âItâs a Pixar World. Weâre Just Living in It.âRoberta Smith
From anxious sheriff dolls, obnoxious race cars, bleeping and buzzing garbage compressors to irritable old men; from cities powered with the screams of children, rat-infested cottages to post-apocalyptic garbage landscapes; from the elaborate sounds of âspeaking whaleâ to the immobilizing shout of âsquirrel!,â the world of Pixar expands âto infinity, and beyond.â As soon as the little desk lamp Luxor Jr. hops onto the screen, audiences of all ages eagerly await to be drawn into an oddly familiar, yet unexpectedly distinct, universe. As Pixarâs digital animation is so beloved, even ill-tempered ogres, singing princesses, and sabre-toothed squirrels obsessed with acorns are often assumed to populate their world as well.
When Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith co-founded Pixar Inc. along with thirty-eight other founding members and investor Steve Jobs in 1986, however, the world was not Pixar. Actually, outside the film industry, few people had heard of the small company and its previous work. Even in Hollywood, many would have probably been hard-pressed to describe what these few individuals contributed to the blockbuster trilogy Star Wars (1977â1983) or why high-tech entrepreneur Steve Jobs invested five million dollars in some forty computer scientists with PhDs. About ten years later, as audiences of all ages flocked to the theaters to see the first film produced entirely with the use of computers, the world had begun changing. As personal computers, cell phones, and the internet came to be an integral part of everyday life, in hindsight, a digitally produced film seemed to be the logical consequence of the increasing technological interpenetration of human life. And an additional ten years later, as the Museum of Modern Art opened its venues to host a show about digital animation, the curators opted to dedicate their entire space to the work of the Pixar Animation Studios. When The Disney Company bought the studio for 7.4 billion dollars only two years later, Pixar and its worlds had become the pinnacle of contemporary American culture. Today, another ten years later, an entire generation of young people have grown up watching the adventures of the sheriff doll Woody and the space-ranger action figure Buzz, traveling Route 66 with race-car Lightning McQueen, or experiencing global environmental annihilation with the cleaning robot WALL-E along with their parents and grandparents. Today, indeed, we live in a Pixar world.
Notwithstanding the immense critical and popular acclaim of the animation studio, scholars have only gradually engaged with digital animation and primarily published essays or dedicated single book chapters to Pixar. While the perception, as Roberta Smith wrote in 2005, âthat there is nothing to say in print about the artistic implications, stylistic differences (and shifts in quality) or social significance of Pixarâs films or their place in the animation continuum is little short of ludicrous,â may not be entirely true today, book-length analyses of the Pixar worlds continue to be few and far between. This book aims to bridge this gap and situate the animated films in their broader cultural, political, and social context. With interventionist sheriff dolls and space-ranger action figures liberating oppressed toys, exceptionally talented rodents hoping to fulfill their dreams, aging wilderness explorers fighting for South American freedom, or Mid-Western small town values forming an all-American champion, these cinematic texts particularly draw on popular myths and symbols of American culture. As the following chapters examine, whether commenting on the American Dream in light of white privilege, the frontier myth in light of traditional gender roles, or the notion of voluntary associations in light of neoliberal transformations, these close readings analyze two interdependent notions: the (aesthetic and narrative) refashioning of traditional American figures, motifs, and tropes for contemporary sensibilities, and their politics of animation. This book hopes to explore the ways in which Pixar films come to re-animate and remediate prominent myths and symbols of American culture in all their aesthetic, ideological, and narrative complexity.
From Failure to Fame: The Pixar Studio and Digital Animation
In the late 1970s, the notion of digital technology, from personal computers to smartphones or the internet, may have been the prominent theme of a science fiction novel or, at best, constituted a fringe phenomenon peripheral to most people. The idea of integrating computer-generated imagery into films or even animating an entire movie using computers must have seemed similarly unthinkable. To invest tens of millions of dollars into a film to project previously unimaginable worlds on the silver screen was not a viable option for film companies at that time, as all larger studios still reeled financially from the breakup of the lucrative yet monopolistic Hollywood system. As Pixar Inc. (which would later become Pixar Animation Studios) developed within a rapidly transforming cultural industry shaped by novel technological advances and business models, to write about the Pixar Animation Studios entails writing about the development of digital technology, blockbuster Hollywood cinema, and animated film of the last forty years. But even as the Pixar company may be one of the pinnacles of contemporary popular culture, without the technological savvy, the creative vision, and the commercial gamble of Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, and Steve Jobs, this story could not have been told.
Almost all histories of the development of the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster system begin with the surprising success of the first Star Wars (1977) film in which audiences were captivated by the adventures happening in a galaxy far, far away. While the narrative told the familiar, fairy-tale inspired story of the battle between the forces of good and evil, most viewers flocked to the movie theaters time and time again to experience fantastic extraterrestrial worlds and dynamic space fights. Even though audiences and critics celebrated George Lucas, director and producer of the film, for his artistic vision, most of the captivating space scenes depended on two novel technological inventions, âa computer-controlled camera that allowed for dynamic special-effect shots and an elaborate optical compositing system [that] gave the movie an unprecedented feeling of realismâ (Paik 19). To further develop and profit from this integration of film-making and computer technology, George Lucas founded a computer division at his film company in 1979 to develop a digital video editing system, a digital audio system, and a digital film scanner and printer (cf. Paik 20). For this Graphics Group, Lucas hired Ed Catmull, a young and aspiring computer graphics researcher from the New York Institute of Technology with a PhD in computer science, to lead the Lucasfilm Computer Division. The small group of digital software and hardware pioneers Catmull assembled to develop digital film production tools for audio mixing, film compositing, and film editing would eventually become the first cohort of the Pixar company (cf. Price 35).
Instead of limiting their work to the development of digital instruments for film production, however, Catmull and his team were determined to explore the visual and narrative potential of digital programming from the beginning. But as George Lucas did not trust the potential of digitally produced special effects or computer-generated imagery, Catmull had to find and develop projects to demonstrate the capabilities of digital animation. Although the team was successful in producing some scenes for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and the highly celebrated short film Andre and Wall B. (1984), âLucas thought the film was awful [âŠ] [which] reinforced his feeling that his Computer Division shouldnât be making films [âŠ] [and gave] him a low impression of computer animationâ (Price 59). Facing continuous doubts about the potential of computer-animated film from within his company, by 1985 Catmull hoped for a buy-out of his small section.
In need of a potential investor, the Computer Division eventually convinced Steve Jobs to acquire a computer graphics section which, in 1986, was not generating profits. Recently fired from his position as executive vice president at Apple, Steve Jobs had the time, vision, and money to invest in the idea of digital graphics that, in his words, âcould be used to make products that would be extremely mainstream. Not tangible, manufactured products, but something more like softwareâintellectual productsâ (Jobs quoted in Paik 51). Whether the ambition to monetize the digital potential of computer software was a brainchild in hindsight or born out of the work the Computer Division had done in producing extraordinary digital imagery such as computer-animated knights for Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) can never be settled entirely. At first, however, Jobs decided to continue fostering the development of his acquisition into a hardware company, since Catmull and his team had created a computer âthat could scan movie film, combine special-effects images with live-action footage [âŠ] and record the results back onto filmâ (Price 62). Named after its first device, Pixar Inc. was supposed to do what Macintosh had done for the personal computer: âGraphics computers would start in the hands of a few early adopters and then make their way into a vast mainstream marketâ (Jobs quoted in Price 85).
But the Pixar Image Computer could never fulfill these expectations. Plagued with technological inconveniences and limited commercial success, the computer became a funding sink for Pixar and Jobs. Although in dire financial distress, Pixar stayed in business because in the late 1980s the company had expanded its portfolio by developing film software and producing TV commercials. For example, the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) computer program, useful to color ink-and-paint cells, was an immediate success with the Disney Studios. Later, the RenderMan and IceMan softwareâdeveloped to enable the rendering of 3-D graphics and the digital processing of photographsâeventually came to transform computer animation and special effect productions. Even as the programs established Pixar as a leader in technological innovation, their 3-D rendering and image processing software remained âniche product[s]â (Price 100). With their technological knowledge and experience, however, Pixar was able to gain a foothold in the market for television advertisementsâhaving acquired some reputation for their software, the company produced several TV commercials. Starting in 1989, Pixar was able to create and increase revenue in this way to offset its losses in the hardware and software business. But by 1991 the annual deficits compelled Jobs to shut down the hardware production entirely and to concentrate all of the companyâs resources on expanding its software development and advertising productions.
While the RenderMan software continues to define Pixarâs technological superiority in the present, its days of producing commercials are long gone. Today, audiences love, cherish, and admire Pixar for its many feature-length computer-animated films. While the first-ever full-length computer-animated film Toy Story (1995) delivered the company from its financial distress in 1995, in those early years only a few people believed in Pixar as a film company: Ed Catmull possessed the technological vision, Steve Jobs provided the funding (although Jobs did not believe in the idea of a cinematic endeavor [cf. Price 104]), and John Lasseter offered the creative talent. A former student at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArt), Lasseter had been trained in the late 1970s by those artists he admired most: longtime Disney animators. Although Disney employed Lasseter in the early 1980s, his growing fascination and passion for digital animation found no resonance at the studio. 1 When his superiors persistently ignored the ideas of the young animator and eventually shelved his project The Brave Little Toaster, in January 1984 a frustrated Lasseter joined the Graphics Group at Lucasfilm. His collaboration with Catmull proved to be the creative foundation of the companyâs later success. Supported by Catmull in his attempts to explore the technological boundaries of computer animation, Lasseter produced several short films throughout the 1980s, each of which contributed to Pixarâs growing esteem in the film industry, demonstrated the ever-increasing possibilities of digital technology, and allowed Pixar to establish their commercial business. Beginning with Luxo Jr. (1984), Pixar continuously produced short animations and eventually won the Oscar for Tin Toy in the category of best animated short film in 1988. While these films showcased the potential of Pixarâs rendering software and functioned to advertise their technological capabilities, they also helped to gradually position Pixar as a film brand. With the financial dedication of Steve Jobs, Pixar accumulated technological and artistic capital which eventually paid off in the early 1990s when the previously disinclined Disney Studios began to float the idea of a cooperation for a full-length theatrical release. With the support and know-how of the animation studio in Hollywood at that time, Catmull, Jobs, and Lasseter had finally set Pixar on its course to become the culturally, commercially, and technologically leading computer animation studio of the present.
Teetering on the brink of financial collapse and wrestling for nearly ten years with finding a profitable business model, Pixar Inc. had attempted to develop graphics computers for the mass market, invented sophisticated rendering software, dabbled in television advertising, and produced critically acclaimed shorts until finding its path. Although Ed Catmullâs technological vision, John Lasseterâs creative talent, and Steve Jobsâ business acumen had primarily shaped this improbable course, the liberty and the opportunity to re-position a company in various competitive markets over the course of a decade from a cutting-edge technology developer to a profitable entertainment business may be hard to imagine outside the cultural, economic, political, and social atmosphere of California, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood. Even as the people at Pixar pursued a clear vision of producing an entire feature film digitally, the success of a computer-animation film studio in 1995 needs to be situated within the broader context of a transforming film industry, the renaissance of animated film, and consolidation of The Disney Company in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the tumultuous early years of the company, the first cohort at Pixar already established the predominant ideas for which the animation studio would become famous. As Pixar developed cutting-edge animation software and hardware from the beginning, the studio could offer novel cinematic experiences previously unseen on the silver screen. This strategy to stir interest in films through novel visual imagery coincided with and profited immensely from the shift to the blockbuster production system in Hollywood in the late 1970s. With Jaws (1975), the Indiana Jones (1981â1989) and the Star Wars (1977â1983) trilogies, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had fundamentally transformed the film businessâand the people at Pixar were deeply shaped by (and had shaped) the transition from the New Hollywood period to the blockbuster era, as James Clarke reasons in The Films of Pixar Animation Studio (2013):
In understanding the allure of the Pixar movie, thereâs a rewarding connection to make with the fantasy-film successes of a number of films produced in the 1970s and 1980s. These are films that many of the Pixar staff would be very familiar with, informing their sense of characterisation, plot, tone and subject choice. Indeed, of the filmmakers synonymous with the fantasy film, we must cite George Lucas and Steven Spielbergâand, critically, both expressed strong feelings towards the tradition of the Disney studioâs animated films of the 1940s and 1950s. (Clarke 38) 2
Parallel to a thriving film industry invested in refining their blockbuster formula, from the mid-1980s Hollywood also experienced a renaissance in animation. Films such as the Spielberg-produced An American Tail (1986) and the Spielberg and Lucas co-produced The Land Before Time (1988) were surprise box office hits and invigorated the genre with novel appeal. 3 At that time, The Walt Disney Company, however, seemed to have lost its ability to produce appealing animation filmsâduring the 1970s and early 1980s the studio had slipped into a creative and economic slumber after the death of its founder, Walt Disney. From a cultural, commercial, and innovation perspective, the Disney tradition so fundamental in shaping the film industry for decades had lost its allure. Only after Michael Eisner became CEO of the company in 1984 and installed Jeffrey Katzenberg as the chairman of Disneyâs motion picture division did the company begin to release critically acclaimed and financially successful animated films again. Beginning with The Little Mermaid (1989), in short succession Disney was able to...