and copy when the on-looking toy Buzz tells the disheart-
ened, video-playing dinosaur “you’re a better Buzz than I am” (Toy Story 2).3
 AN ANIMATED TOAST TO THE EPHEMERAL: THE MULTICULTURAL LOGIC 67

This tongue-in-cheek opening sequence with its various Buzz Lightyears

already undermines any sense of a singular and stable identity. As the film
continues to explore this issue in later scenes, Toy Story 2 engages with what
Brian McHale describes in Postmodernist Fiction (1987) as pivotal for post-
modern texts: the shift “from problems of knowing to problems of modes
of being” (italics in original, 10). Given that ontological questions are not
exclusive to postmodernism, McHale further refers to a “poetics proper”
(27) to define postmodern texts. Indeed, as Toy Story 2 tells a story about
the numerous Buzz Lightyears who all search for their personal fulfillment,
its satirical tone, its campy dialogues, and its intertextual references come to
illustrate these postmodern poetics and what Keith M. Booker subsumed
under the idea of “postmodern pastiche” (Postmodern Hollywood 124).
The animated film complicates the postmodern issue of multiple
Buzzes once the space-ranger action figure and his friends venture off to
rescue the sheriff doll from his human kidnapper. Their journey leads the
small group of friends to a huge toystore, Al’s Toy Barn, where the space-
ranger action figure comes across a Buzz Lightyear aisle filled with seem-
ingly infinite numbers of Buzz Lightyear action figures. Similar to the first
film, the sequel confronts the mass-produced protagonist with questions
of individuality and originality, this time in the form of hundreds of physi-
cally indistinguishable space-ranger toys. Although the Toy-Story-2 Buzz
has learned to define his individuality through “his functional relationship
to Andy” (Burningham 165), when the protagonist accidentally awakens
another Buzz Lightyear, this second Buzz re-enacts the plot of the first
film as the action figure assumes himself to be the actual Buzz Lightyear
who crash-landed on a foreign planet.
This intertextual story within a story climaxes after the two space-
ranger action figures encounter an Emperor Zurg toy during their mission
to save Woody. While Andy’s Buzz simply ignores the threatening gestures
of the villain toy, the freshly awakened Buzz engages in battle. The ensuing
fight between the second Buzz and his arch-enemy on top of an elevator
transpires to be a re-enactment of the opening video-game scene down to
the very dialogues. Again, Zurg defeats the space ranger, but this time the
by-standing Rex intervenes in the nick of time by accidentally pushing the
evil emperor over the edge of the elevator and proves to be the “better
Buzz.” For the victorious Buzz, this presents only a bitter-sweet victory as
Zurg confesses to be his father. Yet, the story-arch is only completed after
the evil emperor toy survives his fall down the elevator shaft, unexpectedly
accepts his role as father to Buzz, and ventures off with his son playing ball.
68 D. MEINEL

In the course of the narrative, then, viewers encounter numerous Buzz

Lightyears: the video-game Buzz, the protagonist Buzz, the video-playing
“better Buzz” Rex, the second Buzz Lightyear, and the seemingly infinite
number of Buzz Lightyear action figures filling the toystore aisle. Since most
of these figures are exact copies of each other and none of them can be con-
sidered the original Buzz from which all other versions derive,4 the protago-
nist is not defined “by some inherent set of material or ethereal qualities”
and is therefore not “an autonomous subject” (Burningham 165). Bruce
Burningham maintains that the space-ranger action figure protagonist of Toy
Story 2 “exists purely as a sign whose meaning is determined by the spe-
cific ‘reader’ who responds to him,” because the other Buzz figures in the
film “could just as easily become a […] central protagonist within a dis-
crete narrative” (165).5 All these incarnations of Buzz Lightyear illustrate
the Baudrillardian notion of “the ‘simulacrum’ for which no original has ever
existed” (Jameson 18)—particularly as no creation story for Buzz is offered.
In addition, the multiple personifications of the space-ranger action figure
illustrate the “‘psychic fragmentation’ of the postmodern subject” and its
increasing sense of “schizophrenia” (Booker, Postmodern Hollywood xv). The
multiple coexisting Buzzes thus shatter the notion of a coherent, unified self,
exemplify postmodern fragmentation, and illustrate in a playful fashion the
“instability of personal identity” (Booker, Postmodern Hollywood xiv).
Ending with “outtakes” from the “filming” of the movie, Toy Story 2
concludes with yet another instance of postmodern play. The entire credit
sequence consists of various moments in “the shooting of the film” in
which the toys act as cast members who perform their roles before, dur-
ing, or after a scene of Toy Story 2. In these outtakes, however, they forget
their lines, are subjected to pranks, or end up in a comical situation so
that filming has to be paused. Before one take, for example, Prospector
Pete flirts with two Barbie dolls, in a different instance Woody gets stuck
in an tape roll, and in a third outtake tour guide Barbie complains that
the need to constantly smile causes her cheeks to ache. Similar to other
postmodern texts, then, Toy Story 2 highlights its fabricated quality as “the
artwork itself comes to be presented as an artwork” (italics in original,
McHale 30). The cinematography of Toy Story 2 also contributes to this
postmodern play by blending or collapsing the various geographical sites
in the animated film into one mutual space.
Growing tired during their mission to rescue Woody, Mr. Potatohead,
Hamm, Slinky Dog, and Rex complain to Buzz about the hardships of
their journey, but the space-ranger toy will not allow for any moaning,
 AN ANIMATED TOAST TO THE EPHEMERAL: THE MULTICULTURAL LOGIC 69

grumbling, or objection by recounting the hardships Woody endured for

their sake. Tilting his head slightly to the side and looking into the distant
sky as the camera begins to slowly zoom in from below, Buzz asks rhetori-
cally: “Did Woody give up when Sid had me strapped to a rocket … No.
And did he give up when you threw him out of the back of that moving
van … No, he didn’t! We have a friend in need, and we’re not going to
rest until he’s safe in Andy’s room! Now, let’s move out” (Toy Story 2).
During this speech, an orchestral version of the national anthem of the
United States begins to play quietly while a rotating globe and fireworks
appear behind the head of the space ranger, underscoring visually and
acoustically the pathos of the speech. While Woody may mean the world
to Buzz, the fade-in of the globe functions to transition from the scene of
the rescue party to the captive Woody. As Buzz fades out of the image and
the globe turns black and white, the camera pans out again to reveal that
the image is the end of a (presumably 1950s) TV transmission watched by
Al the toy collector in his apartment.
This superimposition of a speech made in a yard with the ending of a TV
program watched in a distant apartment produces what McHale describes
as a postmodern poetics in which “two familiar spaces are placed one on
top of the other, as in a photographic double-exposure, creating through
their tense and paradoxical coexistence a third space identifiable with nei-
ther of the original two—a zone” (46). This construction and simultaneous
deconstruction of space occurs in numerous transitions between scenes of
Woody’s imprisonment at the toy collector’s apartment and sequences of
Buzz journeying through the city to rescue his friend. The beginning of
one scene appropriates a visual or narrative cue from the end of the previous
one so that the numerous settings in the film blur into one single zone.6
Parallel to the postmodern notion of compressing space, the animated
film also condenses time. When Woody describes his desire to be with Andy,
the sheriff doll announces his willingness to spend an eternity lost and for-
gotten if this would yield him one more day with Andy (cf. Toy Story 2).
Following David Harvey in The Condition of Postmodernity (1990), such
an attitude favors the postmodern “values and virtues of instantaneity”
(286) in contrast to a conceptualization of time which considers its long
duration. Although the toys constantly fear their obsolescence due to the
maturation of their owners and imagine in horror their dreadfully lonely
deterioration, most of them consciously opt for the temporal experience
of being played with nonetheless—even in the rare case of being offered
eternal life in a museum. Particularly the ending of Toy Story 2 with its
70 D. MEINEL

celebration of immediacy and temporality in defiance of mortality and

coming obsoleteness exhibits what Harvey labeled an “excessive ephem-
erality” (Condition of Postmodernity 306) of the postmodern condition.
From this perspective, the animated film may appear to be pathetically
escapist as Woody and Buzz are wholeheartedly welcoming their ephem-
eral time with Andy notwithstanding the certainty of their ill-fated future.
In this sense, Toy Story 2 seems to abandon its two protagonists to what
Burningham describes as “an (ironically) atemporal space where […] they
sit endlessly awaiting a sequel that will never be made, forever anticipating
an epitaph that will never be written” (172). Even though Pixar has pro-
duced a sequel in the meantime, the ending may appear to be a hyperbolic
flight from the consequences of (toy) life; but with the absence of a learn-
ing experience, the nonexistence of a utopian vision, and the prospect of an
endless duplication of events, the animated film also exemplifies the func-
tioning or logic of late capitalism (cf. Booker, Postmodern Hollywood xv).
Indeed, by the end of Toy Story 2, the continuous fragmentation of identity
so exemplary for the postmodern condition leads to a “schizophrenic sense
of a loss of individual temporal continuity” and “contribute[s] to a larger
loss of any sense of historical continuity” (Booker, Postmodern Hollywood
xv) for the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure. Consequently,
Woody and Buzz cannot imagine an alternative to their commodified exis-
tence in order to avoid their inevitable obsolescence simply because for
postmodern subjects “‘psychic fragmentation’ […] has become so radical
that individuals no longer have a stable enough psyche to undergo the
fundamentally modernist experience of alienation” (Booker, Postmodern
Hollywood xv).7 In light of its postmodern poetics and its historical context,
Toy Story 2 illustrates the ills of late capitalism and animates their subse-
quent transformation of the myths and symbols of American culture.

THE DIGITAL LOGIC OF LATE CAPITALISM

To read Toy Story 2 as a postmodern text and to link its aesthetic and narra-
tive aspects to capitalist practices in the 1990s is to understand “the modes
of production, consumption and circulation of symbolic goods” to be pro-
foundly entangled in the “broader shifts in the balance of power and intra-
societal levels” (Featherstone 11). Rather than merely a stylistic movement,
postmodernism, as Frederic Jameson maintains, is “the cultural dominant
of the logic of late capitalism” (45) and translates the exploitative order of
late capitalism into practices of pleasure and jouissance (cf. 320). Indeed, his
 AN ANIMATED TOAST TO THE EPHEMERAL: THE MULTICULTURAL LOGIC 71

bewilderment at “how the dreariness of business and private property, the

dustiness of entrepreneurship, and the wellnigh Dickensian flavor of title and
appropriation, coupon-clipping, mergers, investment banking, and other
such transactions […] should in our time have proved to be so sexy” (italics
in original, Jameson 274) addresses this paradoxical appeal of capitalism. In
The New Spirit of Capitalism (2007), Luc Boltansky and Eve Chiapello pur-
sue this question further to explore in what ways the “constant transforma-
tion of capital, plant and various purchases […] into output, of output into
money, and of money into new investments” offers people “powerful moral
reasons for rallying to capitalism” (5, 9). To rationalize its logic, late capital-
ism appropriates genuinely non-accumulating formations—“constructions
of a different order”—and combines these “with the exigency of capital
accumulation” (Boltansky and Chiapello 20). In this sense, capitalism adapts
to changing cultural, social, and political environments, yet, as Boltansky
and Chiapello assert, maintains its attractiveness by catering to “different
combinations of autonomy, security and the common good” (17) and by
figuring as “an inspiring adventure” (17), a “bearer of solid foundations for
building the future” (17), and a guarantor “of a just society” (17). As post-
modernism and multicultural liberalism function as these “constructions of
a different order,” both rationalize and popularize contemporary forms of
capitalism—and serve as what Boltansky and Chiapello label “the spirit of
capitalism” (11). As digital representatives of a multicultural liberalism in
a postmodern film, the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure may
seem to be improbable signifiers of this “spirit of capitalism.” The appro-
priation of American myths and symbols to validate socio-economic poli-
cies, however, can hardly be considered a novel phenomenon since President
Reagan, to give but one example, conjoined his neoliberal politics with his
versions of the frontier myth, rugged individualism, and “the city upon a
hill.” But, in contrast to exceptionalist assertions motivating such appropria-
tions of American culture, the animated spirit of capitalism in Toy Story 2 casts
a fleeting, ephemeral notion of American myths and symbols.

A TOAST TO THE EPHEMERAL
While Toy Story portrayed the incorporation of the liberal and conservative
post-Cold War factions in its narrative of national consensus, the sequel
transforms this integrative version into a decidedly multicultural narrative.
As the conservative adversary in the film, Prospector Pete symbolizes a
monocultural version of US society and serves as the villainous other for its
72 D. MEINEL

multicultural liberalism. From a historical perspective, this multiculturalism

functioned to initiate a variety of neoliberal transformations against a
nationalist opposition from the Right—and the leftist obstruction against
the “neoliberalization of the financial markets and [the] downsizing of the
social welfare as well as [the] ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policies within the
military” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism 74) in the 1990s. And
Toy Story 2, the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure animate this
multicultural spirit of late capitalism.
Following the necessities of a sequel, Toy Story 2 additionally continues
many themes from the previous film but embellishes their aesthetic and
narrative illustration, from the introduction of a variety of Buzz Lightyear
action figures in search of individuality to a cast of endearing characters,
witty dialogues, artful cinematography, and captivating musical numbers.
However, particularly the postmodern poetics of the animated sequel—
the question of original and copy, the conclusion of the last “Woody’s
Roundup” TV episode in the diegesis of the film, the collapse of distinct
cinematic spaces into one zone, the compression of time, and the use of
satire and intertextual references—characterize its enchanting qualities.
The postmodern aesthetics of enchantment and Woody’s fractured identity
and Buzz’s multiple personalities in particular illustrate the ephemerality
of these symbols of American culture as the sheriff doll and the space-
ranger action figure stay confined to the passing days of childhood without
a sense of historical continuity. Seen from this perspective, the enchanting
postmodern poetics of the film do not merely animate the spirit of late
capitalism for its all-age audience. As this logic simultaneously foregrounds
finitude and temporality, the visual and narrative features of Toy Story 2
already mediate the fictiveness of its American myths and symbols.
My reading of the postmodern poetics of Toy Story 2 primarily explored
cinematographic features not necessarily exclusive to digital film-making.
Although the illustration of multiple indistinguishable characters may pose
a challenge for live-action cinema, the Pixar film generally utilizes a variety
of postmodern aesthetics common in non-animation cinema as well—from
its camera work to its editing, its scripting, and its intertextual references.
In this sense, my reading of Toy Story 2 highlights the abilities of its direc-
tor, writers, and producers to apply established methods of cinematic pro-
duction to digital film-making, yet does not venture beyond the analysis
of Toy Story’s animated quality examined in the previous chapter; in the
sequel, the visible animatedness of the sheriff doll and space-ranger action
figure continues to foreground their fictiveness. The following chapter,
 AN ANIMATED TOAST TO THE EPHEMERAL: THE MULTICULTURAL LOGIC 73

however, with its analysis of a world populated by crawling and flying,

slimy and grubby, colorful or translucent, multi-eyed, many-headed,
tentacle-swinging nonhuman monsters, will ask in what ways the absence
of visual references to familiar symbols of American culture such as the
sheriff or the astronaut shape the re-animation of its myths.

NOTES
1. The sheriff doll also ignores the fact that puppets on strings which perform in
a TV show for children with a highly generic narrative and an overtly anti-
quated language are no less produced for commercial ends than the merchan-
dizing product Woody is.
2. On the contrary, Al is so invested in his toys that he carefully stores them in
showcases to protect his collection from dust. Woody even receives a complete
overhaul as his paint is refreshed, his clothes amended, and his semi-torn arm
stitched together professionally.
3. This impossibility of distinguishing the various narrative layers of the film also
occurs in a later nightmare sequence. After Andy damages Woody during their
play, the boy stores the sheriff doll on the shelf for discarded toys. Afraid of
losing Andy’s love, Woody slips into a nightmare in which his owner tosses him
into the garbage. But throughout most of the scene, neither Woody nor the
audience is able to recognize the bad dream as such because the film does not
provide any indication of the “shift from outside to inside Woody’s wooden
head […] there are no clear markers to signify the boundary between awake
and dreaming, image and reflection. The dream begins for him and for us
simultaneously” (Ackerman 907).
4. In “Walt Disney’s Toy Story as Postmodern Don Quixote,” Burningham asserts
that “the central protagonist of Toy Story in no way exists as an autonomous
subject, differentiated from all other Buzz Lightyears by some inherent set of
material or ethereal qualities […] Indeed, the only reason this particular Buzz
Lightyear matters at all outside the (con)text of Andy’s bedroom is that he
happens to be the one articulated for us by this particular Disney film; that is,
each and every other Buzz Lightyear posited in the television commercial
could just as easily become a different central protagonist within a discrete nar-
rative, providing that there also existed a distinct text/reader relationship to
give him meaning” (165).
5. The blurring of the supposedly stable boundaries of the narrative is convoluted
by a subplot in Toy Story 2 which has Rex, the “better Buzz,” search for clues to
defeat the video-game Zurg. After the dinosaur learns from a video-game guide
that in order to defeat Zurg he has to maneuver the video-game Buzz to a hidden
entrance into the fortress, this information also helps the toys to find an entrance
to the otherwise inaccessible apartment building where Woody is held captive.
74 D. MEINEL

6. David Harvey also describes this collapse of two different spaces into a third
one as a common postmodern artistic practice (cf. Condition of Postmodernity
301). To give but one additional example of this “third space” or “zone”: after
Woody has been cleaned and repaired, the toy collector exclaims excitedly “He
is just like new” which is followed by a cut to a shot of Buzz passing a large sign
with the word “new” on it (cf. Toy Story 2).
7. Alienation presents one fundamental experience lost in the transition from a
modernist to a postmodernist condition (cf. Booker, Postmodern Hollywood
33). Similarly, spatial or critical distance “has very precisely been abolished in
the new space of Postmodernism. We are submerged in its henceforth filled
and suffused volumes to the point where our now postmodern bodies are
bereft of spatial coordinates and practically (let alone theoretically) incapable of
distantiation” (Jameson 47–48).
 CHAPTER 4

A Story of Social Justice? The Liberal

Consensus in Monsters, Inc. (2001)

On the factory floor of Monsters, Incorporated only the hardest-working,

the most talented, and the bravest monsters dare to endure the hazardous
dangers of energy production. As the company uses an advanced technol-
ogy to harvest the fear of human children by transforming their terrified
screams into energy, these monsters need to travel into the human world
to scare their natural resources. Although the monster society deems
human children to be the deadliest form of life, the workers at Monsters,
Incorporated accept the risk of their employment in order to provide the
city of Monstropolis with the energy needed to fuel everything from TV
sets to automobiles. The large, blue, furry Sulley and his small, green,
one-eyed friend Mike are among those workers who venture into the
human world—actually Sulley scares while Mike files the paperwork.
Although Sulley and his co-workers harvest screams in shifts around the
clock, Monsters, Incorporated cannot satisfy the growing energy demand
of Monstropolis which, in turn, is causing escalating periods of energy
shortage.
The opening credit sequence of Monsters, Inc. (2001) with its jazzy
upbeat soundtrack and hand-drawn monsters scattering about the screen
emulates a 1950s aesthetics and immediately situates the blue-collar nar-
rative visually and acoustically in this period. The following scenes expand
the theme as protagonists James P. “Sulley” Sullivan and Michael “Mike”
Wazowski move through spaces which have been consciously modeled
after “the baby boomer years of the 1950s and 1960s” (Paik 185)—from

© The Author(s) 2016 75

D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_4
76 D. MEINEL

the interior design of Sulley’s apartment to the sites and buildings of

Monstropolis to the Monsters, Incorporated factory. Even minor details
such as a TV commercial for the Monsters, Incorporated company have
been fashioned accordingly.
1
Monsters, Inc. hence animates Monstropolis in a decidedly 1950s
aesthetics—and with its narrative about issues of (energy) scarcity, abun-
dance, and meritocracy, Monsters, Inc. also refers to broader notions of
American culture in the 1950s.
Thanks to his hard work, his exceptional talents, and his moral integrity,
Sulley is not only the most successful worker at the factory and will even-
tually be promoted to CEO but embodies core ideas of the liberal con-
sensus—which the meticulous and computer-intensive animation of his
million hair strands similarly motions to. With its idealization of the inge-
nious worker in a meritocratic society, the liberal consensus of Monsters,
Inc. further challenges our present neoliberal zeitgeist. In contrast to the
postmodern playfulness of Toy Story 2, this animated film explicitly illus-
trates “a kind of prophetic vision of post-9/11 life in the U.S., where the
production of monsters allows the governing elites to scare a population
into quietude while generating profits for their own dastardly schemes”
(Halberstam 52). This animated vision of the good society, however,
ignores the contingent aspects of meritocracy. As John Rawls asserts, the
appreciation of particular talents, say the scaring of children, and the suc-
cess of an individual depend on what a society deems valuable. In portray-
ing Mike as a green, one-eyed, emasculated, and greedy monster, Monsters,
Inc. draws on long-standing tropes and stereotypes of Jewish masculin-
ity in popular culture and, thereby, reproduces the normative features of
the 1950s liberal consensus. With his cheerful ignorance, his entertaining
ineptness, and his moral dubiousness, however, the schlemiel figure Mike
will eventually contest the meritocratic myth of the liberal consensus since
this failed other transforms the energy production system, saves Monsters,
Incorporated, and rescues millions of children from their nightly fears.
Set in a world populated by a highly diverse and dissimilar cast of
nonhuman monsters, Monsters, Inc. cannot draw on visual references to
familiar figures of American culture. In contrast to the preoccupation with
digital representation of familiar exceptionalist figures—the sheriff and the
astronaut—in the previous chapters, this chapter asks in what ways the
absence of popular symbols of American culture shapes the re-animation
of its myths. Even as the film may find novel and unprecedented visual
representations for the liberal consensus in the illustration of Sulley, thanks
 A STORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS IN MONSTERS 77

to the potential of digital animation, the green schlemiel along with the
many enchanting, flamboyant inhabitants of Monstropolis speak to the
complex aesthetic mediation of the animated myth.

MONSTERS OF PLENTY
In the 1950s the notion of an affluent, urban society encountering an
increasing scarcity of resources shaped questions about American identity
and the ideological confrontation of the Cold War. For David Potter in
People of Plenty (1954), for example, experiences of abundance incite and
invigorate in US Americans “their nationalism, their democracy, and their
individualism” (154). Referring to the abundance of natural resources, the
geographical vastness of the North American continent, and the ingenuity
of US citizens in exploiting this environmental wealth, Potter uses ideas
from Werner Sombart’s Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?
(1906)2 and Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis to respond to
Cold War anxieties about the loss of American hegemony in the 1950s.
Particularly the frontier thesis with its sense of a vanishing American excep-
tionality after the closing of the frontier—the loss of geographical abun-
dance—functioned as a blueprint for American fears in the 1950s as the
Soviet Union seemed to contest America’s position as a global superpower.
Expanding the notion of the frontier to mean “‘the edge of the unused’”
(157), Potter broadens its definition as “science has its frontiers, indus-
try its frontiers, technology its frontiers” (157). Consequently, the anxiety
about the closure of the frontier expressed fears about the disappearance of
merely one frontier, while neglecting “the frontiers of industry, of inven-
tion, and of engineering [which] have continued to bring into play new
resources quite as rich as the unbroken sod of the western frontier” (Potter
157). In shifting from a geographical to a metaphorical definition of the
frontier, Potter prolongs its fundamental idea and describes the abundance
of the “unused edges” of science and industry—indicated by the standard
of living (cf. 157)—as characteristic of American culture. The United
States were exceptional, Potter thus maintains, because of the abundance
of space, natural resources, and particularly the ingenuity of its people.
In Monsters, Inc., the monster society experiences a similar moment of
anxiety as increased consumption and the growing immunity of human
children to the scaring techniques of the Monsters, Incorporated employ-
ees begin to threaten energy abundance in Monstropolis. Although indi-
vidual ingenuity will eventually solve the menace of power shortage, in
78 D. MEINEL

the animated film, this quest is intimately linked to the moral dilemma of
whether the pursuit of profits and the production of energy security justify
the exploitation of the weakest and most vulnerable: human children.
For the inhabitants of Monstropolis this is an intricate issue, since human
children are believed to be the most toxic and deadly thing in existence: a
“single touch could kill” (Monsters, Inc.), the predominant opinion states.
In order to protect Monstropolis from anything child-related, the Child
Detection Agency (CDA) fiercely monitors any potential contamination by
isolating, quarantining, and brutally disinfecting any monster that comes
into contact with human objects. Thus when Sulley accidentally brings a
human child into the monster world during the course of his work, this
fallout not merely endangers his well-being and his career, but jeopardizes
the existence of Monsters, Incorporated and the safety of Monstropolis.
In order to evade harsh consequences, Sulley decides to hide the
human girl, Boo, at his apartment. Together with his friend Mike,
Sulley contemplates how to avoid incarceration by the CDA. Their self-
ish motivation, however, quickly changes after Sulley and Mike experi-
ence the joyful harmlessness of the innocent girl. Particularly after the
two friends learn about the clandestine plans of their boss and company
owner Henry J. Waternoose III to increase energy production by abduct-
ing children from their bedrooms to a secret lab in the factory in order to
extract screams through a machine, Sulley and Mike encounter an ethi-
cal dilemma. Although the technologization of scream harvesting would
solve the energy crisis, the insidious machine literally sucks the scream out
of the child in a painful and excruciating procedure.
Unsure whether to return to his old life as a regular worker or to protect
his human friend from the dreadful machine, Sulley eventually realizes the
agonizing consequences of his work. When he is obliged to demonstrate
his scaring abilities, the furry monster terrifies his human friend with his
frightening and horrifying performance. Filmed by multiple video cameras
and relayed to some nearby screens, Sulley watches his distorted, menac-
ing grimace right next to the images of the petrified Boo. This experience
transforms Sulley fundamentally as the blue monster decides to protect
his human friend and expose Waternoose’s illegal schemes. Doing so, he
and Mike eventually “put the company in the toilet, and […] hundreds
of people […] out of work” (Monsters, Inc.) for the sake of treating chil-
dren humanely. Issues of wealth and abundance become secondary when
contrasted with the ethical treatment of the weakest, most innocent, and
defenseless.
 A STORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS IN MONSTERS 79

In a final twist, however, Sulley discovers the potential of children’s

laughter as the emotion of joy contains ten times the energy of fear.
Aligning production methods accordingly, Sulley secures the employment
of his colleagues, saves the company, and solves the energy shortage of
Monstropolis. Whether understood as a contemporary tale about environ-
mental consciousness3 or as a cautionary fable about the hazards of fear,
Monsters, Inc. privileges an ethics of care over the logic of profit and greed.
As the film is, simultaneously, invested in the idea of the ingenious indi-
vidual balancing ethical aspirations without neglecting the material abun-
dance of the affluent society, the animated feature mediates the premises
of People of Plenty in particular and the concept of the “good society”
(Schlesinger 92) envisioned by the liberal consensus in general.

THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS OF MONSTROPOLIS

In the United States the prevailing political and intellectual paradigm from
the 1930s to the 1960s, the liberal consensus, represented an ideological
response to the rise of fascism in Europe and the threat of communism for
many Americans. Intellectuals such as David Potter began to conceptual-
ize the United States as an exceptional society in which neither the totali-
tarian ideology of fascism nor communism were able to flourish because
of an American liberal tradition.
Louis Hartz, for example, rationalized the “ideological victory” of lib-
eralism in the United States with the (by now familiar) assertion of the
“magnificent material setting […] found in the New World” (17). In his
The Liberal Tradition in America (1955), Hartz reasons that this magnifi-
cent material setting of the North American continent with its vast space
and its abundance of natural resources propelled the farmer “to become
capitalistically oriented, to repudiate save for a few early remnants the vil-
lage organization of Europe, to produce for a market and even to enter
capitalist occupations on the side such as logging and railroad building”
(17). Similarly, “the American worker [began] to think in terms of the
capitalist setup” (Hartz 18) as the liberal tradition not only shaped con-
quest and settlement of the continent, but also formed “factory industrial-
ism” by instigating a “job mentality […] rather than the class mentality of
the European worker” (Hartz 18). Echoing yet again the prominent mis-
conception of the absence of a socialist movement in the United States,
the overarching assumption of this liberal tradition in US history denotes
a definition of liberalism beyond the partisanship of a particular political
80 D. MEINEL

movement or party. Instead, by defining “the American community […]

[to be] a liberal community” (3), Hartz asserts the dearth of feudalism
to have prohibited the establishment of a socialist alternative since “[t]he
hidden origin of socialist thought everywhere in the West is to be found
in the feudal ethos” (6). In the absence of an aristocratic regime, com-
munism had to fail in the United States which, in turn, manifested its
exceptional position in the world (cf. Hartz 3, 21). Transcending Potter’s
“historical and behavioral approaches to national character” (xiv), Hartz
identifies the (alleged) absence of feudalism to have fashioned a superior
political system—liberal democracy.
Consequently, liberalism was not merely one particular intellectual
idea which fueled individual political movements and shaped the social
frame of the United States. Rather, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., argued
most prominently in The Politics of Hope (1962), liberalism is the defining
social, political, and economic feature of the United States: “American
liberalism, in the broad sense, is an expression of the total national experi-
ence” (70). For Schlesinger and his colleagues, “all of America is liberal-
ism” (Schlesinger 63) because even the Communist Party in the United
States throughout the 1930s and 1940s, McCarthyism in the 1950s, or
the election of a Republican president in 1952 all yielded to a liberal con-
sensus. The former “succeed[ed] only as they profess[ed] a relationship
to liberalism” (Schlesinger 65) while the latter “accepted as permanent
the changes wrought in the American scene by a generation of liberal
reform” (Schlesinger 68). For Schlesinger, then, a liberal and a conser-
vative current within the broader stream of liberalism exist (cf. 65), but
“since independence, American political conflict has taken place in an
atmosphere—sometimes felt rather than understood—of consensus” (64).
In order to ensure an egalitarian society of equal opportunity and
individual freedoms, consensus liberals advocated for an interventionist
state—particularly in the economic sphere. Since the capitalist excesses
leading to the Great Depression were considered to be as threatening to a
just society as the overbearing bureaucratic apparatus of socialism to a free
society, the New Deal legislation of President Roosevelt was understood
to have achieved an equilibrium between the need for economic security
and individual liberty in the eyes of consensus liberals.

The broad liberal objective is a balanced and flexible “mixed economy,”

thus seeking to occupy that middle ground between capitalism and social-
ism whose viability has so long been denied by both capitalists and socialists.
 A STORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS IN MONSTERS 81

American liberalism, it should be emphasized, is antisocialist, where social-

ism retains its classical connotation of state ownership of the basic means of
production and distribution. This is partly because American liberals doubt
whether bases for political opposition and freedom can survive when all
power is vested in the state; liberty, if it is to be guaranteed by anything but
the self-restraint of the rulers, must have resources of its own inaccessible
to the state. And the antisocialism of American liberals derives also from an
estimate of the administrative difficulties of a socialist system. If substantial
abundance and equality of opportunity can be achieved through a system
of mixed enterprise, why throw up a rigid and oppressive structure of state
bureaucracy? The humane, as distinct from the institutional, goals of social-
ism can be better achieved, American liberals feel, through diversifying own-
ership rather than concentrating it. (Schlesinger 69–70)

But the Keynesian politics of the liberal consensus did not merely aim
to foster consumerist abundance; instead “[t]he object of strengthening
government is to give force to the idea of public interest and to make
possible the allocation of resources to necessary public purposes” in order
“to bring about a higher quality of life and opportunity for ordinary men
and women” (Schlesinger 92). For Schlesinger, this higher quality of life
revolves around questions “of fighting for individual dignity, identity, and
fulfillment in an affluent mass society […] of education, health, equal
opportunity, community planning—the issues which make the difference
between defeat and opportunity, between frustration and fulfillment, in
the everyday lives of average persons” (92). This emphasis on the quality
of life rather than absolute wealth had been motivated by the (ideological)
Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union as the United States needed to
“justify her claim to leadership of free peoples—a claim which cannot be
founded on wealth and power alone, but only on wealth and power held
within a framework of purpose and ideals” (Schlesinger 93).
This middle ground between wealth and ideals is essentially estab-
lished in Monsters, Inc. after Sulley initiates the shift from scare-based to
joy-based energy production to ensure the ethical treatment of human
children and the abundance of electricity. In contrast to Sulley’s liberal
consensus position, his boss—corporate industrialist and child kidnapper
Henry J.  Waternoose—embodies the threat of unregulated capitalism.
Although initially characterized as a benevolent patriarch who still teaches
his young trainees the fundamentals of scaring, frequently chit-chats
with his employees, and regularly visits the factory floor of his company,
Waternoose exposes his greedy, immoral nature once efficiency and prof-
82 D. MEINEL

its can be maximized. Visually reminiscent of a stereotypical nineteenth-

century capitalist, the three-piece suit and bow-tie already foreshadow
Waternoose’s corrupt and crooked nature. Expressing nothing but con-
tempt for ethical behavior, Waternoose declares that “I’ll kidnap a thou-
sand children before I let this company die, and I’ll silence anyone who
gets in my way” (Monsters, Inc.)—even if laws are to be broken, monsters
to be laid off, and children to be hurt. But while laissez-faire capitalism is
demeaned through the figure of the greedy, ill-meaning Waternoose, the
animated film remains invested in liberal capitalism nonetheless. After all,
Sulley is eventually promoted to CEO by the end of the film, because his
individual ingenuity advanced energy production, increased profits, and
adhered to an ethical code of conduct.
Analogous to the negative portrayal of laissez-faire capitalism, an
intrusive government is also envisioned to be incapable of ensuring
the well-being of society. While the CDA plays a vital role in ending
the scrupulous scheming of Waternoose, its totalitarian surveillance of
Monstropolis extends beyond what Schlesinger had celebrated as “affir-
mative government” (92). Although government interventions are a fun-
damental feature of a just society in Monsters, Inc., the film also attributes
an Orwellian quality to the CDA. Dressed in uniform yellow bodysuits
distinguishable solely by the number on their fronts, these agents relent-
lessly purify any potential child contamination by incinerating all human
artifact brought into the monster world and decontaminating every mon-
ster in contact with such an object without the consent of the latter—
shaving off fur and washing off any residue. In a particularly telling scene,
the CDA deploys several military personnel carriers, various helicopters,
and dozens of agents to secure a wider area of the city after a child alarm
at a downtown bar. As civilians and innocent bystanders are arrested for
decontamination and helicopters patrol the vicinity, the CDA eventu-
ally erects a huge force field around the contaminated part of the city.
Instead of being a first aid mission to help potentially injured monsters,
this display of efficiency, force, and capacity to incarcerate a part of the
population exhibits the authoritarian, intrusive quality of government.
In contrast to this display of competency and power the CDA has been
unsuccessfully attempting to expose the criminal activities at Monsters,
Incorporated for more than two years. Despite its far-reaching capabili-
ties and resources, the government agency failed to unearth the illegal
schemes of Waternoose. Only after Sulley and Mike face off against their
ill-meaning boss are his plans exposed.4
 A STORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS IN MONSTERS 83

Parallel to the pursuit of wealth in Monsters, Inc., an interventionist

state “per se can no more be a sufficient end for a good society” (italics in
original, Schlesinger 92). Rather, the film animates the liberal consensus
idea of an affirmative government as the state provides and enforces a just
legal framework which enables individuals to pursue their ideals for the
benefits of society: Sulley was not just the exceptional scarer at Monsters,
Incorporated, thwarted the sinister plans of his employer, and ensured
the safety of an innocent child, but by the end of the film the furry mon-
ster has also single-handedly solved the energy shortage in Monstropolis,
saved Monsters, Incorporated from bankruptcy, and secured employment
for his colleagues.5 While affirmative government guaranteed “individual
dignity, identity, and fulfillment in an affluent mass society” (Schlesinger
92) against the encroachment of excessive capitalism, the state also had
to stay limited to prevent its totalitarian overreach. The liberal consensus,
thus, envisioned government regulations for the sake of ensuring the free-
dom of the individual, because solely individuals could warrant a better
society.
And thanks to his ingenuity, hard work, talent, and ethical conduct,
Sulley advances from his blue-collar occupation to become CEO of
Monsters, Incorporated. Swapping hard hat for tie, Sulley embodies the
liberal consensus a last time as his social upward mobility epitomizes the
meritocratic society of “every American boy and girl hav[ing] access to
the career proportionate to his or her talents and characters, regardless of
birth, fortune, creed, or color” (Schlesinger 92).

A GOOD SOCIETY OF MONSTERS: INDIVIDUALISM,

MERITOCRACY, AND AFFIRMATIVE GOVERNMENT
In the current neoliberal era, the ideas of equal opportunity and meri-
tocracy continue to be of vital significance to articulate alternatives to the
dominant market logic. Walter Benn Michaels, for example, in The Shape of
the Signifier (2004) and The Trouble with Diversity (2006), powerfully con-
demns the inequality produced by neoliberalism, maintaining that “[i]f we
think that globalization should be resisted, we ought to spend […] more
time worrying about the disappearance of any credible alternative to unfet-
tered capitalism” (Trouble with Diversity 165). His intellectual campaign
against inequality and for progressive politics demands the development
of novel social, political, and particularly economic models with the aim
of “help[ing] put equality back on the national agenda” and minimizing
84 D. MEINEL

“the reality of economic difference” (Michaels, Trouble with Diversity 16,

203). This model favored by Michaels resonates with the liberal consen-
sus idea of a meritocratic society protected by an affirmative state: because
children cannot be held responsible for their social situation—wealthy or
poor—a just society compensates for this unmerited inequality by offering
every child the same opportunities “whether my father was an exploited
slave or a spendthrift playboy” (Michaels, Shape of the Signifier 165).
For Michaels, equality is rooted in “a fair chance to earn […] property”
(Trouble with Diversity 133) rather than simply inheriting wealth (or pov-
erty); again echoing the tenets of the liberal consensus, a just society for
Michaels offers everyone the same chance to be successful by establishing
a system in which “the people who stay poor […] deserve their poverty
[…] [and] the people who do succeed […] deserve their wealth” (Trouble
with Diversity 133–134). A just society, therefore, guarantees the equality
of opportunity to all its members, while hard work and talent will auto-
matically regulate the distribution of wealth in a fair and impartial manner
(cf. Michaels, Trouble with Diversity 135). Thus when Sulley advances to
become CEO of Monsters, Incorporated, the animated film mediates the
meritocratic imperative of a just society envisioned by the liberal consensus
for contemporary audiences. As Sulley advances professionally, the malevo-
lent Waternoose loses his inherited property: justice is served when hard
work, talent, and ethical behavior foster social (upward) mobility.
Seen from this perspective, Monsters, Inc. illustrates a progressive eco-
nomic and social agenda which exposes the immoral and dysfunctional
qualities of an excessive market logic.6 As equal opportunity, meritocracy,
an ethical code of conduct, and an affirmative government define a just
society in Monsters, Inc., the animated feature denounces the neoliberal
idea of “the free market as the essential mechanism of social justice”
(Michaels, Trouble with Diversity 75) by exposing its unethical, antiso-
cial, and injurious qualities. Through the depiction of its villain in the
stereotypical attire of a robber baron, the film links twenty-first-century
neoliberalism to nineteenth-century unfettered capitalism and highlights
the detrimental excesses of the contemporary neoliberal zeitgeist.
The aesthetical and narrative references to the liberal consensus highlight
what Jack Halberstam deemed subversive about animation films, as Monsters,
Inc. “offer[s] an animated world of triumph for the little guys, a revolu-
tion against the business world of the father […] [and] animate[s] a new
space for the imagining of alternatives” (47–48). Indeed, as the Monsters,
Incorporated workers at the end of the film put aside their hard hats and
 A STORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS IN MONSTERS 85

stop masking their friendly nature, the transformation of their assignment

from producing fear to generating joy also liberates the physically diverse
and colorful group from the alienating duty of horrifying children for prof-
its. Whereas the stern workers initially had to disguise their good-hearted
personalities by using menacing props such as enlarged teeth or expos-
ing their frightening spikes and talons to the sinister sound of orchestral
music, the monsters eventually labor without their intimidating masquerade
and in tune with their kind disposition to bring happiness to children as
laughter is heard on the vibrantly decorated factory floor. This corporeal,
polymorphous animation of an emancipated working class—that includes
amorphous gender and sexuality—exhibits “[t]he antinormative nature of
animated film [which] arises out of the wacky juxtapositions found in ani-
mated worlds between bodies, groups, and environments” (Halberstam
181). These concluding shots, then, contrast a sense of (working class) com-
munity and diversity with the (capitalist) egoism Waternoose touted earlier.7
The complex procedure to creating animated protagonist James
P. Sullivan, however, questions the seemingly communal alternative which
“connect[s] individualism to selfishness, to untrammeled consumption,
and […] oppose[s] it with a collective mentality” (Halberstam 47). Since
the Pixar computers needed “eleven to twelve hours to render a single
frame of Sulley because of his 2.3 million individually animated hair
strands” (imdb.com), the technological means to bring the furry mon-
ster to life rather highlight an individualist quality. Monsters, Inc. mediates
the liberal consensus with its ideas of equal opportunity and affirmative
government to explicitly formulate—in contrast to Toy Story 2—a social
critique of the contemporary market logic, yet its digital embodiment also
symbolizes individual ingenuity. From the perspective of American cultural
history, then, the hairy blue protagonist with his millions of independently
animated hair strands epitomizes the ingenious, incorruptible, and hard-
working ideal of the liberal consensus for contemporary audiences—but as
an unusual symbol of the American consensus myth, the digital monster
also exhibits “the ‘openness’ of the language of animation as an interroga-
tive tool in a quasi-realist context” (Wells 154).8

ANIMATING THE GOOD SOCIETY?

While a furry appearance and a heart-warming personality set in yet
another fabulous environment populated by all the more endearing
characters function as forms of digital enchantment in Monsters, Inc.,
86 D. MEINEL

sidekick and close friend Mike Wazowski appears to disturb this digital
“affirmation of wonder” with his questionable morality and his gawk-
ing, even unsightly appearance. Similarly, his idle, pretentious, often
selfish conduct should predestine the green monster to stay confined
to his menial professional position. Yet, the shift to laugh-based energy
production provides the (often unwillingly) entertaining Mike with the
opportunity to branch out from his initial vocation. Although he is most
suitable to make children laugh because of his (unintentional) slap-stick
humor, his success story also exhibits the contingent quality of equal
opportunity, meritocracy, and the liberal consensus; and due to his light-
hearted inadequacies Mike eventually animates an idea of social justice
beyond the American consensus myth.
Working as an assistant to Sulley, Mike leads an easy-going life at the
company. While his status and income may leave the green monster unsat-
isfied, the careless approach to his small duties characterizes his laid-back,
even unmotivated approach to work. Mike advances his career only after
his blue friend alters the mode of energy production. As the green mon-
ster has willingly and unwillingly demonstrated his entertaining qualities
throughout the narrative, his talents are most suitable for this novel, joy-
based approach. This promotion, however, is neither a result of his hard
work (he repeatedly forgets to file his paperwork), nor the consequence
of honing skills as Mike is never shown training; and is definitely not
because of his ethical attitude as the green monster scolds Sulley on dif-
ferent occasions for wanting to help Boo. Rather, his talent to entertain
becomes a valuable asset only after Monsters, Incorporated switches from
fear- to joy-based energy production. Consequently, the opportunity for
Mike to climb the social ladder with his witty humor and slapstick per-
formances does not depend on equal opportunity, hard work, or ethical
behavior, but upon what talents a society deems useful. The figure of the
green monster, then, challenges the rhetoric of equal opportunity and
hard labor, because his case demonstrates that equal opportunity—one
fundamental principle of the liberal consensus—is a contingent concept.
What “a society happens to value at any given time” (Sandel 162)
is beyond the influence of the individual, Michael J.  Sandel asserts in
Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (2009), and the success, recogni-
tion, and benefits people reap from their particular talents, therefore,
are “morally arbitrary” (162). Since talents have been valued differ-
ently throughout history, a just society has to acknowledge the unequal
appreciation of particular abilities, because whether these are deemed
 A STORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS IN MONSTERS 87

useful or valuable is the consequence of some event (or contingency)

the individual was not involved in (cf. Sandel 162). Born in a particular
moment in time, people cannot influence what talents “a given society
happens to prize” (Sandel 162).
This objection is a recapitulation of the familiar intervention against the
liberal myth of equal opportunity and meritocracy formulated in A Theory
of Justice (1972). In his seminal book, John Rawls questions whether the
measures of liberal consensus America to implement and guarantee equal-
ity of opportunity9 actually eradicate all social injustices.

Even if it [the liberal conception of equal opportunity] works to perfec-

tion in eliminating the influence of social contingencies, it still permits the
distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribu-
tion of abilities and talents. Within the limits allowed by the background
arrangements, distributive shares are decided by the outcome of the natural
lottery; and this outcome is arbitrary from a moral perspective. There is no
more reason to permit the distribution of income and wealth to be settled
by the distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune.
(Rawls 73–74)

In addition to the value of a talent and its arbitrary distribution, the

third factor institutionalizing and prolonging injustice is socialization,
as “[t]he extent to which natural capacities develop and reach fruition is
affected by all kinds of social conditions and class attitudes” (Rawls 74).
Among these natural capacities Rawls includes “the willingness to make
an effort, to try, and so to be deserving in the ordinary sense” (74).
Consequently, success in a meritocratic society is fundamentally “depen-
dent upon happy family and social circumstances” (Rawls 74). In this
sense, the idea of justice advocated by the liberal consensus is oblivious
to “the arbitrary effects of the natural lottery” (Rawls 74) which include
family and socialization, distribution of talents, and the qualities a soci-
ety values; to conceptualize equal opportunity as an issue of income and
wealth distribution thus discounts the impact socialization, habitus, and
culture have in shaping the chances available to people. The story of
the green, one-eyed monster exemplifies these inadequacies in the lib-
eral consensus as Mike can only profit from his talents after Monsters,
Incorporated transforms its manufacturing paradigm. Once the monster
society alters its perception of children and its modes of energy produc-
tion, Mike receives the opportunity to better his social position by utiliz-
ing his entertaining qualities.
88 D. MEINEL

As Monsters, Inc. challenges our present neoliberal zeitgeist in illustrating

“a kind of prophetic vision of post-9/11 life in the U.S., where the produc-
tion of monsters allows the governing elites to scare a population into qui-
etude while generating profits for their own dastardly schemes” (Halberstam
52), the digital text animates traditional notions of a good society. While
Sulley exemplifies this tenacity of the liberal consensus,10 Mike’s hilari-
ous ineptness and obvious failures question notions of the good society in
Monsters, Inc. An animated schlemiel figure, the green, one-eyed monster
embodies an alternate form of what a good society may also be.

THE GREEN, ONE-EYED SCHLEMIEL

From his name to his extensive gesturing, his witty, self-deprecating humor,
and his neurotic, insecure male persona, the portrayal of Mike Wazowski
appropriates various long-standing tropes and stereotypes of Jewish mas-
culinity in popular culture. Particularly his green color insinuates the hate-
ful portrayals of Jewish people in films such as Jud Süß (1940),11 while the
image of a one-eyed monster refers as much to the anti-Semitic prejudice
that Jewish men are “obsessive about sex” (Erens 316) as the hyperbolic
depiction of his romance with Monsters, Incorporated secretary Celia.
Their constant and vocal testimonies of love highlight this “obsession,”
yet their affectionate “Schmootsie-poo” and “Googlie Bear” also ques-
tion conventional portrayals of masculinity. When Celia grabs Mike for a
celebratory kiss at the end of the film and holds the green monster ten-
derly in her arms—an allusion to the famous Alfred Eisenstaedt photo-
graph “The Kiss” taken at Times Square during V-J Day (August 14,
1945)—the scene inverts traditional gender roles. The inability to handle
insults and humiliations from his co-workers similarly exhibits this sense
of emasculation. After a colleague successfully scares Mike yet another
time in the locker room, Mike mumbles angrily to his friend Sulley that
“[o]ne of these days I am really … going to let you teach that guy a les-
son” (Monsters, Inc.). The inversion of conventional gender roles and the
humiliations at work situate Mike in a cultural tradition that represented
male Jewish figures as effeminate (cf. Wisse 51) as their masculinity “is
undermined by [their wives] at home and by the aggression of the envi-
ronment” (Wisse 38). Mike’s continual concerns with material matters
further insinuates clichéd notions of Jewish masculinity—Mike invites
Celia to the most expensive restaurant in town, but forecloses the help
of his friend Sulley to get the rare and exclusive reservations. Similarly,
 A STORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS IN MONSTERS 89

when trapped in the scream extractor machine and struggling for his life,
Mike offers to bribe his kidnapper with a ride in his car to avoid torture.
This stinginess, again, plays with Mike’s involuntary comedic quality while
exemplifying derogatory stereotypes.
While Monsters, Inc. animates offensive notions of Jewish masculin-
ity—from sexual fixation, materialism, and cowardice, to neurotic behavior
(cf. Erens 15, 262–263)—throughout its narrative, the opening sequence
and the closing shots encapsulate this problematic portrayal especially in
light of the liberal consensus. At the beginning and end of Monsters, Inc.,
Mike and Sulley appear in a TV commercial for and on a magazine cover
story about Monsters, Incorporated. Although in both instances either
the company logo or the magazine’s bar code conceal Mike in the picture,
the green monster responds by bursting out with joy and pride over his
fame. This ignorant self-centeredness highlights the schlemiel character
yet again, but these scenes also capture the prevailing mood of its 1950s
setting when cultural production and social life had been dominated by the
imperative or “desire to conceal […] Jewish identities and […] to avoid
Jewish references in […] cultural production altogether” (Itzkovitz 232).
The integration into US society so long unattainable for Jewish Americans
and Jewish immigrants until the 1950s “came for many at the expense
of any outward signs of Jewishness” (Itzkovitz 232) as the demand for
assimilation denied recognition and perpetuated a culture of invisibility.
Cheerfully celebrating his erasure from visibility, Mike symbolizes the
normative quality of the liberal consensus. Historically, consensus liberals
could not comprehend the partisan features of their welfare state and did
not address “civil rights or racial segregation or sexual inequality until
pressured to do so by popular uprisings” (Philips-Fein 269)12; consen-
sus liberals also could not acknowledge the imperialist dimensions of the
Vietnam War, nor find solutions to the increasing economic problems of
the 1960s (cf. Philips-Fein 269). As the vital center did not hold, the exag-
gerated fear of communism, the excessive (military) spending, and par-
ticularly the failure to adequately address social and political inequalities
exposed the inability of the liberal consensus idea to “eliminate poverty,
economic inequality, and social conflict” (Morgan 3). Seen in this light,
the idealization of the ingenious individual Sulley and the visible erasure of
the inept Mike mediates not only 1950s notions about the American myth
of equal opportunity but animates its normative facets as well.
Notwithstanding the historical parallels to the 1950s, Mike’s clown-
ish and inept behavior situate the green monster in the Jewish tradition
90 D. MEINEL

of the schlemiel figure who embodies an alternative to a capitalist social

system with his incompetence and moral dubiousness. Notwithstanding
the historical parallels to the 1950s and the denunciation of the logic of
late capitalism with reference to the liberal consensus in Monsters, Inc., the
schlemiel figure also embodies an alternative to a capitalist social system
with his incompetence and moral dubiousness. In The Schlemiel as Modern
Hero (1971), Ruth R.  Wisse maintains that the inadequacies repeatedly
demonstrated by the schlemiel may be “the clearest alternative to the still-
dominant religion of success,” because his character type “is an expression
of heart, of intense, passionate feeling, in surroundings that stamp out
individuality and equate emotion with unreason” (111, 82). The personal
shortcomings, the professional insufficiencies, and the moral failings of the
schlemiel Mike13, therefore, embody possibilities beyond the liberal con-
sensus myth of a just capitalist society. Consequently, Wisse credits Jewish
culture with the development of one possible alternative to the logic of
capitalism in the figure of “[t]he American schlemiel [who] declares his
humanity by loving and suffering in defiance of the forces of depersonali-
zation and the ethic of enlightened stoicism” (82).
In my reading of Monsters, Inc., then, the schlemiel Mike also sym-
bolizes a counter-capitalist moment. Because “the loser-as-winner was
not an indigenous American folk-type, and there is much in his makeup
that still seems to go against the American grain,” his continual failings,
misdemeanors, and moral ambiguity gainsay the mythical American hero
figure—those characters with “a decidedly practical bent, resourceful and
hard-headed pragmatists who inevitably outwit the fools, be they dimwits
or woolly intellectuals” (Wisse 74). While the ineptness and incompe-
tence of the schlemiel to master even the daily (and often benign) chal-
lenges of life bestow these figures with “knowledge of [their] futility,”
these experiences do “not invalidate an urgent insistence on joy” (Wisse
90). After all, finding pleasure in spite of failing to succeed leads to the
transformation of Monstropolis: In the face of bankrupting Monsters,
Incorporated, destroying hundreds of jobs, heightening the energy crisis
of Monstropolis and “not to mention the angry mob that’ll come after us”
(Monsters, Inc.), Mike finds comfort in the fact that he and Sulley “had
a few laughs” (Monsters, Inc.). This attitude eventually inspires Sulley to
propose his shift from fear- to joy-based energy production. Thus while
the furry blue monster profits from the (liberal consensus) myth of equal
opportunity, the highly ambivalent green, one-eyed schlemiel exposes its
contingent quality and symbolizes an unruly potential for social trans-
 A STORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS IN MONSTERS 91

formation as he fundamentally alters Monstropolis and saves millions of

children from their nightly fears.
Rather than a(nother) rendering of the liberal consensus, then, the
figure of the green, one-eyed monster visibly mocks the success narra-
tive myth. Although highly invested in symbols of wealth and status,
Mike’s continual failure either to achieve his desires or to maintain a
respectable appearance not only locates the schlemiel at the margins
of Monstropolis’ consensus society but pokes fun at its meritocracy
mantra of hard work as the green monster eventually fashions energy
abundance while having “a few laughs” in passing. Aesthetically the
green monster similarly lampoons traditional notions of the hero
figure. While Mike may be enchanting in his emotionally eruptive,
unintentionally entertaining, and morally ambiguous ways, his visual
animation as a green, smooth blob does not connote the individualist
ideal Sulley alludes to with his millions of individually animated hair
strains. Neither sensitive nor amiable, neither aspiring nor inspiring,
and neither cute nor cuddly, the green schlemiel is the failed other to
the blue, hairy champion of the liberal consensus. Notwithstanding
their functions in the narrative, however, the cutting-edge animated
furry monster is as improbable a candidate for the liberal consensus in
particular or any American myth in general as the decidedly less sophis-
ticated green digital blob is a hero figure.
Thus while Monsters Inc. animates its version of a good society in
the logic of the liberal consensus, digital animation offers novel and
unprecedented visual forms for this traditional myth. And thanks to the
creative potential of digital animation, a blue monster, green blob, and
the numerous crawling or flying, slimy or grubby, colorful or translucent,
multi-eyed, many-headed, tentacle-swinging nonhuman inhabitants of
Monstropolis demonstrate its complex aesthetic mediation. Even as the
film has to draw on established narrative and visual elements to tell a pop-
ular story, the liberty of digital animation mediates its American myths and
symbols in enchantingly unprecedented forms.

NOTES
1. Interrupted in their morning workout routine by a TV commercial for their
corporation, Sulley and Mike sit in front of a 1950s TV set to enjoy the trailer
for Monsters, Incorporated. The commercial details the functions of the com-
pany by fashioning an overtly educational voice-over, a didactic integration of
92 D. MEINEL

charts and maps to visualize information, and the repetitive inclusion of state-
ments made by employer and employees. The urban environment of
Monstropolis is also full of visual cues and references to the 1950s: On their
way to work, Sulley and Mike encounter paperboys delivering the dailies, chil-
dren playing long rope on the sidewalk, and friendly grocery vendors arranging
their fruits. Even the architecture of the factory, its enormous reception hall,
and giant world map visibly refers to visibly refers to the baby-boomer period.
2. For Sombart, the “United States of America is capitalism’s land of promise” (3)
because of its abundance of natural resources, fertile soil, and geographic expan-
sion (cf. 3); its people are ideally suited for capitalism because they left “their
feudal artisan existence” and “traditionalism” (4) in Europe. This ideal state for
capitalism also affects the “American national character” which has its “roots in
the capitalist organization of economic life” (Sombart 10) where everyone and
everything is assessed by their monetary value (cf. Sombart 11–14).
3. This environmentally conscious solution not just solves the energy shortage in
Monstropolis by acknowledging the anxiety and suffering of human children—as
the profits of Monsters, Incorporated skyrocket and its employees embrace their
innovative line of work, the principle of abundance is validated. Instead of curbing
(energy) consumption—walking instead of driving to work—the source of global
wealth and satisfaction is located in the profusion of capitalist production in tune
with blue-collar work and environmental issues. While this blissful ending may
appear to be escapist, particularly since the environmentally friendly production of
endless amounts of energy seems to be currently science fiction, the eco-philoso-
phy of Michael Braungart and William McDonough envisions precisely such a
future through an ethics of abundance. In their book Cradle to Cradle. Remaking
the Way We Make Things (2008), the authors advocate “design[ing] them [human
industries] to get bigger and better in a way that replenishes, restores, and nour-
ishes the rest of the world” (Braungart and McDonough). Using the example of
a cherry tree which “enriches the ecosystem, sequestering carbon, producing oxy-
gen, cleaning air and water, and creating and stabilizing soil” (Braungart and
McDonough) simply through its growth and production of fruit, its “regenerative
abundance” (Braungart and McDonough) ought to be the model for capitalist
production: “[B]uildings that […] produce more energy than they consume […]
factories that produce effluents that are drinking water; products that […] can be
tossed onto the ground to decompose and become food for plants and animals
and nutrients for soil; or, alternately, that can return to industrial cycles to supply
high-quality raw materials for new products […] a world of abundance, not one of
limits, pollution, and waste” (italics mine, Braungart and McDonough). This
transformation of all human modes of production “to create a more inspiring
engagement—a partnership—with nature […] [and] strive to become tools of
nature who serve its agenda” (Braungart and McDonough) captures the prevalent
idea articulated by Monsters, Inc. Hence both cultural texts do not seek alternative
 A STORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS IN MONSTERS 93

economic systems, but imagine a blissful future of capitalism in tune with the
global environment for the benefit of humanity by maintaining and fostering an
abundance of production.
4. The CDA is personified not only by their numerous, identical agents. Their
“Number One” had been working undercover at the Monsters, Incorporated
factory to unsuccessfully learn about the evil schemes of Waternoose.
Employed as an accountant, Roz is a slow-speaking, ill-tempered large snail
whose well-meaning intentions are often hidden by her grumpy attitude.
While her veiled benevolence prolongs the positive characterization of the
government agency, her sluggishness and her bureaucratic pedantry further
exemplify the negative qualities ascribed to the state throughout the film.
5. By shifting from scare-based to joy-based power production, Sulley also alters
the daily routines at the factory as monsters happily dress up, juggle, tell
jokes, and entertain the children—hard hats are swapped for balloons while
all employees joyfully embrace their work and children’s laughter is heard in
the background; working conditions have improved significantly. In contrast
to the earnest, tense, and nerve-racking factory atmosphere at the beginning
of the film, Monsters, Incorporated has changed to become a playful and
lighthearted place all the while manufacturing power in abundance.
6. In addition, the environmentalist features of the film combine questions of a
just society with the contemporary challenge of sustainable capitalist produc-
tion. Thus the Pixar film not merely invokes the liberal consensus, but updates
its vision of individualism and equal opportunity as the defining concepts of a
just society to include contemporary concern about the environment.
7. Using joy, fun, and entertainment to harvest energy and reap profits, however,
also suggests the complete incorporation of a capitalist ethos. Instead of the
alienating force Karl Marx had come to see as characterizing capitalism, in
Monsters, Inc. individual talents are appreciated, while the greater good is simi-
larly served by maintaining a capitalist order. Satisfaction derives not merely
from being successful, but rather from simultaneously doing something good,
and characterizes the capitalist logic of the animated film. Monsters, Inc. envi-
sions a just society not beyond capitalism but through capitalism—fashioned
within a legal and ethical framework (the “affirmative government”) through
which particular excesses of capitalism are restrained and the equality of oppor-
tunity preserved as the fundamental principle of a just society.
8. In light of the enchanting monsters that animate the capitalist critique in
Monsters, Inc., Sergei Eisenstein’s passionate support for (hand-drawn) ani-
mation may be as appropriate as in 1941 when the Soviet film-maker main-
tained that “[in] a country and social order with such a mercilessly standardised
and mechanically measured existence, which is difficult to call life, the sight of
such ‘omnipotence’ (that is, the ability to become ‘whatever you wish’) can-
not but hold a sharp degree of attractiveness” (21).
94 D. MEINEL

9. In his book, Rawls describes the liberal consensus as attempting to balance

“the influence of social contingencies and natural fortune on distributive
shares […] Free market arrangements must be set within a framework of
political and legal institutions which regulates the overall trends of economic
events and preserves the social conditions necessary for fair equality of oppor-
tunity” (73). In order to preclude the “excessive accumulations of property
and wealth […] [c]hances to acquire cultural knowledge and skills should not
depend upon one’s class position, and so the school system, whether public
or private, should be designed to even out class barriers” (Rawls 73). This
description of the liberal consensus and its demand for an inclusive educa-
tional system resonates with the ideas Michaels expresses to ensure social jus-
tice: “if we are committed to equality of opportunity, we should be funding
all school districts equally and abolishing private schools, thus removing the
temptation for rich parents to buy their children an unfair advantage” (Trouble
with Diversity 135–136).
10. In A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), David Harvey anchors the neoliberal
paradigm in idealized notions of individualism (cf. 40) not too different from
the individualist paradigm with which I have described the liberal consensus. In
neoliberalism, however, individualism is appropriated to “split off libertarianism,
identity politics, multiculturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from
the social forces ranged in pursuit of social justice” (Harvey, History of
Neoliberalism 41). This fragmentation of the social becomes particularly appar-
ent in Monsters, Inc. as the film often draws on working class images, but fails to
portray a sense of group belonging or even class-consciousness. Although the
task of scaring children is hard manual labor, although this work is done in a
factory, although the hard hat is a prominent headgear worn by anyone working
on or visiting the factory floor, and although the job is described as “dangerous
work” demanding “confident, tenacious, tough, intimidating” (Monsters, Inc.)
monsters, the film never portrays a moment of social cohesion among the fac-
tory workers. This individualist imperative omits the necessity for “social soli-
darities and a willingness to submerge individual wants, needs, and desires in the
cause of some more general struggle for, say, social equality or environmental
justice” (Harvey, History of Neoliberalism 41). Because a just society is not guar-
anteed by individuals alone, the absence of a broad social solidarity in Monsters,
Inc. animates the captures its individualist imperative of the film of the liberal
consensus—and of neoliberalism. This absence of any sense of social belonging
among the blue-collar workers despite the numerous working class tropes illus-
trates an essential moment in the slow neoliberal transformation of the social
sphere. Neoliberalism vitally depended on and fostered numerous policies that
reshaped the communal or social dimensions of identity—say, as workers or citi-
zens—into “individual entrepreneurs and consumers” (Brown 694). Although
the full force of these changes began to be felt in the 1980s, its roots are traced
 A STORY OF SOCIAL JUSTICE? THE LIBERAL CONSENSUS IN MONSTERS 95

by Michael Kazin to the dissolution of a working class consciousness in the

1940s and early ’50s when “[m]ost workers, thankful for secure employment at
better wages […] described themselves as part of the great American middle
class. Such terms as regular guy, average Joe, and average American, evoking an
agreeable personality rather than a political opinion, eclipsed ones like working
man and Joe Worker” (italics in original, Kazin 168). Through this transforma-
tion, working class imagery could still function to negotiate US American iden-
tity, while a political working class agenda was increasingly detached from the
working class images of the “average American.”
11. The original film poster to promote the Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß shows
the bigoted portrait of a Jewish figure whose green skin is supposed to high-
light the hideous and sinister character the film-makers attributed to Jewish
people. The trope of the green-eyed monster is also a figure of speech to
describe particularly envious or jealous characters, another racist stereotype
attributed to Jewish people at times (most prominently in William
Shakespeare’s Othello and The Merchant of Venice).
12. Much as in 1950s writings, about the liberal consensus and American excep-
tionality, individualism continues to be an exclusively male prerogative in
Monsters, Inc. The three female characters—Boo, Celia, and Roz—exclusively
function to define the male protagonists: Boo remains an object of desire and
inspiration for Sulley throughout the film; Celia remains the stereotypical
love interest for Mike (and although she exerts some power over the green
monster, as I have argued, this is a sign of his emasculation rather than her
emancipation); and Roz similarly can only wield her powers as the head of the
CDA after Sulley and Mike have exposed Waternoose’s schemes. Infantilized,
romanticized, and enfeebled, none of the female characters in the film dem-
onstrate even a remote degree of individual agency as the male Sulley, Mike,
and Waternoose do.
13. A little man in physique and romance, the schlemiel is “harmless and disliked […]
vulnerable and inept […] neither saintly nor pure, but only weak” (Wisse x).
Particularly Mike’s long antagonism towards Boo and his repeated attempts to
quickly get rid of the child, even after her vulnerability is obvious, exposes his
“neither saintly nor pure” motivations. Although ethically “a little tainted”
(Wisse 101), Mike eventually decides to do the morally right thing and help Boo.
While his “tainted” humanism discloses his heartwarming, gracious qualities,
even in these moments Mike demonstrates a social ineptness or clownishness.
When he apologizes for his rude and ignorant behavior to Sulley, for example, the
green, one-eyed monster does not recognize the deadly struggle his hairy friend
is engaged in. Accidentally saving Sulley from being strangled to death, Mike
exhibits his congenial, yet at the same time oblivious, qualities.
 CHAPTER 5

“From Rags to Moderate Riches”:

The American Dream in Ratatouille (2007)

“You must be imaginative, strong-hearted. You must try things that may
not work, and you must not let anyone define your limits because of where
you come from. Your only limit is your soul. What I say is true—any-
one can cook—but only the fearless can be great” (Ratatouille), declared
Parisian star chef Gusteau during one of his popular TV show programs
as probably the most unexpected viewer is watching with eager antici-
pation: Remy the rat. Living in the French countryside and gifted with
an extraordinary sense of taste and smell, the rodent is ostracized by his
pack for his interest in creating good food and despised by humans for
his origins. Only the ideas of “the youngest chef ever to achieve a five-
star rating” whose “restaurant is the toast of Paris, booked five months
in advance” (Ratatouille) provide Remy with some sense of hope that
even this peculiar rodent will eventually shape his destiny and transcend
all social barriers.
This opportunity arises sooner than expected as Remy and his family
have to abandon their rural home after the old housekeeper accidentally
discovers the colony in her attic. Closely evading mustard gas and gun
shots, the rats escape into the sewer system huddled together on impro-
vised boats made out of leaves and carton boxes. In the tumultuous flight,
Remy is separated from his people and stranded—lost, disheartened, and
hungry—in a cold, dirty, dark end of the sewer. There the protagonist of
Ratatouille (2007) waits for hours in the hope of encountering his friends
and family. Depressed by his loneliness, distraught by the hopelessness
of his situation, and exhausted by the long journey, Remy has a vision of

© The Author(s) 2016 97

D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_5
98 D. MEINEL

Gusteau who lectures the rat that “[i]f you focus on what you left behind,
you will never be able to see what lies ahead” and encourages the rodent
to “go up and look around” (Ratatouille).
As Remy ascends from the lowest gutter to the apartment building
above the sewers and onto its rooftop, he encounters the bright, glittering
lights of Paris to realize he has arrived in the city of his dreams: the capital of
fine cuisine (cf. Ratatouille). His physical ascension from the lowest sewer
to the very top of the metropolis foreshadows the social upward mobility
the rat will experience. Since his extraordinary sense of taste will eventually
propel him to become the best chef in town, open his own restaurant, and
transcend the social barriers against rats in the kitchen, Remy will excel his
rat origins to be integrated into the human world. When the camera pans
across the cityscape with its illuminated night skyline in a wide-angle shot,
Paris in its warm, radiant glow appears as a shining city and a beacon of
hope for the rat. This introduction of Paris as a space of opportunity further
suggests and foreshadows the American Dream narrative of Ratatouille.
From its beginning, then, Ratatouille iterates the American success
myth described by James Truslow Adams as the “opportunity for each
according to ability or achievement […] [to] be recognized by others for
what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of their birth or
position […] unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected
in older civilizations” (404). While Adams was the first to explicitly name,
describe, and popularize this American Dream “of a land in which life
should be better and richer and fuller for everyone” (404) in his The Epic
of America (1931), the faith in the opportunity for social upward mobility
in the United States had been a long-held belief. As Elizabeth G. Traube
summarizes the Dream in Dreaming Identities (1992):

Among the most powerful and dynamic of modernity’s cultural narratives is

the American myth or metamyth of success. With roots in American Puritanism
and in Franklin’s secularized work ethic, the success myth developed over the
course of the nineteenth century into a narrative charter for mobility ideology.
Its hero, the self-made man, embodied the founding promise of America. (97)

Although the myth is deeply intertwined with “the ethos of entre-

preneurial success” (Decker xiii), neither the acquisition of wealth nor
fortune shape the American Dream entirely. From its early colonial forms,
the myth would include the hopes for “[r]eligious transformation, politi-
cal reform, educational attainment [to] sexual expressions” (Cullen 7).
 “FROM RAGS TO MODERATE RICHES”: THE AMERICAN DREAM 99

And while the numerous designations of the Dream “competed for the
status of common sense” (Cullen 7) throughout American history, all
these versions share the promise that each and every one has “a capacity
to control their own destinies” (Schwarz 18).
As Remy withstands the temptation of stealing food to ease his often
dire situation in his journey to small business entrepreneurship, the themes
of ethical conduct and modest success in Ratatouille animate nineteenth-
century American Dream stories. Particularly the figure of the rat draws
attention to these traditional notions of American exceptionality since
Remy’s advancement from persecuted pariah to acclaimed chef functions
as a testimony that only in the United States can anyone shape his or her
destiny and “the fearless can be great.” Indeed, as Ratatouille appropri-
ates pejorative associations with rodents to tell its American Dream tale,1
the animated film appropriates numerous narrative conventions of the
success myth formula from the autobiographical mode to the immigra-
tion experience, the notion of social mobility, the abundance of food,
and the hard worker and trickster figures all set in the dualistic world of
lower and upper class. The film illustrates this social polarity in its spatial
portrayal of a derelict bar and the grand Gusteau’s. Yet, as both sites also
stand for a predefined social system in which status is attributed at birth,
Remy eventually escapes these confinements by opening his restaurant and
establishing a visibly middle class space. Due to the portrayal of its various
restaurants, then, Ratatouille links notions of “middle-class respectability”
to its animated American Dream. Whereas the film thus appears to nar-
rate a traditional success myth story similar to the one told in Monsters,
Inc., its exposure of white privilege speaks to the transformation of the
American Dream in the twenty-first century: Not until the cast of white
characters—Linguini (the garbage boy), Colette (the aspiring chef), and
Anton Ego (the food critic)—acknowledge that their privileged position
prohibits Remy from fulfilling his destiny is the rodent able to transcend
the class barrier and fulfill his American Dream.
In contrast to my previous close readings, I focus on the role of voice-
acting as a genuine feature of (digital) animation because dialogues are
often recorded prior to the completion of the film and performers sig-
nificantly shape character creation in the process. Since actors—rather
than characters—also participate in extensive advertising campaigns, this
chapter examines voice-acting as one defining aesthetic element of ani-
mated films and explores the para-textual importance of the star persona
in highlighting the mediation of the American Dream in Ratatouille.
100 D. MEINEL

PIXAR’S ANIMATED AMERICAN DREAM

Holding on to an oversized cookbook as he bursts through a window, Remy
begins to tell his story in medias res as he attempts to explain his unusual
position at the beginning of Ratatouille. Listing the reasons leading to this
troublesome situation, Remy informs the viewers about his “highly devel-
oped sense of taste and smell” (Ratatouille), his assignment to the dull,
undemanding task of testing food for poison, his conflict with the utilitar-
ian ideas of his father Django, and their disagreement about the status of
food as an artful form of living or “fuel” to be “put in the tank” so “your
engine is [not] gonna die” (Ratatouille). Particularly Remy’s admiration
for human culture causes friction between him and Django. While the latter
warns of their hatred of rats, for Remy, humans are superior beings because
“[t]hey don’t just survive, they discover, they create […] just look at what
they do with food” (Ratatouille). Appalled by the indifference to advanc-
ing their lives, Remy despises the endless scavenges of his family to find
food, and dreams of using his talents “to make things” (Ratatouille). While
by pursuing these aspirations Remy will eventually end up in mid-air with
a cookbook, the voice-over narrative strategy of Ratatouille also situates
the animated film within the literary tradition of the success myth in which
“autobiography has been the authoritative mode within which to imagine
the self-made man” (Decker xxvii) and his capacity to shape his destiny.
Frustrated by the apathy for aspiration, the utilitarian philosophy of his
father, and the assignment to a highly unsatisfying social position, Remy
ventures to a close-by human cottage to read books, be exposed to unfa-
miliar ideas, and hone his talents of taste and smell. During one of his
trips into the kitchen of the cottage in which his family resides, Remy is
spotted by the aged landlady who immediately panics and begins to fran-
tically fire at the rat with a shotgun. Her frenzied, erratic, and imprecise
shooting misses Remy, but exposes the rat colony hidden in the attic.
Equipped with a shotgun, chemical weapons, a gas mask, and a helmet,
the landlady goes on a rampage to exterminate the rats and triggers a
mass exodus as the terrified rodents flee to a nearby pond to board small
boats created from twigs, leaves, and garbage. Huddled against each other
on these overcrowded vessels, the rats escape their violent persecution
by embarking on a journey to an unknown place, leaving their home,
their belongings, and their past lives behind. This depiction of poor and
desperate masses brutally driven from their home to travel to a distant,
foreign land visually refers to the experiences of late nineteenth-century
 “FROM RAGS TO MODERATE RICHES”: THE AMERICAN DREAM 101

immigration and steerage passages to the United States. This portrayal of

a persecuted, poverty-stricken minority arriving at the promised shore par-
ticularly alludes to the anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia
in the second half of the nineteenth century when discriminatory politi-
cal, social, and economic legislation fostered high “rates of pauperization”
and produced an “endemic poverty” (Diner 158) among Jewish people
in these regions. As Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia “were drawn to
the United States in part due to anti-Semitism in their native lands […]
where Jewish residents lived under the threat of being beaten or killed
during periodic pogroms” (Wallach 80), their flight eventually symbolized
a pivotal moment in the formation of the American Dream myth. To con-
demn widespread anti-Semitism and the intolerable living conditions in
Europe, Emma Lazarus wrote her famous sonnet The New Colossus (1883)
which came to be engraved at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty. The
plea to “[g]ive me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning
to breathe free” not only demanded opportunity and liberty for anyone
coming to the United States and hoped to address prejudices and injus-
tices experienced by Jewish immigrants in the United States—but also
quickly encapsulated one fundamental notion of the American Dream
(cf. Jillson 6).2
The scenes of harsh involuntary emigration from an old cottage to the
metropolis of Paris further speak to the American Dream motif of the film
despite its decidedly French setting. In the countryside, Remy is confined
to a social position exclusively defined by birth, as both the rat society and
the human world adhere to a hierarchical social structure. Each member
of these societies is assigned a predetermined position that no amount of
work or talent may alter. While the human world would offer Remy an
opportunity to develop his abilities and become something other than
a rodent, the patriarchal and matriarchal leaders of the respective com-
munities—Django and the landlady—both heavily sanction any possible
transgression. Within the American success mythology, these authoritarian
figures symbolize the threat for the self-made hero from above as “repres-
sive authorities, rigid traditions, [and] restrictive rules […] limit individual
initiative and freedom” (Traube 99). As Remy will eventually receive the
opportunity to shape his destiny by transcending his “humble origins,” be
recognized for his talents as “nothing less than the finest chef in France”
(Ratatouille), and become the proud proprietor of a restaurant in Paris,
the metropolis symbolizes not merely the French capital or the center of
cuisine. In the logic of the success mythology and as numerous cities before,
102 D. MEINEL

animated Paris also functions as “the ultimate testing ground, which is to

the success hero what the wilderness is to the frontier hero” (Traube 99).
Consequently, the cottage and the metropolis serve as “mythic rather than
[…] historical or geographical entit[ies]” (Pizer 141).3 Their disparities
encapsulate the traditional success myth dichotomy of “the open and the
closed, the mobile and the static” (Traube 99) and as metaphorical sites
of the animated American Dream narrative both contrast a hierarchical,
immobile, and unjust society with a land of opportunity.
Ratatouille presents the moral dilemma of stealing food for survival and
the question of legitimate proprietorship as one prominent “testing ground”
for Remy. After arriving poor, tired, and starving in the Parisian sewers,
Remy is tempted to thieve food after his long, arduous journey. When
the rat encounters fresh bread in an apartment, his (sub-)consciousness—
illustrated by Gusteau’s spirit—has to remind him that “[y]ou are a cook!
A cook makes! A thief takes. You are not a thief” (Ratatouille). Promising
the protesting rat that “[f]ood always comes to those who love to cook”
(Ratatouille), Gusteau links the American Dream to issues of ethical con-
duct. Indeed, as the film repeatedly addresses questions of producing versus
stealing, making versus taking, rightfulness versus criminality, Ratatouille
links its self-made narrative to discourses of legality, virtue, and morality.
In this way, the film situates its “success hero” within a cultural history in
which the figure “mobilize[s] law in the control of desire” (Traube 100).
Only by adhering to the guidance of his spiritual mentor and “fig of imagi-
nation” (Ratatouille)—the ghost of Gusteau—will Remy eventually achieve
his dream of becoming a respected chef. The rat thus evidences the qualities
of the self-made person as an “honest, plain-dealing worker, bearer of the
disciplinary virtues of the Protestant Ethic, who slow[ly] ascen[ds] from rags
to moderate riches” (Traube 100).
These aspirations for modest commercial success illustrate another essen-
tial feature of the animated Dream. From the very beginning of the film,
Remy continually emphasizes his desire to hone his talents, to discover
novel features of life, and particularly “to make things” (Ratatouille). As
the rat pursues his dream of cooking even in the harshest and most hostile
environment, the disgust of his father and the hatred of the humans do
not keep Remy from venturing into the kitchen to experiment, learn, and
create. The film animates this disinterest in wealth and luxury at the end
when Remy opens his little restaurant and finds his personal fulfillment in
the daily challenges of maintaining a small business. In this sense, Pixar’s
version of the American Dream mediates the mid-nineteenth-century ideal
of self-made success.4
 “FROM RAGS TO MODERATE RICHES”: THE AMERICAN DREAM 103

While in the late twentieth century “the figure of the self-made man
is no longer principally the site of a utilitarian calling, behavior modifica-
tion, or even economic production” (Decker xxix), Ratatouille does not
adhere to the contemporary obsession with wealth and “crass materialism”
(Decker 102) defining the present-day American Dream. As Remy will not
bathe in riches, the rat will have to labor every day for his small restaurant
business to thrive. Since success is portrayed as continuous hard work for
the individual, yet equally vital for the well-being of the (rat) community,
the animated feature recurs to an early nineteenth-century notion of “social
respectability and gentility” (Cawelti 182). The negotiation of lawfulness
and legality in the film further links its success narrative to the nineteenth-
century version of “religious and secular values based on the idea of the
diligent pursuit of a divinely ordained calling as a sign of moral and spiritual
excellence” (Cawelti 169). As Remy does not desire to acquire wealth,
but aspires to become a hard-laboring small entrepreneur, the animated
American Dream of Ratatouille refers to a self-made success myth which
idealizes production, hard work, and morality (cf. Kimmel 20, 78).5
With their protagonists finding “[m]oderate economic security” but
failing to “rise ‘to the top of the economic heap’” (Cawelti 109, 110),6
the popular nineteenth-century Horatio Alger stories provide a narrative
template for interpreting the twenty-first-century animated text. Just as
Alger portrayed success as a form of gaining “respectability […] [and]
a happy state only partially defined by economic repute” (Cawelti 110)
and illustrated the fraudulent features of wealthy entrepreneurs to equal
“middle-class respectability […] [with] spiritual grace” (Cawelti 110),
Ratatouille follows a similar trajectory. Although of simple origins, Remy
demonstrates his moral integrity by refusing to steal food and aspiring to
be a small business entrepreneur amidst a cast of characters who benefit
from unmerited privileges: Whether food critic Anton Ego explicitly
upholds elitist beliefs about social hierarchies or chef Skinner and garbage
boy Linguini inherit a prestigious restaurant despite their inadequate
cooking talents, all these characters eventually yield to the superior abili-
ties of the little rodent.7
In the end, Remy even pays homage to his humble origins in a twofold
sense: he names his restaurant Ratatouille and turns the simple “peas-
ant dish” (Ratatouille) into a celebrated delicacy. Within the narrative,
the ratatouille functions to convince the snobbish Ego that “anyone can
cook”; within the Alger reading I suggest the ratatouille also designates
the nostalgia for a presumably simpler time. Where Alger hoped to save
“the traditional pattern of middle-class economic ideals” by employing
104 D. MEINEL

a pre-industrialist imagery of “small individual businesses or partnerships,”

although his celebrated independent entrepreneur “had begun to be out
of date as early as 1830, but […] still lingered in the minds of Americans
as the ideal form of economic organization” (Cawelti 122), Ratatouille
utilizes images of a blissful childhood and homemade cooking to illustrate
the modest qualities of its American Dream. As Remy serves the food critic
a ratatouille, the dish overwhelms the initially doubtful Ego with child-
hood memories of his mother’s homemade cooking. This experience—set
in a simple, sunlit cottage in the countryside and illustrated in bright and
vivid colors—elicits long-forgotten memories of an idyllic state and links the
modern-day self-made Remy to a bygone social (and economic) model simi-
lar to the small entrepreneur ideal in the Alger stories. Thus just as Cawelti
assesses the Alger stories to promote “the values of a bygone era in an age of
dramatic change and expansion” (Cawelti 120), Ratatouille with its images
of benign entrepreneurial success may be further understood to challenge
the excessive obsession with wealth in the present neoliberal moment and
the “gross materialism” of the contemporary American Dream.8
In addition to the numerous narrative references and the spatial imag-
eries suggestive of the American Dream, Ratatouille also introduces two
pivotal figures of the success narrative: the talented worker and the trick-
ster. As Elizabeth G. Traube maintains in her Dreaming Identities (1992),
success narratives either concentrate on “ambitious, industrious youths
[who] achieve success as a reward for toil, self-denial, and obedience to
authority” (78) or focus on the “trickster who succeeds through cunning,
duplicity, and the artful manipulation of images” (101). In Ratatouille,
the talented and industrious Remy has to cooperate with the involuntary
trickster Linguini in order for both to achieve their dreams.
Parallel to Remy’s arrival in Paris, the inept and gawky Linguini begins
his employment as a garbage boy at Gusteau’s. After the anxious, clumsy
boy accidentally spills the dinner soup and attempts to reproduce the dish
by randomly adding ingredients, Remy cannot keep himself from interven-
ing. Unnoticed by Linguini or anyone else in the kitchen, the rat saves the
nauseous dish with his talent for taste. As the soup is praised by guests and
critics alike, Linguini finds himself in the middle of commendations despite
his inability to cook. When the boy discovers the origin of his success to be
the rat (Remy) he caught moments earlier in the kitchen, he abstains from
killing the rodent and instead agrees on a concord by which he will ensure
its well-being and the rat will help him with his novel assignment as cook.
To be able to communicate with Linguini and manipulate his movements
 “FROM RAGS TO MODERATE RICHES”: THE AMERICAN DREAM 105

in the kitchen, the rat hides underneath the young cook’s toque. Pulling
his hair, Remy manipulates the gestures and movements of his human
puppet while remaining safely out of sight. This cooperation enables both
characters to balance their deficits: Remy is able to pass as human receiv-
ing the opportunity to demonstrate his talents; Linguini can hide his utter
ineptness to find recognition, success, and love.
Thus while Remy represents talent and hard work, Linguini is an
imposter. Although the boy fails to demonstrate “cunning, duplicity,
and the artful manipulation of images,” his ineptness, awkwardness, and
incoherent mumblings have similar consequences. Everyone assumes
Linguini to feign incompetence which allows this failed trickster to play-
fully erode authority and advance through (involuntary) deception and
clumsy charm nonetheless. Hence the garbage boy embodies the success-
ful trickster figure Traube deems characteristic for American Dream nar-
ratives (cf. 104). Whereas the talented worker Remy will gain recognition
and commercial success by opening his restaurant, the trickster Linguini
will merely advance from garbage boy to waiter—yet find his personal
fulfillment in winning the love of his co-worker Colette.
But the American Dream does not merely encapsulate the “creedal
values to create and preserve an open, competitive, entrepreneurial soci-
ety in which the opportunity to succeed is widely available” (Jillson 5).
On the contrary, Jeffrey Louis Decker characterizes the self-made success
narrative as an “Enlightenment project […] establishing the subject of
history as white, male, and middle-class” (xxvii). In Made in America
(1997) Decker details the normative features of the success myth by exam-
ining “autobiographies of enterprise composed by women and minorities”
(xxvii). An autobiographical narrative told by an immigrant aspiring for
the opportunity to shape his destiny, Ratatouille also invites an examina-
tion of class, race, and gender.9 Whereas the animated film introduces and
differentiates its classes particularly along the lines of spatial representa-
tions to celebrate traditional notions of “middle-class respectability,” its
portrayal of white privilege suggests a transformation of the American
Dream in the twenty-first century.

CLASS, SPACE, AND THE ANIMATED DREAM

Although Gusteau has persistently advocated the American Dream on his
TV show and in his cookbook, his restaurant does not mirror the beliefs of
its deceased founder. Visually, the restaurant already qualifies as a prestigious
106 D. MEINEL

upper class venue for the affluent few with its spacious interior design, lavish
antique furniture, luxurious chandeliers, and a discreet, formal atmosphere
in which expensively dressed guests dine to the diegetic sound of classical
music. In contrast to the American Dream of hard work and talent, owner-
ship of the restaurant furthermore transfers by inheritance. At the begin-
ning of the film, Gusteau’s is managed by a former employee, Skinner, who
acquired the restaurant thanks to his position as sous-chef and second-in-
command to Gusteau. Portrayed in crude orientalist stereotypes, Skinner
fails to demonstrate his cooking talents throughout the film and sneers at
the motto “anyone can cook,” while his sole interest lies in generating profit
by expanding a line of cheap frozen food products. Later in the film, when
Gusteau’s testament obliges Skinner to entrust ownership of the restaurant
to the illegitimate son of Gusteau, Linguini, possession of the valuable prop-
erty is transferred onto someone completely inept at cooking only because
of his familial affiliations.
Not a member of the upper class, Remy’s father similarly believes in the
ascription of social positions qua birth and heritage. When defending the
traditional practice of nourishing his people (i.e. scavenging for food) and
rationalizing his disinterest in bettering their lives (i.e. to “make things”),
Django tells his rebelling son that “[t]his is the way things are. You can’t
change nature” (Ratatouille). Consequently, after their flight from the
countryside to Paris the rats settle in a shabby, nameless bar. A few hastily
nailed wooden panels, a couple of carton boxes used as tables, and thimbles
substituting for cups illustrate the lower class status of this new home. The
harsh and deprived living conditions are offset by a vivid and exuberant
atmosphere: The bar is a crowded space in which loud, jazzy music plays
as rats dance and rejoice. Tellingly, the camera is positioned at a low angle
amidst the excited rats to emphasize density, chaos, and liveliness.
In this sense, Ratatouille draws on conventional strategies of idealiz-
ing lower class life as full of hardships, yet vivid, spirited, and communal.
Visually his obese, intellectually limited brother, his loud, patriarchal
father, and a hyper-muscular, body-building cousin stand out as the most
prominent examples of lower class masculinity (as much as the absence
of female rodents). In contrast to these images of excessive working
class masculinity—or what Peter Biskind and Barbara Ehrenreich labeled
the “family-as-nightmare” trope (209)—in moments of crisis, familial
loyalty and cooperation prevail. After Skinner loses the restaurant busi-
ness to Linguini, the former chef kidnaps Remy to coerce the rodent
into creating a novel line of frozen foods. In spite of their previous
 “FROM RAGS TO MODERATE RICHES”: THE AMERICAN DREAM 107

disputes, Django and his family save Remy from his entrapment and
afterwards even help their sibling to manage an abandoned Gusteau’s.
Under Remy’s precise guidelines and instructions the numerous rats
wash the dishes, prepare the ingredients, handle the pots and pans, and
even jail a health inspector to enable their sibling to prepare the rata-
touille dish for his adversary Anton Ego. This masculinization and simul-
taneous romanticization of the lower class as rough but honest, coercive
but supportive, intellectually inferior but heartfelt in Ratatouille tell as
much about the portrayal of working as about middle class in popular
culture. As the capable Remy directs and orders his brethren around
the restaurant kitchen, his coordination and mastery of the previously
unruly mob indicate once again the middle class sensibilities prominent
in Hollywood (cf. Biskind and Ehrenreich 206)10 and this animated film.
Ratatouille hence juxtaposes upper class (the human realm) and lower
class (the rat sphere). Despite their visual differences, both classes privilege
birth and heritage over talent and hard work—just as legal ownership of
Gusteau’s is inherited, Django naturalizes the rats’ lower social position. The
animated film portrays this inflexible ideology of social order as deficient
since Gusteau’s loses its reputation (i.e. two out of its previous five stars) after
Skinner inherits the restaurant. Obsessed by generating profit with cheap
frozen meals, the former sous-chef jeopardizes the legacy of “anyone can
cook,” while his successor, Linguini, proves to be even less capable of saving
the restaurant. Similarly, clan leader Django does not aspire to transcend the
hardships of rat life as his sole objective is providing any kind of food for
his people; from his perspective, rats would continue to scavenge through
garbage eternally. These beliefs in a predestined fate and assigned social posi-
tion render both classes inadequate for and incompatible with the American
Dream—and foreshadow the middle class ideal of the animated success
myth represented by the Ratatouille restaurant at the end of the film.

HYPER-WHITE FOOD CRITICS AND NON-WHITE CHEFS:

THE VILLAINS IN RATATOUILLE
Not only do lower and upper class characters fail to adhere to the American
Dream creed, but Ratatouille also portrays the non-white sous-chef
Skinner and the hyper-white food critic Anton Ego as similarly opposed to
the notion of meritocracy. After the former learns about the hereditary link
between Linguini and Gusteau, the sous-chef fears losing ownership of the
108 D. MEINEL

restaurant to the legally entitled garbage boy; similarly food critic Anton
Ego intends to stem Linguini’s ascent because the idea of a celebration of
the garbage boy as the best chef in Paris disgusts Ego. While Skinner hopes
to avoid any public inquiry into Linguini’s familial background to ensure
his continued possession of the restaurant and Ego is motivated to dem-
onstrate the falseness of the Gusteaudian motto “anyone can cook,” both
villains aim to maintain established social orders. Portrayed in orientalist
stereotypes or as hyper-white figures, the avaricious cook and the elitist
critic feel threatened by the ordinary-white Linguini and hope to end his
success story (seemingly) based on hard work and talent.
In his seminal White (1997), Richard Dyer locates the semblance
between the imagery of “[e]xtreme whiteness” and “[n]on-whiteness” in
their “exceptional, excessive, marked” qualities as both serve to define
ordinary whiteness as “the non-particular position […] the position that
claims to speak for and embody the commonality of humanity” (222–223).
Particularly extreme whiteness—what I label hyper-whiteness—often func-
tions to exteriorize “white racism” (Yancy 5) exclusively to supremacist
ideologies and “preempts any other interrogation of racism by […] society
at large” (Daniels 25). Consequently, since the hyper-whiteness of Ego
and the non-whiteness of Skinner contest the success myth logic of talent
and hard work, both serve to define the American Dream in Ratatouille
to be intimately connected to ordinary whiteness.
With his distinguished clothes, pale, bluish skin, tall, extremely thin
physique, bony fingers, and sharp canine teeth Anton Ego animates one
prominent hyper-white figure: the vampire. For Dyer, the horror of this
bringer of death and mortality is particularly “expressed in colour: ghastly
white, disgustingly cadaverous without the blood of life that would give
colour” (210). Suitably, the coffin-shaped study of Anton Ego, the skull
design of his typewriter, and the portrayal of his vocation to essentially
feed on the labor, struggles, and achievements of others in Ratatouille
further emphasize the vampire-like and thus hyper-white quality of the
food critic. Even his assumption that his final judgment of any restaurant
will be “the last word” (italics in original, Ratatouille) resonates with the
image of (hyper-white) death. The distinctive English accent (voice-acted
by British actor Peter O’Toole) and the explicit disdain for the egalitarian
belief that anyone can cook add an elitist and classist feature well suited
for the iconographic tradition of vampires. These aristocratic traits further
emphasize the non-ordinary hyper-whiteness of Ego.
 “FROM RAGS TO MODERATE RICHES”: THE AMERICAN DREAM 109

Similarly, Ratatouille portrays former sous-chef and proprietor of

Gusteau’s Skinner as wanting averageness. Rather than a hyper-white
appearance, his depiction in crude orientalist fashion and as morally ruth-
less others Skinner. His pursuit of ever-increasing profits leads him to
capitalize on Gusteau’s popularity by producing different premade frozen-
food meals with the counterfeit of the deceased chef. While his aspiration
to expand the small restaurant business into a global food company may
be indicative of the American Dream, his condescension for this kind of
food,11 his disinterest in anything but profits, and his indifference towards
the demise in the reputation of the restaurant suggest Skinner’s willing-
ness to achieve his dream without adhering to the fundamental coda of
hard work and talent. Under his tutelage, the restaurant had lost its five-
star rating as Skinner never developed any novel dishes and used only old
Gusteau recipes for the menu; the former sous-chef does not desire to
shape his destiny by “being a great artist” and “making something.”
At the same time, Skinner exhibits a readiness to use any (immoral and ille-
gal) means necessary to preserve his illegitimate possession of the restaurant.
Instead of entrusting the asset to its lawful heir, Skinner continues to chase his
dream of wealth by concealing the information from Linguini. Even after his
deceitful and hideous schemes to guard his unwarranted social position fail
and legal order is restored, Skinner abducts Remy to coerce the rat to invent
another line of premade frozen meals for the unemployed chef. His immoral
actions differentiate the sous-chef from Remy who repeatedly resents any
form of misdemeanor: due to his high moral standards, Remy scolds his
family for being “thieves” and for “stealing […] garbage” (Ratatouille) and
abstains from purloining food even when exhausted, tired, and hungry.

LEARNING TO PERFORM: MIDDLE CLASS, THE

RATATOUILLE RESTAURANT, AND (THE AESTHETICS OF)
ORDINARY WHITENESS
While members of lower and upper classes as well as hyper-white and non-
white characters express their disdain for the American Dream myth, the
opening of the Ratatouille restaurant at the end of the animated film estab-
lishes a consensus middle-ground for all these groups. After the health
agency closes Gusteau’s as a result of rat infestation, Remy decides to open
his restaurant. The interior design of the Ratatouille with its unpretentious
tables and chairs, a bar, and intimate furniture arrangements contributes
110 D. MEINEL

to an informal atmosphere further mirrored in the casual clothing of its

guests. Elevated from this main dining area, Remy’s friends and family have
similarly found a new home: their section of the Ratatouille consists of
actual furniture and dishes, and lighted by the warm glow of candles the
rats share stories of past adventures in a laidback fashion. The Ratatouille
becomes the place at which the upper class Gusteau’s and the nameless
lower class restaurant fuse into a visibly middle class space. Thanks to his
talent, hard work, and ethical behavior, Remy acquires his restaurant and
thereby embodies the American Dream; his success story portrays visually
and narratively the success myth as a middle class ideal.12
This American Dream seems to be a decidedly white myth.
Notwithstanding their earlier hesitation and explicit contempt for a cook-
ing rodent, the white characters in the film—Anton Ego, Linguini, and
Colette—decide to help Remy operate his restaurant. The multicultural
kitchen staff of Gusteau’s, in contrast, abandon the marginalized rodent in
disgust after learning about Remy and his cooking talents. However, as only
the white (male) figures learn to welcome the American Dream while the
multicultural characters continue to disdain it, Ratatouille follows an exclu-
sionary tradition in its portrayal of the myth—a historical trajectory which
barred primarily people of color from being able to access the Dream in the
United States and, simultaneously, disavowed this exclusionary practice in
popular representations (cf. Hochschild 26).
This white logic of the success myth is particularly obvious with regard
to the villains of the film. Whereas Skinner attempts to coerce the talented
rodent into cooperation and exploit his talents with illegal methods, the
hyper-white Ego, on the other hand, confesses his delusions in public.
Celebrating the American Dream, the former champion of rigid social
hierarchies announces in his last article:

Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a sin-

gularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have
challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement.
They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my
disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize,
only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a
great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. (Ratatouille)

In the last scene, Ego’s much livelier glow of skin and his lofty and infor-
mal clothes visibly highlight this change of heart. Dining cheerfully at the
 “FROM RAGS TO MODERATE RICHES”: THE AMERICAN DREAM 111

Ratatouille, Ego is at ease and enjoys the pleasures of life now that he has
shed all traits of his hyper-white identity and blends in seamlessly with the
middle class atmosphere of the Ratatouille—much in the same way his
chef, Remy, does.
For the rodent, however, to blend in means to be submitted to a rigid
cultural training. When Linguini and Remy decide to cooperate, they have
to figure a way for the talented Remy to control the movements of the
unskilled Linguini. In a long scene, the rat learns to seamlessly manipu-
late his friend’s limbs and operate his human puppet by pulling its hair.
After Remy has mastered to a degree his handling of the garbage boy’s
body, Linguini’s behavior remains excessive, uncoordinated, and decidedly
gawky the first days in the kitchen. With time, however, Remy perfects his
handling but has to maneuver Linguini through non-cooking situations as
well after the latter develops romantic feelings for his colleague Colette.
Compelled to help his inept friend, Remy expresses these romantic feelings
physically by manipulating Linguini at the appropriate moment. In having
to imitate a variety of human gestures, poses, and feelings, Remy thus learns
to perform a particular kind of humanness: ordinary whiteness.13 This initia-
tion into ordinary whiteness exemplifies the cultivation of the success myth
hero particularly prominent in the Alger stories. In lengthy passages, these
texts portray the formal training their hero receives to become “a reputable
member of middle-class society” (Cawelti 117). By learning to maneuver his
human puppet, Remy acquires an understanding of the human world simi-
lar to the Alger protagonist who has “to learn how to dress neatly and mod-
estly, to eliminate slang and colloquialism from his speech, and to develop
a facility with the stilted and pretentious language that Alger took to be
the proper medium of verbal intercourse among respectable Americans”
(Cawelti 117–118). Both cultural texts, then, link the American Dream to
acquiring a middle class identity by learning “social respectability” (Cawelti
118) which Ratatouille also links to ordinary whiteness.
The animated film mediates this sense of ordinariness and whiteness
in the decision to cast comedian Patton Oswalt to voice Remy. Director
Brad Bird and producer Brad Lewis deliberately opted for an actor whose
star persona had been predominantly shaped by the fragile, insecure, and
geeky character Spence Olchin from the TV sitcom The King of Queens
(1998–2007) at that time. As Oswalt plays a figure unable to maintain
proper middle class appearance due to his inability to establish a hetero-
sexual romance, acquire wealth or an aspiring vocation (Olchin works
as a subway token booth clerk), or adhere to normative notions of male
112 D. MEINEL

beauty, this performance (as well as his stand-up routines) fundamentally

shaped his star persona and forms our perception of Remy. Oswalt (as
Olchin) voices a rodent who defies traditional norms of (physical) beauty
and commercial success with a set of hard-to-market talents. As the actor’s
public persona and his film character intersect, the voice-acting mediates
the animated American Dream.14
The aesthetics of voice, vocal sound, and star persona, however, extend
beyond the viewing experience. As lines and dialogues are generally
recorded prior to the completion of the film, voice-acting performances
essentially guide and inspire the animation process. Indeed, the contrast
between physical appearance and personality persuaded Brad Bird to cast
Oswalt for the lead role, as the director explains: “Patton also has a voice
that sounds smaller, it sounds like it’s coming from a smaller person and
yet there is tremendous force in the personality. So that to me was Remy,
a small guy who has big feelings” (Ratatouille Podcast). But actors not
only play a crucial role in shaping the form, look, and feel of an animated
character during production,15 since the entire promotional campaign
of a Hollywood blockbuster film depends fundamentally on its star
performer(s). As Oswalt advertised Ratatouille in countless interviews,
endorsed the film on various TV shows, engaged with fan audiences,
produced additional promotional material (distributed as DVD add-ons
or via website videos) and walked the red carpet at the premiere, he physi-
cally personifies the rodent protagonist and mediates the character beyond
mere vocalization.
To cast an actor associated with supporting roles primarily distinguished
by their want of talent and their abundance of failure as the protagonist of
an American Dream narrative thus seems to question traditional notions
of the success myth—particularly because Oswalt (as Olchin) continually
fails to maintain a sense of average, ordinary Americanness. Since Oswalt
succeeded in transforming these seemingly undesirable traits into a com-
edy career, however, casting a white voice-actor as an ostracized rodent
protagonist transcending social barriers also positions (yet another form
of) whiteness at the heart of the animated American Dream narrative.

AN EXCEPTIONALIST RAT?
In Ratatouille, whiteness functions as the ordinary, the norm and,
simultaneously, as the prerequisite for the middle class ideal of the
American Dream; after all, in the film either white characters embrace
the core ideas of the Dream or characters acquire an ordinary whiteness
 “FROM RAGS TO MODERATE RICHES”: THE AMERICAN DREAM 113

through training and practice. At the end of the film, then, the middle
class space shared by a diverse cast of characters appears to be undis-
turbed in its celebration of a white-washed American Dream.
Particularly Remy appears to validate this version of the success
myth. Initially part of the poor working class, the rat moves socially
upward through talent, hard work, and ethical behavior, while being
schooled in the social norms of (ordinary) white middle class culture
in the process. Furthermore, although the rodent symbolizes sick-
ness, crookedness, indecency, greed, licentiousness, and debauchery in
Western culture and although the rat functioned historically to demon-
ize Jewish and poor people, in Ratatouille these iniquitous usages do
not confine but validate the success myth. While the rat is often used
to represent undesirable traits and marginalize groups, in Ratatouille
this symbol functions to highlight the exceptionality of the American
success myth, because only in the United States, the animated film
suggests, “a great artist can come from anywhere.” In casting Patton
Oswalt as the voice-actor for Remy, Ratatouille mediates this notion
aesthetically.
Remy’s visible physical difference, however, exposes and eventually
contests the white privilege ingrained in the success myth. In spite of
being submitted to a process of white-washing and having to learn the
social conventions of middle class culture, the rodent continues to be
physically different and cannot pass as human; Remy is unable to seam-
lessly integrate into dominant white, middle class culture and becomes
“sick of pretending […] to be a rat for my father […] [and] a ‘human’
for Linguini” (Ratatouille). Since the white, male Linguini and the
white, male Ego maintain a social structure that denies Remy the ben-
efits of his talent, his hard work, and his moral integrity, both have to
forsake their positions of unmerited privilege to enable Remy to achieve
his American Dream.
Believing that “[t]he world is often unkind to new talent” and that
“[t]he new needs friends” (Ratatouille), food critic Anton Ego yields his
authority to determine the fate of every restaurant—and devotes his time
to the success of one restaurant. In doing so, Ego embraces the logic of
the American Dream and aspires to facilitate its fundamental assumption
of “anyone can cook.” As a regular guest at the Ratatouille, Ego cherishes
his new-found life in the same way his waiter, Linguini, does. By admit-
ting to the staff of Gusteau’s his culinary incapability, Linguini jeopar-
dizes his unmerited position as chef. In doing so, however, Linguini also
114 D. MEINEL

adopts the American Dream myth and dispatches his birth privileges. After
acknowledging his shortcomings as a chef, Linguini begins to wait tables
with a previously unseen grace and elegance. Finding professional (and
personal) fulfillment in his true vocation, for the ordinary white Linguini
the American Dream consists in rising from garbage boy to waiter.
In contesting (one form of) white privilege, Ratatouille fundamentally
transforms the success myth narrative. Although Remy is initiated into
human society by learning to perform whiteness and middle-classness, his
talent, ethical conduct, and hard labor teach the ordinary-white Linguini
and the hyper-white Ego to value meritocracy. As both characters were
deeply involved in denying Remy his due success—whether Ego was pro-
moting a crude social caste system or Linguini was profiting from the
rat’s cooking talents—the recognition of their unmerited privileges leads
the food critic and the garbage boy to abandon their undeserved posi-
tions.16 The film, therefore, not merely presents the rather fantastic inte-
gration of previously marginalized species into the exceptionalist fabric
of the American Dream. Rather, Ratatouille exposes (one form of) white
privilege embedded in the success myth, demonstrates its exploitative con-
sequences, and contests its unmerited quality.

NOTES
1. Already An American Tail (1986) told the story of a rodent separated from his
family in a foreign, at times hostile, country after a long arduous journey from
a land of violence and persecution. With its narrative about the adventures of
young Fievel Mousekewitz fleeing from Russia to America, the animated film
from the 1980s draws much more explicitly on the nineteenth-century Jewish
immigrant experience.
2. Ratatouille powerfully invokes this violent part of American history with its
dark, rainy, and lightning-ridden shots of hanged rats on display in a window
shop
3. My reading of Paris as a metaphorical space is situated within a broader his-
tory of US American appropriations of the city. As Donald Pizer comments in
American Expatriate Writing and the Paris Moment (1996), “expatriate writ-
ers sought to dramatize through the Paris experiences of Americans of sensi-
bility those qualities of life necessary to fulfill the spirit which, they either
stated or implied, were not available in America” (142). This focalization of
the United States through a Parisian lens, however, did not serve to question
the nation. Rather “[e]xpatriate writing is […] often implicitly critical of spe-
cific features of American life even while obliquely celebrating other aspects
 “FROM RAGS TO MODERATE RICHES”: THE AMERICAN DREAM 115

of it” (Pizer 142). These links between Paris, an expatriate experience, and
the formation of US identity are traced to the eighteenth century by Vannesa
R. Schwartz. In her It’s So French (2007) she contextualizes the role of the
city within the struggle for US independence: “During the eighteenth cen-
tury, which saw both the French Revolution and the independence of certain
British colonies, intellectual life in Paris played an important role in shaping
the ideas of revolutionary figures such as Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin,
and Thomas Jefferson” (Schwartz 3). Throughout her book, Schwartz con-
tinues to explore the function of Paris as a space from which and through
which US American identity was negotiated from the American Revolution
to the twentieth century and into the present (cf. 3).
4. Even the narrative structure of Ratatouille alludes to the nineteenth-century
success myth. Popularized particularly by Horatio Alger, in his children’s
books the protagonists embark on a “dangerous passage, in which […] [they
are] torn from community and family and […] thrown among strangers in the
city” (Nackenoff 11). As the Alger stories tell of “individual initiative, perme-
ability of economic and social hierarchies, opportunities, and honest dealing”
(Nachenoff 3), Remy will eventually come to represent a contemporary
Horatio Alger figure successfully climbing the social ladder as “the self-made
man […] against the odds” (Nackenoff 3): a rat succeeding in a human
kitchen.
5. Even the availability of food for honest and hard laborers—the promise that
“food always comes”—resonates with other American Dream narratives of
the nineteenth century. In her Hungering for America (2003), Hasia R. Diner
details the appeal of available food for immigrants in the United States: “The
American workers Sombart saw, and the transplanted Europeans Roberts
studied, ate precisely those items which in Europe were defined as luxuries,
foods reserved for the upper classes, with meat and white-sour bread high on
the list. From the period of the early republic onward, both foreign visitors
and guidebooks written for prospective immigrants repeatedly stressed with
wonder the vast amount of food, meat in particular, available on the tables of
the boarding houses where workingmen lived. They marveled at the amounts
of meat that Americans of all classes bought and ate” (12–13). The notion of
easily available food fundamentally shaped not only the American Dream
myth but the notion of an exceptional America as the “history of food abun-
dance corresponded to an analogous abundance of just about every other gift
of nature: land, coal, oil, wood, water, minerals, the basic resources needed to
stoke massive economic development and to put a virtual cornucopia of food
on the tables of ordinary people” (Diner 14).
6. In juxtaposing the unscrupulous quest for wealth with the trying challenges
of earning an honest living (or food), Ratatouille animates the Alger formula
of character development: “Genuine, honest, and sincere characters are con-
trasted with those who would appear to be so. Those who are human are
116 D. MEINEL

juxtaposed to those without feeling, who are machinelike and who trample
others in pursuit of their self-interest. Those who depend upon themselves,
their characters, and efforts for their advancement are juxtaposed to those who
depend upon luck and who try to create value out of thin air” (Nackenoff 8).
7. Even the narrative structure of Ratatouille alludes to the nineteenth-century
success myth. Popularized particularly by Horatio Alger, in his children’s
books the protagonists embark on a “dangerous passage, in which […] [they
are] torn from community and family and […] thrown among strangers in
the city” (Nackenoff 11). As the Alger stories tell of “individual initiative,
permeability of economic and social hierarchies, opportunities, and honest
dealing” (Nachenoff 3), Remy will eventually come to represent a contempo-
rary Horatio Alger figure successfully climbing the social ladder as “the self-
made man […] against the odds” (Nackenoff 3): a rat succeeding in a human
kitchen. Remy’s ascension from rat to riches with the help of Linguini also
follows the narrative conventions of the Alger stories in the sense that “a
young orphaned boy born into poverty who not only works hard, but is of
solid moral character rises above his origins after someone takes note of his
worthiness and rewards him with an opportunity to become wealthy through
hard work” (Sternheimer 9).
8. In this sense, the Alger stories and Ratatouille are not “the celebrator of capital-
ism,” but instead the “nostalgic spokesman of a dying order” (Nackenoff 6). As
a consequence, the longing for an idealized past in Alger and Ratatouille envi-
sions a version of the American Dream inconsistent with its contemporary
materialist zeitgeist by invoking “[t]he older gospel of self-improvement […]
[and] the importance of social respectability and gentility” (Cawelti 182).
Whether this presumed loss of moral responsibility is read—in analogy to
Alger—to be escapist or “impotent in the new order” (Nackenoff 6) remains
open for debate.
9. In my chapter I concentrate on class and race while omitting a close reading
of gender. My decision is motivated by the highly conventional and norma-
tive representation of the two female characters in the film of which only
Colette, an aspiring cook at Gusteau’s, actually speaks. But as she is marginal-
ized to function only as a love interest for the male human protagonist, the
animated American Dream remains an exclusively male experience and repro-
duces the normative genealogy criticized by Decker.
10. Django’s thick New York accent further accentuates a non-upper class con-
text and suggests a Jewish immigrant experience since “[t]he majority of
[Jewish] immigrants in this second wave of migration settled in New  York
City, particularly in the Lower East Side” (Wallach 82).
11. While discussing a new product for his line of frozen meals, Skinner expresses
his indifference and even contempt for the food he is selling: “Cheap sausages
dipped in batter and deep fried. You know, American. Whip something up.
Maybe Gusteau in overalls and Huckleberry Tom hat” (Ratatouille).
 “FROM RAGS TO MODERATE RICHES”: THE AMERICAN DREAM 117

12. This is an ideal already epitomized by the stereotypical imagery used to por-
tray upper and lower class throughout the film. For example, by situating
“the working class in an intensely ethnic scene,” Ratatouille reproduces “the
persistent middle-class view that anyone still trapped in the working class
must have just gotten off the boat” (Biskind and Ehrenreich 207).
13. The voice-acting already foreshadows this ordinary whiteness. Although set
in France and although most characters speak with a heavy French (or some
other) intonation, their standard American English qualifies Linguini and
Remy as ordinary white characters.
14. Star or celebrity studies since the late 1970s, from Richard Dyer’s Stars
(1979) and Heavenly Bodies (1987) to Christine Gledhill’s Stardom: Industry
of Desire (1991) and Thomas Austin and Martin Barker’s Contemporary
Hollywood Stardom (2003), established the notion of actors and their public
personae as cultural and social texts. The “study of stars,” Gledhill summa-
rizes, “becomes an issue in the social production and circulation of meaning,
linking industry and text, films and society” (xii).
15. Bird describes this approach to animation when talking about Janeane
Garofalo (voice of Colette) and the fact that “animators absolutely loved ani-
mating to her voice” (Ratatouille Podcast).
16. The unmerited privilege of Ego does not consist of a particular incapacity or
failure. Rather, his profession is portrayed to be of no merit, as he tells the audi-
ence: “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a
position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment.
We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter
truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average
piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so”
(Ratatouille).
 CHAPTER 6

“Space. The Final Fun-tier”: Returning

Home to the Frontier in WALL-E (2008)

The 2008 Pixar film WALL-E is set in a post-apocalyptic twenty-ninth

century, in which humanity has left an uninhabitable Earth because its
waste and garbage production led to global environmental destruction.
Robots were left behind to clean Earth until its environment would suit
human life again, but the ordeal of the centuries-long project has dimin-
ished their ranks until one last robot is left functioning on the planet. The
film opens by chronicling the daily routine of collecting and compress-
ing junk into small cubes by this last Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth
robot. WALL-E , however, is shown taking a lunchbox to work, listening
to music at work, hanging up his dirty chains when coming home, and
turning on the TV after a long day of labor, and appears to be more than
a mere mechanical entity. WALL-E hums and giggles, befriends a cock-
roach and is ticklish, rocks itself to sleep and is drowsy in the morning.
WALL-E longs for love and can be scared—the machine has developed
beyond its initial programmed function of garbage compression and waste
allocation. Later, the robot even introduces itself as “WALL-E,” signal-
ing the development of an identity over the course of his 700 years of
labor compressing and stacking junk. As Vivian Sobchack maintains in her
“Animation and Automation, or, the Incredible Effortfulness of Being”
(2009), identity formation is linked to the category of movement and
work, in that “movement and work are figured as self-generating, produc-
ing (or reproducing) curiosity, adaptability, emotion, desire and (dare I
say) ‘intersubjectivity’” (388).

© The Author(s) 2016 119

D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_6
120 D. MEINEL

While “movement and work” function to form identity in WALL-E,

the robot’s development is visually situated in the particular space of a
post-apocalyptic twenty-ninth-century Earth and against the backdrop of
the hypermodern spacecraft in which humanity has found refuge. The
Pixar film thus recurs to the frontier thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner to
define and celebrate its particular form of identity formation, individual-
ity, and social order. This frontier myth narrative and its model of (self-
reliant) individuality are, additionally, linked to consumerism, nostalgia,
and gender, further complicating the simple assertion of “movement and
work” as the premise of identity formation. In this chapter, I will explore
the American frontier myth particularly in light of global environmen-
tal annihilation, technological dependency, and post-human existence in
WALL-E. Its frequent play with focus, zoom, camera angle and movement
as well as its combination of photorealist and traditional art-style visuals
further accentuate the animatedness of the frontier narrative and highlight
the mediation of the myth.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE POST-APOCALYPTIC FRONTIER

The opening shots of WALL-E not merely present a post-apocalyptic Earth
but already invoke notions of the frontier. As the camera travels through
a thick belt of garbage surrounding the planet and passes over a seem-
ingly endless landscape of waste to establish a sublime of environmental
destruction, the only thing moving in this world, WALL-E, is barely dis-
cernible in the landscape. The camera then continues to zoom in, show-
ing the robot collecting garbage, compressing the junk into cubes, and
staking these cubes into a building. Through its dutiful work over 700
years, WALL-E has rebuilt parts of the skyline of New  York out of its
compressed garbage cubes and restored some semblance of civilization to
the wasteland. This visual depiction of Earth situates the narrative along a
particular line where trash wilderness and civilization meet and therefore
localizes identity formation within the specific space of the film’s frontier,
a hostile space created largely from non-biodegradable garbage. In these
first scenes, the remains of civilization are characterized by the little robot
still left functioning in the garbage wilderness. WALL-E symbolizes the
last trace of human life, which has otherwise retreated into space. In the
narrative, the polluted planet becomes the frontier where human-made
wilderness and human civilization meet when WALL-E turns out to be
 “SPACE. THE FINAL FUN-TIER”: RETURNING HOME TO THE FRONTIER 121

not a marker of the end of biological life but instead the first outpost of
human civilization about to return and resettle Earth.
In this sense, WALL-E’s identity formation through movement and work
within a particular space animates Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis about
the formation of an American identity. In his 1893 essay “The Significance
of the Frontier in American History,” Turner argues that the frontier expe-
rience remade European immigrants into US Americans through a form
of rebirth fostered by the unique qualities of the frontier. For Turner, life
on the frontier overwhelmed the European immigrants, depriving them of
their heritage and forcing them to adopt the ways of the Natives for sur-
vival, stripping them “of their past and [giving] them a new and uniform set
of American characteristics” such as individualism and democracy (White
26). Turner further contends that the frontier itself is the vehicle for the

most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colo-
nist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and
thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe.
It strips off the garments of civilization, and arrays him in the hunting shirt
and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and the
Iroquois, and runs an Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone
to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war
cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier
the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the con-
ditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian
clearings and follows the Indian trails. (Turner 61)1

The film animates this transformative process of replacing the pioneers’

European garments with those of the Native Americans when WALL-E
makes its way home and realizes that his tank tracks are falling apart. The
robot then strips himself of its broken parts, and replaces them by appro-
priating new parts from the debris on Earth—the damaged and salvaged
Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth robots scattered along his daily path
suggest that WALL-E has done this several times over the course of his
existence.
Similarly, WALL-E’s home—a salvaged yellow container—also under-
scores the robot’s alignment with early pioneers and the film’s frontier
theme. By being set on a highway overseeing the landscape, separated
and above the junk wilderness, its container-home evokes the tradi-
tion of the cabin iconography which “had long been the chief icon of
122 D. MEINEL

the 19th-century frontier, if not of American culture itself” (White 19).

According to White, the cabin marks

both regression, as the wilderness mastered the settler, and the beginning of
the recapitulation of civilized progress. A cabin, built with simple tools from
local materials, proclaimed self-reliance and a connection with place. But
most of all, the cabin had come to represent progress … [as t]he achieve-
ments of modern America made frontier cabins symbols of progress. (19–21)

White is, of course, referring to the settlers’ conception of the progress of

civilization across the American West. Seen from this perspective, then,
the first minutes of the film function to establish WALL-E as an individual
whose identity was formed by “work and movement” in a hostile envi-
ronment by portraying its daily struggles to restore some form of order
to the chaos of wilderness—a visual and narrative animation of Turner’s
nineteenth-century frontier myth.

MEDIATING THE FRONTIER: CONSUMERISM, NOSTALGIA,

AND DIGITAL CINEMATOGRAPHY

While identity formation in WALL-E occurs in a frontier space, the time

period representing this process roughly spans the twentieth rather than
the nineteenth century. Over the course of its work day, WALL-E often
stumbles upon twentieth-century consumer items. Fascinated by these
aged objects, WALL-E salvages, collects, and stores them in its home.
A videotape2 of the 1969 musical Hello, Dolly! best exemplifies WALL-
E’s engagement with twentieth-century consumer items. The musical’s
score is the accompaniment for its work day, and the little robot painstak-
ingly restages the dance numbers. Moreover, its amorous scenes kindle in
the robot a longing for romance and after WALL-E falls in love with an
Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE) sent to Earth to examine its
environmental status, WALL-E express its affection by attempting to hold
hands with EVE—a gesture it appropriates from the musical. As the video
teaches romance, the Hello, Dolly! cassette also encapsulates twentieth-
century popular culture after all, the videotape was a technology popu-
lar throughout the late 1970s until the 1990s that, in WALL-E, contains
a musical produced in 1969 directed by Gene Kelly, one of the stars of
the genre’s golden age of the 1930s–1950s, which is set around 1890.
This time period spans roughly the industrial period from its height in
 “SPACE. THE FINAL FUN-TIER”: RETURNING HOME TO THE FRONTIER 123

the late nineteenth century to its demise since the late twentieth century.
Characterized most prominently by Fordism, mechanical production, and
bulky machines, the industrial age is marked by mass-produced objects for
a modern consumer society.
WALL-E’s intersubjectivity is thus intimately linked to consumer items
of the twentieth century. And although WALL-E is a sophisticated piece
of twenty-first-century technology, the visible bolts, screws, nuts, chains,
and gears WALL-E is made of highlight its mechanical appearance and
also link the robot to the earlier industrial period.3 The interior decor of
WALL-E’s home further exemplifies this fascination with the mechanical
age already evoked by the robot, its collection of consumer items, and
the sounds of its movements. In a later scene in the film, WALL-E invites
EVE into its home, and, as the former switches on fairy lights, their warm
glow gives the interior and objects a magical aura. Narratively, the scene
functions to reveal WALL-E’s endearing character to EVE and initiates
the drone’s appreciation for the garbage-compressing robot as it (and the
viewer) become enchanted by the fascinating bric-a-brac of twentieth-
century objects, including singing fish, bubble-wrap, mechanical mixers,
and Rubik’s cubes. In contrast to the battered, functional exterior appear-
ance of the container-home, the atmospheric, sepia-hued visualization of
its interior invokes and underscores the delightful splendor of nostalgia
illustrated by these items and embodied by WALL-E.  The beauty of an
older, simpler yet charming past is thereby produced on the narrative level,
through the characterization of the protagonist, the discarded objects left
to rot, and their visualization, down to the very lighting of the scenes set
on the film’s frontier.
While the container scene is a particularly exemplary moment, WALL-E
exhibits numerous scenes in which lighting and cinematography provide
“more of a live action feel of filmmaking to the animation” (Chen) in the
words of award-winning director of photography Roger Deakins. As all
elements of an animated film—from sublime landscape vistas down to the
smallest speck of dust—are digitally programmed on computers rather than
shot with traditional film equipment, director Andrew Stanton consulted
Deakins about the use of lighting and shadows to create a natural look
for the frontier environment in WALL-E. As the cinematographer explains:
“The real world, the natural world that we live in just isn’t as well-lit as your
typical animated world is. There are shadows here. Areas in half-light over
there. And if you can take that into account as you’re planning your camera
movements on a CG production, make those sorts of necessary adjustments
124 D. MEINEL

to light levels as you’re composing your shots, you’ll then wind up with
scenes that look much more naturalistic when they’re up there on the big
screen” (Hill). In addition to the play of light, the animated cinematography
also (digitally) simulates the use of camera movement, depth-of-field, focus,
framing, and zooming to further provide WALL-E with the “live action
feel of filmmaking.” For example, when the clumsy WALL-E attempts to
entice EVE and accidentally crashes into a pile of shopping carts, the camera
moves rapidly in and out of focus to locate WALL-E within the cluster of
metal and debris. Similarly, when in a later scene WALL-E is set adrift in
space, the camera zooms frantically about before capturing the small robot
in the vastness of the universe. In these shots, then, WALL-E appropriates
live-action visualizations as the shaky images, the out-of-focus shots, and
hectic camera movements imitate a hand-held aesthetic which adds to a
sense of traditional, at times even amateur, film-making.4
Parallel to the twentieth-century consumer items WALL-E finds, the
mechanical physique of the robot, and its tenacious manual laboring, the
visual representation of the garbage compressor frames the advanced high-
tech machine as an endearing individual. This individuality is formed in
a garbage wilderness in which, similar to the settlers’ appropriation of
Native garb, WALL-E acquires its self-reliant intersubjectivity with the
help of the numerous artifacts scattered about the environment. Although
this individuality is digitally produced, in appropriating various practices
of live-action and amateur cinematography the film mediates its American
frontier myth. From its depiction of a post-apocalyptic space to its mechan-
ical protagonist and the nostalgia for twentieth-century consumer objects
down to their cinematic visualization, then, WALL-E animates the frontier
thesis in a twenty-first-century context.

GENDERED ROBOTS: MALE GARBAGE COMPRESSORS

AND FEMALE DRONES

Beyond the narrative and visual elements of the film, the portrayal of
WALL-E as a timid male robot and its companion EVE as a threatening
female drone further signals the transformation of the American frontier
myth. Arriving on the devastated planet to search for signs of biological life,
the Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator invites questions about gender
when the drone introduces itself as “EVE.” While the bulky, mechanical,
and technologically dated WALL-E with its visible nuts, bolts, and chains
refers to normative conventions of masculine representations, the elegantly
 “SPACE. THE FINAL FUN-TIER”: RETURNING HOME TO THE FRONTIER 125

floating, hypermodern EVE with its “alluringly polished, streamlined,

even graceful appearance” (Montgomery 10) alludes to similar expecta-
tions of female physique (i.e. smooth skin).5 But by being able to fly and
equipped with a powerful weapon repeatedly used to shoot at WALL-E,
the female-gendered EVE is technologically far superior and physically
threatening to the male cleaning robot. Such a portrayal of an intimidated
and vulnerable male figure undermines normative notions of masculinity
in these scenes.6 As WALL-E is immediately charmed and infatuated by
the visitor, the male robot attempts to hold hands with EVE and hopes to
initiate a romance for which the garbage compressor had been yearning
all along (cf. Bernard 58). While this reversal of stereotypical notions of
love presents “the ‘male’ robot being the one interested in such indicators
as hand-holding and the ‘female’ robot being much more aggressive and
violent” (Bernard 54), WALL-E’s passion for a video recording of Hello,
Dolly! also conjures stereotypical notions of homosexual men enthusiastic
about Hollywood musicals (cf. Bernard 54).
WALL-E’s investment in the film not only functions as one example
of the ambivalent gender roles exhibited by the robots but also signi-
fies “the unnaturalness of romance” as the male robot has acquired its
longing for love from a cinematic text: “romance is not inherited; it is
learned” (Bernard 54). Consequentially, WALL-E’s appropriation of the
heteronormative yet female-connoted cultural practices from Hello, Dolly!
undermines stereotypical representations of heterosexual male identity
just as much as the aggressive behavior of EVE defies stereotypical het-
erosexual female identity representations in order to highlight romance,
gender, and identity as performances.
After the two robots have to take refuge from a sandstorm in WALL-
E’s container-cabin, WALL-E eventually succeeds in calming the aggres-
sive and suspicious EVE. Not only does the male cleaning robot introduce
the female drone to the little pleasures of life such as popping protective
bubble-wrap, he also teaches her romance by showing the hand-holding
clip from Hello, Dolly! Again, this training in “how to act feminine”
(Bernard 57) initially demonstrates the performativity of stereotypical
gender roles yet it also already indicates the hierarchical structure of male
and female, as Vivian Sobchack asserts: “It is only under WALL-E’s tute-
lage and care that EVE becomes reflexively adaptive and creative” (386).
Their brief romance ends abruptly when WALL-E gives EVE a plant
he had found among the garbage and debris. Upon storing the plant in
her body, EVE immediately goes into hibernation mode, from which the
126 D. MEINEL

confused WALL-E cannot wake her. Realizing that he does not under-
stand EVE’s sophisticated technology, WALL-E decides to restage vari-
ous romantic scenes with her. To savor his romantic feelings, he gondoliers
EVE through a river of mud, burns a heart with their insignias into a steel
structure, and watches a sunset with her. Just as the technologically dated
WALL-E is shown to be more qualified, knowledgeable, and apt than the
high-tech scouting drone EVE in finding the only biological form of life, the
immobility and stasis of EVE in these scenes of romance further signal the
beginning of the stabilization of stereotypical gender hierarchies, because
the female EVE is assigned the role of the “mysterious object of desire
who motivates the male lead, but who remains essentially passive herself”
(Pramaggiore and Wallis 329). This ascription and stabilization of hierarchi-
cal gender identities is not yet completed since WALL-E remains insecure in
the dominant position, clumsily stumbling at the end of the romance scene.
This ambiguity slowly disappears throughout the latter part of the film,
as the representation of a dominant masculinity is eventually elevated
above a subservient femininity. While WALL-E liberates humanity from its
intellectual and physical confinement aboard the Axiom, EVE is reduced
to the role of an aide. In a pivotal scene, EVE declares WALL-E to be her
new prime directive, thus rejecting her prior programming and seemingly
asserting her independence, only to immediately choose WALL-E as her
new prime directive; she thereby acknowledges a male-centered hierarchy.
Lessened to merely learn from and support WALL-E, EVE also skillfully
demonstrates that “she has internalized many of the characteristics of the
feminine, nurturing the injured WALL-E” (Bernard 60) after he has been
severely damaged. Thus towards the end of the film, normative gender
ascriptions and hierarchies supplant the portrayal of initially ambiguous
and unstable identities.
Moreover, although both robots eventually cooperate to liberate
humanity from its technological confinement in space, the representations
of physical space further situate WALL-E and EVE within gender hier-
archies which portray the frontier as rugged and masculine and urban
spaces as feminine. In this logic, WALL-E is more knowledgeable about
and competent within the exterior space of the frontier when he saves
EVE from a duststorm and discovers the plant she was unable to find;
EVE, on the other hand, saves WALL-E from ill-meaning security robots
aboard the human spaceship—an interior space marked as both urban and
feminine. Since normative metaphors of space eventually illustrate agency,
any earlier gender ambiguity is eventually resolved. After all, EVE nurtures
 “SPACE. THE FINAL FUN-TIER”: RETURNING HOME TO THE FRONTIER 127

and repairs WALL-E not in the interiority of the spaceship but at the initial
place of contestation: the garbage frontier of Earth.7
In WALL-E, individualism and agency are thus male categories which
are connected to the nostalgia for the industrial period and contrasted
to the effeminate post-industrial period represented by EVE.  More
importantly, the first part of the film establishes and celebrates the supe-
rior male identity being formed on the frontier. The emphasis on this male
frontier individualism becomes even more apparent when contrasted to
the dominant space of the second half of the film: the universe.
After the romance sequence and following weeks of waiting on Earth,
a large spaceship arrives to transport EVE to the Axiom which houses the
last members of the human race. Although EVE successfully completes
her mission to determine whether Earth could sustain biological life forms
again, the HAL-like commanding computer of the Axiom follows its initial
program of ensuring human life in space by hiding information about the
habitability of the planet and by attempting to destroy WALL-E’s plant.
The second half of the film, then, focuses on WALL-E and EVE’s struggle
to liberate humanity from the yoke of technology and corporatism.

THE BRAVE, NEW WORLD ABOARD THE AXIOM

Following EVE as a stowaway, WALL-E arrives on the Axiom to find
humanity in very poor physical and spiritual condition. As humans spend
their entire life in hovering chairs, their bone-density has decreased and
their bodies devolved to the point that all humans resemble each other
with round faces and bodies, lacking muscle tone. Their inability to move
independently from technology positions the humans as in desperate need
of the masculinizing influence of the frontier to maintain their long-term
survival. The moral value of physical work performed in a frontier envi-
ronment is emphasized by Turner. In his essay, he valorizes political rep-
resentatives who retain a relationship to the land, and to manual labor,
contending that a “Pennsylvania, a New  York, an Ohio, or a western
Virginia statesman, though far inferior in logic, metaphysics and rhetoric to
an old Virginia statesman, has this advantage, that when he returns home
he takes off his coat and takes hold of the plough. This gives him bone and
muscle, sir, and preserves his republican principles pure and uncontami-
nated” (83). Turner’s position is illustrated in the film, which explicitly
criticizes the corrupting influence of technology. Moving in their hover-
ing chairs along preassigned paths overseen by the ship’s computer and
128 D. MEINEL

pampered by robots, the human characters are absolutely detached from

their immediate physical environment. Even the communication among
humans is mediated through holographic screens that transmit anything
from incoming calls to advertisements.8 Work and movement are instead
performed by robots which are overseen by the ship’s computer, and all
social interaction is technologically mediated. In contrast to WALL-E,
humans have lost all individuality and the possibilities of identity formation
as they are not able to directly engage with the physical or social world.
What distinguishes life on Earth and on the spaceship, or WALL-E
and what remains of humanity, is WALL-E’s individuality and their lack
thereof—humans do not exhibit self-reliance, a discernible work ethic, or
free movement in physical space that WALL-E, as symbolic of the fron-
tier, represents. At numerous moments during its time on the spaceship,
WALL-E brings unintentional change to the monotonous routines of
human and robot life. Fascinated by this hyper-complex, high-tech world,
WALL-E, venturing through the spaceship, fails to discern its patterns and
routines, and wreaks havoc on the otherwise seamless public transporta-
tion system. As humans and robots crash into each other to avoid colliding
with WALL-E, the robot’s free-roaming exploration effectively demolishes
the highly efficient but extremely regulated system of movement.
Yet, while the Axiom is a utopia in which consumer wishes can be satis-
fied in an instant, the film’s vision of the future does not offer the kinds
of consumer choices we as viewers take for granted in the present. Most
notably, clothing functions not as a marker of individuality, but as a locus
of conformity. All of the humans wear the same attire of futuristic red body
suits; the introduction of a new color for their clothes does not afford
opportunity for personal expression. Despite “blue” being offered as a
color choice and advertised as “the new red” (WALL-E), the immediate en
masse switch to the new color underscores the conformity of the human
characters. Although all consumer needs are instantly satisfied aboard the
Axiom, the items do not provide any sense of individuality as all humans
look the same, eat the same, drink the same, and wear the same.
Their espousal of conformity is further linked to the excesses of capitalism
and corporatism. The Buy’n’Large company symbolizes the unrestricted
consumption and throw-away mentality that has suffocated Earth under-
neath layers of garbage: Abandoned Buy’n’Large superstores, megastores,
ultrastores, malls, banks, transit stations, gas stations, and trains litter the
landscape as prominent as the junk itself. The age-old advertisements for
B’n’L spaceships encountered throughout WALL-E’s journey underscore
 “SPACE. THE FINAL FUN-TIER”: RETURNING HOME TO THE FRONTIER 129

the theme of unlimited consumption gone wrong, as one ad suggests: “Too

much garbage in your face? There is plenty of space in space” (WALL-E).
The company also regulates, maintains, and controls the brave new
world of the Axiom from consumer items to the temperature of the ship
and the cycle of day and night. As is common in dystopian science fiction,
the management and indoctrination of human life begins on the linguis-
tic level as small toddlers are taught that “A is for Axiom, your home
sweet home. B is for Buy’n’Large, your very best friend” (WALL-E).
Consequently, the consumption on the spaceship continues the same
pattern of waste production so harmful to Earth, as tons of waste are
constantly dumped into space.9 Not only has the company expanded
its market share and gained totalitarian control over the daily lives of all
humans, but in doing so, it has usurped political powers as Buy’n’Large
has determined political decisions such as the abandonment of Earth. The
willingness of humanity to outsource and minimize work for effortless
consumption has produced a complete dependency on technology. This
dependency has also led to the loss of political sovereignty. In the logic of
the film and in accord with Turner, the shift from work to leisure as the
main process of identity formation endangers independence, self-reliance,
and self-governance. And, in the animated film, the most removed place
from any exterior influence for unrestricted consumption is space.
In WALL-E high-tech human society is securely hidden away from the
struggle for survival in a spaceship. The computerization and robotization
of this social world made humans indistinguishable from each other and
unable to perform any meaningful tasks. In stark contrast to twentieth-
century political, scientific, and pop-cultural narratives of space as a new
frontier, the film’s universe is a place of complacency, idleness, and leisure.
The film explicitly satirizes the popular science fiction theme of “the final
frontier”: The abandonment of the polluted Earth in favor of a life in
space is advertised with the slogan “Space. The Final Fun-tier” (WALL-E).
The universe is reconfigured into the last stage of safe, non-threatening,
and harmless entertainment void of any frontier characteristics.
In WALL-E, the lack of individuality, the absence of physical encounter
with the world, the total dependency on robots and computers—all dystopian
moments in the film—are situated in the safe haven of space. The universe is
thus most prominently marked by the lack of any frontier characteristics and
therefore as a place to escape to from any hardship, struggles, and dangers
the physical world of Earth may impose. This escapism is further tied to the
moral failure of the environmental destruction of the planet. In contrast to
130 D. MEINEL

the popular imagery of pioneers and space explorers, these humans flee from
the self-made difficulties and challenges on Earth to remain hidden on an all-
inclusive gated community somewhere tucked away in space—which speaks
to the transformation of the familiar twentieth-century frontier myth.

EARTH. THE FINAL FRONTIER

Having encountered the frontier in the form of WALL-E, humanity is no
longer content to remain on the Axiom, and returns to Earth to reclaim the
frontier as their home. The narrative is resolved when WALL-E and EVE con-
vince the captain of the Axiom to shut AUTO down and assume manual con-
trol of the spaceship to journey to Earth. Upon reaching their destination, the
humans take their first shaky steps on solid ground. As the camera pans away,
it reveals large fields of plants growing behind the buildings of New York.
The final shot implies that humanity will find the fertile soil it needs not only
to survive, but to thrive—a relationship to the earth that Turner explicitly
positions as particularly necessary and beneficial. The film demonstrates the
restorative properties of this relationship by carrying the narrative across the
final credits, depicting the resettlement of Earth by the communal efforts of
humans and robots well beyond the twenty-ninth century.
Prior to the end credits, however, the screen fades to black, and from
the darkness, a torch is lit. Its glow reveals an ancient-looking surface
with unrecognizable cave paintings. Over the Peter Gabriel song “Down
to Earth,” the painting is revealed to be illustrating key moments after
the Axiom returned to Earth. Instead of being rendered in the “photo-
realistic” style of the feature film, these brief episodes of Earth’s resettle-
ment refer to various artistic styles of human history: starting with ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphics the different scenes employ Greek or Roman
mosaics, Renaissance coal drawings, and a multitude of nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century art styles.
However, these brief scenes of settling the frontier, with humans and
robots laboring together, are halted at equilibrium. In the second-to-last
shot of the end credits, the future after the twenty-ninth century is marked
by an organic symbiosis of technology and nature. The pastoral imagery of
a barely clothed human fishing at a pond in front of the Axiom overgrown
with plants evokes the ideal of the middle landscape. The credit sequence,
taken in its entirety, and in the context of the film, depicts a vision of a
future in which nature, humanity, and technology live in a state of bliss-
ful equilibrium specifically because humanity embraced the unmediated,
 “SPACE. THE FINAL FUN-TIER”: RETURNING HOME TO THE FRONTIER 131

corporeal experience of the physical world through labor, consistent with

Turner’s argument that the frontier experience produces both self-reliant
individuals and a harmonious society: wilderness is transformed into a gar-
den. The final shot, consequently, uses the pixelated style of early com-
puter games to portray WALL-E and EVE still happily on Earth stopping
in front of a huge tree that—as the camera pans down—is revealed to be
the plant once saved by the couple.
The theme of the frontier myth thus exemplifies the exceptionalist logic
of WALL-E. Illustrating its frontier narrative with the help of various cul-
tural styles spanning Western history, the final credits of WALL-E serve to
universalize the frontier myth by envisioning it as the guiding principle
of the past as much as of the future. But in a twist of twentieth-century
American popular imagery, space has become a secluded, dystopian place
of safety while the old frontier vision of an unsettled landscape (on Earth)
has re-emerged through the image of a post-apocalyptic environment
worth settling. This universalizing of the nineteenth-century frontier
myth is, however, only possible because WALL-E builds on the changed
meaning of the frontier in the twenty-first century.
Historically, Turner’s frontier thesis has been widely condemned and
disqualified by scholars as factually inaccurate, inadequate, racist, and
chauvinistic.10 Academic arguments, however, did not change the popu-
larity and validity of the frontier thesis for the greater public, as Patricia
Limerick admits in “The Adventures of the Frontier in the Twentieth
Century” (2000).11 Because of the constant adoption and appropriation
of the frontier thesis throughout the twentieth century in popular culture,
a late nineteenth-century myth which has been debunked by historians still
functions as a vital source of self-conceptualization in public imageries and
narratives.12
Following its proclaimed closure the idea of the frontier changed dur-
ing the first decades of the twentieth century “from [connoting] territorial
expansion to technological and commercial expansion” (Limerick 86).
This transformation of the myth from a physical frontier experience into
a frontier spirit accessible through imagination, consumerism, business,
and science13 was often and prominently invoked throughout the second
half of the twentieth century in the public spheres. In politics, for example,
John F. Kennedy referred in his presidential bid to a “New Frontier”14 to
advocate his strategy for national greatness which he then used to contrast
and demean “Eisenhower moderation” (cf. Wrobel 145). More famously,
Kennedy also linked the technological advance of science and the explo-
132 D. MEINEL

ration of space to the political, economic, cultural, and military struggle

with the Soviet Union to envision space as this “New Frontier” of national
greatness (vis-à-vis communism). His speeches portrayed “the frontier as
the triumphant but demanding crusade of the American people [that] made
a nearly perfect match with the 1960s search for language to direct and
motivate the American public in the midst of the Cold War” (Limerick 81).
Years after Kennedy, Republican president Ronald Reagan would also use
the frontier theme on numerous occasions to define what he considered
admirable about the United States (cf. Limerick 81–82). Writing in the
early 1990s, David Wrobel therefore attributes the usage of the theme to
both political parties as Democrats and Republicans adapt the imagery and
narrative of the frontier to define and advertise their political goals (cf. 145).
In close relation to the ideological struggle during the Cold War, the
frontier theme was reiterated in popular culture, most famously in the
1966 TV series Star Trek that declares at the beginning of each episode
“Space. The Final Frontier.” But Star Trek was merely one phenomenon
among many others. As Limerick notes, in “the selling of space as ‘the
final frontier,’ the aerospace industry, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, presidents, the news media, and the entertainment busi-
ness collaborated with perfect harmony, with no need for centralized
direction or planning, with a seamless match in their methods and goals”
(87). And although the nineteenth-century frontier experience and imag-
ery was historically used to define, discriminate, and violently persecution
racial, gender, and sexual others, the frontier and the pioneer have appro-
priated a new meaning, as Limerick writes:

Logic and history say that the frontier was, in fact, a place where violence
served the causes of racial subordination, but a more powerful emotional
understanding says that the frontier is where people of courage have gone
to take a stand for the right and the good. For people of a wide range of
ethnicities, when it comes to the idea of the frontier, logic and history yield
to the much greater power of inherited image. (90–91)

Today, as the imagery and the narratives of the frontier and the pioneer
possess positive connotations even among marginalized groups, both sig-
nify and represent a multicultural US American identity.15 Not surprisingly
then, Limerick concludes that the contemporary notions of the frontier
function “as a kind of cultural glue” (92).16
 “SPACE. THE FINAL FUN-TIER”: RETURNING HOME TO THE FRONTIER 133

In this sense WALL-E marks the end point of the reframing and expan-
sion of the frontier myth. From originally signifying a parochial, localized,
white experience to foster US American uniqueness and superiority, WALL-E
re-animates the frontier experience as a universal practice of identity formation.
According to this logic, the corporeal encounter so necessary for individual-
ization can be experienced in any space defined as frontieral: an environ-
ment that fosters the unmediated struggle with a physical, emotional, and/
or mental threat to survival which will eventually produce a self-determined,
independent identity. In this sense, the frontier, as David Wrobel observes,
“has become a metaphor for promise, progress, and ingenuity” (145) embed-
ded in but not restricted to its American context and history.
WALL-E displays this transitional quality not only in its narrative of
post-human individuality and liberty. As the animated film utilizes, for
instance, out-of-focus, high-angle and low-angle shots, frantic zooming,
shaky camera movements, the cinematic text appropriates sophisticated
live-action film practices and a hand-held camera aesthetic. Although pro-
duced entirely on computers, the animated aesthetics of the film repre-
sent a transition from traditional forms of filming to digital technology
by simulating camera zooms, movement, and focus in a visual medium
independent of cameras and traditional film equipment. Similar to its ani-
mation of the frontier myth, then, WALL-E also provides a visual transi-
tion from an older to a modern period in appropriating familiar aesthetics
in a novel medium. This transitional element is highlighted once again
in the concluding shots. As the credit scene ends with an 8-bit image
of WALL-E and EVE holding hands, the film situates digitally produced
imagery within an art history which dates back to ancient Egypt and early
forms of human civilization. Again, these shots reassure a continuation
between the past and the future in an era characterized by digital (com-
puter) technology. In this sense, WALL-E acquires a transitional quality
by linking familiar forms of analog film-making to novel forms of digital
visual production via sophisticated computer machinery to re-animate and
mediate the frontier myth for twenty-first-century sensibilities.
Without a doubt, Turner’s frontier myth categorizes and marginalizes
individuals and groups according to their race, gender, class, sexuality, and
able-bodiedness, and WALL-E can be read as perpetuating these notions
as the film celebrates frontier individualism as the remedy to personal,
political, and social decay. As a globally distributed popular product, the
film thus exemplifies and disseminates the imperialist ideology of the fron-
tier myth through its narrative and visualization.17
134 D. MEINEL

At the same time, the narrative and the images do not merely restage
nineteenth-century discourses of American exceptionality. With its open-
ing shots of a polluted Earth completely encapsulated by gigantic heaps
of waste and its camera flight across endless landscapes of devastation, the
animated film illustrates the global consequences of environmental annihi-
lation. Because this worldwide ecological catastrophe is attributed to the
mindless consumption of a highly materialistic and commercialized society,
the animated film exposes the responsibility particularly of the wealthy
(Western) nations for this dystopian future. Similarly to the theme of global
environmental pollution through unfettered (Western) consumption, the
representation of gender also highlights the transformation of the frontier
myth in WALL-E. Despite the establishment of a male-centered hierarchy
and traditional gender roles towards the end of the film, the initial depic-
tion of the two robots offers a brief glance at non-normative gender iden-
tities. In these short moments, the film exposes gender as a performance,
deconstructs femininity and masculinity as non-essential categories, and, as
Carol A. Bernard maintains, “giv[es] us a glimpse, however fleetingly, of
what queer romance can be” (Bernard 62). As the film furthermore pres-
ents its digitally animated frontier by emulating traditional live-action film
practices, the narrative and the visual aspects of the cinematic text speak to
the changed meaning of the frontier; WALL-E mediates and re-animates
the parochial nineteenth-century American myth in light of the threat of
global ecological annihilation in the twenty-first century.

NOTES
1. While his view of the frontier as “furnish[ing] the forces dominating American
character” (Turner 60) was not uncommon during Turner’s writing, his quali-
fication of the frontier as the unique moment of US national identity forma-
tion (cf. Turner 12, 26) certainly was. The frontier thesis stood in stark contrast
to the prevailing theories at that time which attributed the roots of US nation-
hood to the New England or the Southern colonies: Turner, on the other
hand, “provided a secular basis for American exceptionalism to replace the
theological assertions of mid-nineteenth-century chauvinists. He argued that
the Americans were a unique nationality, race, or people, as the term was used
at the turn of the century. His arguments in favor of exceptionalism created an
implicit leitmotif of both genuine pride and chauvinism. He asserted that the
American identity originated neither in Puritan New England nor in the slave-
holding South but on the moving frontier” (Ridge 14) as the Northeastern
origins were tainted with a religious zeal that was strongly connected to
 “SPACE. THE FINAL FUN-TIER”: RETURNING HOME TO THE FRONTIER 135

Europe as much as the Southern colonies and their aristocratic system mir-
rored European feudalism and depended on the economic trade with Europe.
2. According to imdb.com, the tape used by WALL-E is a Betamax tape. Betamax
was a technology to record and store film that was quickly outdated after the
release of VHS tapes. In spite of their (small) technological difference, I will
simply continue to describe this technology as a “tape” or “videotape” because
Betamax and VHS both signify an outdated technology in 2008 as well as in the
twenty-ninth century.
3. In her chapter “Muscular Circuitry” Claudia Springer briefly examines the
history of robots and mechanization to demonstrate that until the industrial
revolution the automaton (sometimes as a machine, sometimes in more
human-like form) was seen as a “wonderful and entertaining mystery”
(Springer 101). But in the industrial revolution the advanced mechanization
of automatons which began to do human work increasingly threatened
humans as these new automatons, called robots, were represented as “dan-
gerous entities determined to overthrow humanity” (Springer 101). These
robots were not seen “as charming mechanical novelties,” rather they were
judged by their superior abilities that would be of assistance to humans,
endanger, or even replace them. With the substitution of these robots by
newer technologies of “systems dependent on intricate microelectronic cir-
cuitry” (Springer 101–102) in the late twentieth century the sense of threat
and fear shifted again. As these technologies are “incomprehensible and hid-
den from view [...] contain[ing] microscopic parts concealed behind the
computer screen” (Springer 101–102) they are perceived as mysterious, often
fostering anxieties rather than awe. The portrayal of robots as cute, non-
threatening entities already implies a sense of nostalgia for a simpler past.
4. The frequent use of high- and low-angle shots, the shift of focus within a single
shot, the placement of characters behind objects or at the margins of shots, and
the camera zoom from small framing shots to wide-angle set-ups all highlight
the sophisticated play with cinematography. Particularly the camera set-up for
the dialogue scenes in WALL-E develops into a visual trademark of the ani-
mated film as passive characters are (almost always) positioned at the edge of
the frame and out of focus while the active ones are located in the center and
in focus. The sense of “live action feel” is further heightened by the seamless
inclusive of non-animated human actors in an advertisement WALL-E passes
on his daily ride home.
5. Both robots are also distinguished by their work. While WALL-E is shown to
physically engage with the environment by compressing garbage into cubes
and building skyscrapers, EVE simply scans the environment using a ray.
6. Wielding her weapon to threaten and shoot WALL-E, EVE is an advanced piece
of technology literally and metaphorically imperiling the masculinity of WALL-E
who is thrown into severe identity crisis by the superior female robot. The nar-
rative takes this male insecurity to its logical end point. After WALL-E has spent
136 D. MEINEL

the whole day humiliating himself by bumping from one mishap into another, in
the evening both robots demonstrate their technical abilities. In this pivotal
scene WALL-E fails to compress garbage into a cube as it dissolves in front of
EVE’s eyes. Facing the superior female drone WALL-E fails to demonstrate his
one single ability and purpose as a robot—an act of emasculation.
7. The association of physical space with gender also situates both in the larger
context of the nineteenth century in which the general public “understood
American space and American experience in gendered terms” (White 48).
Although these gendered spaces are now a common staple in cultural imagi-
nations, the portrayal of the rugged individual frontiersman and the female
city dweller nevertheless refer to late nineteenth-century imaginary of the
frontier space and experience as “masculine” and the city as “feminine” (cf.
White 48). Says White: “[l]ike most of their peers, they [Turner, Bill, and
Russel] understood American space and American experience in gendered
terms. The frontier was masculine; machines and cities were its antithesis.
They emasculated men, robbed them of their true manhood. Thus cities and
machines were defined as feminine” (48).
8. In a telling scene, two humans are shown floating parallel to one another
while being in conversation with each other. Instead of turning their heads,
both continue to stare into their holographic screen to communicate.
9. Here, the films picks up its eco-critical narrative by demonstrating that even
after humanity has wasted Earth, the Buy’n’Large corporation did not change
its production methods. The company simply uses the “plenty of space in
space” to get rid of the garbage rather than changing its modes of production,
unbeknown to consumers who remain ill-educated and uninformed dupes.
10. As Patricia Limerick further summarizes the professional criticism leveled at
the frontier thesis: “It stressed the individualism and self-reliance of the pio-
neer and had correspondingly little to say about federal aid to expansion. It
concentrated on the history of the humid Middle West to the neglect of the
arid West beyond the hundredth meridian. More importantly, it provided
support for models of American exceptionalism by emphasizing the unique-
ness of the American frontier experience” (144).
11. “After 1968 and the publication of Hofstader’s The Progressive Historians,
there was every reason to recognize that Turner’s Frontier Thesis existed in
its own bewitched historiographical space, a zone in which critiques and con-
tradictory evidence instantly lost power and force” (Limerick 143).
12. A detailed history of the frontier thesis and its significance in the twentieth
century has been researched and analyzed by (cultural) historians such as
Richard Slotkin in his Gunfighter Nation (1992); David Wrobel in his The
End of American Exceptionalism. Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the
New Deal (1993); James Grossman’s edited volume accompanying The
Frontier in American Culture exhibition at the Newberry Library (1994–
 “SPACE. THE FINAL FUN-TIER”: RETURNING HOME TO THE FRONTIER 137

1995); and in Something in the Soil. Legacies and Reckonings in the West
(2000) by Patricia Limerick.
13. “[T]he qualities of the frontier were still shaping the nation’s development,
and among those qualities was individualism. [Guy] Emerson saw no need to
temper frontier individualism in a closed frontier environment. For him, the
frontier had never really closed. Individualism was alive and well and the only
concern was keeping it unbridled and unhampered. The ‘physical frontiers’ of
America might be gone, but ‘the great frontier of American character’ was
alive and well. The only danger, in Emerson’s estimation, was that the
‘machinery of organization and government’ might stifle the ‘intense indi-
vidualism’ that had been nurtured on the old frontier. The solution, Emerson
proposed, was not to temper individualism to meet the needs of a closed-
frontier society, but to glory in the individualistic spirit—to keep the frontier
alive by keeping its spirits alive. The physical frontier was easily replaced with
new frontiers of business enterprise” (Wrobel 100).
14. As early as 1944, President Roosevelt and Vannevar Bush (working as his sci-
ence advisor) defined science as a new frontier and laid the foundation that
made the promotion of “space exploration and development […] the nation’s
most-committed and persistent users of the frontier analogy” (Limerick 86)
later under Kennedy.
15. “The frontier of an expanding and confident nation; the frontier of cultural
interpenetration; the frontier of contracting rural settlements; the frontier of
science, technology, and space; the frontier of civil rights where black pio-
neers ventured and persevered; the frontiers between nations in Europe, Asia,
and Africa; la frontera of the Rio Grande and the deserts of the Southwestern
United States and northern Mexico—somewhere in the midst of this weird
hodgepodge of frontier and pioneer imagery lie important lessons about the
American identity, sense of history, and direction for the future” (Limerick
92).
16. In a similar vein Richard White concludes in “Frederick Jackson Turner and
Buffalo Bill” (1994) that, notwithstanding the racist and gendered history of
the frontier and the frontier thesis, “[i]n a country with so many variants of
actual experience, it is perhaps a good thing to find imaginative coherence in a
set of stories that accept change and conflict as givens. When we all mount up,
when we assume the right to inhabit and retell a common past, then there
seems to be a unity among us that transcends, without erasing, our differ-
ences” (55).
17. Due to its geographical setting in a US American space and its animation of
the frontier myth, the film portrays the mechanical protagonist as a US
American savior of humankind. This humanity similarly exhibits highly
monocultural features. Neither in physical appearance nor in language or cul-
tural preferences does the film portray the humans living aboard the Axiom
138 D. MEINEL

to be diverse. As the autopilot is programmed to automatically return the

spaceship to its home location the Axiom descends from space to land near
New York, a geographical correlation that further suggests US Americans to
function as stand-ins for a global population. Lastly, the credit scene of
WALL-E also sustains an imperialist notion when illustrating life on Earth
after humanity has returned. The different shots of the resettlement of the
planet with their reference to various artistic styles of human history are also
deeply rooted in Western traditions as, for example, neither Persian, Chinese,
Mayan nor Japanese cultures are referenced. Although meant to demonstrate
the transcultural and trans-species cooperation of all humans and robots, by
concluding with the US American savior WALL-E, the film restages notions
of translatio imperii—the United States exemplify the logical height of
Western culture and civilization which is dated back to ancient Egyptian,
Greek, and Roman empires. Because of the geographical setting, the mythical
site of the frontier, and the monocultural depiction of humans, US culture
functions as a synecdoche for humankind in the animated film.
 CHAPTER 7

Empire Is Out There!? The Spirit

of Imperialism in Up (2009)

At the beginning of the 2009 Pixar film Up, a young Carl Frederickson is
shown eagerly watching the afternoon program at a local movie theater.
Set in the early 1930s, the program starts with a black-and-white news-
reel montage of the “Movietown News ‘Spotlight on Adventure’” which
provides “footage never before seen by civilized humanity: a lost world in
South America” (Up). Into this Paradise Falls with its “plants and animals
undiscovered by science” dwelling in an “inhospitable summit” (Up), only
explorer Charles Muntz dares to venture. Speaking before a mesmerized
crowd of admirers in a dashing pilot leather jacket and with a white scarf,
Muntz represents the clichéd personification of the adventurer: “attractive,
endowed with personal magnetism, ardent in romance, a natural leader
with […] a sense of duty to a country or cause […] selflessly dedicated
to justice […] honorable, fair, and chivalrous, behaving as a gentleman
and recognizing a code of conduct” (Taves 111–112). The imagery and
rhetoric of the newsreel montage, furthermore, establish a binary opposi-
tion between South American “wilderness” and “Western civilization” in
which the former needs to be catalogued, explored, and conquered by the
superior forces of science and male individualism. But, as the announcer
continues, the heroic figure of the Western explorer is dishonorably
stripped of his ranks in the scientific community after the bird skeleton
Muntz brought from South America is deemed to be a fraud. Exiled from
his intellectual and spiritual community, the news episode ends by show-
ing Muntz boarding his zeppelin to venture to South America again to
prove the existence of the bird, promising to continue the search until his

© The Author(s) 2016 139

D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_7
140 D. MEINEL

reputation is restored. This anachronism in the presentation of the arche-

typal hero-adventurer figure as an ambiguous character is underscored by
the dated black-and-white imagery of the newsreel and the antiquated
voice-over. The cinematic travelogue Up is invoking in its opening scene—
particularly the Fox Movietone News (1928–1963) presented by Lowell
Thomas—further hints at an imperial trope and a sense of antiquatedness.1
Lastly, the zeppelin Muntz boards also underscores the outmoded quality
of the imperial trope which Up establishes from its beginning; after all, the
airship was a highly popular symbol of (Western) technological advance
during its heyday of the first decades of the twentieth century, but lost all
its economic, military, and cultural significance after the zeppelins’ vulner-
ability to fire had been tragically exposed by the explosion of the Graf
Hindenburg in 1937.
As foreshadowed by the first scene, Up portrays imperialism as an archaic
phenomenon and thereafter negotiates its destructive consequences. As an old
man, Carl will not meet the dashing and daring mythic adventurer-hero of his
youth, but a bitter, paranoid, and ruthless maniac—an experience which will
enable Carl to acknowledge his similarity to Charles and abandon the pursuit
of his own imperial fantasy. Yet, despite his eventual reformation, by usurping
the Muntz zeppelin, Carl remains an adventurer and explorer until the very
end of the film. In this sense, both characters have to be situated within the
frame of imperial conquest; and as adventurers they represent “a vision of
what the new empire can become” (Taves 42). The closeness between Carl
and Charles—of which their similarity in name is an obvious sign—demands
an exploration of the ways in which the old imperialism exemplified by Charles
is not merely discarded by the “anti-imperial” Carl, but rather supplanted by a
contemporary form of imperialism embodied by the latter.
In other words, the following film analysis aims to incorporate an
essential element of the American Empire: the perseverance of what Amy
Kaplan has aptly phrased “the tenacious grasp of American exceptionalism”
(“Tenacious Grasp” 153). Kaplan cautions against developing a critique of
the United States “which chastises America for not living up to its own ideals”
(“Tenacious Grasp” 156). Because, for Kaplan, “this approach is both insu-
lar and exceptionalist, as it implicitly makes the United States the bearer of
universal values,” such a perspective simplifies “the complexity of US engage-
ment with the world to a Manichean conflict between a good and a bad
America” (“Tenacious Grasp” 156–157). This dichotomous approach would
reinscribe the search for American ideals in cultural texts at a moment when
the field of American studies moves beyond these confinements.
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 141

The essay “Down Kerouac’s Road to Pixar’s Up” (2010) by Walter

Metz can function as an explication of this danger. In his reading of Up,
Metz explores the intertextual references in the Pixar film to such canonical
texts as The Crowd (1928), Citizen Kane (1941), The Aviator (2004), and
On the Road (1957) to demonstrate that in contrast to the larger-than-life
characters of a Howard Hughes, Charles Foster Kane, or Dean Moriarity
“true humanity [is to be found] in the sharing of a simple moment of hap-
piness in the company of our loved ones” (80). As I will demonstrate, this
interpretation is even more convincing since the film abandons the ideal of
the nuclear family in favor of a non-heteronormative, non-biological, and
transracial community of friends. This queer model of family and kinship
incorporates gender-bending identities, representations of strong female
personae, and the celebration of single parenthood and old age.
But just as the fleeting reading of Up by Metz merely hints at these
progressive images, his intertextual reading also prohibits the noticing
of more ambiguous notions in the film. To assert that Up “glorifies the
common American men like Carl” (Metz 68) is to neglect the closeness
between this “common man” and his idol gone mad Charles Muntz.
Accordingly, by killing Charles, Carl not merely rids himself of his villain-
ous other, but also continues Charles’ imperial legacy by taking possession
of his zeppelin Spirit of Adventure. The denunciation and simultaneous
continuation of imperialism encapsulates a practice of disavowal in which
old-fashioned colonialism is portrayed to be a disruptive, harmful, and
malevolent project (Charles), yet can only be obliterated by the “common
American man” (Carl).
Historically, this notion of justifying imperialism as an anticolonial or
emancipatory intervention dates back to the Monroe Doctrine (1823). By
denying any European nation state or alliance intervention in North or
South America, the doctrine “held in balance New World exceptionalism
and the embattled dialectics of the Americas” (Murphy 2) and asserted the
privilege of the United States to intervene in this “Western hemisphere.”
Consequently, the Monroe Doctrine oscillated between anticolonialism
(vis-à-vis Europe) and imperialism (vis-à-vis the Americas), while simulta-
neously disavowing the imperialist dimension of US policies by casting the
United States as the bearer of democracy (cf. Murphy 6, 145).
Although its outdated model of (separated Eastern and Western) hemi-
spheres does not suit the contemporary globalized world, the rationale
of the Monroe Doctrine continues to inform contemporary US imperial
practices. This datedness as well as the logic of imperialism present two
142 D. MEINEL

vantage points from which I will analyze Up. The outmoded dimension
of the doctrine informs the film narrative which, after all, chronicles the
struggle of two very aged men relentlessly pursuing their (imperial) fanta-
sies—the animation picture, therefore, revolves precisely around questions
of aging, obsoleteness, and adapting to the contemporary world. Through
Carl and Charles, the validity of old systems of belief (i.e. imperialism)
is addressed and their possible adjustment to the contemporary world
explored. Due to the historical perspective I suggest, Up does not exem-
plify a story about “true humanity.” But its re-animation of long-standing
traditional motifs through aged male figures, Asian American Boy Scouts,
zeppelins, speaking dogs, and queer mother-birds mediates the complex-
ity of US Empire in the twenty-first century.

THE IMPERIAL FANTASIES OF JAMES, CARL, AND CHARLES

The figure of the explorer or adventurer, the binary logic of wilderness

and civilization, and the localization of the former within the geographi-
cal space of South America invoke the nineteenth- and (early) twentieth-
century imperial discourse of the Monroe Doctrine. Formulated by
President James Monroe in 1823, the doctrine envisioned a binary South
America in which its newly independent democracies were (geographically
and spiritually) connected to the United States, but required protection
from its aristocratic European colonizers; and a South America needing to
be regulated by the United States (cf. Murphy 6). In her book Hemispheric
Imaginings. The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives of U.S. Empire (2005),
Gretchen Murphy characterizes this “binary between Old World tyranny
and New World democracy” (5) as a tool to justify US interventions in
the Americas while invoking anti-imperial imagery and narratives. The
Monroe Doctrine can therefore be considered an instrument in denying
the imperial practices of “Indian removal and slavery [as] signs of colonial-
ism and tyranny within the democracies of the New World,” at the same
time giving voice to chauvinistic reservations within the United States “that
South Americans were racially incapable of democratic self-rule” (Murphy
5). This disavowal of the imperial quality of the Monroe Doctrine—or
rather its “flexibility” to figure as an anticolonial text justifying US impe-
rial intervention in South (and Latin) America—offers an explanation for
its growing attractiveness throughout the nineteenth and into the first
decades of the twentieth century. As the Monroe Doctrine pronounced
“anticolonialism as American tradition and […] elide[d] the ways in which
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 143

the United States had not always been homogeneously ‘compact,’ had
not influenced other peoples only by the force of example, and had not
abstained from fighting for possessions’” (Murphy 129), this duality of an
“anticolonial tradition” and its appropriation “to justify hegemony in the
Western Hemisphere and beyond” (Murphy 130) continued to be one
pillar of US Empire throughout most of the twentieth century.
At the turn of the twentieth century, this “anti-imperialist imperial-
ism” (Kelleter, “Transnationalism” 31) persisted in popular opinion and
fundamentally shaped political discourse. President Theodore Roosevelt,
for example, rationalized his Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine by
asserting that “to keep the region [Latin America] stable and prosper-
ous, the United States might be forced to intervene in cases of ‘chronic
wrongdoing, or an impotence’” (Murphy 144). While such sentiments
transformed the doctrine into one principle of (foreign) policy, criticism
of the doctrine began to swell at the same time. With the end of World
War I, the notion of an Eastern and Western hemisphere seemed increas-
ingly antiquated since

[t]he reconfiguration of the capitalist world system and the movement of

the United States toward its core required U.S. citizens to revise sympa-
thies that the Monroe Doctrine expressed for South America. In place of
Monroe’s radical division between east and west, monarchy and democ-
racy, the turn of the twentieth century brought a more pronounced division
in the conceptual location of the United States between north and south,
strong and weak, civilization and “barbarism.” (Murphy 128)2

In addition, the continuous interventions of the United States in Latin

and South American countries fueled criticism of the doctrine from
these societies. Because the Monroe Doctrine asserted the right of self-
determination for a nation, Latin and South Americans condemned the
hypocrisy of denying their countries this right and furthered the increas-
ing doubts about the doctrine in the 1920s and 1930s (cf. Murphy
146–147). Its authority in and validity for official US politics ended when
Undersecretary of State Reuben Clark “retract[ed] Roosevelt’s Corollary
in the 1930 Clark Memorandum, which stated that the Doctrine should
no longer be used to justify US intervention in Latin American affairs”
(Murphy 147).
With the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the expansion of the Empire
of Japan, and the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy, and Spain, however,
144 D. MEINEL

the essential premise of the Monroe Doctrine was easily adapted to the
context of the 1930s—particularly with its conceptualization of the United
States as an opponent of the expansionist and imperialist doctrines of Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union (cf. Kaplan, “Left Alone with America”
12). Throughout World War II, then, President Franklin D.  Roosevelt
utilized the doctrine “as the first principle of hemispheric defense against
totalitarian threat” (Smith 3). Already a vital ideological tool in the wars
with Japan and Nazi Germany, “the Monroe Doctrine remained a power-
ful cluster of ideas” (Smith 4) in the following Cold War by rationalizing
US assistance “for brutal but anti-Communist regimes in Latin America”
(Smith 4). Again, US imperial interventions in the Americas came to
be portrayed and justified as anti-imperial reactions against aggressive
Communist expansion (cf. Murphy 147). Because “the ideas and emo-
tions evoked by the words ‘Monroe Doctrine’ continued […] to influence
the thinking and behavior of American leaders, especially in the adminis-
trations of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Ronald
Reagan” (Smith 5), its essential logic continued to rationalize America’s
role after World War II since “the United States’ professed opposition to
imperialism […] constituted its exceptional standing throughout the Cold
War” (Pease, “Re-Mapping the Transnational” 21).
The demise of the Soviet Union eventually exposed the confines of
the concept of two separated hemispheres as the Monroe Doctrine was
supplanted by notions of “global interconnectedness” and interdependent
networks (Murphy 148–149). Although this idea of two hemispheres did
not suit the post-Cold War world, the fundamental logic of the Monroe
Doctrine persisted as a core matrix of US policies. Continuing to vilify
foreign military engagement as imperial while justifying US interventions as
anti-imperial, “the disavowal of American imperialism persists in the opposi-
tion to new ‘evil empires’” (Kaplan, “Left Alone With America” 12).
In Up, the powerful images and dramatic voice-over narration of impe-
rial exploration and conquest presented in the “Movietown News” do
not fail to make their mark on the young Carl. In an almost educational
fashion, Up illustrates the interpellatory power of film as the boy stares
mesmerized onto the silver screen, absorbing the glorification of adven-
ture travel in his explorer outfit with goggles and pilot cap. Interpellated
into the imperial discourse, Carl wanders through the streets afterwards
carrying a “Spirit of Adventure” balloon, jumping over tiny cracks in the
pavement, and climbing small tree stumps to the voice-over narration of
the previous newsreel. In a playful manner, these shots frame “the boy’s
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 145

banal childhood activities as the work of an epic adventurer […] [as] these
actions become the climbing of Mount Everest and the fording of the
Grand Canyon” (Metz 70). Notwithstanding the tongue-in-cheek tone of
the movie travelogue grandeur, however, Carl is completely enthralled by
the fiction.
His imperial fantasies intensify when Carl meets a young girl, Ellie, in
an abandoned house. The lively girl enacts her own fantasies of explora-
tion, traveling the world, and discovering unknown places to the hail of
“adventure is out there” (Up). Through their shared imperial imagination
and play, the two children become friends, fall in love, and eventually
marry. In a beautiful silent montage, Up chronicles their life as Ellie and
Carl move into the abandoned house of their childhood to enjoy a happy
marriage, but have their hope of traveling to South America continually
shattered by everyday inconveniences. As the years go by, their fantasies
of exploring South America slowly fade away to be supplanted by their
desire for children. After a miscarriage, however, Ellie and Carl are forced
to bury this dream as well, but their love enables them to lead a happy
and satisfying life. And when they finally save enough money for tickets to
South America, Ellie embarks on her final journey.
Instead of spending the last years of his life with his beloved wife, Carl
now has to face a society fundamentally different from his childhood:
Surrounded by numerous skyscrapers, his small two-story house with its
little garden appears to be an anachronism in this booming hypermodern
neighborhood. Out of time and out of place, Carl has withdrawn into an
inner exile after Ellie’s death and responds with hostility to any intrusion
from the outside. After his beloved mailbox is damaged, Carl vents all his
anger, hostility, and sadness by violently hitting a construction worker. As a
consequence, Carl loses his property in a court ruling and is forced to join
a retirement home. Alienated from the contemporary world Carl desires
to escape the bleakness of his present life. As his faded fantasies of adven-
ture and exploration forcefully re-emerge, Carl is inspired by a collage of
his deceased wife which pictures their house atop a waterfall at Paradise
Falls to journey to another space and time—the “exotic wilderness” of his
childhood fantasies. To do so, Carl launches his whole house into the air by
releasing tens of thousands of helium balloons attached to the building.3
Just as at the end of the newsreel montage Charles Muntz had vowed
to restore his reputation by continuing to explore the “unknown wilder-
ness” of South America, Carl is determined to fulfill his fantasy of placing
146 D. MEINEL

his home atop Paradise Falls—an imperial gesture resembling the setting
of a flag and locating Carl amidst the imagery of conquest.4
As Carl rests gleefully in his armchair satisfied with his coup while the
house is floating safely through the air, his escapist journey is interrupted
by a sudden knock at the door: Carl has accidentally taken a stowaway
aboard. The eager Boy Scout Russell had hoped to gain a “help the
elderly” badge by attending in some form to Carl. In his effort to com-
plete all the tasks to become a “senior wilderness explorer,” the Asian
American Russell had been on the porch when Carl launched the house,
thereby ending up stuck on the unusual airship. This unintentional inter-
vention in his plans is but the first episode of disruptions Carl has to face
in pursuing his imperial childhood fantasy.
After the house is caught in a heavy storm, Carl and Russell arrive in
Paradise Falls, but have to drag the floating house through the valley to
get the building where Ellie had imagined it to be. On their journey,
the two encounter a large bird, they name Kevin, and the speaking dog
Dug. As this gang of four slowly make their way to their destination, the
film introduces each of the characters as marginalized, deviating from
norms, and lonely: Dug has been ostracized from his pack for lack of
intellect, Kevin is the rare bird hunted by Charles Muntz, Russell suffers
from the absence of his father, and Carl is an outsider to contemporary
society unable to cope with the death of his wife. And while the first three
characters are immediately drawn to each other and to Carl in particular,
the old man continually disparages Kevin and Dug and discourages them
from following the two humans in his desire to be alone with his memo-
ries of Ellie. But just as Carl is unable to shake off Kevin and Dug, Russell
remains as unruly by repeatedly ignoring orders issued by the ill-tempered
Carl. His inability to dictate his companions’ behavior is not merely an
expression of the powerlessness of the grumpy old man and the (relatively)
independent minds of all the characters, but also a fundamental element
of the reluctant hero: As Dug continues to pester Carl about becoming
his new master, the latter loses his temper and yells: “I am not your master
[…] I am nobody’s master, got it” (Up).
The group eventually encounters the long-lost Charles Muntz who, after
more than seventy years, is still devoted to restoring his reputation by find-
ing proof of the existence of the rare bird species. Initially Carl is excited
to meet his “childhood hero” (Up), but slowly discovers the monoma-
niac, sinister character Charles has become. When the latter detects Kevin
hidden on top of the floating house, Charles indicates to his frightened
guests that he has killed other visitors before, because they had attempted
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 147

to “steal” Kevin. Uncompromisingly pursuing his dream of scientific glory,

Charles has lost all the qualities of the adventurer-hero and in the isolation
of Paradise Falls turned into a remorseless murderer, making his promise
“to capture the beast alive, and I will not come back until I do” (Up) a dark
foreshadowing of his madness.5 Through the fallen colonial hero Charles,
the Pixar film characterizes imperial fantasies as a harmful, totalitarian, and
obsolete ideology; particularly for the imperial agent.6
As Carl has also been trapped in the past with his memories of Ellie, the
resemblance between him and Charles is slowly foregrounded in the film.
After Charles is able to track down Carl, Russell, Kevin, and Dug, he sets the
house on fire to divert Carl and capture the bird. Afraid of losing his dream,
Carl first extinguishes the flames and then refuses to rescue Kevin, because “I
am going to Paradise Falls, even if it kills me” (Up). This fanatic dedication
to a single objective disregards the consequences for Carl and those travel-
ing with him—after all, Kevin had saved Carl from the Muntzian dog pack
earlier. Just as Charles transformed into a schizophrenic murderer because of
the relentless attempt to re-establish his reputation as a trustworthy scientist,
Carl begins to resemble his childhood hero as the old man is completely
transfixed by the imperial fantasy of placing his house atop Paradise Falls.7

ADVENTURE IS IN HERE: REWRITING THE IMPERIAL

FANTASY
Although Carl comes close to being consumed by his obsession, his social
ties to Kevin, Dug, and Russell save him from ending up like Charles. After
Carl and Russell complete their mission to pull the house to its designated
spot, the Boy Scout—being fed up with the bickering old man—uses some
of the remaining balloons to build a small aircraft and ventures off to
rescue his bird friend Kevin. With Russell gone and the house at its final
destination, Carl has accomplished his dream. The imagery and the extra-
diegetic music, however, cast doubt on this moment of triumph: After
the long and difficult journey, the house is devastated and in a miserable
condition; broken furniture and personal belongings are scattered every-
where and dull, gray colors further illustrate the disarrayed interior. To the
minimal sounds of an extra-diegetic sad oboe tune, Carl begins to clean
his living room. As he sits down in his beloved armchair, surrounded by
the emptiness and dullness of the house, and to the silence of a muted
soundtrack, a high-angle camera shot captures the dreariness of his life.
The militant pursuit of his dream has led to the destruction of everything
that made this house a symbol of love earlier in the film. Fulfilling his
148 D. MEINEL

(imperial) fantasy, Carl proves to be more successful than Charles, but

remains as isolated and lonely.
Rummaging through Ellie’s My Adventure Book, Carl discovers that
his wife has documented their entire marriage under the section “Stuff
I’m Going To Do.” Her adventure, these pages imply, was not a journey
to some faraway place, but rather to live a rich and satisfying life with
Carl. The book ends with a brief note from Ellie encouraging Carl not
to remain stuck in a past he cannot re-experience: “Thank you for the
adventure. Now go have a new one. Love, Ellie” (Up). These memories
of a meaningful past and the encouragement to continue life redefine the
concept of adventure. While Carl (and Charles) framed “adventure” as a
spatial journey into an “unknown wilderness,” the note left by Ellie char-
acterizes “adventure” as a spiritual endeavor and social practice (i.e. being
part of a community). As this reasoning begins to dawn on Carl, brighter
colors supplant the gray tones of the previous shots to illustrate his eman-
cipation from his fixation on the past.8
After this change of heart, Carl decides to assist Russell in freeing the cap-
tured Kevin. In order to get the building off the ground again, Carl throws
out old furniture, a fridge, and private belongings. As he literally abandons
his past life and rids himself of all the objects that kept his house down (and
himself stuck in the past), Carl is eventually able to fly to the rescue of his
new friends. By disposing of his material possessions, he not only sheds his
emotional attachment to the past, but also discards his monomaniac fixation
on its resurrection. While earlier in the film, damage done to his house (the
mailbox) triggered a violent outburst, Carl realizes at Paradise Falls that
this obsession with the past undermines his present. Through the uncom-
promising and militant pursuit of their respective dreams, the Pixar film
establishes a parallel between Carl and Charles, but offers Carl the opportu-
nity—through his social bonds to Russell, Kevin, and Dug—to disentangle
himself from his imperial fantasy. In the logic of the narrative, the final battle
between the monomaniac Charles and the reformed Carl is, consequently,
about the role of the past—and the grasp of its imperial legacy.
Their final confrontation ends with Charles slipping off the zeppelin and
falling to his death at the same moment the house slides off the zeppelin.
This correlation between the obsession with the past (Carl) and the desire
to explore the “wilderness” for fame and fortune (Charles) presents imperial
fantasies as dated, malicious desires of and for a bygone era; transcending this
mania for the past is deeply intertwined with the denunciation of imperial
fantasies, and vice versa. Through the embrace of his contemporary social
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 149

life, Carl casts off the desire to resurrect his childhood imperial fantasies. In
the logic of Up, Charles’ death concludes Carl’s reformation and liberates
the latter to begin a new chapter in his life by at the end of the film becoming
a surrogate father for Russell. Although the animated feature portrays impe-
rialism as an obsolete fantasy of the past, even detrimental to the present, its
dreadful dimensions are portrayed as particularly harmful for the imperial
dreamer. After all, Up narrates the trials and tribulations of Carl, while the
object of imperial desire is relegated to the margins.9
The film concludes with Russell’s inauguration into the ranks of “senior
wildlife explorer.” After the ceremony, Carl, Russell, and Dug are pictured
eating ice cream outside a parlor while counting red, blue, and gray cars.
This second-to-last shot of an old man, an Asian American boy, and a
speaking dog forming an intimate community encapsulates those qualities
Jack Halberstam deems indicative of a progressive animated feature. In his
book The Queer Art of Failure (2011), Halberstam attributes an emanci-
patory potential to those animation films celebrating a diverse community
by “connect[ing] individualism to selfishness, to untrammeled consump-
tion, and [opposing] it with a collective mentality” (47).10 For him, a
progressive animated film resists “an overemphasis on nuclear family and a
normative investment in coupled romance” as images of “collectivity […]
social bonding […] [and] diverse communities” come to trump notions of
“extraordinary individuals” (47). In Up, the heteronormative ideal of fam-
ily never came fully into existence as Carl and Ellie led a satisfying childless
life. And while Russell may represent the offspring they never had, the
community portrayed at the end of the film transgresses the fantasy of
(biological) familial bliss. This community is not tied together by hetero-
sexual romance,11 nor by normative hierarchies of race, age, nationality,
or species. Rather, the reciprocal relationship between the young Asian
American boy and the aged Euro-American man also includes the speak-
ing dog Dug and the South American queer, single mother-bird Kevin.
This non-genealogical transnational community of outsiders and queer
identities also supplants the obsolete imperial fantasies Charles embodies.
Instead of the exhilarating adventure of the exceptional individual conquer-
ing an “unknown wilderness,” the film cherishes mundane moments of life
shared with others. In this light, counting cars not simply invokes some of
the fondest memories Russell had of his father, but rather elevates benign
activities above an imperial agenda of conquest, fame, and fortune. In this
sense, the film cherishes “the ordinary American life, not the one which
reaches for the heights of fame and fortune” (Metz 67) and corresponds
150 D. MEINEL

to the progressive narrative category portraying an “animated world of

triumph for the little guys” (Halberstam 47). As an empire-critical text, Up
highlights the repercussions of imperial fantasies for the imperial dreamer—
the threat of interpellation12—and envisions an alternative communal expe-
rience at the end.

THE SPIRIT OF THE INFORMAL EMPIRE

This cautionary tale about the dangers of imperialism for the imperialist
agent continues the imperial trope, nonetheless, as the plight of the per-
petrator marginalizes the colonized yet again. This tenacity of the impe-
rial logic is particularly visible in the portrayal of the indigenous Kevin.
Presented as an intellectually inferior character, the illustration of the
South American native perpetuates familiar imperial tropes by reproduc-
ing the colonial dichotomy of nature and culture (cf. Mignolo 81–82): As
an animal without any technological knowledge or cultural sophistication,
the South American native Kevin is naturalized as another feature of the
scenery of Paradise Falls—particularly her inability to speak differentiates
Kevin from all other (human or animal) characters in the film.13 When
the US American “wilderness explorer” Russell further names the South
American mother-bird “Kevin” and simultaneously misrecognizes her, this
queering of gender has to be situated within a history of imperial practices
which utilizes strategies of othering to establish hierarchies of inferiority
and superiority. Tellingly, Kevin is also the only character in the film whose
vocal expressions are translated, interpreted, and framed by others.14 Thus
when Carl promises to protect the South American native mother-bird
from the ambitions and desires of the imperialist Charles, the narrative
further animates the hegemonial logic of the Monroe Doctrine.
In addition to the normative representation of South American charac-
ters, the film concludes with the (strict) separation of masculine and feminine
spheres. Whereas Carl, Russell, and Dug happily enjoy their ice cream in a
decidedly urban space, Kevin (and Ellie) is left in the “wilderness” of Paradise
Falls. This division enforces traditional gendered notions of imperialism as
the United States are eventually home to the male characters and South
America to the female characters (whether US American or not).
This separation of gender is additionally marked by normative representa-
tions of (im)mobility which “have often coded masculinity as ‘active,’ ‘extend-
ing,’ and ‘mobile,’ and femininity as ‘passive,’ ‘inhibited,’ and ‘stationary’”
(Steinhoff 110). By traveling to South America in a house and later to the
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 151

United States in a zeppelin, Carl and Russell display degrees of mobility

unattainable for the female characters. Although Kevin has been portrayed
as an agile, quick, and mobile bird throughout the film, her inability to fly
restricts her to the confines of Paradise Falls. Ellie has been a similarly active
and agile character at the beginning of the film, but loses her mobility as she
is personified after her death by the house15: In the final shot of the film, the
camera slowly pans away from Paradise Falls where “Ellie” is located perma-
nently atop the valley as Kevin is heard squeaking in the background.
These gendered representations of (im)mobility exemplify broader
notions in US culture since “geographical and social mobility […] have
been of major significance for the narratives of nation-building and
American subject formation” by conceptualizing an “immobilized Other”
in a “highly exclusionary” fashion (Paul, Ganser, Gerund 12). Because
“mobility has been the core of American foundational mythology” (Paul,
Ganser, Gerund 11), the characterization of gender, mobility, and space
in Up complicates a progressive reading as femininity, immobility, wil-
derness, and otherness are compartmentalized in a binary opposition to
masculinity, mobility, urbanity (or “civilization”) and the (US) nation.16
This dichotomy of exclusion and inclusion suggests a highly ambiguous
re-animation of imperialism in Up.
The last shots of the film heighten this uneasiness. When Carl and Russell
take possession of the Spirit of Adventure both also appropriate imperial
power. After all, the airship in Up refers to the luxurious interior design
of the German zeppelin Graf Hindenburg visually, the South American
context invokes the commercial travel route of the Graf Zeppelin, and
the ability to carry other airplanes alludes to US military zeppelins ZRS 4
and ZRS 5. This fusion of various historical zeppelins situates the Spirit of
Adventure within an aeronautic history motivated by commercial business
competition, imperial conquest, and military conflict.17 The combination
of iconographic airships haunts the final shots of Up as the zeppelin is a
reliable and effective tool of transportation enabling Carl and Russell to
comfortably travel anywhere in the world.18
Within the context of imperialism, the expanded (global) mobility
symbolized by the zeppelin additionally illustrates a shift from British to
US American Empire and their modes of imperial control. Brian Larkin,
for example, describes the nineteenth-century British Empire being
“organized through control of seas, postal systems, telegraphic networks,
and chains of wireless stations through which a command and control
structure existed, tying far-flung nodes into a single territorial system.
152 D. MEINEL

The push here was toward tighter integration, faster linkages, greater
centralized control, less autonomy for outlying areas” (155). The relative
stasis of the British Empire is most aptly represented by the deployment
of large military and bureaucratic resources to the colonial periphery to
maintain a very tight, hierarchical control over these spaces. Or, to follow
James Laxer in his Empire (2006): “While an important part of the British
Empire was informal, in that the Union Jack did not fly over it, the larg-
est part of the empire was formally British territory, directly ruled from
London” (20). By contrast, US Empire has to be considered informal as
it is not defined “by settlers and the annexation of territory but organized
around the faster movement of goods and a preference for proxy politi-
cal regimes as long as they guaranteed that speed of movement” (Larkin
155).19 Since US imperialism molds vital economic, political, military, and
cultural “decisions in the countries that fall within the empire” even as
local, regional, or national governments keep legal sovereignty over their
territory, its strategies differ extensively from British imperial practices (cf.
Laxer 20).
Up, animates these competing forms of empire in the way Charles and
Carl sustain social cohesion make use of the zeppelin, and treat the colo-
nial space. By maintaining a tight hierarchy among his dog pack, Charles is
able to employ his numerous animals to establish control of Paradise Falls.
South America, furthermore, remains a foreign and peripheral space for
Charles—a site to extract precious resources from in order to re-establish
his reputation in the imperial center. Living in his comfortable, luxurious
quarters aboard the Spirit of Adventure, while being catered to by his loyal
dogs, Charles continues to preserve the familiar lifestyle of the imperial
center (for dinner hot dogs are served) as he remains visually isolated from
the valley in his dashing flight jacket and with his enormous nineteenth-
century hunting rifle. In an obsolete fashion, even the zeppelin is merely
used as a stationary headquarters rather than a mobile tool of surveillance
and control.
By saving Kevin and her chickens from Charles, Carl and Russell, on
the other hand, align themselves with the local inhabitants and their strug-
gle against imperial usurpation. Leaving the house located atop Paradise
Falls, however, functions as a visible reminder of their deed and manifests
a subtler form of surveillance which rests upon the regulation of space
through symbols rather than physical presence. Additionally, the authority
of the symbol is substantiated by the mobility of the Spirit of Adventure.
Since the zeppelin allows for global mobility, every location in the world
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 153

becomes an easily accessible destination for the neo-imperialist Carl and

Russell as the globe is configured into a single, manageable network.
In this sense, the disavowal of imperialism in Up is made possible by an
obsolete notion of empire as the physical occupation of territory is intimately
linked to Charles Muntz. His disappearance during the 1930s further illus-
trates popular (mis)conceptions about US imperialism. Although some
expansionist tendencies in US history (the Spanish–American war in 1898
and the annexation of Cuba and the Philippines) tend to be acknowledged,
the Monroe Doctrine in the nineteenth century and the advent of totali-
tarian regimes (in Europe and Asia) in the twentieth helped to define US
imperial practices at the turn of the century as a deviation from an otherwise
anti-imperial tradition vis-à-vis European empires, fascism, and communism.
Consequently, the transformation of the all-American adventurer Charles
Muntz into a fanatical imperialist is made possible in part by his disappear-
ance in time.
Furthermore as Charles represents a (supposedly) bygone era of US his-
tory, the depiction of imperialism as a long-lost relict of the past allows to
read Up as a critical commentary on US (foreign) policies: Charles’ reap-
pearance frames the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as (outdated) imperial
endeavors motivated by dubious reasons. This critique, however, rests upon
an obsolete understanding of empire which neglects the “informal” or neo-
imperial qualities of American imperialism after World War II. The portrayal
of empire as a malevolent fantasy and endeavor, therefore, continues to
disregard the persistence of imperialism as Up does not animate a farewell
to US imperial power per se. The zeppelin as a tool of unrestricted global
travel indicates the preservation of imperial agency, just as its name, Spirit of
Adventure, underlines the non-physical quality of empire.
And while the Pixar film may question the logic of imperial fantasies as
leading to a life of social isolation, psychological mania, and violent death,
the narrative does not engage with the experiences of the object of impe-
rial desires. Instead of detailing Kevin’s trials and tribulations after Charles
invades her home, the film explores the damaging consequences of the
imperial fantasy for its potential agent Carl (whose fantasy is similarly
invaded by Charles in the “Movietown News ‘Spotlight on Adventure’”
newsreel). As the (female) imperial object is marginalized, her story is sup-
planted by a portrayal of the dangers of the imperial fantasy for the (male)
imperial subject-to-be.
In this sense, the non-normative moments in Up continue to be
haunted by informal forms of US imperialism. Through the friendship
154 D. MEINEL

of Carl, Russell, Dug, and Kevin the Pixar film offers a vision of a com-
munal ideal transgressing the interpellatory grasp of imperial ideology.
Although Up abandons the patriarchal, heteronormative, monocultural,
nuclear family structure in favor of an unconventional, transcultural, and
transnational community, the film continues to be embedded within nar-
ratives of US Empire. After all, the transgressive community divided along
lines of normative gender assumptions, (im)mobility, and space alludes
to the “well-known nineteenth-century ‘cult of domesticity’ or ideol-
ogy of ‘separate spheres’” which figured prominently as “engine[s] of
national expansion” (Kaplan, Anarchy of Empire 24, 29). While Kaplan
uses a different nexus to explore these issues in The Anarchy of Empire
in the Making of U.S.  Culture (2002), her interest in imperial practices
via Manifest Destiny resonates with my reading of the Monroe Doctrine
in Up. Particularly the reconfiguration of the South American Paradise
Falls as a separate yet integral sphere of US domesticity exemplify the
“paradoxical effect whereby the distinction between inside and outside
is obliterated by the expansion of the home/nation/temple to encom-
pass the globe” (Kaplan, Anarchy of Empire 31). The Pixar film, after all,
does not abandon all forms of imperial power, as the Spirit of Adventure
symbolizes (the potential) continuation of imperial practices with a non-
normative appeal. As the last shots illustrate a blissful, transnational com-
munity between the Americas yet frame it in the logic of the Monroe
Doctrine, Up exemplifies, to borrow from Kaplan, that its visual rhetoric
and that of domesticity “share a vocabulary that runs imperial conquest
into spiritual regeneration [...] in visions of geopolitical domination as
global harmony” (Anarchy of Empire 31).
Even as the last shots of Up suggest a transnational harmony, as a criti-
cal comment on Western interventions in general and the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan in particular, the film weighs the consequences of engaging
in imperial endeavors to establish global concord. Indeed, if the cultures
of US imperialism haunt the national sphere, then the harmful conse-
quences of imperialism portrayed in the film also signal transformations at
home. For one, the portrayal of very old and particularly young age decid-
edly weakens the imperial grasp in the animated film.20 Similarly, although
the Boy Scouts of America organization has been deeply entangled in the
expansionist period of American history, the depiction of an eager Asian
American member further speaks to the changing nature of traditional
imperial symbols.21 And while the Monroe Doctrine constructed Latin
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 155

and South America as a site in need of protection from (European) impe-

rialism, in Up the object of imperial desires is substituted by the trials
and tribulations of the imperial agent. Instead of narrating a story about
Kevin’s fundamental rights to lead an independent, self-determined life,
Up is a cautionary tale about the dangers imperialism extols upon its
agents. This portrayal of the costs of imperialism presents a third instance
of its transformation as the animated zeppelin alters old motifs of empire
into symbols of vulnerability.
In her essay “Zeppelin Fictions and the British Home Front,” Ariela
Freedman details the contradictory notions associated with the zeppelin.
Dubbed a “baby killer” and read as “a sign of the utopian future” at times
(Freedman 54), the zeppelin was imagined to be “[a]n uncanny mix of
machine and natural entity, bridging the sublime and the grotesque, the
awe-inspiring and the monstrous” (Freedman 51). Because the airship com-
bined “apocalyptic and utopian” (Freedman 54) visions of danger and eroti-
cism, excitement and threat, the alien and the familiar (cf. Freedman 61–62),
the zeppelin is defined by Freedman as a “slippery sign” (62).22 In Up this
notion of a “slippery sign” materializes in the tension between the airship
as a signifier of imperial conquest and mobility set against its technological
obsoleteness and physical fragility. Because the zeppelin’s airfare history is
stained by a tremendous loss of life as numerous crew members, passengers,
and ground personnel died due to the aircraft’s technological faults and its
susceptibility to natural phenomena, its vulnerability undermined the func-
tion of the airship as a symbol of Western superiority, civilizational progress,
and technological advancement. Since its susceptibility eventually led to the
abandonment of these airships as a means of travel, the iconography of the
zeppelin in general and of the Spirit of Adventure in particular inadequatly
symbolize US imperial power today.
Consequently, Up could be situated within a long-standing cultural his-
tory of presenting American imperialism as a liberating experience—par-
ticularly its ability to incorporate previously marginalized people, groups,
and ideas such as queer, transnational communities. In doing so, however,
its seemingly all-encompassing, tenacious grasp is thereby altered none-
theless. In their adaptation for contemporary sensibilities, the various sym-
bols of US imperialism in the film not only animate traditional notions of
Empire. The old man, the Asian American Boy Scout, the queer mother-
bird, and the zeppelin all mediate the complexity of the anti-imperial myth
as its twenty-first-century hail differs from its nineteenth-century version.
156 D. MEINEL

NOTES
1. For decades the Fox Movietone News had been a common feature of news
reporting at the cinema. Since these newsreels “pandered to popular tastes
and to the short, tabloid-induced attention span of their audiences”
(Herzstein 314), their choice of themes, imagery, and voice-over commen-
tary perpetuated a decidedly US American perspective on their subject matter
(cf. Henderson 129). Particularly the travelogues were deeply steeped in
colonialism (cf. Gunning 30–31).
2. Particularly the expanding notion of (white) racial superiority undermined the
idea of one coherent Western hemisphere by emphasizing a shared (presum-
ably white) heritage with Europeans: “Coolidge’s racial relocation describes a
shift in both spatial and racial perceptions of proximity. Not only does he point
out the new primacy of ‘race feeling,’ but he closely links it with a reconsidera-
tion of the hemisphere as a meaningful spatial category, which becomes less
important in this turn toward genealogy […] Coolidge sees race as trumping
geography, a device that erases the Western Hemisphere” (Murphy 126).
3. The journey in an airborne house invokes Dorothy’s trip to the Land of Oz
in Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). In his reading of the
novel, Frank Kelleter links its representations of otherness to the need for
tolerating differences, negotiating compromises, and embracing modes of
coexistence. Kelleter further identifies an anti-interventionist motive in The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz he connects to the boxer rebellion and European
imperialism in China (cf. “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” 177–178). Up
eventualy addresses the ethic of difference and the anti-interventionist theme
of the novel.
4. Similarly to the adventurer figure in the film genre, the Pixar protagonist is
“introspective, filled with self-doubts, and agonizing over his duty” (Taves
177). And just as the “[c]olonial adventurers desire to live in a different
realm, hastening to outposts along the frontier as soon as the opportunity
arises” (Taves 177), Carl hopes to escape the dull and hopeless life of the
retirement home by giving up “[t]raditional pleasures, including family and
the comforts of civilization” (Taves 177).
5. The authoritarian hierarchy Muntz established among his crew further indi-
cates the malevolent nature of his enterprise and his character. In order to
catch this rare bird, Charles has bred an army of dogs. The pack lives by a strict
hierarchical order in which their names Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Epsilon
signal their social position. Equipped with speaking devices, the canines refer
to Muntz as their master, while the adventurer considers his animals to be
servants. The dogs not only hunt the bird for the old man, but also clean his
zeppelin, cook his food, and cater to his needs. In the tight hierarchy of the
pack any individual trait or mistake immediately leads to harsh punishment—
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 157

as Dug is continually ridiculed for his lack of intelligence and chastised for
failing to adhere to the harsh military code of the dog pack.
6. This juxtaposition of the two male protagonists recalls Joseph Conrad’s Heart
of Darkness (1902). While Carl can be considered a Marlowe figure fascinated
by fantasies of travel and exploration, Charles resembles the white imperial
hero-figure Kurtz, whose brutality and crudeness exposes the devastating
consequences of (European) colonialism. The notion of a physical journey
into foreign territory which figures as a psychological exploration of (Western)
morality in Up similarly refers to an essential trope of Heart of Darkness. Since
the novella has further been considered to provide “a powerful critique of at
least some manifestations of imperialism and racism as it simultaneously pres-
ents that critique in ways that can be characterized only as imperialist and
racist” (Brantlinger 192), even the debates surrounding Heart of Darkness
correspond with my thesis about the tenacious grasp of imperialism in Up. To
name but two additional parallels: the deconstruction of the hero figure as a
(potentially) subversive gesture (cf. Thieme 27) and the portrayal of the white,
male protagonist(s) as victim(s) of imperial ideology (cf. Hampson 210).
7. In addition to the monomaniac fixation on their dreams, both characters are
also driven by the fetishization of a female figure: Just as Charles desperately
attempts to capture the single mother-bird Kevin to restore his reputation by
any means necessary, Carl clings to his past with Ellie.
8. Crossing his heart, Carl promises to appreciate Ellie’s last wish. This gesture
links Carl not only to his wife, but to the Boy Scout Russell as well. At differ-
ent moments in the film, both had demanded the aging man to cross his heart
when pledging an oath. This connection between the deceased wife and the
young boy had been foreshadowed by the geometrical forms used to illustrate
both characters. As the Pixar animators exclusively used circles and round
shapes to depict Ellie and Russell, the boy visually supplants the wife after her
death. This shift from the bygone adventure of marriage and the one of
friendship/parenthood is concluded when the Boy Scout’s scarf rests on
Ellie’s armchair; the narrative shifts from past to present.
9. While Kevin and Paradise Falls come to embody the imperialist obsessions of
Charles and Carl, the film does not explore the consequences of their objec-
tification. Up neither considers the psychological effects a seventy-year hunt
has on Kevin and his family nor the environmental impact Charles and Carl
may have on Paradise Falls. In highlighting the agony Carl experiences due to
his imperialist fixation, the animated feature has to be situated within an
imperial history which understood South America from a European and US
American perspective (cf. Mignolo xi–xii).
10. Halberstam further asserts that “[c]ontemporary animations in CGI also con-
tain disruptive narrative arcs, magical worlds of revolution and transforma-
tion, counterintuitive groupings of children, animals, and dolls that rise up
158 D. MEINEL

against adults and unprincipled machines. Like the early Disney cartoons that
Benjamin found so charming and engaging, early Pixar and DreamWorks
films join a form of collective art making a narrative world of anarchy and
anti-familial bands of characters” (22).
11. The film remains fairly vague about Russel’s familial situation. His father and
mother are probably divorced and while his father rarely spends any time with
Russell, his mother appears to be similarly struggling with the boy, as her
favorite game, according to Russell, is “who can be quit the longest” (Up).
Even when Russell is promoted to “senior wildlife explorer” at the end of the
film, Carl stands with Russell while his mother is briefly shown in the audi-
ence (Up). This marginalization of his biological family underscores the non-
genealogical quality of the community of friends.
12. As mentioned earlier, the first shots of Up portray interpellation and apparatus
theory in an almost didactical fashion: As Carl is hailed by the imperial agent
Muntz through the newsreel montage, his play afterwards is totally usurped by
restaging the imperial fantasy depicted at the movie theater. By the end of the
film, Carl disassociates himself from his childhood hero and his ideology as
Carl recognizes their harmful qualities. In a similar manner, Walter Metz
locates a disinterpellatory potential in the film, because “Up features a fantasy
narrative in which its spectator, Carl, has broken free of the fantasmatic control
effected by the cinema: he has murdered his Oedipal controller, Muntz, and in
so doing recreated a more healthy real-world relationship free from Muntz, the
big Other” (78). As Carl is disinterpellated from the imperial ideology at the
end of the film, Up offers a cautionary tale about the (dis)interpellatory poten-
tial of film, ironically, through the medium of film.
13. Although Kevin is an intelligible bird, she is unable to use language and com-
municates solely via noises or gestures. When compared to Dug, whose com-
ments and statements emphasize his intellectual limitations, Kevin appears to
be intellectually superior. Despite the differences between Kevin and Dug,
however, both are characterized by their animalistic behavior when, for exam-
ple, Carl attempts to rid himself of their company by playing “catch the ball”
with Dug and by playing “catch the chocolate” with Kevin (cf. Up). The lack
of language skills as well as her instinct-driven behavior naturalize the native
South American and portray Kevin to be inferior to the US Americans Carl
and Russell.
14. In one scene, for example, Kevin scavenges food from the house while Dug
explains to the puzzled Carl and Russell (and the viewer) that Kevin is doing
this in order to feed her chickens.
15. Carl continually speaks to the house by calling the building “Ellie” (cf. Up).
16. The portrayal of Carl and Ellie additionally underscores the shift from non-
normative to normative gender assumptions. At the beginning of the film,
Ellie is the active, even dominant character daring Carl to take risks, continu-
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 159

ously talking to the shy, speechless boy, and defining the rules of their play.
After Carl breaks his arm due to Ellie’s dare, she sends him a little note rolled
into a stick and attached to a balloon (already foreshadowing the motif of the
balloon travel). This moment signals the appropriation of a phallic symbol
which disconnects “the phallus’ naturalized link to masculine morphology by
turning phallic symbols into mobile signifiers that can also be attached to the
female body and to femininity” (Steinhoff 118). Heike Steinhoff identifies
this “reterritorialization of the phallus” (118) as a significant trope in pirate
and action films to signal “female empowerment and subversion” (118) in
spite of the otherwise normative gendered stereotypes in these genres. This
emasculation of the male protagonist in Up is offset in a later hospital scene.
Mirroring the reterritorialization of the phallus by Ellie earlier, Carl sends his
bed-ridden wife a similar note attached to a balloon. The re-appropriation of
masculinity in this shot, however, appears to be incomplete as the film contin-
ues to allude to the trope of male disempowerment. The notion of emascula-
tion is further hinted at when Carl is confined to the domestic space of the
house after the death of his wife; a shot of his petit house among high-rising
skyscrapers visually underlines the theme. The journey to Paradise Falls and
into the “wilderness” of South America can thus be read as an attempt by
Carl to (re-)gain his masculinity—tellingly, during his travel Carl will liberate
himself not only from the Muntzian imperial fantasy, but from a femininity
represented by the heavy house which limits the mobility and agency of the
old man. By the end of the film, Carl has asserted his masculinity by accepting
his social position as a master to Dug, as surrogate father to Russell, and a
protector to Kevin. The theme of a (spiritual) adventure is intimately con-
nected to issues of masculinity and made possible solely through the dis-
avowal of the female mother: just as Russell’s biological mother is marginalized
and the South American Kevin requires the protection of the US American
man, Carl rids himself of his emasculating agent “Ellie” when he watches the
house float from the zeppelin down to Paradise Falls telling Russell that “it’s
just a house” (Up).
17. In his The Zeppelin Story (2010), John Christopher details the different quali-
ties of these airships. The Graf Zeppelin was the first (and only) zeppelin to
travel around the world, in 1929 (cf. 59), and continued to be employed on
risky voyages to expand the scope of long-distance airship travel by embarking
“on a polar expedition to rendezvous with a Soviet icebreaker deep within the
Arctic Circle” (62). In 1930, South America became a major destination of
airship travel as the Graf Zeppelin also established “regular passenger services
between Germany and Brazil” (Christopher 62). Although these trips of the
Graf Zeppelin “served to establish the airship’s apparent dominance of long-
distance travel at a time long before passenger aircraft began operating across
the oceans” (Christopher 60–62), its spartan accommodations were not
160 D. MEINEL

suited for the glamorous romance zeppelin travel invoked. Its successor, the
Graf Hindenburg, was built to provide its passengers a spacious, luxurious
travel experience (to Rio de Janeiro or New York) with an elaborate, lavish
interior design. Most famously—and visually referenced by the Spirit of
Adventure—“[p]assengers entered the underbelly of the airship via a pair of
aluminum stairways” (Christopher 81). In contrast to the commercial
endeavor of glamorized airship travel, the US military issued the production
of two zeppelins capable of “launching and retrieving aircraft in-flight from
the airships’ bellies” (Christopher 71) to capitalize on the technological devel-
opments for armed conflicts. These three iconic zeppelins apparently served as
inspirations for the illustration of the Spirit of Adventure. Their history already
hints towards the broader imperial and militaristic context in which zeppelins
had been invented, designed, and used as their creator Count Ferdinand von
Zeppelin stated as early as 1887: “[T]he importance of airships in the future
will certainly be immeasurable. Not only will they become important in war-
fare; they will be used for civil transportation […] They will also be used on
expeditions of discovery (to the North Pole, to central Africa)” (Count
Zeppelin quoted in Christopher 7). Because zeppelins were attributed a key
role in the warfare strategy throughout World War I by the German Empire
to bomb civilian targets in England, their technological development pro-
gressed “from simple craft that could travel between cities within Germany, to
streamlined leviathans capable of linking the continents” (Christopher 30).
Additionally, the German military used zeppelins to deploy troops and sup-
plies to their embattled colonies in Africa during the war (cf. Christopher 30).
After the war, this idea of using zeppelins for long-distance travel to remote
regions was appropriated by the British Empire as “Great Britain […] with its
far-flung territories, saw itself at the hub of aeronautical development and,
following the successful Atlantic flights of the R34, the airship was seen by
many as the solution for long-distance transportation to link the empire”
(Christopher 39).
18. The credit scene continues to show snapshots of the happy non-normative
community of Carl, Russell, and Dug. While the extra-diegetic song “My
Spirit of Adventure is You” echoes the transformation of adventure into a
daring interpersonal experience, the tune also invokes the normative notions
of an imperial enterprise full of “exotic” dangers such as “cannibals and tigers
[…] gargantuan monstrosities larger than a whale” (Up). To hang “a hun-
dred heads on my wall” (Up) in an endless continuation of yet “another risky
venture” (Up) also captures the persistence of “adventure” as an imperial
trope—an ambiguity symbolized by the image of the zeppelin.
19. In a similar fashion Laxer also describes US imperial practices to guarantee
and secure “the promotion of a system of relatively unregulated free enter-
prise that allows capital to flow freely to all parts of the world, and a system of
 EMPIRE IS OUT THERE!? THE SPIRIT OF IMPERIALISM IN UP (2009) 161

trade that places as few barriers as possible in the way of the ability of multi-
national corporations to access raw materials, labor, productive facilities and
markets in all parts of the world” (72). These economic objectives are inti-
mately connected to maintaining military supremacy as the US armed forces
are “in place to ensure that the United States can protect its access to vital raw
materials such as petroleum and […] free access to all the key sea passageways
of the world” (Laxer 72).
20. The very old Carl and the very young Russell both exemplify a similar expan-
sion of the imperial motif, yet their physical vulnerability and their childish
naïveté deviate from its mere reproduction.
21. In their book The Scouting Party: Pioneering and Preservation, Progressivism
and Preparedness in the Making of the Boy Scouts of America (2010) David
C. Scott and Brendan Murphy explore the sway individuals such as Theodore
Roosevelt or Buffalo Bill had on the foundation and development of the Boy
Scout movement. With their ideas of “the frontier,” Western expansion,
Manifest Destiny, and national identity, the Boy Scouts have to be situated
within an imperial context. Tracing broader social, economic, political, and
cultural phenomena to examine the links between imperialism, the mytholo-
gization of US national identity, and the role of the Boy Scouts, Peter
Macleod asserts in his Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts,
YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870–1920 (1983) that “[t]he tone of mili-
tant patriotism, the concern for individual efficiency within a nationalistic
context, insistence on uniformity and centralization of authority, and the
attraction of Scouting for preadolescent boys—all these traits of British
Scouting took root in America, with due allowance for American nationalism
and the preoccupation of American character builders with adolescence”
(144). Particularly the fear of “imperial decline” (Macleod 138) and search
for a “substitute for the vanished frontier” (Macleod 46) were vital motiva-
tions driving the Boy Scout movement.
22. While Freedman is referring to public responses during World War I, even
after the war, the zeppelin continued to function as a contested signifier. In
addition to its connotations of war, horror, and tragedy, the former weapon
also came to symbolize “a luxury means of travel […] [and] the dream of easy
intercontinental travel and trade” (62).
 CHAPTER 8

“And when everyone is super … no one will

be”: The End of the American Myth in The
Incredibles (2004)

Set in an unnamed metropolis in the 1950s, the Pixar film The Incredibles
(2004) introduces its protagonist Mr. Incredible as an exemplary super-
hero in his early prime. Stopping crime, arresting criminals, saving people,
and helping the elderly, the muscular, broad-shouldered, blond champion
of the helpless and innocent keeps his metropolis safe. But instead of nar-
rating a formulaic story about an epic conflict between the all-American
superhero protagonist and an equally superhuman antagonist, the film
quickly diverges from genre conventions as Mr. Incredible marries the
love of his life, superhero Elastigirl, within the first ten minutes of the
film. In addition, the fundamental threat to the well-being of the superhe-
roes initially emanates not from a supervillain, but rather from the society
the superheroes vow to defend. After stopping a man from committing
suicide, Mr. Incredible is sued for injuring the man during the rescue
and “ruin[ing]” his death (The Incredibles). The success of the lawsuit
encourages others to file for compensation for injuries sustained when
Mr. Incredible saved their lives. As other superheroes are similarly pros-
ecuted, the government has to pay millions of dollars in restitution for the
unintended consequences of the interventions of superheroes. Through a
1950s newsreel montage, the film portrays the changing attitude towards
superheroes as their increasingly negative reputation, “tremendous public
pressure and the crippling financial burden of mounting lawsuits” compels
“the government [to] quietly initiate the Superhero Relocation Program”
(The Incredibles). Under this program “[s]uperheroes were granted
amnesty from past actions under the promise to never again resume hero

© The Author(s) 2016 163

D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_8
164 D. MEINEL

work” in order to become “[a]verage people, average citizens quietly and

anonymously making the world a better place” (The Incredibles).
To be coerced to blend in, to be obliged to be normal, and to be
assigned to a permanent social position present fundamental themes of the
animated film. Jack Halberstam deems this striving for recognition by the
“marginalized” superheroes to be “an Ayn Randian or scientologist notion
of the special people who must resist social pressures to suppress their
superpowers in order to fit in with the drab masses” (47). Indeed, when
the superheroes eventually find the courage to contest the social norms of
their society by working together, The Incredibles animates what Alexis de
Tocqueville described in Democracy in America (1835) as “the tyranny of
the majority” and “voluntary associations.” Thus the narrative mediates
for contemporary audiences what the French scholar deemed to be excep-
tional about the United States in the nineteenth century. In postulating an
American exemption from historical developments in Europe, Tocqueville
not only attempted to rationalize his observations but formulated an idea
that later scholars exalted into American exceptionalism at the beginning
of the Cold War. When the suburban home of the Incredible family is
annihilated at the end of the film, however, a similarly mythologized sym-
bol of American Cold War culture burns to the ground.
As the plane of evil mastermind Syndrome destroys the suburban
home, the cinematic text eventually abandons twentieth-century myths
and symbols of American culture. Instead of mourning for a lost past,
this (re-)animation of September 11, 2001, concludes a process of libera-
tion for the American superhero family. The obliteration of the suburban
home along with the metamorphosis of the hard-bodied masculine hero
and the emancipation of the female superheroes all exemplify unexpected
shifts from Cold War symbols of American culture. As the Incredibles are
freed from social and spatial confinements to engage with the next super-
villain, their individual liberation and their unbounded mobility animates
the logic of a global and unlimited “War on Terror” and its neoliberal
pendant of unrestricted movement (of money, goods, and people). Much
as the Homeland Security Act disassociated “the people from recogniz-
ably ‘American’ ways of life” (Pease, “Global Homeland State” 8) and
the neoliberal undoing of (national) borders, the superhero family severs
its ties to a distinguishable American space so crucial for Tocqueville and
American myths and symbols. With its shots of violent battles, murdered
superheroes, and dead henchmen, The Incredibles eventually animates this
post-American myth narrative in less enchanting aesthetics.
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 165

“CELEBRATING MEDIOCRITY”
After the 1950s newsreel montage, the film skips to its present some
twenty years after the initial events. While Bob and Helen, Mr. Incredible
and Elastigirl, are living the American Dream of home-ownership in a
suburban neighborhood with their three children, all of them struggle to
fit into the daily routines of their suburban lives. The film meticulously
portrays the hardship and misery every member of the family has to endure
from the necessity to conceal their talents: Violet Parr, the oldest daugh-
ter, has such a low degree of self-esteem that she constantly hides from
the boy she adores by using her superpower of invisibility to be literally
not seen. Dash, the son, is constantly in trouble with teachers and school
authorities as the boy is unwilling to restrict the use of his superhuman
speed. While he is never caught or punished for his misdemeanors, the
little pranks highlight Dash’s unwillingness to keep his talents a secret. In
contrast to his sister, Dash complains about having to disguise his abilities
because, as he argues, “our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our
powers made us special” (The Incredibles).
But the film particularly focuses on the suffering Bob has to endure
due to misrecognition under the anti-superhero law. Working as an insur-
ance agent in a nine-to-five job, Bob is constantly frustrated by the cor-
porate system by which he must abide. Much the superhero of the past,
Bob still helps his insurance customers to receive their due payments, for
which his supervisor disparages him. Rather, Bob is expected to increase
profits instead of helping his customers, as his supervisor lectures him:
“A company is like an enormous clock. It only works if all the little cogs
mesh together. A clock must be clean, well lubricated, and wound tight”
(The Incredibles). As corporate life values the ritualized fulfillment of one’s
professional obligations, blending into the communal body, and subordi-
nating the needs of the weak for profits, while talent, individuality, and the
greater good are deprecated, this logic bears semblance to the rationale
behind the superheroes ban earlier in the film. Legally denied his talents
and humiliated by a corporate system fixated on profits, Bob has lost any
purpose in life, as he later protests at home: “It’s psychotic! They keep
creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely
exceptional …” (The Incredibles). The physical slackness of Bob's previ-
ous hyper-masculine, muscular body and its size function to highlight his
frustration and misery, as Bob is literally too large for the small world of
the office cubicles, his little supervisor, and his tiny car.1
166 D. MEINEL

Mandated to hide their identities,2 the Parrs not only suffer individu-
ally—the ban on superheroes similarly affects their family life. At dinner, the
two older children constantly fight, while Helen is preoccupied with the
toddler and Bob remains indifferent to and absent-minded about the whole
situation. Eventually, the tensions spin out of control and all four family
members end up using their superhuman powers to either tease each other
or attempt to contain the fighting. This domestic chaos—full of scream-
ing, shouting, and violence—illustrates the dysfunctional dimension of Parr
family life; only the ring of the doorbell brings the commotion to a halt.
The sound is a persuasive reminder of the outside world, its rules and expec-
tations, calling the Parr family to an order they are unable to maintain.
Pursuing a similar objective, but for very different reasons, evil master-
mind Syndrome also aspires to deny the superheroes their due recognition.
Instead of using legal means or a corporate ideology to sanction these talented
individuals, Syndrome hopes to develop a variety of technological devices
that will provide everyone with superhuman abilities “so that everyone can
have powers” (italics in original, The Incredibles). While during his research
Syndrome also ends up executing some superheroes for his purposes, the
supervillain actually aspires to eliminate the exceptional individuals meta-
phorically: “Everyone can be super,” he exclaims, “[a]nd when everyone’s
super … no one will be” (italics in original, The Incredibles).
In the logic of the film, then, the proclamation of “making everyone
super,” the legal ban of superheroes, and the corporate notion of people
as cogs all express a contempt for gifted and talented individuals—a dis-
avowal Bob and Dash repeatedly bemoan, since making everyone special,
they lament, “is another way of saying no one is” (The Incredibles).3 In
illustrating the importance of individual recognition for a just society and
by exploring the harmful consequences of the will of the majority, The
Incredibles mediates de Tocqueville’s fundamental ideas about the excep-
tionality of American society.

THE INCREDIBLES: A VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION

In Democracy in America (1835) Alexis de Tocqueville begins his portrayal
of American society by asserting that “[n]o novelty in the United States
struck me more vividly during my stay there than the equality of condi-
tions” (9). In the eyes of the French traveler, the absence of predetermined
privileges qua birth differentiates democracy fundamentally from aristoc-
racy. This equality of conditions, as Tocqueville describes, “gives a particular
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 167

turn to public opinion and a particular twist to the laws, new maxims to
those who govern and particular habits to the governed” and continues
“far beyond political mores […] exercising dominion over civil society as
much as over the government; it creates opinions, gives birth to feelings,
suggests customs, and modifies whatever it does not create” (Tocqueville
9). In asserting these equal conditions in the United States, Tocqueville
thus did not primarily “refer to the idea of social or economic justice, but
to the (then revolutionary) idea of equality of rank” (Fluck, “The Search”
38). With these novel social and political conditions a constant competition
for individual differentiation arose, because social positions and status were
not predetermined anymore. From this state of equal conditions, everyone

is forced to take it upon herself to demonstrate her worth to others because

nobody else will do it for her. This is especially true in a society of immi-
grants with great cultural diversity and great mobility because this mobility
increases the frequency of encounters with strangers and creates a need on
the side of the individual to develop commonly understandable forms of
self-representation. (Fluck, “The Search” 38–39)

In this sense, the equality of conditions necessitates a “race for recogni-

tion” not in an economic, political, or social sense, but in the context
of “identity formation in the new system of democracy” (Fluck, “The
Search” 39). Consequently, the quest for recognition in the Tocquevillian
sense entails the hopes and ambitions to individuate oneself in a society of
equals instead of aspiring for a fairer distribution of common resources (cf.
Fluck, “The Search” 39).4
In spite of the democratizing and liberating features of the equality of
ranks, the ensuing race for recognition also fosters novel forms of social
control: in the continual struggle for recognition individuals depend on
recognition by their fellow citizens in order to participate in a demo-
cratic society. When an individual expresses a view deemed too radical or
inappropriate by the majority the individual will be denied recognition,
shunned by fellow citizens, and thus experience a social—rather than a
literal—death (cf. Tocqueville 255–256). This “tyranny of the majority”
(Tocqueville 262) poses an immense threat, as “the rareness now of out-
standing men on the political scene is due to the ever-increasing despotism
of the American majority” (Tocqueville 257). Because of this tyranny of
the majority, democracies are even more efficient in maintaining social
control than aristocratic societies since “[a]utocratic regimes only go after
168 D. MEINEL

the body, but democratic republics enslave the soul” (Gilmore 53). In this
logic, independent thought, dissent, and non-conformism as sources of
political, social, and cultural sovereignty are in constant danger of being
silenced (cf. Gilmore 53). The equality of ranks in democracy thus cul-
tivates a restless, shifting, unstable competition for recognition among
individuals to establish a social position, but does not foster a more diverse
public as the tyranny of the majority curbs deviation more efficiently than
any autocratic regime could.5
For Tocqueville, this threat of conformism could solely be impeded by
the “freedom of association” as “a necessary guarantee against the tyr-
anny of the majority” (192), because these organized forms of reciproc-
ity are training grounds for “self-interest properly understood” (525).
Voluntary associations, then, prime “Americans for civic life by prompt-
ing them to focus on solving concrete problems […] and prevent that
quality from degenerating into either the old-fashioned egoism that ear-
lier moralists abhorred or the equally unattractive, new-fangled individ-
ualism” (Kloppenburg 69). The shared experience of working together
teaches people to transcend their individual interests for the better of
society, while the reciprocity and cooperation, simultaneously, “prevents
a tyrannical majority from stifling dissent through the decentralization of
authority” (Kloppenburg 70). Although a more sober version may define
voluntary associations as “intermediary organizations standing between
the individual and the state” (Villa 216), the freedom to associate leads in
both cases to an extensive variety of political, commercial, and industrial
associations and “others of a thousand different types—religious, moral,
serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very
minute” (Tocqueville 513).6 For Tocqueville, then, this plurality of asso-
ciations as much as the equality of ranks characterizes the United States as
a nation exempt from European feudal history (cf. 189).
When the public coerces superheroes to be “like everyone else,” when
corporate life demands surrendering talent, individuality, and the greater
good to the lubrication of the business machine, and when the supervil-
lain hopes to “make everyone super so that no one is,” The Incredibles
animates the threat of the tyranny of the majority for twenty-first-century
audiences. Similarly, by associating with each other, the Parr family
eventually master all challenges and defy the will of the majority. After
Syndrome and his henchmen threaten the physical lives of the Incredible
family, Bob, Helen, Violet and Dash begin to cooperate and utilize their
superhuman talents. In contrast to the earlier dinner table scene, the battle
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 169

on Nomanisan Island demonstrates an unprecedented accord among the

superhero family. After this first experience, the Tocquevillian “ideal of
reciprocity” (Kloppenburg 70) characterizes Parr family life. By harmo-
nizing their different superhuman talents (strength, speed, dexterity and
protection), by the end of the film the superheroes eventually save the city
from Syndrome and alter public opinion.
In addition to the social threat posed by the tyranny of the majority,
the equality of ranks may also foster selfish and egoistic behavior. If all
members of a society merely consider their individual well-being, the fear
of having to share some of the personal wealth for the better of society
would foster “stupid excesses […] [of] shameful troubles” (Tocqueville
527–528). For Tocqueville, however, the United States are characterized
by an “enlightened” egoism as “[e]very American has the sense to sacri-
fice some of his private interests to save the rest” (527). This “self-interest
properly understood,” the insight that democracy can only prosper if all
its citizens share some of their wealth, is described by Tocqueville to be
“at the root of all actions” in the United States (Tocqueville 527, 526).
Similar to the antidote for the tyranny of the majority, only “reciprocity
or sympathy” can prohibit the descent from “self-interest properly under-
stood” into “egoism or selfish inwardness” (Kloppenberg 70).
This threat of egoism and selfish inwardness is present from the first scenes
of the film. When the young Mr. Incredible in his 1950s heyday disparages a
boy eager to become a superhero sidekick with the words “Fly home, Buddy.
I work alone” (The Incredibles), the arrogance of the superhero not only shat-
ters the dreams of the aspiring boy but also initiates his desire to avenge this
humiliation as Syndrome. Later, the fantasy of working alone leads the older,
married Mr. Incredible to jeopardize and endanger the well-being of his family.
During his marriage, Bob begins to escape the dull monotony of his
life as an insignificant insurance agent by monitoring the police radio
and clandestinely assisting law enforcement with his close friend Lucius
“Frozone” Best from time to time. Using their extraordinary abilities to
help others, the former superheroes do not find satisfaction in their covert
work, because the police consider the two to be criminals engaging in
illicit activities. As an alternative, Bob sometimes withdraws into a room,
or rather shrine, full of old newspaper clippings, children’s drawings and
trophies given to the former Mr. Incredible. Bob nostalgically clings to
his magnificent past while selfishly ignoring his contemporary respon-
sibilities as father and husband. When offered the opportunity to deal
with a malfunctioning robot at a confidential government research facility,
170 D. MEINEL

the thrilled Bob accepts this possibility of re-experiencing his glorious,

adventurous past on Nomanisan Island—without informing his family.7
The name of the island, however, already spells out a warning to Bob’s
egocentric indulgence, as No-man-is-an Island literally foreshadows the
need to abandon the myth of working alone.
As Bob is continually offered more of these clandestine assignments
his life drastically changes: a montage scene illustrates a rejuvenated Bob
as he drives home in new, expensive cars, wears fancy suits, works out to
get in shape, and rekindles the love affair with his wife Helen. Pretending
to go on business trips for his insurance company, Bob pursues his selfish
fantasies by deceiving the family about his new line of work. This house
of cards crumbles when Mr. Incredible learns that he has been betrayed
as well. Imprisoned on Nomanisan Island by Syndrome, who set up the
whole operation of secret assignments to avenge his childhood humilia-
tion, the consequences of his selfish feats begin to dawn on Bob: When
his family approaches the island in search of their father and husband, the
trapped Bob has to witness the destruction of their plane by Syndrome.
After Helen, Violet, and Dash survive the attack and come to Bob’s rescue,
the overwhelmed superhero apologizes for having been “caught up in the
past” (The Incredibles). Pursuing egoistic and selfish ends, Bob has “underval-
ued all of you,” forgotten that “you are my greatest adventure,” and risked
“almost miss[ing] it” (The Incredibles). Despite this confession, only during
the final stand-off with Syndrome does Mr. Incredible learn to abandon his
selfish inwardness. Because he fears not being strong enough to protect his
family, Mr. Incredible orders them to “[w]ait here and stay hidden […] I have
to do this alone” (The Incredibles). At first furious about this relapse, Helen
eventually soothes her husband's fears of losing his family and assures him that
“[i]f we work together, you won’t” (The Incredibles). In working together,
the superheroes form a voluntary association to save the metropolis from
Syndrome’s rampaging and out-of-control robot, alter public opinion about
these exceptional individuals, and cooperate to transcend selfish inwardness as
The Incredibles animates Tocqueville’s mythologized idea of America.8
As the cinematic text portrays the traditional family as the ideal volun-
tary association, the animated film draws on nineteenth-century notions
of marriage. For Tocqueville, public sphere, family life, and marriage were
intimately connected since the latter mirrored “the social and political rev-
olution taking place under our eyes” (Tocqueville 586) and were, there-
fore, “necessary to the founding and replication of democratic order”
(Reinhardt 69–70).9 Family life and marriage particularly enabled women
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 171

to experience a form of liberty comparable to men contracting for work,

Harvey C.  Mansfield and Delba Winthrop assert in the introduction to
their translation of Democracy in America.10 Although often an imposed
necessity, their contractual nature allowed Tocqueville to characterize
nineteenth-century marriage as a voluntary association, because women
could negotiate and decide “with whom they contracted to marry […]
to an unprecedented degree” (Mansfield and Winthrop lxxiii). As “pri-
vate contractual agreements,” marriages offered women some degree of
shaping their destiny through a voluntary, public, and communal associa-
tion since they could “make an informed choice to marry and voluntarily
accept the social constraints marriage brings” (Mansfield and Winthrop
lxxiii, lxxviii). In addition, as young women and wives acquire and inter-
nalize in marriage many of the same practices taught in public voluntary
associations, “they come to understand the marital contract and their hus-
band’s authority as the social contract of liberal political theory was meant
to be understood” (Mansfield and Winthrop lxxviii).
But whereas family and marriage may be understood to function as vol-
untary, contractual training grounds against the tyranny of the majority so
essential to Tocqueville, the Tocqueville revival, and American exception-
alism, The Incredibles appears to illustrate normative notions of femininity
and masculinity with its gendered division of public and private spaces
already manifest in the Tocquevillian model of voluntary associations (cf.
Reinhardt 71).11 Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl, furthermore, come to illus-
trate a story about the plight of the white, middle class man in the gray
flannel suit Bob, his homemaker wife Helen, and their daily life in a subur-
ban neighborhood. Much as Tocqueville omitted the “family experiences
of ‘white’ and ‘black’ workers, farmers, and others” (Janara 52),12 the
animated film seems to privilege white, middle class experiences. Rather
than merely mimicking nineteenth-century ideas, however, the fantastic
superhero narrative set in a modern-day environment, the introduction of
black superhero Frozone, and Helen’s opening statement not to “[l]eave
the saving of the world to the men” (The Incredibles) suggest a mediation
of family, gender, and white privilege for twenty-first-century sensibilities.

VICTIMIZING THE WHITE, MALE SUPERHERO BODY

Although gangsters and villains frequently attempt to pursue their evil
schemes, The Incredibles portrays its 1950s as a golden age of social order
and stability as superheroes intervene in the nick of time to put an end to
172 D. MEINEL

criminality and delinquency. As these extra-ordinary (male and female, black

and white) individuals perform their duty to protect society from wrong-
doings, misfortunes, and catastrophes, good and evil are easily discernible.
Untainted by the hateful violence surrounding Segregation in the historical
1950s, a change for the worse occurs when people begin to demand indi-
vidual rights. Instead of altruism and talent, egoism and “fitting-in” come to
characterize the American public when the demands of victimized groups—
those people Mr. Incredible and his colleagues unintentionally harm while
saving their lives—drive the exceptionalist individuals into illegality. In The
Incredibles, the expansion of individual rights abruptly ends the golden age
of the 1950s and initiates a period in which white (male) individuals are cast
“not only as a minority identity but as one injured by the denial of public
representation” (Wiegman, “Whiteness Studies” 116). Historically, this peri-
odization coincides with the vocal demand for civil liberties and rights in the
late 1950s and 1960s. In portraying the Civil Rights Movement as a selfish
appeal of greedy people, and in representing the Parr family and particularly
Bob as victims of these social changes, the animated film exemplifies how
whiteness and especially “[w]hite masculinity has responded to calls for both
redistribution and recognition by citing itself as the most needy and the most
worthy recipient of what it denies it already has” (Carroll 10). In accordance
with its narrative of white victimization, the film later alludes to affirmative
action and political correctness as further sources of white “disenfranchise-
ment” to conclude in the 1980s—a period revered for its backlash against
critique of white masculinity under the Reagan and Bush administrations.
In this light, African American superhero Frozone illustrates the
attempt to balance a narrative about (white) disenfranchisement, yet even-
tually exemplifies what Hamilton Carroll describes as the dialectical work-
ings of whiteness (cf. 8). Shooting ice and manipulating water, Fro(st)
zone is similarly banned from using his extraordinary talents, opts to pur-
sue his superhero vocation in secret, and at the climax of the film battles
Syndrome and his robot. But the African American superhero not only
functions as a friendly and good-hearted sidekick to Mr. Incredible. Living
contentedly in an expensive downtown apartment, childless, and bicker-
ing with his off-screen partner, Frozone exhibits complementary character
traits to Mr. Incredible—yet, the film does not portray him to be “injured
by the denial of public representation.”
Nevertheless, The Incredibles does not illustrate a nostalgic longing
for the heyday of conservatism under Ronald Reagan, as a look at Hard
Bodies (1994) by Susan Jeffords demonstrates. In her work, Jeffords links
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 173

conservative notions of US national identity to the self-representation

of Ronald Reagan and the popular action hero embodied by Sylvester
Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger. These hard bodies, Jeffords maintains,
not merely represented an idealized self-image of Reagan or “idealizations
of an outdated Hollywood heroism” (Jeffords 25). Characters like Rambo
in First Blood (1982) and John Matrix in Commandos (1985) rather “came
to stand not only for a type of national character—heroic, aggressive, and
determined—but for the nation itself” (Jeffords 25). A case could prob-
ably be made that superheroes in general, and the figure of Mr. Incredible
in particular, exemplify many of the traits Jeffords attributes to her concept
of the hard body. But, more importantly, his family ties separate the hyper-
masculine Mr. Incredible from the hard bodies of the 1980s. In contrast
to characters portrayed by Schwarzenegger and Stallone (or their “softer”
successors Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson) who fought for their wives and
children, Mr. Incredible faces the need to fight along with them.13 Because
in The Incredibles only the superhero family can succeed through recipro-
cal cooperation and by “working together,” the film follows a trajectory
Jeffords anticipates in her book when she traces an increase in family plot-
driven narratives in the (hard body) action film.
Whereas The Incredibles never interrogates its narrative of white victim-
ization, the transformation of the hard-bodied masculine ideal hints at the
altered gender hierarchies in the film.14 In her essay “The Family in Action”
(2004), Yvonne Tasker examines this development in action-adventure
films to similarly contend that the family trope increasingly defines the
genre. While Tasker cautions that “movies in which men are shown to turn
to their families” often “leave gender hierarchies untouched” (“Family in
Action” 253, 257), the (re-)transformation of Helen from housekeeper to
superheroine and the empowerment of her daughter Violet also suggest
that families can be “spaces of possibility” (“Family in Action” 265).

FROM HEROINE TO HOMEMAKER … TO HEROINE, AGAIN

Although Helen may seem to be most comfortable with the ban on super-
heroes, underneath her composed and often tranquil attitude a deeper
dissatisfaction with her life as a housewife looms. As Elastigirl, she fought
crime alongside her male counterparts and proudly announced at the
beginning of the film: “Settle down, are you kidding? I’m at the top of my
game! I’m right up there with the big dogs […] Leave the saving of the
world to the men? I don’t think so” (The Incredibles). However, contrary
174 D. MEINEL

to her declaration, Helen marries, becomes a homemaker, and does settle

down, after the public bans superheroes. Rather than finding fulfillment
in her life, Helen constantly nags at and fights with the withdrawn Bob.
She has also internalized the demand to blend in so much so that she
constantly disciplines and scolds Dash and Violet for using their abilities.
Although her attitude portrays Helen as an obedient devotee of the anti-
superhero legislation, the frustration with her life as a housewife becomes
visible when Elastigirl dons her superhero costume and marvels in disbelief
at her physical change over the years. Once she defies the superhero prohi-
bition, Helen attains her (old) self-confidence as she rescues her husband
from captivity and battles Syndrome along with Bob. The final shot of the
film concludes her liberation from the tyranny of the majority when the
camera pictures Helen alongside her husband: As Bob prepares to battle
another supervillain, she has already geared up for their next adventure.
Similar to her mother, Violet also experiences a fundamental transforma-
tion. Initially shy, timid, and insecure, the teenage girl hides from the outside
world whenever possible by using her ability to become invisible. When Violet
is later dragged into a battle with Syndrome’s henchmen, her anxieties almost
fail her to create a protective force field—her second ability. Closely escap-
ing death, the victory in this confrontation initiates a change of heart. Violet
eventually learns to maintain a steady force field as her confidence increases
throughout the film so much so that at the very end she is able to protect her
family from an exploding airplane. This empowerment also transforms her
personality, as the previously shy and insecure adolescent eventually asks the
school beau out for a date. Having mastered her superhuman talents, in the
last shot the young woman stands alongside her family courageously prepar-
ing to tackle any threat to public safety (and any challenge to her personal life).
With its portrayal of nurturing and protective heroines, however, The
Incredibles genders its superheroes in conventional fashion: while Bob and
Dash utilize their superior talents of strength and speed to either violently
throw, smash, or trash their enemies, the female characters exhibit less
aggressive qualities. Invisibility and particularly the ability to generate pro-
tective force fields ascribe a nurturing quality to Violet. Similarly, Helen
employs her superhuman dexterity most often in a non-aggressive fashion
when she transforms, for example, into a parachute or a boat, or holds
together a (flying) recreational vehicle. Rather than charging into battle,
Helen cautiously sneaks and infiltrates in her attempt to save her husband
and resorts to violence only in moments of severe danger when she uses
her flexibility—a sexualized reference to her femininity—as a weapon.
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 175

However, just as Bob learns to forsake his ideal of lone, rugged mas-
culinity, Helen and Violet similarly transcend their conventional roles of
homemaker and timid adolescent to become equal counterparts to the male
superheroes. Through reciprocity and working together, the exceptional
individuals bond to become the exceptional family. While their normative
whiteness persists unchallenged, the male and female characters transcend
stereotypical gender expectations. This transformation is not only confined
to representations of femininity and masculinity. In portraying white-collar,
middle class life in suburbia as drab and monotonous, The Incredibles already
infers the inadequacy of this American ideal—and the destruction of the
suburban house at the end of the film signals the conclusive moment of
deliverance for the Parrs from the tyranny of the majority. Its annihilation
by a crashing plane liberates the superhero family to intervene against evil-
doers anywhere in the world, and thereby animates the logic of the global
“War on Terror”; this liberation, however, undoes all spatial connections to
any particular American myths and symbols as well.

LEAVING SUBURBIA
After the Incredibles successfully avert his plot, Syndrome kidnaps the
Parr infant, Jack-Jack, to avenge his failed plans. Yet, the family is able to
rescue their smallest member by working together once again: Bob hurls
his expensive sports car—the last symbol of his desire for a heroic past—at
the escaping Syndrome, which forces the supervillain to drop the infant.
While Helen catches the falling baby as Syndrome smashes into his air-
plane, Violet conjures a force field to shield the family from the exploding
aircraft. Although the family survives this confrontation unharmed, their
suburban home is reduced to rubble. In the logic of the film, however,
this obliteration of the house does not symbolize the dissolution of the
American family. On the contrary, since the assault awakens the hidden
superpowers in the infant Jack-Jack, this development completes the inau-
guration of the Incredibles. Similar to the liberation from the corporate
gray flannel suit monotony and conventional gender roles, the annihila-
tion of the suburban home illustrates the transcendence of another 1950s
symbol of American culture.
Writing about 1950s suburbia in Rebels: Youth and the Cold War
Origins of Identity (2005), Leerom Medovoi describes the suburbs “as
a primary Cold War ideological apparatus” of identity formation which
“hailed its subjects […] as white Americans participating in a national ideal
176 D. MEINEL

(the much ballyhooed ‘American dream’)” (19). In his (Althusserian)

reading of suburbia, Medovoi reads the suburban neighborhood not
only as a geographical space but as an ideological site as well. As a means
of social regulation, political conciliation, and extensive consumerism,
the suburbs symbolized nationalism, mass culture, and state-organized
capitalism in American culture shaped by Fordist modes of production,
distribution, and consumption in the 1950s (cf. Medovoi 17).
But with its intrusive form of government and corporatism, the suburbs
also increasingly symbolized the fear of liberal democracy that “the minority
is vulnerable to the ‘tyranny of the majority’ exercised through state power”
(Purcell 40). Already in the 1950s, suburban life and Fordism were increas-
ingly considered to foster conformity and stifle liberty as “the new system of
mass consumption was depriving Americans—and most vitally its men—of
their hitherto distinctive autonomy, and thus diminishing the very value
of freedom” (Medovoi 21). Although suburbia functioned to exemplify
the exceptionality of American culture in the ideological Cold War with the
Soviet Union, this symbol came to increasingly encapsulate anxieties about
the loss of individuality: the demand to fit in, to be like everyone else in
the affluent society illustrates its oppressive nature. In response, compet-
ing notions of individuality emerged to challenge this fear of conformity.
Whereas in the Western genre, for example, the rugged male individual pre-
sented an antidote to the tyranny of the majority, the adolescence fad with its
idealization of a rebellious youth also celebrated “the autonomous character
of American identity, on both the national and individual level” (Medovoi
23). In the 1960s, the countercultural movements similarly rendered the
suburbs a normative space of reactionary ideology. Yet, in The Incredibles nei-
ther adolescence nor rugged individualism nor countercultural ideas present
alternatives to the suburban manifestation of the tyranny of the majority.15
Historically, the expansion of individual liberties increasingly shaped
ideas about a just society as liberal democracy deemed the individual to
be “the basic political unit” (Purcell 40) just as their extension appeared
to be a particularly viable option in light of the oppressive collectivity of
suburban life in the 1960s and the stagflation of a Fordist economy in the
1970s. With the obliteration of the suburban home and the transformation
of traditional gender roles, the animated film thus exemplifies what Nancy
Fraser has described as the convergence of “two critiques of traditional
authority” (Fraser 387–388)—state-organized capitalism and hegemonic
masculinity. While feminism challenged established male privileges in the
era of state-organized capitalism (cf. Fraser 386), a neoliberal paradigm
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 177

supplanted Fordism and its socio-political counterpart, Keynesianism, in

the stagflation crisis of the 1970s. In this twofold criticism of the patriar-
chal nation-state, “second-wave feminism has unwittingly provided a key
ingredient of the new spirit of neoliberalism […] [by] supply[ing] a good
part of the romance that invests flexible capitalism with a higher meaning
and a moral point” (Fraser 384). Instead of leading to a “holistic vision
of a just society” (Fraser 376), the (feminist) demands for individual free-
dom and liberty against an intrusive government were seized by corpora-
tions (cf. Harvey, History of Neoliberalism 42). Voiced not only by second
wave feminism but a wide alliance on the traditional Left, the demand for
“social justice presupposes social solidarities and a willingness to submerge
individual wants, needs, and desires” (Harvey, History of Neoliberalism
41) which was in tension with the movements’ demands for individual lib-
erty. As a consequence, the demands for individual rights had “the power
to split off libertarianism, identity politics, multiculturalism, and eventu-
ally narcissistic consumerism from the social forces ranged in pursuit of
social justice through the conquest of state power” (Harvey, History of
Neoliberalism 41).16 The obliteration of the suburban home along with the
metamorphosis of the hard-bodied masculine hero and the feminist super-
heroes, then, illustrates yet another triumph of the voluntary association
over the tyranny of the majority, but this liberation of the Incredible family
also illustrates the individualist logic of neoliberalism. Just as feminism in
the neoliberal era, the liberating features of The Incredibles end up being
“fraught with ambiguity, susceptible to serving the legitimation needs of a
new form of capitalism” (Fraser 382).
As Dash, in the concluding scenes, is allowed to compete in an athletics
event, cheered on by his proud family, the film eventually animates this
neoliberal “regime of accumulation” (Fraser 386). With his superhuman
speed, Dash easily outperforms his peers, but is encouraged by his par-
ents to win only by a slight margin. The state-mandated equalization of
all people at the beginning of the story is substituted by an unrestricted
contest among individuals. Just as neoliberalism “entails a host of policies
that figure and produce citizens as individual entrepreneurs and consum-
ers whose moral autonomy is measured by their capacity for ‘self-care’”
(Brown 694), The Incredibles envisions a just society in which the excep-
tional individuals are at liberty to use their talents but will self-regulate
their abilities to maintain the notion of a fair competition.
With the annihilation of the suburban home by an exploding aircraft,
however, the cinematic text also draws on more recent historical events.
178 D. MEINEL

The 2004 film refers to September 11, 2001, yet transcends its trauma as
in the last shot the Incredible family dons its superhero outfits to confront
the next supervillain. Separated from the constraints of a monotonous
corporate logic, the social tyranny of the majority, and the geographical
space of suburbia, the superhero family may adventure happily ever after.
In this light, their unbound mobility illustrates the logic of the Homeland
Security Act, which liberated American citizens “from the conditions of
belonging to a territorialized nation” and expanded “the domestic emer-
gency state to extend its policing authority to the dimension of the globe”
(Pease, “Global Homeland State” 8). This imperial logic of the Homeland
State and the “War on Terror,” as Naomi Klein documents in The Shock
Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007), is intimately tied to
a global neoliberal agenda. Her book meticulously details how various
disasters—whether political coups, terrorist attacks, or “natural” catastro-
phes—function to shock or scare entire populations to “give up things
they would otherwise fiercely protect” (Klein 17). The “War on Terror”
illustrates only the most current example of this disaster capitalism which
Klein characterized as “huge transfers of public wealth to private hands,
often accompanied by exploding debt, an ever-widening chasm between
the dazzling rich and the disposable poor and an aggressive nationalism
that justifies bottomless spending on security” (15).17 Indeed, the terror
of a seemingly indestructible robot rampaging a vulnerable metropolis
shocks its inhabitants into granting the superheroes their unbound lib-
erty; and the similarly petrifying appearance of the next supervillain at the
end of The Incredibles will ensure the persistence of this legal order. The
superhero family thus symbolizes the imperialist logic of the Homeland
Security Act and the neoliberal rationale of disaster capitalism.
In contrast to previous and later Pixar productions, The Incredibles
mediates its narrative of shock and disaster in a similarly unenchanting
aesthetics. The portrayal of a dysfunctional family and a broken marriage
as well as the sexual innuendo of rekindled passion later in the film already
suggest less of an “affirmation of wonder” (Felski 58). Instead, with its
narrative about the (daily) problems of a human family and the drudgery
of adult life in particular, The Incredibles develops a distinct live-action
theme which caused even the Disney management to wonder, accord-
ing to producer John Walker, “what made it ‘an animated movie’” (Paik
251). This narrative approach, consequently, necessitates somber and less
enchanting illustrations within the corporate Pixar aesthetics and the tech-
nological boundaries of digital animation. While “the goal was to create
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 179

stylized caricatures that felt human, rather than looked human” (italics in
original, Paik 244), director Brad Bird aimed for a realist animation of
muscles, skin, hair, and clothing, and movement of the human charac-
ters that “marr[ied] the stylized visuals of hand-drawn animation with the
vivid realism of the three-dimensional computer world” (Paik 249).
The explicit violence of The Incredibles further notably distinguishes this
production from other Pixar films. Although the film neither appropri-
ates a proper aesthetic of shock in the Felskian sense to “ruptur[e] familiar
frames of reference” (Felski 105) nor exposes its viewers “to all that we find
grisly or abhorrent, to warring impulses of desire and disgust, subterranean
dramas of psychic anxiety and ambivalence” (Felski 130), its shots often
illustrate a form of mature violence in a realist aesthetics. As a consequence,
the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) suggested parental
guidance for The Incredibles as some material may not be suitable for chil-
dren (PG rating). Whereas other Pixar films picture violence in a humorous
fashion—the only other film to receive a PG rating in my study, Up, for
example, interrupts the live-or-death struggle between Carl Frederickson
and Charles Muntz aboard the zeppelin with amusing moments of false
teeth dropping or sudden, incapacitating lumbagos—The Incredibles hits
a serious note: the attempted suicide, the depiction of a brutal mugging,
the shots of murdered superheroes, the frequent violent engagements, and
the death of various minor characters all underscore the sober nature of an
initially fantastic movie. The Incredibles thus varies from the enchanting aes-
thetics animating the American myths and symbols of the other Pixar films.
These realist aesthetics of the film appear to be the proper choice for
a narrative mediating the events of September 11, 2001. Yet, in avoiding
animating the myths and symbols of American culture in an enchanting
fashion, The Incredibles exemplifies a somber illustration that eventually
allows for the narrative dissolution of the gray flannel suit, the home-
maker ideal, and the suburban home. In separating its voluntary associa-
tion from a particular cultural and geographical context, The Incredibles
does not mediate but essentially dissolves its American myths and symbols.
An indispensable assertion of Democracy in America described voluntary
associations as social formations within definable spatial boundaries; oth-
erwise Tocqueville could not have written about democracy in America.
Hence, the cinematic text portrays its voluntary association, the Incredible
family, to contest the tyranny of the majority but in the process the ani-
mated myth also transcends traditional symbols of American culture. The
Incredibles mediates this de(con)struction of its myths and symbols in
180 D. MEINEL

light of a global National Security State and an economic paradigm of

boundless movement (of people, money, and goods).18 Rather than being
a critical interrogation of the damaging consequences of imperialism and
neoliberalism after September 11, 2001, my reading of The Incredibles
indicates in what ways these transformations contest those myths and sym-
bols on which they are founded.

NOTES
1. These images of the white-collar Bob animate predominantly 1950s con-
cerns about a growing conformity and a loss of individuality brought about
by corporate life. For example, in White Collar (1951) C.  Wright Mills
describes white-collar “men […] [as] cogs in a business machinery that has
routinized greed and made aggression an impersonal principle of organiza-
tion” (Mills 109). More generally, the white-collar employee is “the hero
as victim, the small creature who is acted upon but who does not act, who
works along unnoticed in somebody’s office […] never talking loud, never
talking back, never taking a stand” (Mills xii) and whose “will seems numb,
his spirit meager” (Mills xviii). And although physically not a “little man,”
Bob is similarly “estranged from community and society […] alienated
from work and […] from self; expropriated of individual rationality, and
politically apathetic” (Mills xii, xviii).
2. Only the infant, Jack-Jack, and Helen do not seem to evidence similar ten-
sion between their superhero identity and public demand. Jack-Jack has
not yet developed any superhuman abilities, while Helen continually
attempts to enforce the legal code under which the rest of the family suf-
fers: she scolds Bob for encouraging his children to use their ability, pun-
ishes the kids for any transgression, and continually states that “[r]ight
now, honey, the world just wants us to fit in, and to fit in, we gotta be like
everyone else” (The Incredibles).
3. This disavowal not only erases any individual differences and inhibits the
exceptionally gifted, but turned the young, talented, and ambitious
Syndrome into an evil mastermind. After Mr. Incredible fails to see the
brilliance of the boy in inventing technological devices and dismisses the
young Syndrome as a suitable sidekick, the insulted and offended child
decides to avenge this humiliation. The adult Syndrome has labored,
researched, and plotted for years to eventually develop an indestructible
robot which he orders to attack the city and then saves the day in a staged
battle with his invention. Doing so, Syndrome aspires to become the super-
hero. As the villain explains his plan to Mr. Incredible: “The robot will
emerge dramatically, do some damage, throw some screaming people, and
just when all hope is lost, *Syndrome* will save the day! I’ll be a bigger
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 181

hero than you ever were” (The Incredibles). After this demonstration of his
abilities, Syndrome would reveal the technological devices empowering
him to be a “superhero” which he would then sell to everyone.
4. While the equality of conditions and the quest for recognition are nowa-
days fundamental features of every liberal society, Tocqueville also offered
a profoundly exceptionalist contention with his examination of democracy
in the United States. To promote the idea of democracy without upsetting
the ruling aristocracy in France, Tocqueville presented the United States as
not just different from European history but exempt from its feudal past:
“The Americans,” Tocqueville wrote, “have this great advantage that they
attained democracy without the sufferings of a democratic revolution and
that they were born equal instead of becoming so” (509). This assertion of
an absent feudal past exalted Democracy in America to canonical status as
one of the founding text of American exceptionalism. Its observations
were endowed by “[p]olitical scientists, literary theorists, philosophers,
and citizens alike […] with a metahistorical knowingness about U.S. dem-
ocratic culture” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism 112). This canon-
ization, Donald Pease continues, maintained that Democracy in America
could function as a “framework of intelligibility […] [which] provided the
metalanguage in which issues get identified, recognized, parsed, construed,
ordered, and concatenated” (New American Exceptionalism 131). In this
sense, Tocqueville and his work functioned as a fundamental justification
of American exceptionality particularly after World War II, composed a
vital element of the ideological struggle throughout the Cold War, and
structured the foundation of the field of American Studies (cf. Welch 3–4).
Even after the end of the Cold War, as historian James T. Kloppenburg so
vividly attests to, Tocqueville continues “to enjoy everlasting life in both
popular and scholarly conversations about American democracy today […]
[as] both Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan on the right and both Bill and
Hillary Clinton on the left […] have quoted Tocqueville” (61–62) to
endorse their respective political visions. Or, as historians Harvey
C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop observe: “both Left and Right appeal to
Democracy in America for support of their contrary policies” (xviii).
Tocqueville and Democracy in America did not become pivotal texts
of American exceptionalism, because of their precise observations about
the cultural, social, political, and economic conditions of nineteenth-
century United States. Plenty of ingenious writings have highlighted
the shortcomings of the Tocqueville perspective [see, for example,
Mark Reinhardt The Art of Being Free (1997) or Gary Wills “Did
Tocqueville ‘Get’ America?” (2004)]. Rather, his observations and their
appropriations allow for a more complex understanding of exceptional-
ist narratives about the United States. To put it differently, instead
182 D. MEINEL

of being concerned with the “facts” Tocqueville “unearths,” I am inter-

ested in the particular fact that “Tocqueville” became.
5. After World War II, the concept of the “tyranny of the majority” articu-
lated two competing critiques of society. Sociology books such as The
Lonely Crowd (1950) by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel
Denney, White Collar (1951) by C. Wright Mills, The Organization Man
(1956) by William H.  Whyte and novels such as The Man in the Gray
Flannel Suit (1955) by Sloan Wilson employed the idea to express a
concern for the dangers of conformity in the affluent post-War US society.
A different reading developed out of the Frankfurt School which appropri-
ated the concept to diagnose a hegemonization of the “soul” in an expand-
ing consumer society and warned of a fundamental reconfiguration of the
individual in capitalism. In my chapter, I am referring to the first reading
of the Tocqueville phrase: the “tyranny of the majority” as a form of social
pressure to conform.
6. Even “local, legally established political entities, such as townships, cities,
counties, and other sites of local political administration and participation”
(Villa 224) are characterized by Tocqueville as voluntary associations.
7. The possibility of continuing his former line of work is further linked to the
fantasy of masculine bravado when Bob is offered the assignment by the
mysterious femme fatale Mirage.
8. Donald Pease details in The New American Exceptionalism the fascination
with Democracy in America. Rather than a partisan engagement with
Tocqueville a broad coalition from “Bill Clinton in espousing the tenets of
the liberal multiculture, Newt Gingrich writing in support of a politics of law
and order, William Connolly on the territorial rights of indigenous tribes,
Arthur Schlesinger in opposition to a disunited nation, Anne Norton on
feminism, David Campbell against the security state, Michael Sandel on com-
munitarianism, Seymour Lipset in support of neoliberalism, and Cornel West
in defense of a politics of difference” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism
115) appropriates and celebrates his ideas.
9. Even the language employed by Tocqueville describes family life to be tied
to the political sphere as his choice of words “press[es] the point that polit-
ical and familial relations share a common sensibility” (Janara 53).
10. Some passages in Democracy in America suggest a less favorable conceptu-
alization of family and marriage. Rather than examples of voluntary asso-
ciations, family and marriage may be considered to function as spaces to
which people selfishly withdraw. Since “[e]ach man is forever thrown back
on himself alone […] there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude
of his own heart” (Tocqueville 508), leave “the greater society to look after
itself,” and depart “into the circle of family and friends” (Tocqueville 506).
For Tocqueville then, family seems to represent a threat to democracy by
harboring and fostering a selfish egoism negligent of society. In this sense,
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 183

family could be considered a “narrow circle” inadequate to teach “the ‘art

of association’ for public ends” (Villa 231). This illustration of family and
marriage is already offset by the extensive definition Tocqueville gives of
voluntary associations: in general, voluntary associations are not exclu-
sively (institutional) organizations since to voluntary associate implies a
social practice “of relating to others […] [an] art of associating, an art of
vital importance to the art of being free” (italics in original, Reinhardt 39).
Thus instead of constituting (institutional) organization, association is
defined by Tocqueville “not only as a noun but as a verb, one that conveys
[…] the ability to transcend isolation” (Reinhardt 39). Although this
expansive conceptualization incorporates almost any form of frequent
social interaction to offer “a kind of grammar for conduct, a set of rules
that structure and make possible the actions of subjects” (Reinhardt 39),
beyond their social practice of associating, Tocqueville considers family and
marriage as organizational forms of voluntary associations. In this way, “a
society’s dominant mentality governs family” (Janara 48) and situates these
domestic relations not along a private–public division but within “the
broader ‘social state,’” to reveal its “pervasive mentality and [its] sensibili-
ties […] and its politics” (Janara 49). Families in general, and married
women in particular, foster the establishment and dispersal of a democratic
order by teaching its core values. Tocqueville thought of wives as “moral
educators […] experts in the reproduction of virtue” (Reinhardt 69). In a
similar vein, Jean Bethke Elshtain reads the purpose of the family to func-
tion as a vital space to form and teach democratic values for Tocqueville;
especially women are apt and predisposed for teaching (democratic) values
and morals: “Tocqueville’s most interesting contribution to an under-
standing of the public and private resides not so much in his gloss on the
virtues of American womanhood, but in his insight that domestic institu-
tions, in some way, mesh with or reflect the higher political order.
Tocqueville ties up the internal governance of the family, which molds
adult behavior and character through childhood development patterns and
practices, with aristocratic and democratic systems respectively […] In
democratic societies […] [t]he mother plays an important role as the incul-
cator of democratic values in her young” (Elshtain 130).
11. Tocqueville’s conflation of women and femininity with “‘passions’ and ‘tyr-
anny’” and thus with aristocracy “that must be ‘controlled’” (Janara 58)
expresses the fear that through equality men in general and democracy in
particular will lose their autonomy (cf. Janara 64).
12. Tocqueville’s anxiety to include women and people of color in his vision of
“republican citizenship as political liberty” (Janara 67) delineates the
boundaries of his political theory. In Democracy in America men are still in
demand for “subordinates in their wives and daughters (and in the poor
184 D. MEINEL

and non-‘whites’) to reassure them that they themselves have escaped the
subjugation” (Janara 67). Consequently, “democracy’s ideology of equal-
ity does not straightforwardly yield equality between the sexes, but stimu-
lates anxiety that such leveling signifies loss of order and meaning—the fall
into Tocqueville’s swirling abyss” (Janara 52). For similar reasons,
Tocqueville also does not bring himself to question slavery wholeheartedly
despite his observation that racism is another form of the tyranny of the
majority (cf. Tocqueville 252–253).
13. In contrast to the hard bodies of the 1980s, Bob is also unable to endure
Syndrome’s (mental) torture on Nomanisan Island, breaks down, cries,
and attempts to retaliate against the evil mastermind by threatening to
murder his assistant Mirage. This inability to endure immeasurable pain
and the vulnerability of the hyper-masculine body signal a divergence from
the motif of the 1980s action hero; yet the collapse of the 1980s masculine
(action hero) ideal also prefigures the salvation of a new masculine action
hero and indicates a shift in (heroic) masculinity. First, the vulnerability of
Mr. Incredible elicits solidarity and mercy in Mirage who eventually releases
him, moments before Elastigirl would have rescued Mr. Incredible as well.
In this sense, the double rescue suggests that the social ties established by
empathy (Mirage) and love (Elastigirl) will save him rather than his super-
human, hard-body qualities.
14. Twice, female characters rescue Mr. Incredible from Syndrome’s torturing
hands: once the villain’s assistant Mirage and Helen intervene, the other
time Violet, the daughter, saves her father (and her family).
15. The Incredibles does not celebrate youth since Violet struggles with her
self-esteem rather than attempts to rebel against her parents. Although
Dash expresses discontent with the social order, the boy is actually merely
echoing his father’s attitude. By the end of the film, after all battles have
been fought, Dash exhaustedly exclaims “I love family vacations” (The
Incredibles). Similarly, Bob’s fantasies of living a rugged individualist life
are supplanted by his reformed masculinity and his appreciation of working
together with his family. Finally, as whiteness and heteronormativity con-
tinue to be dominant tropes, The Incredibles does not exhibit countercul-
tural diversity.
16. Linking individualist ideas with the desire for a highly flexible flow of capi-
tal, labor, and products, proponents of the neoliberal market logic asserted
the economic paradigm not only fostered the efficient distribution of
resources but “should even be extended beyond the economy, to institu-
tions like the state, universities, hospitals, schools, and so on” (Purcell 13).
In the 1970s and 1980s, then, neoliberalism developed into an “ideologi-
cal project” and a form of “governmentality” (Purcell 14) shaping
American society and culture.
 “AND WHEN EVERYONE IS SUPER … NO ONE WILL BE”: THE END 185

17. Donald Pease describes the link between the “War on Terror,” the
Homeland Security Act, and a neoliberal agenda similarly: “If the modern
state was construed as the embodiment of Enlightenment Reason, and the
neoliberal principles of market democracy comprised the means whereby
this rationality becomes universalized, neither the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan nor the Baathist regime in Iraq could be construed as either
modern states or as rational actors in the global economy. In their military
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. emergency state apparatus
imposed this modern state formation and that market logic on the Afghan
and the Iraqi peoples. As a result of these acts of ‘defensive aggression,’
Afghanistan and Iraq were relocated within the Global Order of the
Homeland Security State” (“Global Homeland State” 9).
18. While I have explored the links between feminism and neoliberalism, a simi-
larly uneasy relationship exists between (neo)conservatism and neoliberal-
ism. Although both have often been conceptualized as two sides of a single
coin, the neoliberal theme of The Incredibles illustrates their inconsistencies.
By annihilating hallmarks of (neo)conservatism and by transcending the
(geographical or imaginary) space of the US nation, the animated feature
illustrates the fundamental discrepancy between the particularities of nation-
alism and the universal dimensions of capitalism. After all, neoliberalism
envisions a global social sphere “in which cultural and national borders are
largely erased, in which all relations, attachments, and endeavors are submit-
ted to a monetary nexus, while neoconservatism scrambles to re-articulate
and police cultural and national borders, the sacred, and the singular through
discourses of patriotism, religiosity, and the West” (Brown 698–699).
 CHAPTER 9

Driving in Circles: The American Puritan

Jeremiad in Cars (2006)

To the buoyant and lighthearted tunes of the iconic 1950s song “Sh-Boom”
by The Chords, the inhabitants of modern-day Radiator Springs cheer-
fully drive down Main Street enjoying the freshly paved roads, the recently
refurbished store fronts, and the new-found beauty of their small town.
In the warm, cozy light of the street lamps, the remodeled and polished
cars shine with a pristine beauty, further adding to the splendor of the
moment. As the welcoming and affectionate glow of the redecorated small
town sparkles on the hoods and tops of a 1949 Mercury police car, a
1950 Isetta forklift, a 1951 Hudson Hornet, a 1959 Fiat 500, and a 1959
Chevrolet Impala, the reflections of the atmospheric illumination on these
cars highlights the distinctiveness of the scene—the small town shines in
its former beauty. The sophisticated animation necessary to illustrate the
complex lighting of these shots in the film is not only unparalleled, but
functions as an aesthetic homage to the 1950s just as the narrative of Cars
(2006) portrays the period as a long-forgotten golden age of individual
integrity and communal bliss.
The animated film juxtaposes this idealized rendering of the small town
with the mammoth project of the Interstate system. Although the open-
ing of the new highways in the late 1950s had been eagerly anticipated
by the Radiator Springs inhabitants as another milestone of progress, the
small town actually slides into a severe decline after former tourists and
customers speed down the Interstate without stopping in the town. In the
following decades closed-down businesses and abandoned houses char-
acterize this previous heaven along Route 66. While historical debates

© The Author(s) 2016 187

D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_9
188 D. MEINEL

about the Interstate Highway System often revolve around the question
of whether the project fostered “triumphant progress, liberation of the self
[…] or the loss of national innocence” and continually refer to American
exceptionality in general and the frontier myth in particular when assessing
whether the Interstate “made or unmade a singular and heroic nation,”
its animation in Cars leaves no doubt as to whether the highway system
produced an “earthly kingdom or [a] withering Eden” (Seiler 1–2). As
Cars mediates a tradition in which driving served Americans “to name, to
circulate, [and] to represent their representability as American subjects”
(Simpson xxvi), the cinematic text animates a fascination with American
mobility that romanticizes the era of Route travel and disparages the
present-day Interstate system.
This nostalgia for a 1950s mode of mobility, however, is not merely
confined to a bittersweet yearning for a lost period. After initiating the
restoration of their small town, the citizens of Radiator Springs decide to
treat protagonist Lightning McQueen to a very special overhaul. To thank
McQueen for the paving of the streets and for invigorating their small town
life, the modern, high-tech race vehicle—all characters in the film are actual
automobiles—is spray-painted in a 1950s style and his old wheels replaced
with the prominent white-wall tires of 1950s car culture, to the tunes of
the famous Bobby Troup song “Route 66.” This outer transformation
visually mirrors a change of heart as McQueen eventually embraces small
town life and proudly announces that “Radiator Springs looks good on
me” (Cars). Initially appalled by rural life and constantly mocking its mor-
als, McQueen learns the value of community and friendship from the small
town inhabitants who, in turn, propel him to become the racing champion
he had been aspiring to be throughout the film. As the Radiator Springs
inhabitants help the ambitious sports car to succeed at the final event of the
Piston Cup, the idealized 1950s small town life functions as a blueprint for
a successful future. In this sense, Cars illustrates the structure of a nostalgia
narrative in which “the past cannot be revisited, [but] the memory of it as
imprinted upon mnemotopic sites can function as a utopian model for the
future” (Sprengler 74). Indeed, the film follows the conventions of nostal-
gic narratives in which an ideal past is threatened, appears to be lost, and
is mourned before being successfully restored. While this secular “Eden-
loss-retrieval trajectory” (Sprengler 72) is a common narrative structure,
its similarities with the American Puritan jeremiad locate it within the con-
text of a particular American cultural tradition. Similar to the nostalgia
narrative, Sacvan Bercovitch describes in The American Jeremiad (1978)
 DRIVING IN CIRCLES: THE AMERICAN PURITAN JEREMIAD IN CARS 189

the jeremiad as a literary form of loss and retrieval: the jeremiad “sets out
the communal norms; then, a series of condemnations […] detail the actual
state of the community […] and finally a prophetic vision […] unveils the
promises, announces the good things to come, and explains away the gap
between fact and ideal” (16).
Because of its idealization of the past and its often vivid denunciation of
the present, the jeremiad may appear to be an exclusive longing for a bygone
era and may seem to promote reactionary ideals in the face of social transfor-
mations. But the “prophetic vision of the good things to come” also quali-
fies the American Puritan jeremiad to be future-oriented instead of merely
romanticizing the past. As a narrative of progress, then, the extensive liter-
ary wallowing in the consequences of celestial vengeance and in the perils
of divine retribution characteristic of the jeremiad re-conceptualize “God’s
punishments [as] corrective, not destructive” (italics in original, Bercovitch
8); actual or envisioned punishment only substantiates the promise for the
good things to come just as references to a “mythic past” serve to “demand
progress” (Bercovitch 24). Cars exemplifies this jeremiad narrative struc-
ture as the film portrays small town United States as a “withering Eden,”
details the perils of narcissism and expressive individualism in contemporary
America, and envisions a bright future rooted in a mythical 1950s.
Cars develops its animated jeremiad through the act of driving and
(auto)mobility, portraying the act of traveling the Interstate Highway
as a detrimental practice leading to anonymity, conformity, and national
decline. Illustrated as a personal and communal form of mobility, the
practice of driving the long-forgotten Route system, however, symbolizes
the mythical past and the opportunity to amend the failings of the pres-
ent. During his involuntary stay at Radiator Springs, the self-absorbed
Lightning McQueen ushers in this transformation of his emblematic nar-
cissism, hones his talents to become a true racing champion, and in the
process restores the small town to its past beauty. Portrayed in a twofold
sense, then, the (proper) act of driving functions to form the exceptional
individual who revives the exceptional nation in decline. The film animates
these notions of movement and mobility visually with an enchanting world
populated by cars, and musically with the use of highly popular country
and rock songs. Indeed, the compilation of various iconic songs from past
decades not only contributed to the immense commercial success of the
soundtrack (unparalleled for a Pixar film) but speaks to the sonic media-
tion of American myths and symbols. Nonetheless, as Cars romanticizes
the American South as the site of a mythical past, uses nineteenth-century
190 D. MEINEL

landscape painting traditions to portray the beauty of small town life, and
illustrates mobility as a white, male privilege, the film fails to animate the
open form of the jeremiad: In telling a story about the loss and retrieval
of American greatness originating in and concluding with the 1950s, Cars
ends up circular rather than future-oriented.

NARRATIVES OF INDIVIDUAL AND NATIONAL DECLINE

“Speed. I am speed. One winner, forty-two losers. I eat losers for breakfast”
(Cars). Opening with these bellicose words to a black screen repeatedly
interrupted with quick shots of stock cars speeding along an oval track,
Cars situates its protagonist, race car Lightning McQueen, within a nexus
of (auto)mobility and individualism. During the following competition,
McQueen speeds effortlessly past his rivals as the lyrics of the Sheryl Crow
song “Real Gone” situate the highly talented individual within an American
context: “I’m American made, Bud Light, Chevrolet […] I was born in the
South, sometimes I have a big mouth” (Cars) announces the all-American
qualities of the protagonist. In the fast-edited stock car racing scene, the
song further ascribes mythical qualities to McQueen when declaring that
“[t]here’s a new cat in town, he’s got high paid friends/ Thinks he’s gonna
change history […] Yeah you think he’s so swell/ But he’s just perpetuatin’
prophecy” (Cars). Whereas the visual illustration of the Piston Cup compe-
tition portrays McQueen as a highly talented athlete, the soundtrack links
the protagonist to a mythologized form of (Southern) American culture.
But even as reigning Piston Cup champion The King admits that
McQueen “got more talent in one lugnut than a lot of cars has got on
their whole body” (Cars), this incomparable talent is merely one side of
McQueen’s character. As the first lines of the film already foreshadow, a
selfish and highly narcissistic attitude characterizes this all-American ath-
lete. In his spare time, the race car fantasizes about becoming the face
of the highly paid Dinoco Oil advertisement campaign, a celebrity on
the covers of magazines, the lead role in blockbuster action films, proud
owner of a star on the Walk of Fame, and an admired host of luxurious
parties in Hollywood penthouses. In addition to daydreaming about his
imminent fame and fortune, the self-assured and overconfident McQueen
also enjoys posing in front of the TV cameras, ridicules his competitors in
public, and proudly announces himself to be “a one-man show” (Cars).
Even when his pit crew deserts the self-absorbed racer, McQueen only
mockingly responds by asking “how will I ever find anyone else who
 DRIVING IN CIRCLES: THE AMERICAN PURITAN JEREMIAD IN CARS 191

knows how to fill me up with gas” (Cars). Not even towards his loyal
sponsors and benefactors, the Rust-eze brothers, can McQueen extend
some courtesy. As the talented athlete aspires for glamour, fame, and pres-
tige, McQueen considers his practically minded and constantly corroding
financial supporters to be “not good for my image” (Cars). Living in a
private trailer exclusively stocked with Lightning McQueen merchandiz-
ing, memorabilia, and trophies, the sports car is completely wrapped up
in his image and hardly notices the absence of friends. Later in the film,
when his narcissism is challenged, McQueen cannot name “the last time
[he] cared about something except [himself]” (Cars).
The film, then, introduces the exceptionally talented Lightning
McQueen as an all-American athlete with a highly narcissistic personality.
Particularly his self-absorbed desire for popularity and celebrity exempli-
fies what Robert Bellah has famously characterized in Habits of The Heart
(1985) as “expressive individualism”: a form of individualism defined by
the obsession “to cultivate and express the self and explore its vast social
and cosmic identities” (35). This quest for distinction not only presents
one fundamental feature of the expressive individual but leads to broader
social ramifications as well. In pursuing their individual aspirations, people
may abandon any commitment to public life, Bellah worries, and may end
up incapable “of sustaining genuine individuality and [of] nurturing both
public and private life” (143). Expressive individualism (or the search for
recognition in Tocqueville’s sense) fosters a highly self-absorbed individ-
ual unable to maintain meaningful social relationships and threatens the
social fabric of America, Bellah and his colleagues worried in the 1980s
and Cars illustrated in 2006.
Enwrapped in his logic of “one winner and forty-two losers,” McQueen
illustrates the harmful social consequences of a “culture of competitive
individualism, which in its decadence has carried the logic of individual-
ism to the extreme of a war of all against all, the pursuit of happiness to
the dead end of a narcissistic preoccupation with the self,” as Christopher
Lasch diagnosed American society in The Culture of Narcissism (1979,
xv). Indeed, in the first half of the film McQueen exhibits a set of behav-
iors Lasch would have qualified as narcissistic: in ridiculing his pit crew,
McQueen “extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply
antisocial impulses,” his daydreaming reveals the aspiration for “immedi-
ate gratification and liv[ing] in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied
desire” (xvi), his obliviousness to the laws of Radiator Springs demon-
strates his narcissistic disregard for rules or regulations (cf. xvi), and his
192 D. MEINEL

derogatory attitude towards the past designates an inner poverty (cf. xvii).
The all-American athlete Lightning McQueen hence epitomizes a narcis-
sistic culture that the oval racetrack symbolizes spatially: a space where the
beginning is also the end and movement is circular rather than forward.
More than the oval track, however, in Cars the Interstate Highway System
illustrates this fading of American greatness in an expressive culture.
After McQueen accidentally damages the old streets of Radiator Springs
and the local judge sentences the race car to repair them, during his invol-
untary stay the all-American athlete learns about the former beauty of
the shabby, almost abandoned town. In a cut-back to Radiator Springs in
the 1950s, the film pictures a bustling and booming main street as cars
pass happily along Route 66, greet each other warmly, and attend the
local businesses. These images of a vibrant communal life along the Route
are accompanied by the extra-diegetic nostalgic tunes for those bygone
days—as James Taylor sings in “Our Town”: “Long ago, but not so very
long ago/ The world was different, oh yes it was/ You settled down and
you built a town and made it live/ And you watched it grow/ It was
your town” (Cars). Although the inhabitants of Radiator Springs initially
welcomed the new highway system in the hopes of a prosperous future,
with the opening of the Interstate, the small town along old Route 66
was bypassed, local business were forced to close, and people moved away
as travelers sped down the Interstate and the town began to wither. The
thrilled excitement about the Interstate and the waning small town with
its closed stores, decaying buildings, and empty streets captures the dualist
perception of the Interstate system as “either triumphant progress, libera-
tion of the self […] or the loss of national innocence” (Seiler 1). With
its portrayal of the Interstate, Cars mediates a cultural history Cotton
Seiler describes in Republic of Drivers (2008) as shaped by “a predict-
ably partisan line […] of how the interstates built or ruined the nation,
empowered or enslaved its population […] made or unmade a singular
and heroic nation, depicted alternately as earthly kingdom or withering
Eden” (1–2). When Cars blends from the delighted expectations of the
Radiator Springs inhabitants to shots of a wilting small town and the extra-
diegetic music laments in a mournful tone that “[m]ain street isn’t main
street anymore/ Lights don’t shine as brightly as they shone before/ Tell
the truth, lights don’t shine at all/ In our town […] Open up for business
that’s never gonna come/ As the world rolls by a million miles away […]
No one seems to need us like they did before/ It’s hard to find a reason
left to stay/ But it’s our town/ Love it anyway” (Cars), the animated film
portrays Radiator Springs as a “withering Eden.”
 DRIVING IN CIRCLES: THE AMERICAN PURITAN JEREMIAD IN CARS 193

In contrast to driving along the old Routes, then, Cars illustrates

Interstate travel as a highly anonymous journey as people rush to their
destination without recognizing fellow travelers nor the beauty of the
landscape, as Radiator Springs local Sally Carrera grieves: “driving right
by […] not even know[ing] what they are missing” (Cars). The animated
film, therefore, links anonymity and conformity to Interstate travel as the
straight, wide, and long stretches of the new highway system “cut through
the land” (Cars) to profoundly change the act of driving. While the old
Route roads organically “moved with the land […] rose […] fell […]
curved” as cars “drove on it to have a great time” (Cars), the Interstate
Highway transformed driving into an impersonal, conformist, and effi-
cient means of traveling “to save ten minutes of driving” (Cars), Carrera
further explains. In bemoaning the loss of communal forms of driving
along the Route system and by portraying the journey along the Interstate
Highway to be an anonymous form of travel, the narrative frames the act
of driving the Interstate as contributing to an increasing disappearance
of the individual and fostering social “disconnection and civil indiffer-
ence” (Seiler 146). The animated film thereby illustrates those narratives
of decline which portray the Interstate experience to efface the identity
of the drivers as “each person dons an armoring shell […] and engages
in automobility’s facsimile of social interaction” (Seiler 146). Through its
characterization of the Interstate Highway System and its lament of the
declining small towns along Route 66, the animated film also portrays the
United States as a “withering Eden.”
This paradisiacal site is not completely lost in the film. In different
scenes throughout Cars, driving also functions to portray what Seiler
labeled “the ideology of American exceptionalism” (1). When Mack and
Lightning McQueen depart for the last competition of the Piston Cup
in California and after both leave behind the intricate web of the met-
ropolitan highways, the film celebrates the vastness and greatness of the
American landscape for the first time. While the two pass abundant forests,
endless fields of cabbage and corn, lush meadows, and dry prairie plains on
their journey westward, the musical score further draws parallels between
driving, freedom, individuality, and the nation. In their extra-diegetic
song “Life Is A Highway” Rascall Flatts announces that “[t]here’s a world
outside ev’ry darkened door/ Where blues won’t haunt you anymore/
Where the brave are free and lovers soar/ Come ride with me to the distant
shore/ We won’t hesitate/ To break down the garden gate” (Cars). These
lines allude to the popular belief that “[a]long their roads, Americans have
carr[ied] out their pursuit of happiness” (Patton 13). While these song
194 D. MEINEL

lyrics or popular books about driving such as Open Road (1986) further
mythologize the idea that “[t]he automobile and its highways froze the
values of the frontier by making movement a permanent state of mind”
(Patton 13), comfortably stowed and stationary in his trailer McQueen
does not experience this frontier state of mind at first.There is no Sailed
reference in the list. Please provide full detailsI misspelled here.
Actually, these fantasies of frontier (auto)mobility become a night-
mare for the race car after he accidentally rolls out of his semi-trailer onto
the highway at night. Perplexed by the fast-approaching cars and with-
out headlights, McQueen panics and paces frantically across the highway,
avoiding several collisions at the last moment. Even after he regains some
orientation, the unfamiliar roads, the numerous lights, and the confus-
ing signs disorient McQueen. After chasing down a truck he mistakes for
Mack, McQueen ends up leaving the Interstate Highway to continue his
search along Route 66, where his hysterical speeding draws the attention
of the police. In the ensuing pursuit, McQueen mistakes the engine com-
bustion of the police car for shots and ends up damaging the roads of the
small town of Radiator Springs as the terrified race car attempts to outpace
his pursuer. These scenes highlight McQueen’s alienation from regular
driving, as ordinary road travel is a life-threatening experience for him.
His inability to distinguish between the different trucks to find his friend
Mack, his failure to identify ordinary engine sounds, and his missing head-
lights further signal McQueen’s estrangement not merely from regular
forms of automobility but from the American myth of the open road itself.
Only during his stay at Radiator Springs will McQueen eventually learn
to drive the open road. While his determination to master the local dirt
track prepares the race car to succeed in the final competition of the Piston
Cup, learning to maneuver the dusty, slippery, and thorn-scattered road-
way also teaches McQueen the values of small town life. In the logic of
the film, then, McQueen transforms his personality from selfish narcissist
to the genuine American individual who embraces friendship, commu-
nity, and cooperation to nurture public life for the greater good. This
cultivation of the public sphere is accomplished by the end of the film
when McQueen decides to set up his racing headquarters at Radiator
Springs, which draws new business and tourists to the small town. The
concluding shots of Cars illustrate this renaissance of Radiator Springs
with bustling streets, crowded shops, and a busy and popular Route 66.
The camera angle, the mise-en-scène, and the characters present in these
shots exactly mimic the earlier 1950s montage scene which portrayed the
blissful heydays of Radiator Springs prior to the building of the Interstate
 DRIVING IN CIRCLES: THE AMERICAN PURITAN JEREMIAD IN CARS 195

Highway. Cars thus defines the act of driving as a binary cultural prac-
tice of either empowering social cooperation and fostering individualism
through the old Route system and the dirt track, or leading to harmful
egoism and absent-minded conformity through the professional racetrack
and the Interstate.

IMAGINED PASTS: THE JEREMIAD AND THE GOLDEN AGE

OF THE 1950S

With its romanticization of the 1950s as a golden age of communal bliss,

its condemnation of the present as a “withering Eden,” and its restoration
once that mythical past is retrieved, the storyline of Cars mediates the
narrative structure of the American jeremiad—a literary form in which an
ideal and virtuous state is corrupted or even lost due to sinful, immoral
acts as people fail “to walk in righteousness,” take “glory in the self,” and
succumb to “the temptations of the flesh” (Bercovitch 7). While this cor-
ruption would eventually draw God’s vengeance, in its American Puritan
version the jeremiad qualified the threat of divine retribution into a salu-
tary moment (cf. Bercovitch 8). According to Bercovitch, the American
Puritan jeremiad “posits a movement from promise to experience—from
the ideal of community to the shortcomings of community life—and thence
forward, with prophetic assurance, toward a resolution that incorporates
(as it transforms) both the promise and the condemnation” (16). Indeed,
in expressing the hope for a brighter future by “direct[ing] an imperiled
people of God toward the fulfillment of their destiny […] guid[ing] them
individually toward salvation, and collectively toward the American city of
God,” the American Puritan jeremiad eventually “demand[s] progress”
(Bercovitch 9, 24).
As a narrative of progress, then, the jeremiad envisions a promising
future. This divinely assured prospect, however, requires a crisis and an
unfulfilled errand to foster the restless striving necessary for its attainment
(cf. Bercovitch 23). To find assurance for the divine sanction of this yet-
unfulfilled errand, the American Puritan jeremiad transformed anxiety
and uncertainty into a catalyst for the quest for signs of God. Within the
context of the North American continent, the Puritan settlers deemed
nature—what they considered wilderness—to be “a territory endowed
with special symbolic import”(Bercovitch 15) in which signs of God could
be found. Consequently, the quest for signs of divine assurance demanded
to be on a search, to be in process, or, according to Bercovitch, to be on
an errand into this wilderness (cf. 15).1
196 D. MEINEL

For Lightning McQueen, Radiator Springs represents such a contem-

porary wilderness. Since the small town cannot be located with modern
GPS technology and its inhabitants appear simple-minded and backward
to the arrogant athlete, McQueen ridicules Radiator Springs as a “hillbilly
hell” in which his “IQ is dropping by the second” (Cars). Mocking the
racing advice McQueen receives from local judge Doc Hudson, the cocky
athlete exclaims sarcastically “[t]hat makes perfect sense. Turn right to go
left. Yes, thank you! Or should I say No, thank you, because in Opposite
World, maybe that really means thank you” (Cars).
While this “opposite world” is a place where his notions of civiliza-
tion are non-existent, a road trip through the countryside of Radiator
Springs with small town beauty Sally Carrera initiates a change of heart
in the self-absorbed McQueen. Speeding through lush forests, passing
majestic waterfalls, and marveling at the astonishing vistas, the two cars
experience the natural beauty of the region. As the camera floats through
the landscape its wide-angle shots offer a sublime viewing experience
of nature. When Carrera and McQueen end up on a high plateau over-
looking the region, the grand vista shots of the valley, the mountains,
Route 66, and Radiator Springs further accentuate the sublime quality
of nature. Animating nineteenth-century landscape paintings by Asher
B. Durand, Albert Bierstadt, or Frederic Edwin Church, the extreme-wide
and extreme-long angle camera shots of Route 66 organically curving
through the countryside, of minute Radiator Springs, and of miniatur-
ized mountains devise “a view of nature both bounded and contained”
while illustrating the often sought-after ideal of the middle landscape and
the balance between “the extremes of wilderness and city” (Miller 10,
13).2 In animating nineteenth-century landscape art traditions, Cars also
mediates the illustration of a “national ideology” in which “nature could
function for Americans as an enabling myth that made possible belief in
the exceptional character of American nationalism” (Miller 16). While the
two cars never abandon the paved road during their trip, for McQueen
this excursion and his stay at Radiator Springs represents a journey into
(geographical) nature and (spiritual) wilderness—visually and narratively
portrayed as a mythical “territory endowed with special symbolic import”
for the race car. Through this experience, McQueen learns to appreci-
ate the natural beauty of the region, questions his selfish individualism,
and begins to fathom “[h]ow great would it have been to see [Radiator
Springs] in its heyday” (Cars). Analogous to nineteenth-century land-
scape paintings, then, the animated film associates “images of nature with
 DRIVING IN CIRCLES: THE AMERICAN PURITAN JEREMIAD IN CARS 197

virtue, purity, and uncomplicated harmony, as well as with national unity,

pride of place, and a unique identity” (Miller 12) to mediate the American
myth of nature’s nature, the errand into the wilderness, and the jeremiad
narrative for contemporary audiences.
After experiencing the animated beauty of the land during this digital
errand into the wilderness of Radiator Springs, the selfish and ignorant
McQueen transforms. Accepting his sentencing, the racer paves the streets
of the rural community and through this encourages the other inhabitants
to refurbish their stores and homes as well. Soon the whole town shines in
its long-forgotten beauty. Once the community welcomes McQueen in its
midst, his selfless acts motivate the inhabitants of Radiator Springs to help
the race car with his dream of winning the Piston Cup: Italian-American
tire shop employee Guido gladly substitutes for the absent pit stop team
and Doc Hudson, the local judge, volunteers to act as the missing crew
chief. Particularly the relationship to the latter advances the jeremiad
narrative structure of the film and exemplifies McQueen’s fundamental
transformation.
After the arrogant race car recognizes Doc Hudson as 1950s racing
champion “The fabulous Hudson Hornet,”3 the aspiring racer exclaims
that “your driving is incredible” (Cars) and begs the old car “to show
me some of your tricks” (Cars). The disillusioned Hudson, however, still
wrestles with his past as a three times Piston Cup winner who was not
allowed to compete after a serious crash when officials labeled Doc as
“history” and “[m]oved on to the next rookie standing in line” (Cars).
Similarly to Radiator Springs after the Interstate, Hudson represents a
glorious yet forgotten past. In hiring the retired champion to work as his
coach, McQueen attempts to mend previous wrongs. When beloved but
aging champion The King is severely injured in an accident during the
final lap of the championship race, McQueen has the opportunity to do so.
As shots of the damaged King blend into images of Doc Hudson’s crash
some fifty years earlier, McQueen stops short of the finish line and decides
to help The King complete the final lap of his career. Although McQueen
loses the race and the championship, in honoring the past and caring for
others the athlete gains everything he initially dreamed of: the esteem of
his colleagues, the admiration of the fans, and the regard of the journal-
ists. Even Dinoco Oil owner Tex offers McQueen a contract, but the lat-
ter declines the sponsorship to honor those who “gave me my big break”
(Cars)—the Rust-eze brothers. McQueen has transcended his narcissism
to learn the value of cooperation and caring for others. As McQueen aspires
198 D. MEINEL

to the moral integrity and athletic excellence of his mentor Doc Hudson,
the journey from past ideal (Hudson) to the condemnation of the present
(self-absorbed McQueen) to a prophetic vision (selfless McQueen) follows
a jeremiad narrative.In note 3, ‘curb’ does not seem the correct word, as it
means to lessen or reduce. Please check and adviseChanged
As McQueen uses his professional success to restore the former splen-
dor of Radiator Springs, Cars animates a personal as well as a collective
jeremiad. His decision to set up his racing headquarters for the next season
in the small town leads to a renaissance of Radiator Springs as numerous
tourists and racing fans flock to the community. With his rediscovery of
nature’s grandeur and re-embrace of small town values, the all-American
athlete transforms the “withering Eden” into an “earthly kingdom” of
“the good things to come” which the film mediates in animating the
splendor of a bright future analogous to the romanticized imagery of the
1950s. With its prophetic vision voiced in a Southern vernacular, driven
by sports car culture, and illustrated by white, male mobility, however,
Cars locates its mythical future in the highly selective American South of
the 1950s.

IMAGINED SPACES: THE AMERICAN SOUTH

While Route 66 “moves with the land” from Chicago to “rise, fall, and
curve” through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and
Arizona before ending at Santa Monica, the voice-acting and the reference
to the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) culture
situate the animated jeremiad and its romanticization of 1950s small town
life in a distinctively Southern space. Speaking in heavy Southern vernacu-
lars, the naïve and child-like tow truck Mater, the benevolent and good-
hearted racing champion The King, and the altruistic oil-company owner
Tex embody a set of social values the all-American athlete McQueen will
have to learn in order to become the true champion of a sport franchise
intimately associated with the American South and its culture.
From its very beginning, Cars links decency, goodwill, and ethical con-
duct to Southern culture. Piston Cup champion The King, for example,
cautions the arrogant and vain McQueen about his dismissive attitude
towards his pit crew and warns him that “you ain’t gonna win unless you
got good folks behind you” (Cars) in thick Southern vernacular. By con-
trast, The King values cooperation and teamwork and suggests that true
greatness only derives from collective efforts. While contemptuous at first,
 DRIVING IN CIRCLES: THE AMERICAN PURITAN JEREMIAD IN CARS 199

McQueen will later experience the truth of this moral when Mater, with
his rusty, crumbling, and corroding auto body yet naïve and warm-hearted
attitude, befriends the arrogant racer. Immediately fond of McQueen, the
kind Southern country boy Mater offers his companionship despite the
ignorance and rudeness of the all-American athlete. Mater introduces the
imprisoned and disheartened race car to the joys of tipping tractors, and
thereby brings unexpected pleasure into McQueen’s lonely life. With his
welcoming, open, and kind behavior, the tow truck will not only teach the
racer the value of friendship; his talent to speed in reverse will eventually
figure as an inspiring motto for McQueen and as a metaphor for the film
narrative: “I do not need to know where I am going,” Mater explains in
his heavy Southern dialect, “just need to know where I been” (Cars). The
belief in loyalty, friendship, and cooperation. Industrial tycoon, head of
the Dinoco Oil Company, and racing sponsor Tex Dinoco—animated as
a 1975 Cadillac Coupe de Ville with horns on his hood—endorses this
belief in loyalty, friendship, and cooperation. Although McQueen does
not win the last race and forfeits the Piston Cup championship, the indus-
trial magnate from Texas offers the racer a sponsorship nonetheless. In
selflessly helping The King to finish his last competition, McQueen honors
tradition, respects the achievement of those before him, and favors acting
by a moral code which corresponds with the worldview of the industrial
magnate for whom “[t]here is a whole lot more to racing than just win-
ning” (Cars).This is not a proper sentence. Please check and adviseI am
not sure which passage you are referring to exactly. I changed the part I
felt needed clarification.
These three characters embody a set of values Cars deems essential to
becoming a truly all-American athlete and to the reformation of the “with-
ering Eden” Radiator Springs. With its portrayal of the arid Southwest as
a national landscape and the Southern variety as the vernacular of moral
values, Cars animates an imagined American South. With its history in and
celebration of Southern culture, the theme of stock car racing in the film
further localizes the jeremiad narrative in a distinct space.
As Scott Beekman details in NASCAR Nation: A History of Stock Car
Racing in the United States (2010), amateur and professional stock car
racing fostered the development of a Southern identity along the lines
of whiteness, masculinity, and class.4 Part of the strategy of NASCAR to
popularize and expand professional stock car racing since the 1950s had
been to commission racetracks particularly in the South (rather than expand
nationwide) to fuel “a sense of regional pride” (Beekman 48) among
200 D. MEINEL

Southerners. Consequently, as “[t]he stock car became a representation

of southern pride and independence […] stock cars became southern”
(Beekman 48). This explicitly local and regional character of stock car rac-
ing cultivated a distinct sense of Southern culture which social transforma-
tions in the 1960s and 1970s further enhanced as “[t]he social structure
of the South, predicated on race and deference, cracked under the com-
bined weight of African American protest and the federal government’s
intervention” (Beekman 75). As a consequence, people started searching
for “a new set of myths and values that defined their regional identity.
New totems of ‘southernness’ needed to develop. Headed by a socially
conservative southerner and already established in the South, NASCAR
offered a ready-made new outlet for regional identity” (Beekman 75).
The 1970s, furthermore, saw an increasing proliferation and expansion of
stock car racing outside the South as (white) Americans searched for what
they deemed a particularly authentic culture. Interest in Southern culture
in general and stock car racing in particular became, Beekman maintains,
“national because it was regional” (104). Going regional thus entailed and
allowed for the evasion of broader social transformations in the 1960s and
1970s when “[s]tock car racing in the states of the former Confederacy
developed as a cultural endeavor for whites and, to a significant extent,
remains a preserve for them” (Beekman xiii). Symptomatically, the
NASCAR organization and its numerous middle and working class, white,
male fans valued stock car racing “as havens from the pressures of the civil
rights movement” (Beekman xiii). With its exclusive field of white, male
athletes competing in the Piston Cup and its immobilization of the female
Sally Carrera and the multicultural “Delinquent Road Hazards” (Cars),
Cars animates this history.

THE SOUND OF AMERICAN MYTHS AND SYMBOLS

Mobility and, later, driving constituted what many deemed exceptional
about America in the age of the automobile: in the eyes of Frederick
Jackson Turner, Oscar Handlin, John Steinbeck, Lewis Mumford, David
Riesman, and Jack Kerouac, movement shaped American democracy and
individuality (cf. Seiler 81–85). This view, Seiler maintains, envisioned in
numerous narratives a “frontier-ranging male individualist, whose heroic
qualities derived from his constant movement” (Seiler 82). In the age
of automobility, the figure of the driver embodied these ideas about the
autonomous individual and the ideal of a republican political culture
 DRIVING IN CIRCLES: THE AMERICAN PURITAN JEREMIAD IN CARS 201

(cf. Seiler 35)—and this driver figured as masculine and white (cf. Seiler
85, 108–109). When “mobility relies on immobility […] [as] certain sub-
jects and objects are immobilized […] [so that] others can travel” (italics in
original, Beckmann 84), the immobilization of female, African American,
and Latino characters in Cars exemplifies the normative features of the
animated jeremiad located in an imagined 1950s American South free of
the ills and violence of Segregation.
In the animated film, mobility is a white, male privilege as Lightning
McQueen, Tow Mater, Doc Hudson, Mack, Radiator Springs’ Sheriff,
and The King compete on professional racetracks, travel the Interstate
Highway, journey along Route 66, practice on dirt tracks, chase through
corn fields, or fly across the land while various others endure a station-
ary, even immobilized existence. Slowly cruising down Main Street, the
multicultural inhabitants of Radiator Springs move at a very leisurely pace
and in the confined space of the small town throughout the entire film.
When Italian American forklifter Luigi and car tire expert Guido along
with Latino American shop owner Ramone (voiced by Cheech Marin) and
his African American partner Flo (voice by Jenifer Lewis) do travel, the
animated film does not portray the Italian and Latino American charac-
ters speeding the Interstate; the multicultural group travels from Radiator
Springs to the Piston Cup final in California via a cinematic edit. When
multicultural characters do drive fast along the Interstate, Cars presents
and labels Boost, DJ, Wingo, and Snot Rod as a group of “Delinquent
Road Hazards” (Cars). With their colorful, flashy lights, their boom-
ing sound systems, and their ostentatious auto bodies, in combination
with their vernacular, these characters not only explicitly refer to African
American and Latino American car culture. Since these tuned and modi-
fied racers use the Interstate to harass trucks and travelers, Cars portrays
the mobility of this multicultural group to be dangerous and a threat to
public safety. By the end of the film, these initially agile characters are
jailed and thus rendered immobile.
The female lead in Cars, Sally Carrera, endures a similar transformation.
In her first scene, the film introduces the small town attorney and local
business owner as an assertive, well-versed, and competent lawyer as the
Porsche 911 Carrera model eloquently fends off Lightning McQueen’s
flirtatious macho-attitude in court and persuades judge Doc Hudson to
penalize the arrogant racer for damaging the streets of Radiator Springs.
In rallying the support of the small town inhabitants, Carrera is able to
win the case, as judge Doc Hudson sighs: “Seems like my mind has been
202 D. MEINEL

changed for me” (Cars). Her coy, even timid behavior towards McQueen
as well as her immobility throughout the rest of film, however, under-
mine this compelling introduction of an able and confident female fig-
ure. Whereas McQueen continues to be at (some) liberty to drive around
town even while serving his sentence, Carrera rarely moves about Radiator
Springs, staying mostly behind the reception desk of her Cozy Cone
motel, and nervously peeking out the minute McQueen returns from his
daily adventures.
Once Carrera does actually leave town, she is not without male supervi-
sion. Although she intends to educate the arrogant McQueen about the
natural beauty of the countryside and speeds with him along the wind-
ing roads, these shots portray Carrera in a gender-normative fashion. The
moment McQueen apprehends the sublime beauty of nature for the first
time, the film immediately cuts to a slow motion shot from his point of
view which zooms in from the sight of a majestic waterfall to Carrera driv-
ing in front of the natural wonder and coyly looking at her male chaperon.
Even when she tells McQueen about her love for the beauty of the land-
scape, the film uses a shot from his point of view to portray the sublime
magnificence of Radiator Springs, Route 66, and the Rocky Mountain
valley. Narratively, the emphasis on his perspective accentuates the trans-
formative process McQueen undergoes. But since Cars continually associ-
ates Carrera with the sublime landscape in these scenes and frames both
from a male perspective, the camera work of the animated film portrays
the female lead and the natural environment as objects of the male gaze.
And although mobile in the shots, Carrera stays under constant male
supervision. By the end of the film, Sally is completely immobilized as
she does not leave Radiator Springs—even under male supervision—to
support McQueen in his Piston Cup final in California. Although most
inhabitants travel to the racetrack and the romantic relationship between
McQueen and Carrera is well established, Cars confines her to the small
town along with the infantile fire truck Red and the senile Model-T Lizzy
to watch the competition on TV, while her friends are actively involved in
the race by changing tires, offering advice, and providing support. With
this immobilization, the animated film diminishes Carrera to the role of
an object of male desire. As at the end Cars animates her in the tradi-
tion of the subservient 1950s housewife, the film envisions a heterosexual
romance The Incredibles deemed obsolete.
Analogous to the animation of the “good” Radiator Springs to come,
with shots of female, Latino American, and African American immobility,
 DRIVING IN CIRCLES: THE AMERICAN PURITAN JEREMIAD IN CARS 203

Cars intertwines the narcissistic individual and the withering of Radiator

Springs with icons of black culture. In an early scene, the self-absorbed
McQueen prepares for a competition by telling himself that “I am speed!
Float like a Cadillac, sting like a Beemer” (Cars). As the line refers to
Muhammad Ali’s famous phrase “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,”
the scene links the narcissism of the racer to an icon of African American
culture. Although Ali was often considered to be an arrogant and ignorant
athlete himself, his vocal criticism of the Vietnam War, his support for the
Civil Rights Movement, and his fight for African American emancipation
made the former boxing champion also an African American symbol of
empowerment (cf. Marqusee 251–252). In linking narcissism to African
American culture, the animated film portrays the ills of the withering Eden
to be intimately tied to cultural diversity. To ensure the transformation of
a mythical past into a prosperous future, then, necessitates the establish-
ment of decidedly white and male privileges, again.5
While these examples cast doubt on whether Cars animates a jeremiad
narrative about a mythical past and a prophetic future to “demand prog-
ress,” the combination of camera work, editing, and soundtrack medi-
ate the allure and fascination of mobility, the North American landscape,
and the transformation of the withering Radiator Springs. Unusual for a
Pixar film, Cars’ musical score contains numerous hit singles from popu-
lar artists. This may be one explanation why the soundtrack peaked at
sixth position in the Billboard charts in 2006, and eventually achieved
platinum status in the United States for the sale of more than one million
units. And even as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
also awarded producer and composer Randy Newman a Grammy for his
mournful “Our Town” in the category of “Best Song Written for a Motion
Picture, Television or Other Visual Media” the following year, the songs
performed by Sheryl Crow, Rascal Flatts, and The Chords actually make
the allure of the animated jeremiad audible.
The camera position on the asphalt of the track, its elegant flights along
the competitor, and the fast editing in the opening scenes in Cars, for
example, convey the sense of speed in a racing competition visually, as
the powerful guitar riffs of Sheryl Crow’s rock song “Real Gone” capture
the atmosphere of the event musically. From the excitement of the crowd
to the enthusiasm of the racing fanatics celebrating in the infield of the
speedway, down to the commentators, small vendors, and long lines at
the female restrooms, the film animates in great detail (and with tongue-
in-cheek) the racing event experience to the sound of a song that drives
204 D. MEINEL

this enchanting presentation forward. When McQueen departs for the

last competition in California, the film illustrates his travel along the vast
Interstate Highway System from the East to the West coast with extreme
wide- and high-angle shots of the landscape as the camera moves along
the woods and the rivers, the fields of crops and cabbages, and arid, sun-
drenched canyons. Blending the majestic landscapes with slow fades visu-
ally, the film mediates the geographical vastness of the North American
continent musically with Rascal Flatts’ country rock version of “Life Is
A Highway” (a cover of the popular 1991 Tom Cochrane song). As the
steady mid-tempo drum beat underscores the continuous rhythm of one
type of scenery transitioning into another, the powerful electric guitars in
the chorus add a stirring quality to the sublime landscape shots. Finally,
to illustrate the restoration of Radiator Springs, Cars fuses its images of
freshly paved streets, refurbished houses, and cheerful inhabitants with the
doo-wop sounds of the 1954 The Chords song “Sh-Boom.” The slow,
simple beat, the deep plucking of the double bass, and the vocal harmony
of the tune in combination with the dazzling lights sparkling on the pol-
ished bodies of the Radiator Springs inhabitants cruising blissfully down
their Main Street truly enchant small town life and bring the withering
Eden to life again. In the concluding shots of the film, however, with
Lightning McQueen and Doc Hudson speeding along their dirt track,
Mater enjoying his long sought-after helicopter flight, and the Delinquent
Road Hazards locked in jail, the tunes of John Mayer’s “Route 66” cover
version end up celebrating the prophetic vision of the small town and
announcing the white, male privilege of the 1950s.
In American culture, automobility and driving have figured promi-
nently as a promise for the return of a “mythologized past” and the assur-
ance of “a limitless, abundant future” as both offered “the symbolic means
to restore the American character” (Seiler 85). Cars animates this myth
of American mobility in the narrative structure of the jeremiad. However,
with an aging, white male (Doc Hudson) illustrating the mythical past and
a young, white male figuring the prophetic vision, the animated jeremiad
concludes at its beginning: a 1950s Southern small town with its privileg-
ing of white, male mobility and its illustration of female, multicultural
immobility. Aesthetically, the film enchants its jeremiad narrative with
a popular musical score and a cast of amiable car characters. However,
the portrayal of small town life with cinematic shots in the tradition of
nineteenth-century landscape painting heralds the failure of the aesthetics
of enchantment to mediate the jeremiad potential for the “good things to
come.” Rather than forward, then, Cars moves in circles.
 DRIVING IN CIRCLES: THE AMERICAN PURITAN JEREMIAD IN CARS 205

NOTES
1. With time, as Bercovitch asserts, the Puritan jeremiad became the cultural
vehicle through which the colonies developed into the first modern, middle
class (capitalist) society free of feudal hierarchies (cf. 18). In the latter parts
of his book, Bercovitch traces the development of the idea of the jeremiad
from the Puritan settlers through the American Revolution to the eve of the
Civil War (1860) to demonstrate how this religious narrative would eventu-
ally expand into a vital element of the civil religion of the United States and
figure as its master narrative (cf. 28).
2. Even though the animated imagery in Cars is not a space cultivated by farm-
ers, the romanticized representation of 1950s life along Route 66 and of the
small town citizens of Radiator Springs portray them as benign, common,
and simple inhabitants of the land.
3. Hudson Motors got involved with stock car racing in order to promote sales
of their cars and in particular their Hornet model, also referred to as the
“Fabulous Hudson Hornet.” This model “would dominate Grand National
in the early 1950s to a degree never again duplicated by any manufacturer.
The Hudson Hornets won 12 races in 1951, then 27 of the 34 races in
1952, and 22 of the 37 next season. Even as Hudson itself staggered toward
oblivion in 1954, its cars won 17 Grand National races” (Beekman 58–59).
The accident involving the Hudson Hornet in Cars could hence be read as
a metaphorical take on the bankruptcy of the company in 1954, particularly
as “Hudson’s runaway success pushed all the major car companies to
become more actively involved in Grand National by mid-decade” (Beekman
60) making the Hornet irrelevant for the prospering of NASCAR and stock
car racing.
4. Historically, stock car racing developed as a sport popular among white,
working class Southern males during the 1920s and 1930s when these
Southerners were socially excluded from horse-racing events and economi-
cally from the expensive open-wheel racing. Middle and particularly work-
ing class whites flocked to the stock car racing events open to them as fans
and, simultaneously, as participants since people could enter these competi-
tions with their private passenger cars. The races quickly became part of
local and regional culture because “[s]tock car racing finally gave working
class white southern men the chance to demonstrate their honor and mas-
culinity in a democratic public cultural endeavor. Working class stock drivers
competed not just among themselves, as they had previously in horse racing,
but with the entire community. Success against their peers, and potentially
social betters as well, on the track gave these men both status and a public
voice” (Beekman 26). Even today and despite its expansion into a nation-
wide market, the NASCAR series retains many of its roots in the ambiguous
history of the Old South as “stock car racing is the most politically encoded
206 D. MEINEL

sport in the United States. The political trappings adopted by the NASCAR’s
leadership stress family values, patriotism, support for the military, and
Christianity—issues more associated with the Republican Party” (Beekman
141).
5. In a similar fashion, the condemned anonymity of the Interstate Highway
System in Cars actually represented a possibility of experiencing freedom
and unmonitored mobility for African Americans in the 1950s: “Driving
on—or, more accurately, within—the more totalized space of the interstates
diminished the risk of humiliation of and violence against ‘marked’ drivers,
especially when compared to the state roads, which, passing through every
town and accessible at myriad crossroads, exposed those drivers to the casual
racism of white citizens and the various prejudices and predilections of local
businesses and law enforcement” (Seiler 126). The imprisonment of the
“Delinquent Road Hazards” refers to this monitoring of public space par-
ticularly through white citizens and law enforcement.
 CHAPTER 10

Animating a Yet Unimagined America?

The Mediation of American Exceptionalism
in Toy Story 3 (2010)

Opening with a camera flight through a breathtaking arid Southwestern

landscape, Toy Story 3 (2010) begins with a tracking shot of Mr. and Mrs.
Potatohead as the two are about to rob a nineteenth-century train. Before the
mischievous couple are able to flee the scene of the crime in a pink corvette,
however, the Roundup Gang intervenes to stop the criminals from escaping
with their loot. To divert Woody, Jessie, and Bullseye, the Potatoheads blast
a nearby bridge to force the trio to save the lives of the innocent troll dolls
on the train. As Buzz Lightyear intervenes in the nick of time to prevent a
horrible disaster, the sheriff doll, the space-ranger action figure, and their
friends continue to pursue the sinister duo. When Piggy Bank suddenly
appears in his spaceship to help the two Potatoheads, Slinky Dog hopes
to assist the Roundup Gang with his “built-in force field,” and Rex pro-
nounces himself to be “the dinosaur who eats force-field dogs” (Toy Story
3), the opening sequence climaxes in a chaotic hodgepodge of nineteenth-
century Western images and futuristic science fiction phantasmagorias.
While Woody and his friends rehearse their familiar roles from the drama
Andy enacted with his playthings in the first Toy Story film, Toy Story 3 at
first animates the act of playing with toys as an integral element of the
film rather than as a fantasy within it. Instead of a little boy playing in his
bedroom, clumsily moving his toys about, and voicing their dialogues in a
poorly disguised voice, these opening shots are aesthetically indistinguish-
able from any other scene in the film. Eventually, however, Toy Story 3 dis-
closes its opulent science fiction train robbery with horse-riding cowboys,

© The Author(s) 2016 207

D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_10
208 D. MEINEL

cabriolet corvettes, force fields, dinosaurs, spaceships, and flying space rang-
ers to be a fantasy. As the film suddenly cuts to shots of a motionless Mr.
Potatohead sitting in a shoebox dangling on a piece of string in mid-air,
the majestic spaceship turns into a carton box, and the arid Southwestern
landscape into a children’s room, Toy Story 3 also shifts perspective; the end
of the Western-sci-fi drama is told from the point of view of the little boy
as familiar images of an absorbed Andy passionately moving and voicing his
toys supplant the aesthetically stunning imagery of the opening shots. In
a third shift of perspective, Toy Story 3 cuts to the footage of a home video
camera filming little Andy as the boy plays in his room. While the following
scene continues to capture Andy happily enacting his fantasy world with
his toys, the individual shots also show the little boy growing older. To the
opening song of Toy Story (1995), the home video edit slowly begins to
fade to black as Randy Newman sings “and as the years go by/ Boys, our
friendship will never die” (Toy Story 3). The extra-diegetic music, the bliss-
ful play of the little boy, the shaky images of the home video camera, and
the intertextual references to the previous Toy Story films function as a nos-
talgic homage to a happy, harmonious, and serene, yet bygone, childhood.1
After these glimpses into the past, the narrative settles in its present time
some ten years later. As Andy prepares to leave for college and the toys have
not been played with in years, the beginning of Toy Story 3 continues where
Toy Story 2 so joyfully ended: after the fun had lasted. With its opening
shots, Toy Story 3 once again enacts the postmodern play so essential for Toy
Story and Toy Story 2, but the third installment never develops a postmod-
ern poetics beyond the opening scene. Instead, when Toy Story 3 illustrates
scenes of abandonment, torture, or death in a startling fashion, the longing
for an idyllic past and the dreadful sense of obsoleteness after the blissful
days of childhood have ended come to shape a thoughtful narrative and
its somber tone. Immediately after the opening sequence, for example,
Andy, the teenager, labels his old plastic childhood friends “old […] junk”
(Toy Story 3) before throwing them carelessly in a garbage bag for storage
in the attic. For Woody and his friends, the prospect of an eternity in the
attic—not played with and forgotten—symbolizes a dreadful, meaningless
existence that sanctions their exodus from Andy’s bedroom. But whereas
obsolescence, worthlessness, and demise characterize the beginning of Toy
Story 3, its concluding scene returns to the shaky home video camera bliss
of a content child playing with its toys. Instead of nostalgically longing
for the past, however, Toy Story 3 ends with a bright future for the toys as
Woody and his friends find a new home with young Bonnie.
 ANIMATING A YET UNIMAGINED AMERICA? THE MEDIATION OF AMERICAN 209

Illustrating the irretrievable loss of an ideal state, the perils of a frac-

tured community, and the assurance of a blissful yet altered future, Toy
Story 3 animates the narrative structure of the American Puritan jeremiad
which “posits a movement from promise to experience—from the ideal
of community to the shortcomings of community life—and thence for-
ward, with prophetic assurance, toward a resolution that incorporates
(as it transforms) both the promise and the condemnation” (Bercovitch
16). Whereas in Cars (2006) this melancholic wistfulness for a bygone era
ended in a cyclical notion of history, in Toy Story 3 the loss of the golden
age with Andy spurs a journey into the wilderness of a daycare center and
a local landfill before establishing a fresh covenantal bond with a young
female child.
Since the errand into the daycare center and the local landfill encour-
age Woody and his friends to rekindle their devotion to a human owner,
these spaces become endowed with symbolic meaning—similar to the
Puritan notion of North America Perry Miller described in Errand into
the Wilderness (1956) and Sacvan Bercovitch later described as a “secular
and sacred place” (15) in The American Jeremiad (1978). “If for the indi-
vidual believer it remained part of the wilderness of the world,” Bercovitch
maintains, “for God’s ‘peculiar people’ it was a territory endowed with
special symbolic import, like the wilderness through which the Israelites
passed to the promised land” (15).
As the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure eventually top-
ple a totalitarian regime once again to bring democracy and freedom to
the oppressed toys of the daycare center, the film appears to animate its
American jeremiad in the imperialist tradition William V.  Spanos traces
in The Exceptionalist State and the State of Exception (2011). For Spanos,
the jeremiad and the errand into the wilderness stand at the heart of “the
secular exceptionalist American national identity” (Exceptionalist State
148) and encapsulate the driving logic of US imperialism from the nine-
teenth century to its global “War on Terror” in the twenty-first century
(cf. Exceptionalist State 150). In contrast to Toy Story (1995), however,
Woody and particularly Buzz are not motivated by a desire to spread lib-
erty and democracy. Consequently, their journey will not conclude with
the transformation of an evil empire abroad. The sheriff doll and the space-
ranger action figure come to encounter their mortality in the fiery pits of
a garbage incinerator; animated in religious imagery, this near-death expe-
rience fosters an inner transformation as the playthings eventually accept
their fate of eternal storage in the attic at home.
210 D. MEINEL

Whereas Woody, Buzz, and their friends learn to cherish their cove-
nantal bond with Andy on their errand into the wilderness of a local land-
fill, the young man abandons his responsibilities for his plastic friends. By
expelling his faithful plastic friends from their home(land), Andy presumes
a community similar to the logic of the State of Exception: the expulsion
of the toys mediates the Bush administration’s enactment of, what Donald
Pease describes as, “a version of American exceptionalism that was voided
of the need for American exceptionalists” (New American Exceptionalism
180). But when the young man decides to pass his playthings on to the lit-
tle female child Bonnie at the end of the film, the last scene concludes with
shots of a new covenant. This transcendence of the State-of-Exception-
exceptionalism illustrates a development Barack Obama proposed when
the presidential candidate encouraged the American people to “emigrate
from their involuntary exile […] to a new as yet unimagined America”
(Pease, New American Exceptionalism 213). In contrast to Cars, then,
this animated jeremiad concludes with a (progressive) transformation of
the ideal community: As Woody and his friends will eventually settle with
a young female child, Bonnie exemplifies a gender-inclusive public previ-
ously absent from the male-centered trilogy and the Pixar catalogue.
Even as this happy ending may illustrate the inclusive potential of the
American jeremiad or “an exceptionalism with exceptionalists,” to para-
phrase Donald Pease, Toy Story 3 does not necessarily end with the ani-
mation of an exceptional American. Because Bonnie already possesses a
variety of different toys and plush animals, neither the sheriff doll nor the
space-ranger action figure will play an exceptional role in her life. As the
sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure will begin a new adventure
with Bonnie, in this “yet unimagined America” the myth of an exceptional
America will be merely one fantasy for the young female child to toy with.

ERRAND INTO THE DAYCARE WILDERNESS

Deposited in a garbage bag by a disinterested and uncaring Andy, Woody
and his friends are mistaken for junk and end up on the street curb next
to the garbage cans. After barely escaping the dump truck, the toys feel
unwelcomed in and even exiled from their previous home since, from their
perspective, “Andy doesn’t want us” and “threw us out […] [l]ike we
were garbage” (Toy Story 3).2 This disheartening experience propels the
playthings to abandon their covenantal bond with Andy and search for a
brighter future elsewhere. After evading eternal boredom in the attic and
 ANIMATING A YET UNIMAGINED AMERICA? THE MEDIATION OF AMERICAN 211

escaping the horrors of the garbage truck, Woody and his friends journey
to the Sunnyside daycare center in hope of finding a new home. At first,
their errand seems to have brought the toys to a promised land as the
sight of a playground, the sound of happy children, and even the rainbow
painted on the front door lead the toys to assume that they have “hit the
jackpot” (Toy Story 3). When the camera slowly moves through rooms
full of children playing with their toys to the calm orchestra sound of the
extra-diegetic music, the film introduces Sunnyside as a paradise for toys.
As Woody and his friends are enthusiastically welcomed by the other toys
at the daycare center, their last fears disperse.
Greeted by a large, fluffy teddy, Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear (Lotso) intro-
duces the new arrivals to this seemingly ideal place where toys get played
with “[a]ll day long! Five days a week” (Toy Story 3). Lotso continues to
describe their lives as an eternal cycle of happiness and joy because as “kids
get old, new ones come in. When they get old, new ones replace them.
You’ll never be outgrown, or neglected. Never abandoned or forgotten.
No owners means—no heartbreak” (Toy Story 3). But when Lotso assigns
Woody and his friends to the toddler room, the toys begin to question
their initial assumptions. As the infants rush into the room to grab the
new playthings, the frantic extra-diegetic music, the disorganized camera
angles, and the fast editing stress the ensuing horror. Abused as hammers,
misused as paintbrushes, smeared with food, stuffed into mouths and
noses, violently pulled and dragged through the room, smashed, chewed,
and fought over, Buzz and his friends have to endure this mistreatment
while the older children are playing carefully with their dolls in the next
room. By the end of this violent mistreatment, the camera hangs high
above the room showing the little toddlers running anarchically with the
toys as the bowed string music heightens to a painful crescendo before the
film cuts to a black screen in silence. With this brief visual and acoustic
intermission, Toy Story 3 further heightens the previous agony: groaning
with pain, smudged with different colors, missing body parts, jumbled
together, and horribly distorted, Buzz and his friends have ended up in a
hostile and menacing toy wilderness.
Similar to the Puritan perception of the North American continent,
this wilderness is also fraught with what Bercovitch described as “special
symbolic import” (15). When Lotso announces that at Sunnyside “we
don’t need owners” because “[w]e own ourselves” as “masters of our
own faith” and in “control [of] our own destiny” (Toy Story 3), the teddy
bear appropriates an egalitarian rhetoric to disguise his totalitarian regime.
212 D. MEINEL

In order to enjoy the privilege of being played with by the older children,
Lotso has “rigged the whole system” and created a social “pyramid” (Toy
Story 3) obliging the newer toys to serve under the terrifying conditions
in the toddler room. But the moment Buzz and his friends decide to leave
the daycare center again, Lotso and his cronies have no qualms about act-
ing as masters of Sunnyside and imprisoning the toys.
While the wilderness experience of the daycare center and the land-
fill afterwards will transform the condemned toy community and estab-
lish a new prophetic covenant in the course of the film, the animation
of Sunnyside as a totalitarian political regime in these scenes mediates
the familiar logic of an “anti-imperial imperialism”—the liberation of
an innocent people from an oppressive government for the betterment
of all in the name of American democracy. For William V.  Spanos, the
American Puritan jeremiad with its errand notion functions as the ideolog-
ical premise of US imperialism in its stipulation of a “crisis afforded by a
perpetual frontier” and “an always renewable, anxiety-provoking enemy”
(Exceptionalist State 148–149). In The Exceptionalist State and the State
of Exception (2011), Spanos conceptualizes the jeremiad and its errand
to have born “witness to the United States’s emergence as a global sea
power […] [which] increasingly sought after unilateral hegemony over
the world […] [and] culminated in the George W. Bush administration’s
declaration of its unending war on (Islamic) terror after 9/II in the name
of its exceptionalist errand in the ‘world’s wilderness’” (150). With his
pseudo-liberal rhetoric and his aggressive, autocratic demeanor, Lots-o’-
Huggin’ Bear exemplifies those totalitarian leaders whose acts supposedly
warrant American interventions in a global wilderness to spread liberty
and democracy3—the scenes of torture at the daycare center in Toy Story 3
further mediate this logic of an anti-imperial imperialism.
When Buzz declines to become a member of Lotso’s gang of drinking
and gambling toys and professes to stay with his imprisoned “family” (Toy
Story 3), the teddy bear decides to torment the space-ranger action fig-
ure. In an uncanny scene, the strapped and fixed “family man” (Toy Story
3) endures a violent treatment until Lotso eventually erases the memory,
experience, and character of the space-ranger action figure. Being set to
his initial factory programming temporarily, Buzz becomes an obedi-
ent marionette for the evil teddy bear until Woody and the other toys
restore his personality again when they topple the totalitarian regime at
Sunnyside. In ending this dictatorship, Woody and his friends bring lib-
erty to the oppressed daycare center society and institute, as one Barbie
 ANIMATING A YET UNIMAGINED AMERICA? THE MEDIATION OF AMERICAN 213

doll tells Lotso, a political order in which “[a]uthority should derive from
the consent of the governed, not from threat of force” (Toy Story 3). The
credit sequence details this truly egalitarian and democratic consensus:
the successful “state-building” at the daycare center yielded a cooperative
society as all toys take turns in enduring the toddlers’ play, hold extrava-
gant parties at nighttime, and have made “Sunnyside […] sunny once
again” (Toy Story 3).
Despite the liberation of Sunnyside, Woody and his friends do not
settle at the daycare center as their experience in this toy wilderness actu-
ally strengthens their sense of homelessness. This loss of belonging, then,
transpires beyond the remediation of US imperialism as Toy Story 3 nar-
rates the exile of a plastic people from their home after the dissolution of
their providential covenant. The errand experience animates not merely
an imperialist adventure but the search for this lost covenant. Thus when
Andy fails to ensure the well-being of those who have provided for his
childhood happiness and exiles the sheriff doll and the space-ranger action
figure, the young man enacts what Donald E. Pease described as “a ver-
sion of American exceptionalism that was voided of the need for American
exceptionalists” (New American Exceptionalism 180) with reference to
the national consequence of the “War on Terror.” Rather than solely an
imperial endeavor, domestically the Bush administration treated US citi-
zens as “denizens of a protectorate that the State of Exception defended
rather than answered to” and disassociated its political and legal apparatus
“from the normalizing powers of the discourse of American exceptional-
ism […] to render the state exempt from answering to its norms” (Pease
181). For the sake of homeland security, this State of Exception aban-
doned international law, the legal norms of the Constitution, the political
supervision of Congress, and the cultural myth of American exceptional-
ism to rationalize its military interventions abroad and its legislation at
home (cf. Pease, New American Exceptionalism 182–183). Whereas the
Bush administration exiled the American people politically, legally, and
culturally (cf. Spanos, Exceptionalist State 142), Toy Story 3 exiles its sheriff
doll and space-ranger action figure literally.
But as Woody and his friends eventually end up in a new home(land), Toy
Story 3 transcends the State-of-Exception-exceptionalism and offers in its
concluding shots a set of images resonating with the vision Barack Obama
proposed when the presidential candidate offered the American “constitu-
encies […] to gather up their resolve and prepare to emigrate from their
involuntary exile within an intolerable Homeland and to migrate to a new
214 D. MEINEL

as yet unimagined America” (Pease, New American Exceptionalism 213).

Toy Story 3 animates this transition from an “involuntary exile” to a “yet
unimagined America” as a jeremiad experience: the dissolution of the ideal
community between Andy and his toys sends the latter on an errand into a
hostile wilderness before establishing a new covenant with Bonnie.

SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GARBAGE

INCINERATOR
Exiled from their home, the sheriff doll, the space-ranger action figure,
and their friends oust the totalitarian regime at Sunnyside; their search for
a home(land), however, compels the playthings to continue their passage.
After the political wilderness of the daycare center, their errand transforms
into a life-threatening experience for the toys when Woody and his friends
involuntarily journey to a local landfill. With its vast heaps of trash and its
massive garbage incinerator, Toy Story 3 animates this landfill as a space of
desolation suitable for an anxiety-provoking wilderness that remediates
the American Puritan jeremiad preoccupation with the “threat of divine
retribution” (Bercovitch 8). Although this fear had been detailed with an
unparalleled passion and intensity in Puritan jeremiads, the divine punish-
ment envisioned in these narratives functioned correctively rather than
destructively as trials and tribulations were to be mastered as “period[s]
of probation” (Bercovitch 56). In the face of the scorching flames of the
enormous garbage incinerator, the toys eventually encounter the final pro-
bation before their reformation.
Trapped under piles of garbage, Woody, Buzz, and their friends can-
not escape the conveyor belt system of the landfill as the machine slowly
drags the toys into the fiery pits and blistering flames of the colossal gar-
bage incinerator to their certain annihilation. As the toys huddle together
to meet this animated approximation of “the threat of divine retribution”
together, the near-death experience helps Woody and his friends to appreci-
ate the value of community in life and beyond. This moment of community
reminds the toys of their duty to bring happiness to a child even if this may
mean eternal life in an attic. But as Woody and his friends hold hands in
these last moments, a divine intervention saves the reformed community
from the eternal fire. After a bright light from above localizes the toys in the
incinerator, an enormous hand reaches down to fish Woody and his friends
out of the sea of garbage. Although rescued by a profane garbage crane,
the film animates the scene with religious imagery to further illustrate the
 ANIMATING A YET UNIMAGINED AMERICA? THE MEDIATION OF AMERICAN 215

redemption of the toys. This deliverance from death allows the toys to fulfill
their part in the covenant with Andy as Woody and his friends come to cher-
ish the previously undesirable attic as a “safe and warm” place with plenty
of “games […] books […] a race car track […] an old TV […] those guys
from the Christmas decoration box,” and, above all, “we’ll all be together”
(Toy Story 3) by the end of the film. Willfully surrendering to an eternal
future in storage, the toys travel from the landfill to inhabit one of the boxes
destined for the attic. At the very last moment, however, Woody labels their
carton as a present to a local female child from the neighborhood who had
taken care of the sheriff doll earlier in the film. A puzzled Andy follows the
instructions and delivers his toys to Bonnie. As the little child is a passionate
and imaginative toy enthusiast, she inspires Andy to play with Woody and
Buzz and all the other toys one last time in the concluding shots of the film.
Hence Toy Story 3 began with the memories of an ideal community that dis-
solved in the present, initiated an errand into the wilderness and a period of
probation to end with the restoration of a reformed covenant.

A YET UNIMAGINED AMERICA?

Although the concluding shots of Toy Story 3 mirror its opening scene of
blissful childhood play, the narrative does not end mourning for or cel-
ebrating an idealized past. Instead, as the sheriff doll and the space-ranger
action figure transfer from a male adolescent to a young female child, Toy
Story 3 establishes a female figure at the heart of its narrative. While for
Pixar to release a film with a female protagonist will necessitate another
two years, the child character in the Toy Story trilogy functions as the essen-
tial purpose for the toys; each narrative depends on the emotional link to
Andy. In supplanting a male-driven past with a female-oriented future, Toy
Story 3 eventually mediates the inclusionary potential of the jeremiad.
Historically, the American Puritan jeremiad developed into a national
master narrative as its explicit religious ideas developed into a decidedly
secular myth. This “movement […] ‘from sacred to profane’” (Bercovitch
93) not only incorporated Biblical into American history but also
absorbed marginalized groups into this American consensus “so long as
that would lead into the middle-class American Way” (Bercovitch 160).
Whether female equality or African American emancipation, due to the
jeremiad consensus about an altered past that would eventually develop
into a prophetic vision, American society could adapt to and eventually
integrate hitherto excluded groups and demands as long as these would
216 D. MEINEL

“fulfill (rather than undermine) the American dream” (Bercovitch 160).

Seen in this light, then, the narrative transition to a female child animates
the inclusive potential of the American jeremiad.4
The cinematic jeremiad from an “involuntary exile” to a prophetic
vision also mediates the “exceptionalism with exceptionalist” consensus
presidential candidate Barack Obama envisioned for his “yet unimagined
America.” As Andy exiles Woody and Buzz from their home(land) and
sends his toys on an errand into the wilderness, the journey from Andy
to Bonnie animates the transition from the Bush administration’s disas-
sociation “from the normalizing powers of the discourse of American
exceptionalism” to Obama’s transformation of this State of Exception in
“work[ing] with and through the fantasy of American exceptionalism”
(Pease, New American Exceptionalism 181, 209).
The concluding shots of Toy Story 3, however, not only remediate a
(re-)animation of the myth of American exceptionalism on the idyllic front
porch of a suburban home. Given that Bonnie already owned a hedgehog
doll, a blue dinosaur toy, a unicorn, a rag doll, a sad clown, and a toy
version of Totoro,5 Woody, Buzz, and their friends will neither be the
exclusive favorites of Bonnie nor attain a similarly defining status for the
little child as they previously had for Andy. Sharing their playtime with
other equally popular toys, Woody and Buzz integrate into an established
community. As both will not preside over a diverse toy population, the
sheriff doll and the space-ranger action figure eventually come to be part
of a collection of Japanese film studio mascots, German-British hedgehog
dolls, and queer unicorns. The digital jeremiad narrative, paradoxically,
animates a “yet unimagined America” in which the myth of an American
exceptionality becomes merely one cultural fantasy to play with.

NOTES
1. The memory of long-gone childhood play will remain the only instance in
which the different layers of fiction are not immediately separated. In con-
trast to its prequels, Toy Story 3 displays fewer moments of intertextual refer-
ences or the use of irony—and except for the opening scene, the animated
film does not blur its narrative and any fictional account within the diegesis.
Even as space and time will play a crucial role, the film differentiates its vari-
ous spaces meticulously just as the finitude of life is a fundamental motive of
the plot. Furthermore, neither space nor time are compressed as the ani-
mated feature deviates from the postmodern poetics of its predecessors.
 ANIMATING A YET UNIMAGINED AMERICA? THE MEDIATION OF AMERICAN 217

2. The disregard Andy shows for his toys suggests that putting his toys in a
trash bag and losing sight of their whereabouts had been motivated by more
than a mere misunderstanding.
3. President George W. Bush articulated these traditional visions of US inter-
vention during his second inaugural speech multiple times stating at differ-
ent moments that “[f]or a half a century, America defended our own
freedom by standing watch on distant borders […] For as long as whole
regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny—prone to ideolo-
gies that feed hatred and excuse murder—violence will gather, and multiply
in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mor-
tal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of
hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward
the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom
[…] The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success
of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expan-
sion of freedom in all the world […] So it is the policy of the United States
to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions
in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our
world” (Bush, “Second Inaugural Address”).
4. Although the female child contests male privilege and illustrates the inclu-
sionary potential of the American jeremiad, the gender-inclusive narrative
also exemplifies “the middle-class American way” as Bonnie (and Andy)
lives in a suburban neighborhood with picket fences, a well-trimmed gar-
den, and properly arranged bedding plants.
5. A character from the film My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and mascot of the
Japanese Studio Ghibli film company.
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FILMOGRAPHY
Cars. Dir. John Lasseter. Perf. Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy,
and Paul Newman. 2006. Disney/Pixar, 2007. DVD.
Monsters, Inc. Dir. Pete Docter. Perf. Billy Crystal, John Goodman, and Mary
Gibbs. 2001. Disney/Pixar, 2007. DVD.
Ratatouille. Dir. Brad Bird. Perf. Brad Garret, Lou Romano, Peter O’Toole, and
Patton Oswalt. 2007. Disney/Pixar, 2008. DVD.
The Incredibles. Dir. Brad Bird. Perf. Craig T.  Nelson, Samuel L.  Jackson, and
Holly Hunter. 2004. Disney/Pixar, 2007. DVD.
Toy Story. Dir. John Lasseter. Perf. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and Don Rickles. 1995.
Disney/Pixar, 2007. DVD.
Toy Story 2. Dir. John Lasseter. Perf. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and Joan Cusack.
1999. Disney/Pixar, 2007. DVD.
Toy Story 3. Dir. Lee Unkrich. Perf. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and Joan Cusack.
2010. Disney/Pixar, 2010. DVD.
Up. Dir. Pete Docter. Perf. Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai,
and Bob Peterson. 2009. Disney/Pixar, 2009. DVD.
WALL-E. Dir. Andrew Stanton. Perf. Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, and Jeff Garlin.
2008. Disney/Pixar, 2009. DVD.
 INDEX
A American dream in Ratatouille, 32–3,
Ackerman, Alan, 63–4
Adams, James Truslow, 98
Adorno, Theodor, 12–13
aesthetics, 20–2
animated, 10–12, 20–1, 28
digital, 10–11, 21, 28–9, 29–31, 47,
55, 57–8
of enchantment, 66, 72, 204
live-action camera, 33–4, 124, 133
1950s, 75–6, 187
realistic, 164, 178–9
voice-acting, 33, 99, 111–12, 113
age of audiences, 19–20
Aladdin (1992), 7
Alger, Horatio, 32, 99, 111, 115n4,
116n7
Also Sprach Zarathrustra (Strauss), 20
Althusser, Louis, 13
American Adam, The: Innocence and
Tragedy in the Nineteenth Century
(Lewis), 52–4
American Adam trope, 30–1, 46,
52–5, 57
American dream, 2, 165
© The Author(s) 2016
D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5
97–114
class and, 99, 105–7,
109–12
ordinary whiteness, 111–14
Paris as symbol, 101–2
virtue and, 102–4, 109
whiteness and, 107–14
white privilege, 99, 113–14
American exceptionalism, 37, 47, 210,
213–14, 216
animation genre, 22–3
Cold War and, 24–5
driving, 200
food abundance, 115n5
frontier myth and, 134n1
historical scholarship, 23–5
Ratatouille and, 99
resource abundance and scarcity,
77–9
Tocqueville and, 164, 181n4
Toy Story and, 51
Toy Story 3 and, 36–7, 210,
213–14, 216
WALL-E and, 134
231
232 INDEX
American Expatriate Writing and the
Paris Moment (Pizer), 114n3
American Jeremiad, The (Bercovitch),
188–9, 209
American Masculinity Under Clinton
(Malin), 48
American South, 36, 198–200
American Tail, An (1986), 7, 114n1
Anarchy of Empire in the Making of
U.S. Culture, The (Kaplan), 154
Andre and Wall B. (1984), 4
animation genre, 22–30
American exceptionalism, 22–3
critical divide, 9–18
cultural myths and symbols, 29–30
potential for subversion, 20–1
revival of, 6–9
Animation in America (Wells), 21
Antz (1998), 8
B individualism, 36, 190–5
Baum, Frank, 156n3
Beauty and the Beast (1991), 7
Beekman, Scott, 199–200
Bellah, Robert, 191
Benjamin, Walter, 11–12, 16, 19–1
Bercovitch, Sacvan, 188–9, 195, 209
Bernard, Carol A., 134
Bird, Brad, 111–12, 179
Biskind, Peter, 106
Bob (Incredibles)
masculinity, 165, 172, 175
Boltansky, Luc, 63, 71
Bolter, Jay David, 29, 43n28
Booker, Keith M., 10, 19, 38n7, 67
Braungart, Michael, 92n3
Brave Little Toaster, The, 5
Brief History of Neoliberalism, A
(Harvey), 94n10
British Empire, 151–2
Bug’s Life, A (1998), 10
Building Character in the American
Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and
Their Forerunners, 1870-1920
(Macleod), 161n21
Bush, George W., 212
Buzz Lightyear (Toy Story films),
2, 45–58
American cultural symbology, 55–7
masculinity, 46, 48–9, 56
maturation of, 30–1, 50–2
postmodern identity, 67–8
C
capitalism, 70–1, 79–4
Carol, Hamilton, 172
Cars (2006), 35–6, 195–204
American jeremiad, 36, 188–90,
195, 209
American South, 36, 198–200
gender, 36, 201–2
Interstate highway system, 187–8
landscape art, 36, 196–7
race, 36, 201–3, 204
soundtrack, 35–6, 188, 192–4,
203–4
Catmull, Ed, 1, 3–6
celebrity studies, 117n14
Chiapello, Eve, 63, 71
Chicago Sun (newspaper), 8
children’s culture, 19–20
Christopher, John, 159n17
Clarke, James, 7, 40n19
Clark, Reuben, 143
Clinton, Bill, 46, 51, 56
Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs
films (2009, 2013), 8
Cold War, 24–5, 46, 81, 164, 175–6
communism, 79, 144
Computer Animation Production
System (CAPS), 5
 INDEX 233

computer graphics software Diner, Hasia R., 115n5

development, 4–5 Disney, 7–9, 23
Condition of Postmodernity, The CAPS system and, 5
(Harvey), 69–70 dormant period and renaissance
conformism, 35, 163–4, 166 of, 7
highway travel, 193 Lasseter at, 5
Conrad, Joseph, 157n6 Pixar competition by, 8
consumerism, 122–4, 128–9 purchase of Pixar by, 2, 9–10
Coolidge, Calvin, 156n2 tradition of, 7–9
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden
We Make Things (Braungart and Messages of Children’s Films
McDonough), 92n3 (Booker), 10
critical divide in scholarship of Disney Version, The: The Life, Times,
animation genre, 9–18 Art, and Commerce of Walt Disney
interpellation and, 11–16, 18 (Schickel), 38n8
meaning production and, 16–18 Dorfman, Ariel, 13–14
transnational cultural studies, 16–18 Dreaming Identities (Traube),
cultural appropriation, 16–18 98, 104
Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The DreamWorks Studios, 8–9
(Jameson), 62 driving, 188–90, 193, 200, 204
cultural myths and symbols, 29–30 Dyer, Richard, 108
Culture of Narcissism, The (Lasch),
191–2
Cultures of United States Imperialism E
(Kaplan & Pease), 14–15, 27–8 Ebert, Robert, 8
Edwards, Brian, 17
Ehrenreich, Barbara, 106
D Eisenstaedt, Alfred, 88
day care center (Toy Story 3), 37, Eisenstein, Sergei, 11, 16, 19–21,
209–14 93n8
Deakins, Roger, 33, 123 Eisner, Michael, 7
Decker, Jeffrey Louis, 105 Emerson, Guy, 137n13
Democracy in America (Tocqueville), Empire (Laxer), 152
35, 164, 166–9, 171, 179–80, enchantment, 31, 57–8
182n8 aesthetics of, 66, 72, 204
Despicable Me films (2010, 2013, Entertainment Weekly (magazine), 8
2015), 8 Epic of America, The (Adams), 98
Dialectic of Enlightenment Errand into the Wilderness (Miller),
(Horkheimer & Adorno), 12–13 209
digital animation Exceptionalist State and the
beginnings of, 2–9 State of Exception, The (Spanos),
live-action style, 28–30 209, 212
234 INDEX
F H
family life/marriage, 35, 165–6,
170–1, 173–5
fascism, 11–13, 79, 143
Felski, Rita, 31, 57–8, 179
femininity
in Up, 150–1
in WALL-E, 125–7, 134
film industry, blockbuster formula
of, 6–9
Films of Pixar Animation Studio, The
(Clarke), 7, 40n19
financial history of Pixar, 4–5
Fisher Fishkin, Shelly, 18
Fluck, Winfried, 14, 22
Fox Movietone News (1928-1963), 140
Fraser, Nancy, 176–7
Freedman, Ariela, 155
frontier myth, 2, 77
WALL-E and, 33–4, 120–2, 127–8,
129–30, 130–4
Frozen (2013), 8
G
Garofalo, Janeane, 117n15
gender, 2
in Cars, 36, 201–2
in Incredibles, 35, 170–1, 171–3,
173–5
mobility and, 150–3, 201–2
in Monsters, Inc., 95n12
in Ratatouille, 105–7
in Toy Story, 3, 37, 210, 215
in Up, 150–1
in WALL-E, 124–7, 134
Gingrich, Newt, 46, 51, 56
Globalizing American Studies
(Edwards), 16–17
Gone with the Wind (1939), 16–17
Graf Hindenburg ship, 140, 151
Grusin, Richard, 29, 43n28
Habits of the Heart (Bellah), 191
hair/fur animation, 32, 76, 85, 91
Halberstam, Jack, 19–20, 84–5,
149–50, 164
Hard Bodies (Jeffords), 172–3
hard worker figure, 99, 104–5
Hartz, Louis, 79–80
Harvey, David, 69–70, 94n10
Heart of Darkness (Conrad), 157n6
Helen (Incredibles)
gender and, 173–5
Hemispheric Imaginings: The Monroe
Doctrine and Narratives of
U.S. Empire (Murphy), 142–4
Homeland Security Act, 178
Horkheimer, Max, 12–13
How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist
Ideology in the Disney Comic
(Dorman & Mattelart), 13
Hudson Motors, 205n3
Hungering for America (Diner),
115n5
hyper-whiteness, 107–9
I
Ice Age tetralogy (2002-2012), 8
IceMan software, 5
identity formation, 66–8
Jewish male stereotypes, 76
postmodernism and, 67–8,
69–70
in WALL-E, 119–21
ideology of Pixar films, critical divide
on, 9–11
immigrants/immigration, 100–2,
115n5, 116n10
imperialism, 13–15, 55–6
imperialism in Up, 34–5, 134–55
effect on imperial agents,
146–9, 153

justification, 141–7
mobility and, 150–3
zeppelin symbology, 155
Incredibles, The (2004), 35, 156–80
American dream, 165
Cold War/suburban home
symbology, 164
conformism, 35, 163–4, 166
Democracy in America, 35, 164,
166–9, 171, 179–80
family life/marriage in, 35, 165–6,
170–1, 173–5
gender, 35, 170–1, 171–3, 173–5
masculinity, 171–3
neoliberalism, 177–80
race, 171–3
realist aesthetics, 164, 178–9
suburban home destruction,
35, 175–80
tyranny of the majority, 35, 164,
167–70, 176–7
voluntary associations, 35, 164,
166–71
War on Terror, 164, 175, 177–8
Indiana Jones trilogy (1981-1989), 7
individualism, 36, 176–7, 196–8
Interstate highway system, 187–8,
192–5
interventionist government, 82–3
It’s So French (Schwartz), 115n3
J contingent quality of, 85–8, 90–1
James, David E., 12
Jameson, Frederic, 62, 70–1
Jaws (1975), 7
Jeffords, Susan, 49, 172–3
jeremiad literary form, 35–7, 188–90,
195, 209, 212, 215–16
Jewish male identity stereotypes, 76,
88–91
Jobs, Steve, 1, 3–6
INDEX 235
Johnson, Lyndon B., 144
Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?
(Sandel), 86–7
K
Kaplan, Amy, 14, 27–8, 140, 154
Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 7
Kazin, Michael, 94n10
Kelleter, Frank, 156n3
Kennedy, John F., 131–2
Kiorastami, Abbas, 17
Klein, Naomi, 178
Kloppenburg, James T., 181n4
Kubrick, Stanley, 20
L
Land Before Time, The (1988), 7
landfill (Toy Story 3), 37, 209, 212–14,
214–15
landscape art, 36, 196–7
Larkin, Brian, 16–17, 151–2
Lasch, Christopher, 191–2
Lasseter, John, 3, 5–6, 8, 10
late capitalism, 70–1
Laxer, James, 152
Lazarus, Emma, 101
Lewis, Brad, 111
Lewis, R. W. B., 46
liberal consensus, 32, 75–88
capitalism and, 79–4
individual ingenuity, 76–7, 79, 85
interventionist government, 82–3
Jewish masculinity, 89–91
neoliberalism and, 83–5
primacy of, 79–83
resource abundance and scarcity,
77–9, 79
liberal multiculturalism, 31, 46, 51,
56, 62–6, 71–2
236 INDEX
Liberal Tradition in America, The
(Hartz), 79–80
Lightning McQueen (Cars)
individualism, 36, 190–5,
196–8
Limerick, Patricia, 131–2, 136n10
Lion King, The (1994), 7
Little Mermaid. The (1989), 7
Lucasfilm, 4–6
Lucas, George, 3–4, 7
Luxo Jr. (1984), 6
Luxo Jr. (desk lamp), 1
M monocultural ideology, 64–5, 71–2
Machine in the Garden, The (Marx),
25–8
Macleod, Peter, 161n21
Madagascar trilogy (2005-2012), 8
Made in America (Decker), 105
Malin, Brenton, 48
Mansfield, Harvey C., 181n4
Marx, Leo, 25–8
masculinity
hard bodies, 172–3
in Incredibles, 165, 171–3
in Toy Story, 46, 48–9, 56
in Up, 150–1
in WALL-E, 125–7, 127–8, 134
of Woody and Buzz, 46–9
Maslin, Janet, 8
Mattelart, Armand, 13–14
McDonough, William, 92n3
McHale, Brian, 67
meaning production, 16–18, 21–2
meat, 115n5
mediation
in Cars, 36, 189
in Incredibles, 171
in Monsters, Inc., 32, 77, 91
in Ratatouille, 33, 99
remediation, 29–30–1
in Toy Story, 2–3, 37, 62, 213
in WALL-E, 120
Medovoi, Leerom, 175–6
Merchandizing, 19
Metz, Walter, 141
Michaels, Walter Benn, 83–4
Mickey Mouse shorts (1928-1937),
11–12
middle class, 99
Miller, Perry, 209
Mills, C. Wright, 180n1
mobility, 36, 200–4
driving, 188–90, 193
gender and, 150–53, 201–2
Monroe Doctrine (1823), 34,
141–4, 153
Monroe, James, 142
Monsters, Inc. (2001), 31–2, 73–91
capitalism and, 79–83
hair/fur animation, 32, 76, 85, 91
resource abundance and scarcity,
77–9
schlemiel stereotype, 32, 88–91
Most Typical Avant-Garde, The
(James), 12
Mulvey, Laura, 14
Murphy, Brendan, 161n21
Murphy, Gretchen, 142–4
Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), 2,
9, 19
myth-and-symbol school, 27–8
N
NASCAR Nation: A History of Stock
Car Racing in the United States
(Beekman), 199–200
neoliberalism, 2, 76, 83–5, 177–80
New American Exceptionalism, The
(Pease), 46, 182n8
New Americanists, 14–15

New Colossus, The (Lazarus), 101
New Deal legislation, 80
New Spirit of Capitalism, The
(Boltansky & Chiapello), 71
New York Times, The, 8
Nixon, Richard M., 144
O rat as symbol, 99, 113
Obama, Barack, 213–14, 216
ordinary whiteness, 111–14
Oswalt, Patton, 111–12, 113
P Paris setting, 101–2
Paris, France, 101–2
Pease, Donald, 14, 46, 56, 66
Cultures of United States
Imperialism, 27–8
on exceptionalism, 181n4,
182n8, 210
on neoliberalism, 185n17
People of Plenty (Potter), 77, 79
Pixar: 20 Years of Animation
exhibition (MOMA), 9, 19
Pizer, Donald, 114n3
Pocahontas (1995), 7
political climate of 1990s
antagonism in, 51, 56, 64–6
liberal multiculturalism, 31, 64–6
Toy Story 2, 64–6, 71–3
Politics of Hope, The
(Schlesinger), 80
Postmodernist Fiction (McHale), 67
postmodern poetics, 31, 63–6,
67–73
Potter, David, 77, 79
Q resource abundance/scarcity, 77–9, 79
Queer Art of Failure, The
(Halberstam), 149–50
INDEX 237
R
race (see also whiteness)
Cars, 36, 201–4
imperialism and, 156n2
Incredibles, 171–3
Monroe Doctrine and
, 142–3
Rancière, Jacques, 22
Ratatouille (2007), 32–3, 91–114
class, 99, 105–7, 109–12
gender, 106–7
hard worker/trickster figures, 104–5
immigrants/immigration, 100–2
promotion of, 112
rat as symbol, 99, 113
ratatouille (dish), 103–4
virtue/morality, 102–4, 109
voice acting, 99, 111–12
voice-over narration, 100
whiteness, 107–14
white privilege, 99, 105, 113–14
(see also American dream in
Ratatouille)
Rawls, John, 76, 87
Reagan, Ronald, 71, 132, 144, 172–3
re-animation
Cars, 36
Monsters, Inc., 32
Toy Story, 3, 37
Up, 142, 151
WALL-E, 33–4, 133–4
Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins
of Identity (Medovoi), 175–6
Remediation: Understanding New
Media (Bolton & Grusin), 29
RenderMan software, 5
Republic of Drivers (Seiler), 192
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 80, 144
Roosevelt, Theodore, 143
238 INDEX
S Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Sandel, Michael J., 86–7
Schickel, Richard, 38n8
Schlemiel as Modern Hero, The
(Wisse), 90
schlemiel stereotypes, 32, 88–91
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 80–1
Schwartz, Vannesa R., 115n3
Scott, David C., 161n21
Scouting Party, The: Pioneering and
Preservation, Progressivism and
Preparedness in the Making of the
Boy Scouts of America (Scott &
Murphy), 161n21
Seiler, Cotton, 192, 200–1
selfishness/egoism, 36, 169–70,
190–2, 194–5, 196–8
September 11, 2001, 179–80, 212
sexuality in Toy Story, 48
Shape of the Signifier, The (Michaels),
83–4
Shock Doctrine, The (Klein), 178
short Pixar films, 6
Shrek tetralogy (2001-2010), 8, 17
Sklar, Robert, 27
Sklare, Marshall, xxx
small towns, 36, 192, 194, 198–9
Smith, Alvy Ray, 1
Smith, Roberta, 1–2, 9
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
(1937), 12
Sobchack, Vivian, 119, 125
social class
in Ratatouille, 99, 105–7, 109–12
Tocqueville and, 166–9
societal recognition, 164, 167–8
Sombart, Werner, 77
Sony Picture Animation, 8
South America, 142–3
Soviet Union, 56, 77, 81, 144
Spanos, William V., 209, 212
Star Trek (television series), 132
(1982), 4
Star Wars trilogy (1977-1983), 1, 3, 7
stock car racing, 199–200
studio authorship, 38n7
suburban home symbolism, 35,
175–80
success myth, 98–9. See also American
dream in Ratatouille
T
Tangled (2010), 8
Tasker, Yvonne, 173
television advertising, 5
Theory of Justice, A (Rawls), 87
Thomas, Lowell, 140
Thompson, Elizabeth, 16–17
3-D graphics, 5
Tin Toy (1988), 6
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 35, 164,
166–71, 179–80, 182n8
on family/marriage, 171
tyranny of the majority, 35, 164,
167–70, 176–7
voluntary associations, 2, 35, 164,
166–71
totalitarianism, 37, 209, 211–13
Toy Story (1995), 8, 30–1, 37–58, 72
age of audience, 19
American Adam trope, 30–1, 51–5
critical acclaim, 8
imperialist ideology, 15, 55–6
masculinity, 46, 48–9, 56
opening scene, 28
performance of toyness, 55–8 (see
also Buzz Lightyear (Toy Story
films)) (see also Woody (Toy
Story films))
Toy Story 2 (1999), 31, 58–73
liberal multiculturalism, 31, 62–6,
71–2

postmodernism, 62–3, 66, 71–3
postmodern poetics, 31
space/time construction/
deconstruction, 68–70
Toy Story 3 (2010), 36–7, 204–16
American exceptionalism, 36–7,
210, 213–14, 216
American jeremiad, 212, 215–16
daycare center, 209–14
errand into the wilderness, 209–10,
210–14, 215–6
opening scene, 207–8
Toy Story, compared, 207, 209
Transcendental Resistance (Voelz),
39n10
transnational American studies, 16–18
Traube, Elizabeth G., 98, 104–5
trickster figure, 104–5
Trouble with Diversity, The (Michaels),
83–4
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 33, 77,
120–1, 127, 129, 131, 133
20th Century Fox, 8
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), 20
tyranny of the majority, 35, 164,
167–70, 176–7
U gender, 124–7, 127–8, 134
United States. See imperialism;
Tocqueville, Alexis de
Universal Pictures, 8
Up (2009), 34–5, 134–55, 179
age, 141, 154
Carl/Charles comparisons, 140–1,
147–9
gender, 150–1
imperialist ideology, 15
mobility, 150–3
Monroe Doctrine and, 34, 141–2–4
non-normative kinship, 141,
149–50, 153–5
INDEX 239
zeppelin symbology, 155 (see also
imperialism in Up)
upward mobility, 98–9. See also
American dream in Ratatouille
V
Violet (Incredibles)
gender and, 174–5
virtue/morality, 102–4, 109
small towns, 188, 192, 194, 198–9
Voelz, Johannes, 39n10
voice acting in Ratatouille,
99, 111–12
voice-over narrative in Ratatouille,
100
voluntary associations, 2, 35, 164,
166–71
W
Walker, John, 178
WALL-E (2008), 26–8, 33–4, 119–34
age of audience, 19–20
cinematography, 123–4, 133
consumerism, 122–4, 128–9
frontier myth and, 33–4, 120–2,
127–8, 129–30, 130–4
movement and work, 120, 128
WALL-E (WALL-E), 2
wealth vs. hard work as success
markers, 102–4
Wells, Paul, 21–3
White (Dyer), 108
White Collar (Mills), 180n1
whiteness, 107–14
hyper-whiteness, 107–9
Incredibles and, 171–3
ordinary whiteness, 111–14
white privilege, 2, 36, 63, 65–6,
113–14
240 INDEX
mobility, 201, 204
in Ratatouille, 99, 105
White, Richard, 122, 137n16
Why Is There No Socialism in the
United States? (Sombart), 77
Winthrop, Delba, 181n4
Wise, Gene, 25
Wisse, Ruth R., 90
Wonderul Wizard of Oz, The (Baum),
156n3
Woody (Toy Story films), 2,
45–58
American symbol, 55–7
anxiety of, 45–6, 58
camera POV of, 45, 47, 56–7
as collectible, 58–62
masculinity, 46–8, 49, 56
maturation of, 30, 50–1
Wreck-It Ralph (2012), 8
Wrobel, David, 132–3
Y
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), 4
Z
Zeppelin Story, The (Christopher),
159n17
zeppelin symbology, 155