Pixar has created a stable of films for children that is founded on narratives of self-actualization—of characters branching out, embracing freedom, hitting personal goals, and living their best lives. But this self-actualization is almost exclusively expressed in terms of labor, resulting in a filmography that consistently conflates individual flourishing with the embrace of unremitting work.
Is there any other production house operating today that is more obsessed with narratives of the workplace and employment? The basic Pixar story is that of an individual seeking to establish, refine, or preserve their function as an instrument within a system of labor. The only way Pixar is able to conceptualize a protagonist is to assign them a job (or a conspicuous lack of one) and arrange the mechanisms of plot to ensure that they fulfill that job. This is why Joy can only accept Sadness once she comes to understand what it is she does.
.. In every Pixar film, the protagonist’s arc is oriented toward the ultimate goal of being an efficient, productive worker—whether employment has been thematized as being a father, princess, robot janitor, toy, ant colonist, harvester of screams, adventurer in South America, or otherwise. For Pixar, to live is to work.
.. At its bottom, this is the logic of pure capitalism. In an economy structured around limitless growth, dynamism must become the natural state of things.
.. The natural and profitable ideological by-product of this fixation is an abhorrence of collectivism—and therefore organized labor. To be collective, to be one among many, is to no longer be a special individual producer, which is its own kind of death. This is why Toy Story 2 abhors the idea of Woody becoming part of a box set.
Rush Limbaugh’s Evasive Embrace of Donald Trump
“Do you understand that I always have a purpose? Do you realize nothing is haphazard? You’re wondering why I’m supporting Trump. Who says I am? Have I announced specifically that I am, or are you perceiving it? A better question would be: If you think that, why? And I can’t go any further. I did with my brother last night. It’s on record, if I have to go back and prove this, and I told Snerdley this morning about this. But I can’t go any further here. It is what it is. I know it’s a cliche.”
So there you go.
Limbaugh always has a purpose, and those who’ve been listening long enough, if they have sufficient intelligence, will discern it, or at least fall back on their general confidence in him. Put another way, his incentives—as an entertainer—may diverge from those of his audience. His listeners should recognize his evasiveness and that their trust in him is misplaced. Conservatives who’ve been complicit in this farce for years should come clean.
What Seth Meyers Is Doing Differently
Behind a desk, the jokes are similar, but can be slightly more evolved. “It’s a tried-and-true, tested delivery system,” Meyers says, adding that the format allows him to punctuate his jokes visually, a long-time SNL gambit similarly employed by Comedy Central hosts like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. This also makes it easier for the show’s writers to throw in an extra punchline and get more mileage out of a topic.
John Stewart: The Walter Cronkite of the last decade
That was a smart move, in terms of Obama’s stewardship of his image, his awareness of Stewart’s influence and his recognition that Stewart is in some odd sense the Walter Cronkite of the last decade.