Pixar, Psychology, and the Soul
The brilliant A.O. Scott turns in a creepily sharp review of Toy Story 3:
Therein lies its genius, and its uncanny authenticity. A tale that captured the romance and pathos of the consumer economy, the sorrows and pleasures that dwell at the heart of our materialist way of life, could only be told from the standpoint of the commodities themselves, those accretions of synthetic substance and alienated labor we somehow endow with souls.
Cars, appliances, laptops, iPads: we love them, and we profess that love daily. Its purest, most innocent expression — but also its most vulnerable and perishable — is the attachment formed between children and the toys we buy them. “I want that!” “That’s mine!” Slogans of acquisitive selfishness, to be sure, but also articulations of desire and loyalty. [...]
When we grow up, or just grow tired of last year’s cool stuff, we don’t just put away those childish things, we throw them out. “Face it, we’re just trash,” says a bitter pink teddy bear near the end of “Toy Story 3.” Though the movie [...] labors to dispel the gloom of this statement, it can’t entirely disprove it.
I can't read that last line without thinking of Freud -- who sighed in a private letter that psychoanalysis turned everything so quickly to "dreck" (Yiddish for excrement), or the penultimate chapter of Catch-22 -- "the spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all." No matter how well-animated, can toys (or robots, as in Wall-E) tell us the truth about which spirit is uniquely ours, or what human 'ripeness' really means?
The thorniest problem for me with Wall-E was exactly this: the virtuosity with which Pixar imbued those robots with humanity caused us to relate to them as if they had not been merely human creations. This subtle suspension of disbelief has potentially profound consequences. No matter how fully we turn to dreck or garbage when emptied of our soul, we are never really "just trash" in the manner of anything created by human hands. And, after all, the reduction of everything we create to the status of trash is a view appropriated, as a glance at Pascal reveals, from specifically Christian psychology. Profaned or secularized, as Freud revealed, that psychology becomes not just depressing to human beings but deadly.
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May '10
Re: Pixar, Psychology, and the Soul
I believe the ability to participate in creation is part of what it means to be created in the likeness of God. A creation's value and purpose are determined by its creator. If I invented bicycles and motorcycles, I would not necessarily value the motorcycle more simply for being more "advanced" or complex. One can love a simple or even broken thing very much, or hate something elegant and refined.
The image of Hell as a place of fire arose from Jesus saying it is like the hill on which Jerusalem burned its garbage (I can't recall the name of the hill, at the moment). So a person may indeed become like trash. But injury or wear does not make one so. Only the Creator may decide the point at which His creation has failed His love.
It's certainly interesting, and a little frightening, to see how people adapt to advances in person simulations. Japan has been pushing to personalize robots for years, though they have yet to cross the uncanny valley. The automatic chat programs of our intelligence agencies seem like real people for a few minutes before realization strikes. But games are at the forefront, I think.
May '10
Re: Pixar, Psychology, and the Soul
Quoting "college me," who was very radical in her spiritual beliefs, "It's all gonna burn." My response as "grown up me" is, "And I'm gonna have fun with it while it's here." The turn around has been the realization that since we were created for life, then for pete's sake live life and enjoy everything about life - the good and the bad!