Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Typical Toy's and Typical Stories

After recently watching Toy Story, I have noticed that there are many messages through out the film which I have not realized when watching it as a young tender lad. Andy is a kid in the movie with many toys, but through many agents he has pretty much all "boy" toys to play with. He has a cowboy toy, army men, a dinosaur, Mr. Potato Head, RC Cars, ect. Thanks to his mom, Andy has been receiving boy toys ever since he can remember, so he can't help but to want the new Buzz Lightyear toy for his birthday.


http://www.the-leaping-lamp.com/images/toy-story-andy-davis.jpg


Even the way Andy plays with the toys is very typical for a young boy. In the opening screen Andy sets up a imaginary hostage situation with many of his toys including the lady sheep walker a.k.a the damsel in distress named "Bo peep" who is captured behind the villain which is his Mr. Potato Head with an eye missing. Reminds me in class how we talked about stereo typical villains tend to be of color and have the typical "bad guy" scars. So Andy has his favorite Cowboy toy "Woody" to save the day and put Mr. Potato Head in jail. Its safe to assume Andy watches a lot of cartoons and movies that have this type of scenario which is repeated over and over in story plots. But as a young boy he can't very much help it because that's all he knows and is used to.

Many of the characters personalities seem very typical as well. Bo peep for example does not have many lines in the movie (spoiler: the toys talk) but when she speaks, its seductive. "I wanted to thank you, Woody, for saving my flock." Woody says "oh hey, it was, uh nothin'" she says "What do you say I get someone else to watch the sheep tonight", implying that she wants to have some alone time with Woody later on the night. Which a theme in many movies. Also the main characters Woody and Buzz both have a male dominance issue and through out the movie and fight over each other to win Andy's attention and approval which is the main plot in the film.