'Toy Story': a critical reading
Dublin Core
Title
'Toy Story': a critical reading
Subject
Toy Story
Description
'Toy Story': A Critical Reading is a book about the Toy Story (2015) film series. It was first published in 2015. Tom Kemper, from Pixar Studios, analyses the 1995 computer-generated animated feature film Toy Story in the BFI Film Classics series. This text explores the relationship and differences between Toy Story and other Disney films, from the creation of the film to the manufacturing process. It also explains the commercial value of 'Toy Story' and the business model that breaks the traditional film periphery. Additionally, it lists the film's production staff. The book analyses the storyline and cinematography of the film using examples. This book is intended for professional filmmakers or film enthusiasts. It focuses less on the plot of the film and more on its impact and aftermarket. Pixar's first computer-generated animated feature film, Toy Story (1995), has remained popular since its release. The film has spawned four sequels that have appealed to audiences of all ages worldwide. Pixar Studios, like the Pop Artists, transformed traditional animated films into trendy fads that have endured. In doing so, they created a unique alternative to the typical Disney model.
At the beginning of the book, the author starts with "Power Pop" as the title to illustrate the specific shots of the "Toy Story" film. The wave spectrum is a very broad concept, but the combination of cinematic art and pop art is what was expected from the art behind the film, which ultimately became the highest-grossing film of 1995. The book shows the excellence and artistry achieved by this film in order to highlight the success of the Pop Art created, and of course it’s literally an illustration of the popular power and influence of the film. Especially the film Toy Story, the design and color scheme of the toys in the film, mentioned in the book, is like art, which is different from another traditional Disney. Like Andy Warhol and other pop artists, Pixar's film rebels against the effect of secular traditional cartoons and puts the ordinary things around them in a more artistic way. The concept of anthropomorphism in the Toy Story trilogy is unprecedented. The relationship between toys and humans is mutually constitutive and ever-changing (Lanier et al. 26-47). By remembering the toys of their childhood, the artists in the film thereby create attractive characters and figures. We don't think of our films as underground, commercial, arthouse or pornographic, they're all a bit of everything, but at the end of the day, they're just 'our own films' (Crimp and Andy). So, the success of Toy Story is a result of this idea of thinking outside of the box and pursuing art.
As well as analyzing what goes into making a film, the book also includes a brief introduction to the creation of Pixar Studios, a film company that Lasseter was drawn to after the failure of his independent work on The Brave Little Toaster, which later became Pixar Studios. At the time of its founding, Pixar had several contacts with many of the computer graphics animation experiments in the United States, and this preliminary work set the stage for the impressive, animated films that Pixar would eventually make. However, Pixar was not favored by Disney at the beginning of its development because it deviated from Disney's traditional style. This text describes how Disney animators and artists treated Pixar Studios like "a rebel group". In the author's opinion, however, it was more a rebellious idea of an innovative spirit that broke away from the so-called traditional rules, which was ultimately vindicated by the success of Toy Story. The text also makes a statement about the early days of Disney, just like the early days of Pixar, Disney's young animators in the 1970s and 1980s brought the department to its knees, and after the 1990s films like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were released, which of course stemmed from the innovative development of Disney's management, Eisner and Katzenberg were instrumental in the development and evolution of Disney, and their innovative and individualistic approach had a lasting influence on the development of Toy Story. In addition, John Lasseter and his team have studied the design and manufacturing process of toys through extensive research and a deep understanding of childhood memories. They have worked hard to make Toy Story not just an animated film, but a work that can be watched repeatedly and that will resonate with people.
The book also mentions the commercial value of Toy Story, starting with the fact that each film has been a notable box office success worldwide, generating significant box office revenues for both Pixar and Disney, with the influence of bringing in a significant amount of money. And what makes Toy Story different from other animated films is that the main characters are toys themselves. This book analyses the commercial value of the toys in Toy Story, such as derivative sales, where the characters themselves are toys, leading to a wealth of derivative products, including identical toys, clothing, and stationery. These products can enrich the enjoyment of everyday life and bring the characters of the film into the lives of the audience. Most importantly, it has generated huge revenues for the Disney Company and, at the same time, Toy Story has become a strong brand, building a long-term thematic image for the Disney Company, and becoming one of its most important animated icons. The potential commercial value is endless.
The text concludes by describing the epochal changes in Toy Story, a whole new era of animated cartoons or animated films in which computer-rendered animation essentially replaced traditional hand-drawn animation, and after which other animation studios began to learn the essence of Toy Story. Computer animation reduced labor costs, and although budgets later rose as standards improved, it didn't stop audiences from enjoying the special effects. Since then, computer rendering has led to great animated films such as Madagascar (2005) and Shrek (2001). With the success of Toy Story, Pixar became a mainstay of Disney, paving the way for a later break between the two, but the author avoids the influence of Toy Story's excellence. At the end of the book, the author lists the people who worked behind the scenes on Toy Story, as well as a list of quotes from the books, completing a complete analysis and evaluation of the Toy Story film, giving it the credit it deserves.
The main section of the book provides an overview of the film's scene scheduling, not necessarily for every scene, but for the more important scenes that deal with both the timeless themes of the plot and the advances in computer animation in presenting these scenes to the audience. This section is written in a fairly simple way that is both entertaining and easy to understand. Toy Story may be a light-hearted film, but this book treats it with the seriousness it deserves. This book analyses the Toy Story franchise from a variety of perspectives, celebrating the creativity of Pixar Studios and the creation of a new popular trend to replace Disney's traditional animated films. Tracing the film's origins, production history and impact, it shows how its postmodern mash-up of pop culture icons and references represents a fascinating departure from Disney's fine art style and fairytale naturalism. From the story behind Toy Story to the film's content and the evolution of its business model, he fully acknowledges the success of cross-genre, computer-generated animation, and by highlighting Toy Story's consumer-goods theme, which subverts the traditional relationship between film and its ancillary products, Kemper offers an illuminating, revisionist exploration of this groundbreaking classic.
Works Cited：
Lanier Jr, Clinton D., C. Scott Rader, and Aubrey R. Fowler III. "Anthropomorphism, marketing relationships, and consumption worth in the Toy Story trilogy1." Journal of Marketing Management 29.1-2 (2013): 26-47.
Crimp, Douglas, and Andy Warhol. " Our kind of movie": the films of Andy Warhol. MIT Press, 2012.
At the beginning of the book, the author starts with "Power Pop" as the title to illustrate the specific shots of the "Toy Story" film. The wave spectrum is a very broad concept, but the combination of cinematic art and pop art is what was expected from the art behind the film, which ultimately became the highest-grossing film of 1995. The book shows the excellence and artistry achieved by this film in order to highlight the success of the Pop Art created, and of course it’s literally an illustration of the popular power and influence of the film. Especially the film Toy Story, the design and color scheme of the toys in the film, mentioned in the book, is like art, which is different from another traditional Disney. Like Andy Warhol and other pop artists, Pixar's film rebels against the effect of secular traditional cartoons and puts the ordinary things around them in a more artistic way. The concept of anthropomorphism in the Toy Story trilogy is unprecedented. The relationship between toys and humans is mutually constitutive and ever-changing (Lanier et al. 26-47). By remembering the toys of their childhood, the artists in the film thereby create attractive characters and figures. We don't think of our films as underground, commercial, arthouse or pornographic, they're all a bit of everything, but at the end of the day, they're just 'our own films' (Crimp and Andy). So, the success of Toy Story is a result of this idea of thinking outside of the box and pursuing art.
As well as analyzing what goes into making a film, the book also includes a brief introduction to the creation of Pixar Studios, a film company that Lasseter was drawn to after the failure of his independent work on The Brave Little Toaster, which later became Pixar Studios. At the time of its founding, Pixar had several contacts with many of the computer graphics animation experiments in the United States, and this preliminary work set the stage for the impressive, animated films that Pixar would eventually make. However, Pixar was not favored by Disney at the beginning of its development because it deviated from Disney's traditional style. This text describes how Disney animators and artists treated Pixar Studios like "a rebel group". In the author's opinion, however, it was more a rebellious idea of an innovative spirit that broke away from the so-called traditional rules, which was ultimately vindicated by the success of Toy Story. The text also makes a statement about the early days of Disney, just like the early days of Pixar, Disney's young animators in the 1970s and 1980s brought the department to its knees, and after the 1990s films like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were released, which of course stemmed from the innovative development of Disney's management, Eisner and Katzenberg were instrumental in the development and evolution of Disney, and their innovative and individualistic approach had a lasting influence on the development of Toy Story. In addition, John Lasseter and his team have studied the design and manufacturing process of toys through extensive research and a deep understanding of childhood memories. They have worked hard to make Toy Story not just an animated film, but a work that can be watched repeatedly and that will resonate with people.
The book also mentions the commercial value of Toy Story, starting with the fact that each film has been a notable box office success worldwide, generating significant box office revenues for both Pixar and Disney, with the influence of bringing in a significant amount of money. And what makes Toy Story different from other animated films is that the main characters are toys themselves. This book analyses the commercial value of the toys in Toy Story, such as derivative sales, where the characters themselves are toys, leading to a wealth of derivative products, including identical toys, clothing, and stationery. These products can enrich the enjoyment of everyday life and bring the characters of the film into the lives of the audience. Most importantly, it has generated huge revenues for the Disney Company and, at the same time, Toy Story has become a strong brand, building a long-term thematic image for the Disney Company, and becoming one of its most important animated icons. The potential commercial value is endless.
The text concludes by describing the epochal changes in Toy Story, a whole new era of animated cartoons or animated films in which computer-rendered animation essentially replaced traditional hand-drawn animation, and after which other animation studios began to learn the essence of Toy Story. Computer animation reduced labor costs, and although budgets later rose as standards improved, it didn't stop audiences from enjoying the special effects. Since then, computer rendering has led to great animated films such as Madagascar (2005) and Shrek (2001). With the success of Toy Story, Pixar became a mainstay of Disney, paving the way for a later break between the two, but the author avoids the influence of Toy Story's excellence. At the end of the book, the author lists the people who worked behind the scenes on Toy Story, as well as a list of quotes from the books, completing a complete analysis and evaluation of the Toy Story film, giving it the credit it deserves.
The main section of the book provides an overview of the film's scene scheduling, not necessarily for every scene, but for the more important scenes that deal with both the timeless themes of the plot and the advances in computer animation in presenting these scenes to the audience. This section is written in a fairly simple way that is both entertaining and easy to understand. Toy Story may be a light-hearted film, but this book treats it with the seriousness it deserves. This book analyses the Toy Story franchise from a variety of perspectives, celebrating the creativity of Pixar Studios and the creation of a new popular trend to replace Disney's traditional animated films. Tracing the film's origins, production history and impact, it shows how its postmodern mash-up of pop culture icons and references represents a fascinating departure from Disney's fine art style and fairytale naturalism. From the story behind Toy Story to the film's content and the evolution of its business model, he fully acknowledges the success of cross-genre, computer-generated animation, and by highlighting Toy Story's consumer-goods theme, which subverts the traditional relationship between film and its ancillary products, Kemper offers an illuminating, revisionist exploration of this groundbreaking classic.
Works Cited：
Lanier Jr, Clinton D., C. Scott Rader, and Aubrey R. Fowler III. "Anthropomorphism, marketing relationships, and consumption worth in the Toy Story trilogy1." Journal of Marketing Management 29.1-2 (2013): 26-47.
Crimp, Douglas, and Andy Warhol. " Our kind of movie": the films of Andy Warhol. MIT Press, 2012.
Creator
Tom Kemper
Source
Amidi, Amid, The Art of Pixar Short Films (San Francisco: Chronicle, 2009).
Barthes, Roland, Mythologies (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972).
Cross, Gary, Kids' Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Hauser, Tim, The Pixar Treasures (New York: Disney Editions, 2010).
Higgins, Steven, Pixar: At the Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco: Chronicle, 2005).
Isaacson, Walter, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011).
Klein, Norman M., Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon (London: Verso, 1996).
Lasseter, John and Steve Daly, Toy Story: The Art and Making of the Animated Film (New York: Disney Editions, 1995).
Maltin, Leonard, Of Mice and Magic:
A History of American Animated Cartoons (New York: Plume, 1987).
Osmond, Andrew, 100 Animated Feature
Films (London: BFI, 2010).
Paik, Karen, To Infinity and Beyond!:
The Story of Pixar Animation Studios (San Francisco: Chronicle, 2007).
Price, David A., The Pixar Touch:
The Making of a Company (New York:
Vintage, 2009).
Seiter, Ellen, Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1994).
Solomon, Charles, The Toy Story Films:
An Animated Journey (New York: Disney Editions, 2012).
Stewart, James B., Disney War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005).
Topps Company, Inc., The, Wacky
Packages (New York: Abrams, 2008).
Varnedoe, Kirk and Adam Gopnik, High & Low: Modern Art & Popular Culture (New York: Abrams, 1990).
Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009),
documentary directed by Don Hahn.
Wells, Paul, Animation and America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002).
Wells, Paul, Animation: Genre and Authorship (London: Wallflower, 2002).
Images from Toy Story John Lasseter, 1995), © Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar; Toy Story 2 (John Lasseter, 1999), © Disney Enterprises/Pixar; 100 Cans', Andy Warhol, 1962; Woman with Flowered Hat', Roy Lichtenstein, 1963; Northwest Hounded Police (Tex Avery, 1946), © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer;
Newsweek, 27 June 1988; Aladdin John Musker/Ron Clements, 1992), © The Walt Disney Company;
Disney promotional film (1957), © The Walt Disney Company; Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones, 1953), © Warner Bros.; Rabbit Seasoning (Chuck Jones, 1952), © Warner Bros.; Wackiki Wabbit (Chuck Jones,
1943), Warner Bros.; Porky in Wackyland (Robert Clampett, 1938), Vitaphone Corporation/Warner Bros.; 'Bicycle Wheel', Marcel Duchamp, 1913; 'Talking Tina'/'Living Doll', The Twilight Zone (Richard
C. Sarafian, 1963), Cayuga Productions/CBS.
Barthes, Roland, Mythologies (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972).
Cross, Gary, Kids' Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Hauser, Tim, The Pixar Treasures (New York: Disney Editions, 2010).
Higgins, Steven, Pixar: At the Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco: Chronicle, 2005).
Isaacson, Walter, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011).
Klein, Norman M., Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon (London: Verso, 1996).
Lasseter, John and Steve Daly, Toy Story: The Art and Making of the Animated Film (New York: Disney Editions, 1995).
Maltin, Leonard, Of Mice and Magic:
A History of American Animated Cartoons (New York: Plume, 1987).
Osmond, Andrew, 100 Animated Feature
Films (London: BFI, 2010).
Paik, Karen, To Infinity and Beyond!:
The Story of Pixar Animation Studios (San Francisco: Chronicle, 2007).
Price, David A., The Pixar Touch:
The Making of a Company (New York:
Vintage, 2009).
Seiter, Ellen, Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1994).
Solomon, Charles, The Toy Story Films:
An Animated Journey (New York: Disney Editions, 2012).
Stewart, James B., Disney War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005).
Topps Company, Inc., The, Wacky
Packages (New York: Abrams, 2008).
Varnedoe, Kirk and Adam Gopnik, High & Low: Modern Art & Popular Culture (New York: Abrams, 1990).
Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009),
documentary directed by Don Hahn.
Wells, Paul, Animation and America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002).
Wells, Paul, Animation: Genre and Authorship (London: Wallflower, 2002).
Images from Toy Story John Lasseter, 1995), © Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar; Toy Story 2 (John Lasseter, 1999), © Disney Enterprises/Pixar; 100 Cans', Andy Warhol, 1962; Woman with Flowered Hat', Roy Lichtenstein, 1963; Northwest Hounded Police (Tex Avery, 1946), © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer;
Newsweek, 27 June 1988; Aladdin John Musker/Ron Clements, 1992), © The Walt Disney Company;
Disney promotional film (1957), © The Walt Disney Company; Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones, 1953), © Warner Bros.; Rabbit Seasoning (Chuck Jones, 1952), © Warner Bros.; Wackiki Wabbit (Chuck Jones,
1943), Warner Bros.; Porky in Wackyland (Robert Clampett, 1938), Vitaphone Corporation/Warner Bros.; 'Bicycle Wheel', Marcel Duchamp, 1913; 'Talking Tina'/'Living Doll', The Twilight Zone (Richard
C. Sarafian, 1963), Cayuga Productions/CBS.
Publisher
British Film Institute
Date
First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE
Contributor
Xusikun Xin
Rights
© Tom Kemper 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London ECIN 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London ECIN 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Format
Book 13.74 x 0.71 x 19.05 cm
Language
English
Type
Animation
Identifier
ISBN 978-84457-667-8
Coverage
The film Toy Story
Books about Toy Story
Toy Story film analysis
Books about Toy Story
Toy Story film analysis
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
112 pages
Original Format
Paper, Photo
Files
Collection
Citation
Tom Kemper , “'Toy Story': a critical reading,” Archival Encounters: Digital Exhibitions form the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, accessed February 5, 2025, https://humanities-research.exeter.ac.uk/archivalencounters/items/show/17.