The Toys Are Us

NEARLY 2,000 years after St. Paul of Tarsus wrote his poetic epistles to the people of Corinth, we still equate our capacity for selfless love with the putting away of childish things. That is to say, the time comes for each of us to grow up and pack up our toys.

SHOOT: Excellent New York Times article on the inner workings of Toy Story.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The ennobling, terrifying drama of outgrowing toys has played out many times in stories and songs — most recently in this weekend’s Pixar release, “Toy Story 3” — and these well-loved tales tell us at least as much about the times in which they were created as they do about the time of life when children abandon their dolls and action figures. Indeed, for all the toys’ talk about the glories of being played with, very little screen time is ever devoted to showing Andy actually doing anything with them; when we do see Andy flopping Woody around like a bean bag, neither of them seems to be having much fun. In Andy’s presence, the toys are inanimate — polyethylene, wires, patches of cloth. Only when he leaves the room, when the toys are not serving him as impassive objects of his fancy, do they come alive.