Originally published in Thai here: ณศักต์ พงษ์ศรี, “เมื่อความรักคือการปฏิวัติขนาดย่อม : Toy Story 4 กับการกระโดดออกจากชีวิตแบบเดิมๆ”
If one considers Toy Story 4 (2019) as a rom-com, which is quite reasonable when the two Protagonists are Woody and Bo Peep, this film wouldn’t fit the basic formula that concludes with a predictable happy-ending as in other Disney films.
For instance, in Beauty and the Beast (2017), Belle, a poor farm girl ends up marrying the Beast, who happens to own a gigantic castle. Even Cinderella (2015) manages to escape from her oppressive step mother and lives happily ever after with Prince Charming.
On the contrary, Toy Story 4 purposes quite a radical way to look at ‘love.’ The theme of this film then is not what love can do for you; It is what you can do for love. Love, as captured by Toy Story 4, is a violent disruption to one’s life.
The film begins with Woody and Bo Peep heartbreakingly saying their goodbye in the rain, because Woody decides not to leave his friends and responsibility behind. In this sense, Woody is like all of us. In a capitalist society, we all are born with certain sets of values that dictate us what to do in order to live a good life. In the theorist Mari Ruti’s words, we all are living our lives according to our “happiness scripts.” Take these words for example: study hard, get rich, and live a luxurious life! For Woody, his “happiness script” is to be a good toy on the shelf to make his owner happy.
Nevertheless, a professor at Chicago University, Lauren Berlant argues that capitalism promises people a lot of things, but in the end those are nothing but a “cruel optimism,” because such optimism will only end up hurting us. Thammasat Professor Sustarum Thammaboosadee stresses this point further by giving an example of a highly competitive education system, where students are always thriving for good grades. Unfortunately, no matter how hard they try, the nature of a competition will always result in a few winners and many losers, as if the world is not meant to be a place for everyone.
Woody’s story is no different. No matter how hard he tries, Woody simply is never going to be good enough. Eventually, he gets replaced by his owner’s newest toy, Forky. Despite all that, it doesn’t seem like Woody is going to do anything about such an unjust system, as if he is willing to be his owner’s second-best.
And all of a sudden, everything changes. While making their way back to their owner, Woody and Forky spot a clue in the Second Chance Antiques that may lead to Bo Peep. At this point, one thing that really stands out is the word “Second Chance,” because it appears at the exact moment when Woody is about to see Bo Peep again. For that reason, it could be said that what this scene is really about is Woody’s second chance to fall in love all over again. This reencounter is indeed magical. Consider how the producers try to capture this moment: everything moves in slow motion, as if time stands still, and the background suddenly becomes all so blurry, as if nothing else exists but the two.
However, the moment Woody decides to enter the store to find Bo Peep is also the moment of violent disruption in his life, because everything that follows is disastrous. First of all, Forky gets kidnapped. Then Woody and his friends have to risk their lives to save the newbie. Besides, throughout the rescue mission, Woody and Bo Peep are always coming to an argument, which almost jeopardizes their whole plan! Obviously, these acts confirm that falling in love is indeed a traumatic event.
Life will never be the same once you fall in love.
Woody loses everything that he has. He loses his normal life because instead of acting as a good toy on the shelf he has to risk his life to save Forky. He loses his secured life because he has to ride with the notorious, unskilled speedy biker Duke Caboom. Ultimately, he loses control over his life because he has to strictly follow Bo Peep’s plan.
“Love is a catastrophe,” says Slavoj Žižek, a renowned philosopher of the Left. It just ruins you. It opens up your heart and lets someone you never expect to know inside to mess you up.
What is she doing?
Why hasn’t she returned any of my texts?
Is she mad at me already?
Love precisely gives you this madness! This is why you don’t need any reason to be in love. You FALL in love. Just think about it. You live a happy life. You make a one-night stand here and there. You walk on the street as usual but then there is this one person who just smiles at you, and your life changes. Well, I mean, who would have thought that a smile could take one’s breath away?
If love causes this much imbalance in life, a rational person would not want to be in love in the first place.
Love doesn’t just destroy you. It also corrupts you. According to the prominent Marxist philosopher Alain Badiou, love corrupts you in the same way that Socrates corrupted the youth, because it leads you to infinite possibilities other than “the paths already mapped out.” This is true in every society. We all are expected to obey social customs. Especially in capitalism, we all are expected to be selfish, to always be looking out for our own selves. Yet love is the complete opposite.
Love contradicts the principle of self-interest. You instantly become selfless; you care for the lot of the other more than you would concern about yourself. For Badiou, love in this sense is the “minimal form of communism.”
This becomes clear in the ending of the film. Woody refuses to live his life according to his scripts of happiness as a good toy on the shelf. He decides to leave his owner and friends behind. He decides to put his sheriff badge down and courageously jump off the shelf so that he can be with Bo Peep.
However, as mentioned above, this film does not have a happy ending. Instead, it ends with a lot of questions. We just know that Woody decides to jump off his shelf to live with Bo Peep. But what will happen next? Will they live a happy life? Or will they eventually go their own separate ways? Well, we will never know. The end of the film just marks the beginning of their true journey to “infinity and beyond.”
That’s right. Love is the journey “to infinity and beyond.” No one knows what’s going to happen, when it’s going to end, or whether it will lead to happiness or not. However, despite knowing that the road ahead is full of uncertainties, Woody still decides to embrace all the risks, wishing deep down in his heart that everything will turn out to be fine. Cleary, falling in love does take a lot of courage.
We usually think that true love is one that makes you happy, which is not wrong. However, it is also important to understand that besides all its enchantments, love is catastrophic and may easily cause pain and sorrow. Cost-benefit analysis is completely irrelevant when it comes to love. Take Woody’s case for example: Love ruins him in every possible way. But isn’t this precisely what true love is about? Love leads to no happiness, because such happiness already lies in love itself. It is the enjoyment of every little shared moments along the way that matters. If one seeks only for a happily-ever-after ending, it may ultimately cost him his ability to actually love someone.
Last but not least, Toy Story 4 comes out in the time when extreme right-wing politics is on the rise due to the crumbling economic order of neoliberal globalization. In China, there’s Xi Jinping. In the US, there’s Donald Trump. In Thailand, likewise, we have the General Prayuth Chan-o-Cha. Without a doubt, many Thais may have already given up their hope to live in a better Thailand, thereby accepting their lives as written on scripts.
In this context, Toy Story 4 provides us with an alternative way to live our lives. In capitalism, we all are toys on the shelf. We are given our own happiness scripts to live our lives accordingly so that we can pretend to be happy in a world full of greed, misery, exploitation, and excessive competition. A meaningful life doesn’t have to be just about oneself. Jump off the shelf. Take some risks. You will never know how wonderful life can be till you actually start living your life.
Falling in love, for one, has the potential to open up all sorts of those possibilities. Love in this sense is a minimal revolution that will change your life forever.
