62 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2016
    1. The care and precision required in rendering a digital universe mandate a level of microscopic vision that not even the cinema’s scrupulous attention to mise-en-scene could produce. The de-cision of Pixar to mirror the techniques of the cinema—to render things not in perfect focus but to invent in the realm of the digital blurry focus, shadow and darkness, is an important part of the emotional and philosophical make-up of these films, and links Pixar with “so-phisticated” cinema, making it a part of a cinematic canon in ways that margin-alized animation has rarely been

      A microscopic vision... meaning their animations go deep in not only story but in visual design and technique that mimics modern cinema.

    2. . One of the distinct pleasures in Pixar’s films is the pleasure of seeing the deepest of human struggles, timeless philosophical questions projected in and through remote forms of representation.

      one of the pleasures of pixar movies

    3. Not only do they bear the ar-chitecture of our social world but, as computers and robots, they have bod-ies, “characteristics,” personality, and style.

      We have created in our own image, demonstrating in the most forward of ways, a need to humanize and illustrate to all if not to ourselves, that we have a connection to objects and in turn are able to create relationships and interactive dynamics with what would be (or should be) move-less, lifeless, soulless objects.

    4. These Pixar films challenge adult viewers to closely consider their relationship to “friendly,” “soulful” objects.

      Scott's initial claim is simply made at the beginning of the section.

    5. One needs only to think of the sequence where, just for the fun of it and with no real narrative purpose, the toys knock over a huge container of bouncing balls in the toy store.
    6. Pixar habitually leaves behind the playful in its adult address and gives sustained attention to dark musings traditionally minimized in the G-rated

      giving attention to what would over wise in other "childrens movies" be minimized

    7. Pixar films fascinate with spectacle.

      The super happy fun candy scenes and how they create moments of movement. An example is the Pixar Zoetrope at Disney California Adventure

    8. These films imagine the possibility of love, beauty, commu-nity, and meaning through object sur-rogates, and in the face of apocalyptic circumstances.
    9. Cen-sorship became a productive force, re-channeling the censored material symp-tomatically across the text in a nascent, uncrystalized form (Foucault 4–11).
    10. Woody was meant to be a sorry specimen—“a slob in a cowboy hat, bleary of eye and dark of jowl” (Lane 86).15
    11. That is, Pixar’s films encourage adult audiences to both encounter and deny each film’s veiled dark content and its implications for them.

      This shows that Pixar wants the adult audience to recognize these messages and the meaning of these messages.

    12. The films frankly admit that the toys are fighting a losing battle
    13. This paper explores how Pixar films (Wall-E and the Toy Story trilogy [1995, 1999, 2010]) expand the limitations that have traditionally bound “family enter-tainment” under the G-rating by em-ploying a postmodern adaptation of the “principle of deniability,” a producer-designed multivalence that flourished in Hollywood from 1930–1968 under the Production Code (Vasey 104–13).
    14. 3Important scholarly work in studies of contemporary censorship has gone to the “stigma of the X rating” (Sandler, Lewis)
    15. in an effort to engineer Buzz “getting lost” behind the desk so that Andy will take Woody on his expedition to Pizza Planet, Woody ends up accidentally pushing Buzz out the window

      Woody shows his insecurities about being left out or left behind

    16. Much as widescreen cin-ema altered the scale of perception, mak-ing it possible to perceive minute details and epic grandness, digitalization has made possible the careful construction of a cinema of impossible scale—and for the creation of an atmosphere that is graphically “clean” and carefully con-trolled down to the most microscopic, barely perceptible detail.

      This paragraph quickly sets the lens and topic sentence of the Coopting the Cinema of Attractions section.

    17. All That’s Plastic Melts: Pixar Noir

      This topic dives into the dark reality of Pixars desire to engage the parents or adults to think directly about their violent and "Rated R" values. The author points out the scene in which Woody pushes Buzz out of the window. It also goes into telling the viewers how we are altering our values from "us revolving around objects" to "objects revolving us around". The argument in this section is that we will surround ourselves with objects and eventually dump them and forget them. We will create a "city of mass-consumption". It will collectively join the rest of the conversation in the arguments desire to expose just how great Pixar films are engaging children to begin to question their own involvement of "mass-consumption" and exposing adults to decide whether or not we should continue the path of "mass-consumption" and overall destructive tendencies.

    18. This paper explores how Pixar films (Wall-E and the Toy Story trilogy [1995, 1999, 2010]) expand the limitations that have traditionally bound “family enter-tainment” under the G-rating by em-ploying a postmodern adaptation of the “principle of deniability,” a producer-designed multivalence that flourished in Hollywood from 1930–1968 under the Production Code (Vasey 104–13).3
    19. Few sequences in contemporary cin-ema evoke the sense of isolation we get from the sequence where a panicked Jessie refuses to go back into “stor-age,

      A scene evokes powerful emotional fears of isolation and perhaps a fear of the unknown.

    20. WALL-E not only anthropomorphizes but Westernizes our robot hero and the loving sequences between WALL-E and the two loves of his life, EVE and his pet cockroach, are loaded with Disney’s signal sentimen-tality

      This is what we as an audience are comfortable with.

    21. New Hollywood block-busters were often made to fit into the PG category that would draw and thrill teen audiences (think Steven Spielberg’s Jaws [1974] or Raiders of the Lost Ark[1981]). But Pixar has helped to revive the idea that the cinema should address everyone—and has restored audience interest in the G rating.
    22. They feel, move, and have their being better than humans, who are often characterized as sadistic, careless, and preoccupied. They become not sur-rogates for human emotions but the ori-gin of a purer form of emotion than the corrupted or marginal human ones

      Toys become a metaphor for the simpler human soul, the purer human soul, they are at the mercy of conditions out of their control and instead of responding with the modern human reaction (i.e. sadistic careless preoccupied) they respond with non-corrupted actions (usually "I don't want to die" if you watch the movies) by demonstrating this difference Scott has made the claim that Pixar is subliminally telling adults that they have strayed from kinder purer emotional responses to difficult life stimuli

    23. (Wall-E and the Toy Story trilogy [1995, 1999, 2010]) expand the limitations that have traditionally bound “family enter-tainment” under the G-rating by em-ploying a postmodern adaptation of the “principle of deniability,” a producer-designed multivalence that flourished in Hollywood from 1930–1968 under the Production Code (Vasey 104–13).
    24. Although on the surface Pixar’s Toy Story (Dir. John Lasseter, 1995) and WALL-E (Dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008) are “innocent” animated film about ob-jects, their value as cinema lies in their ability to complexly address human—and sometimes wholly adult—fears about meaninglessness, apocalypse, and oblivion.
    25. However, Pixar’s features ground themselves—and their adult specta-tors—in a set of “traditional” binary oppositions between male and female, good and bad, servant and master.

      This transitions into the next paragraph about race playing a part in giving examples for bring "racialized servants".

    26. The use of “innocent”-looking films to address complex issues is not new to Hollywood but originated during the era of the Production Code, when studios used ambiguity and indirection to connote censorable issues onscreen.
    27. the peculiar self-alienation—and particularly the alienation from the body—experienced by technologically immersed humans
    28. Pixar has made over the twenty-seven years since its inception, it has garnered not only ex-tremely high box office figures but also (at least until 2011 with Cars 2) aston-ishingly uniform critical praise.
    29. Pixar’s stories are original (not recycled or reworked fairy tales) and its technological innovations intro-duce fresh phenomenologies in viewers, pleasurably alienating viewers from the adult subject matter so frequently cen-tralized in the cinema
    30. New Hollywood block-busters were often made to fit into the PG category that would draw and thrill teen audiences (think Steven Spielberg’s Jaws [1974] or Raiders of the Lost Ark[1981])
    31. Presenting objects with a utopian kinesthetic, they grant them just a bit more fluidity and less gravity than they have in reality. These films have therein shifted spectatorial possi-bilities—and enabled additional payoffs with repeat viewing (Belton 198).
    32. The de-cision of Pixar to mirror the techniques of the cinema—to render things not in perfect focus but to invent in the realm of the digital blurry focus, shadow and darkness, is an important part of the emotional and philosophical make-up of these films, and links Pixar with “so-phisticated” cinema, making it a part of a cinematic canon in ways that margin-alized animation has rarely been.
    33. Pixar’s Toy Story (Dir. John Lasseter, 1995) and WALL-E (Dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008) are “innocent” animated film about ob-jects, their value as cinema lies in their ability to complexly address human—and sometimes wholly adult—fears about meaninglessness, apocalypse, and oblivion.
    34. riveting mounds of metal dramatically revealed through the birds-eye shots that rival the buildings in height—are actually mile-high piles of trash.

      this is showing human waste and what it has done to Earth

    35. Pixar’s Toy Story (Dir. John Lasseter, 1995) and WALL-E (Dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008) are “innocent” animated film about ob-jects, their value as cinema lies in their ability to complexly address human—and sometimes wholly adult—fears about meaninglessness, apocalypse, and oblivion.
    36. Sharing with Toy Story the trope of mounting an overwhelming set of ethi-cal tragedies and concerns beneath the veneer of fun, kinetically-driven enter-tainment, the first several minutes of WALL-E underscore the literal massive-ness of Earth’s problems

      Pixar films often mask serious issues beneath their fun, family friendly exteriors.

    37. As Ju-dith Halberstam has noted, Pixar films are also doing curious cultural work, in their “preoccupation with revolt, change, cooperation, and transforma-tion” (Halberstam 79)
    38. Censorship and Dense Narratives

      Summary: This section is mainly about the hidden messages that are in the G rated movies and how adults ignore them because of the rating or the audience these movies are for.

    39. By Ellen ScottPixar, Deniability, and the Adult SpectatorPixar, Deniability, Toy Story 3 (2010) be-gins with Andy’s toys playing pretend
    40. Pixar realized the diminish-ing value of transient references in the creation of timeless classics and has mined an alternative set of “universal” pleasures.

      Pixar digressed from using short pop culture references to instead using universal interest.

    41. In WALL-E, the humans have converted themselves into floating objects—mounds of flesh laden with too many conveniences to move for them-selves.

      humans become lazy and complacent allowing things to be done for them

    42. This spec-tatorial distance, “making strange,” as Brecht would have it, allows the paren-tal viewer to process these narratives as an “other,” “unintended” audience and thus relieves them of the burden of full-frontal spectatorship (Brecht 93).
    43. resonant with the his-tory of slavery. Jessie tries to convince Woody that he is “valuable property” (a virtue we don’t know quite how to take) and that although he will be sold away from his “owner,” this is a good thing because he will be sold as “a set” with herself, Bullseye, and Pete—mak-ing him part of a new family with which he was always destined to belong. There is much anxiety about being sold away from the “set”—and about being left be-hind. In the same sequence, Stinky Pete even asks Buzz if Andy “broke” him, a double entendre that takes on a disci-plinary resonance within the surround-ing discourse on ownership, auctioning and captivity.

      Author makes note of the underlying issue of historical slavery hidden in "Toy Story 2", and issues of being human property (objectification).

    44. Giving the audience a taste of the film’s “navigable space,” this shot evinces the phenomenological power of the digital to depict scale of a breathtaking breadth (Manovich 248; Whissel, 91).8
    45. we live with our objects intimately—that they “people” our world.

      Scott implies a dependence upon objects. It's a fact that humans are social beings in need of emotional stimuli from others, when these needs are not met, we seek emotional stimuli even from fabricated relationships or intimacies

    46. Toy Story 3 (2010) be-gins with Andy’s toys playing pretend. The setting is the Old West. Sheriff Woody fights the Potato Heads-cum-bandits to rescue a moving train full of orphan trolls. The Potato Heads escape the train in Barbie’s dream car. But the train is headed toward the precipice at the end of a dynamited trestle. Despite Woody’s efforts, the train plunges off the edge. We hear it thud below and see smoke rise from the chasm. Cow-girl Jessie’s jaw drops in utter disbelief and disappointment. For several long seconds as the energy of the action se-quence diffuses, we believe that Woody has failed. Then Buzz lifts the train out of the hole. But the threat is not, as we had imagined, contained but is instead reanimated and escalated. The toys are assailed by a mushroom cloud of “death by monkeys” and finally an unnamed threat behind a red button in Evil Dr. Porkchop’s dirigible.
    47. “The visual and nar-rative incoherence that often arose from the effacement and displacement of sen-sitive subjects encouraged audiences to become active interpreters, obliging them to make their own sense of contra-dictory evidence” (Vasey 127–28).
    48. Stinky Pete even asks Buzz if Andy “broke” him,
    49. Alongside this sheer pleasure in ma-teriality and movement, Pixar operates with a nostalgia that is both regressive (in its reliance on traditional notions of gender, class, and morality) and liberat-ing (in its embrace of an ironic, detached view of the present).

      The author uses this sentence to effectively bring to our attention the nostalgia Pixar movies bring to us now that we are older.

    50. They also cause them to ponder their relationship to “the end”

      This marks a transition sentence.

    51. If identification with the object is ex-hilarating, it is also, at moments, fright-ening. The Toy Story films and WALL-Ealso generate important, though embed-ded, insights on both human and inani-mate objectification

      The author makes a connection to the audience identifying with an object, with human objectification and the fears associated with that issue.

    52. If “veiling something from sight turns out [as it did] to inspire as signifi-cant an erotic reaction as the unveiled event would have done...If the film screen works like a kind of censoring, elaborating the effect of what it covers, how will you censor that?” (Cavell 83)
    53. making strange,” as Brecht would have it, allows the paren-tal viewer to process these narratives as an “other,” “unintended” audience and thus relieves them of the burden of full-frontal spectatorship (Brecht 93).
    54. If identification with the object is ex-hilarating, it is also, at moments, fright-ening.

      This is the topic sentence for the first paragraph.

    55. Nostalgia is one of the central pleasures of the Pixar films, which not only focus on “classic,” vintage objects (the world worn, low-tech WALL-E and his collection of ephemera, and timeless classic toys in Toy Story), but also on a nostalgia for Hollywood

      This could be considered the 'thesis' of this section. It lets us know what it will be about.

    56. it has un-wittingly led to an increasing attention to the body: “information technologies have turned the body into property in a particular way” and it is this concern about the body that these films express (Nakamura 96).

      Also seen portrayed by Lucas films in "Star Wars: A New Hope" you see C3P0 as depicted as a human. He is portrayed as a "clumsy", "uncoordinated" and "clueless" and is always in dire need to be saved. You are than introduced to R2D2 who is not objectified as a human and he is intelligent.

    57. Not only do they bear the ar-chitecture of our social world but, as computers and robots, they have bod-ies, “characteristics,” personality, and style. WALL-E and the Toy Story films suggest that they, like us, have a soul.

      Sincerely is the passion to which we strive so eloquently to engage in the production of another race to dominate and strangle as "ours" and breathe light unto. We feel this need to fill holes in our life with "things" and we, as alpha species must be the dominant of all.

    58. Pete’s unnamed new girl owner never directly addresses Pete but tells her Barbie doll that Pete “needs a makeover,” one she will presumably perform herself, as she has on Barbie, with the help of markers, stickers, and (a final marker of drag) glitter.

      Even though this is to be seen as normal everyday play from a young girl playing dolls. Pixar hits home to the males in the crowd because it forces young and old men to question their childhood growing up and playing with dolls or "action figures" yet this little playful touch from the motion picture company also allows us to see the gender objectification that we as society places on our children that boys have boy toys and girls have girl toys.

    59. Toy Story and Toy Story 2 strongly sug-gests the danger of girls, as do EVE’s destructive, gun-happy tendencies in WALL-E. I

      Do parents see this when they watch the movies? I fear that even as intelligent as this is, that most parents can hardly see through the tape and see the behind the scenes action taking place. Unless a person has taken philosophy courses or film courses in school they might not see these however if one is looking for these issues they become more clear. I as a child who saw these movies as a young adult did not see this as an issue and now that I am a parent showing these to my kids I feel that I only recognize these issues because I myself have been introduced to them.

    60. servant and master.

      Seen a lot in Wall-E with the robots being in complete servitude to the humans. Other Pixar movies have shown this ownership over entities by humans. With Toy Story the toys are shown to have life and they are only to live for the imagination of the humans.

    61. they are more reflections on movement—stud-ies of movement and its dynamics—than exhilarating thrill rides bent on effacing mechanics as most action films are.

      Pixar has shown that they are more into the industry of studying movement and its dynamics. it just falls into the realm of movies. They have transformed the study of movement into films.

    62. Toy Story 3 (2010) be-gins with Andy’s toys playing pretend. The setting is the Old West. Sheriff Woody fights the Potato Heads-cum-bandits to rescue a moving train full of orphan trolls. The Potato Heads escape the train in Barbie’s dream car. But the train is headed toward the precipice at the end of a dynamited trestle. Despite Woody’s efforts, the train plunges off the edge. We hear it thud below and see smoke rise from the chasm. Cow-girl Jessie’s jaw drops in utter disbelief and disappointment. For several long seconds as the energy of the action se-quence diffuses, we believe that Woody has failed. Then Buzz lifts the train out of the hole. But the threat is not, as we had imagined, contained but is instead reanimated and escalated. The toys are assailed by a mushroom cloud of “death by monkeys” and finally an unnamed threat behind a red button in Evil Dr. Porkchop’s dirigible.

      This section of text immediately shows the authors credibility. He transports us (the reader) directly into the issue.