This is an interesting little article that will probably offend a whole host of people,
but Jordon Hoffman at UGO had a thought that the plot of TOY STORY 3 often looked like a metaphor for the plight of the Jews in the Holocaust.
Intentional? I doubt it. Interesting? Yeah, a little bit. Read the parallels below, but if you haven’t seen the film yet, warning, there are SPOILERS ahoy.
Andy is seventeen and about to leave for college. These toys are left behind, just as host nations left behind the Jews as the Third Reich conquered Europe.
Woody holds a meeting, where the assembled toy family discusses possible outcomes for their new position in the world. Change a few words and it is the same exact scene at the train station from Roman Polanski’s award winning Holocaust drama The Pianist. No, we won’t just be abandoned. Surely we can be useful to them somehow. Yes, we’ve lost friends (Bo Peep), but surely that can’t happen to us.
Buzz Lightyear stands forward and suggests sanctuaryIN AN ATTIC. Are you kidding me?
The cattle car comes for the toys in the form of a horrible garbage bag – but they don’t go straight to extermination. They find themselves alive and at Sunnyside where they are put “to work.” (Consider this, then, Dachau instead of Treblinka.)
Once there, they meet the toy version of Sonderkommando, toys who live the stay fed and well-sheltered (like Ken in his dream house) while leading other toys to a certain death. Newcomers are bashed and abused in the “Caterpillar Room” by non-age appropriate children until they resemble Muselmann and are eventually thrown into the trash chute.
The trash chute leads to a systematic sorting of metal (e.g. any last valuables) until, eventually, the fiery crematoria.
Our heroes get saved at the last minute, of course, and they find themselves a new homeland. It is a place where many of their kind already live and have an established foothold, and it would appear that security, finally, is at hand if they are vigilant.
I’ll be honest, I had glimpses of concentration camp ovens during that final terrifying scene, and some of the other stuff is curious to note. I highly doubt this was intentional on Pixar’s part, but it certainly is interesting to think about in retrospect.
What do you guys think? Wild conspiracy theory, or is there something here?