the empty holster

So, right up front. I'm going to admit to being underwhelmed by Toy Story 3.

The short that precceeds it is puzzlingly retro-sexist, but so difficult to describe, I'll just say that it features a blobby cartoon character is drooling over a cartoon bikini girl. That set me down into a stew of righteous feminist indignation before the movie even started. Then in the first five minutes, there's a big fiery explosion, and a mushroom cloud (it's made of plastic monkeys, but still). I can't help but feel like I'm nitpicking here, but I come to a Pixar film looking for some shameless emotional exploitation, not action movie stuff. I guess it could be taken as a wink and a nudge to the usual summer-movie-mayhem, but it wasn't funny. It was a little funny. Looking forward to a big tearful catharsis, I remained dry-eyed until the final minutes. I guess nothing could push my buttons like montage of Jessie being loved and abandoned by Emily while Sara McLaghlan sings.

Toy Story is still about playing with toys the right way. It's a horror to be played with the wrong way. Being loved to death by young pre-schoolers is equivalent to dismemberment and reconfiguration at the hands of Sid, serial-killer -in-training. Though in the minds of some, he is creative, unbound by conventions and rules.

The most intriguing aspect of it all is, as always, the empty holster. There's always a little tension around Woody's removable hat being lost, but even Big Al, the heartless mercenary toy collector who is so excited to find a Woody complete with hat, never mentions what is missing from the holster. I always wonder how and when exactly these decisions get made, because nothing happens by accident in a Pixar movie. [Pixar provides a great argument that great (popular) art can be made by committee.] A TV cowboy of another era wouldn't be complete without a gun (or two), but by today's standards, it's unthinkable to provide a child with even a tiny six-shooter. So the compromise is an empty holster. What's the quote about a gun in the first act, having to go off? "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." I pulled it from Wikipedia entry on Chekhov. So what does no gun mean? And who is Woody's original owner? I've always assumed he belonged to the missing and never mentioned father. (I did the math and it works out well enough.If Andy is 17 in 2010, and "Woody's Roundup" aired in the early 60's, that adds up.) The empty holster is the symbol of the lost father, that Woody can fill in for but never fully replace. As the father is never mentioned, neither is the gun.

Woody also fills the role of boss of the toys. He's the jovial manager that David Brent/Michael Scott (I love both US and UK versions of The Office) are always trying to be. Quick with a joke, trusted, admired, beloved. Able to muster his troops and calm the savages in a crisis. And he has a militaristic, buffoonish sidekick jockeying for power in Buzz Lightyear. Hmm, I may have to expand on this later. I wonder if I can make footnotes.