Book review: Pixar with Lacan: The Hysteric’s Guide to Animation

The scholarly interest in Pixar Animation Studios has quietly increased over the last 10 years, with research ranging from the studio’s production practices and creative culture to the development of technology and the digital aesthetic, storytelling and storyboards, and the growth of the company. Karen Paik’s To Infinity and Beyond! The Story of Pixar Animation Studios (2007) and The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company (2008) by David Price have become seminal to understanding the formation of Pixar and the first 20 years of the animation studio’s history. While the company is frequently held as an exemplar of business success and attempts to solve the ‘Pixar Formula’ have been debated (see Capodagli and Jackson, 2010, and Finney, 2014, among others), Pixar co-founder, Ed Catmull’s own Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (2014) offers an insightful first-hand account of how the company built and sustains its creative culture.

Yet, unlike Disney, the studio’s parent company, there are still only a handful of texts written specifically about Pixar, and fewer that analyse the films themselves. To date, the thematic approach to Pixar’s films includes diversity, gender and nostalgia, to name a few. Lilian Munk Rösing’s Pixar with Lacan falls within this collection of texts, offering a psychoanalytically-informed analysis of the studio’s animated films, spanning a 15-year period, from Toy Story (1995) to Toy Story 3 (2010). Throughout the book, Munk Rösing introduces complex Lacanian theories using examples from Pixar’s films to explain concepts such as the voice, the gaze, the Other, symbolic castration, and desire and drive. In her introduction, Munk Rösing notes that analysing the films in this way shows ‘what kind of ideas they propagate about being human’ (p. 14). In doing so, the book addresses not only what animates Pixar’s characters, but also what animates us.

The first three chapters in Pixar with Lacan outline the power of the voice in Toy Story, the concept of the big Other in Toy Story 2 (1999) and sadism in Toy Story 3. From Chapter 4 onwards, the book follows a chronological order, which has the added benefit of underlining the development of Pixar’s ideology and allows Munk Rösing to explore the progression of computer-generated animation throughout. Each chapter in the book is contained by an analysis of one of Pixar’s films, as per the chapter title, which makes the structure of the book clear and concise, particularly when the subject matter is, at times, difficult to understand. Although the Toy Story chapters are categorized by the voice, the big Other and sadism, they explore so much more than the chapter titles indicate.

In the first chapter ‘Beyond the Name of the Father: Toy Story’ (pp.15–23), Munk Rösing engages with Slavoj Žižek’s concept of the voice as alien, which, ‘according to Žižek (and psychoanalysis in general) is at the core of humanity: “Humanity means: the alien is controlling our animal bodies”’ (p. 16). She analyses this idea in relation to Woody’s ‘coming alive’ in front of toy tormentor Sid, to explain how Woody’s voice in this scene demonizes him (the voice as alien takes control of his body) and traumatizes Sid in return. In this chapter, Munk Rösing also introduces Buzz Lightyear as the incarnation of ‘Lacan’s definition of the psychotic: the one who firmly believes in the big Other’ (p. 17), in relation to his delusional and fictional mission from Star Command. She describes the big Other as ‘Lacan’s concept for that place – be it a person, an ideology, God, common sense – where I believe the truth about my existence, the meaning of my life, the guarantee of my identity, to be located’ (p. 18). The analysis and description of Buzz’s journey (and fall) throughout Toy Story is beautifully and clearly explained through Lacanian theory, and introduces the idea of the screen as the big O. Munk Rösing notes, ‘this is something recurrent in Pixar: it is by watching a screen that the characters come to know their desire’ (p. 18), a concept she returns to later in the book. Chapter 3, ‘Sadism in the Kindergarten: Toy Story 3’ (pp. 37–49), engages with separation and introduces the concept as ‘the central existential challenge, from the first separation from the maternal body, to the last separation from life itself’ (p. 44), and language as liberation from separation. Munk Rösing explains this as ‘the liberation of saying “mother” instead of being in close wordless contact with mother’ (p. 44). She goes on to discuss object relation theory and the act of play to learn how to handle separation, and how this is evident, not only in Toy Story 3, but across the Toy Story series.

While the analysis of the Toy Story films, A Bug’s Life (1998), Monsters, Inc. (2001) and Finding Nemo (2003) in the first half of the book is interesting, at times the more complex psychoanalytical theory that Munk Rösing tackles is confusing and not fully explained, which undermines her analysis. This could be due to my own prior lack of knowledge on the theories outlined in the book, but as an introduction to Lacanian theory, small sections of these chapters needed further clarification. For example, when reading Chapter 5 ‘There is Nothing More Toxic than a Human Child: Monsters, Inc.’ (pp. 63–74), the outline of Lacan’s discourse as models for social bonds, and the accompanying formulas (p. 67), is dense and unclear, thus the analysis of Monsters, Inc. that follows seems superficial. Yet, the identification of Mike and Sully’s careers from mailmen to scarers as ‘reflecting the American dream of the self-made man’ (p. 72), and the different meanings of Dory’s motto in the next chapter, ‘“Just Keep Swimming”: Finding Nemo’ (pp. 75–91) is concise and insightful. Here, Munk Rösing describes Dory ‘as the allegory of Marlin’s animating principle, as a principle of pure movement forwards’ (p. 78). In addition, her engagement with the production notes and DVD commentaries and her linking of them with the narrative of Pixar’s films is wholly satisfying. In one instance, she notes the theme of ‘technical innovation and individual courage, but also entertainment (the circus troupe) [in A Bug’s Life] is crucial to the process of animation, which may be seen as a celebration of Pixar’s own qualities’ (p. 51).

Chapter 7 is the turning point of the book. By this stage, Munk Rösing has outlined most of the key concepts in Chapters 1–6 and is able to make the films the focus of the remaining chapters, using Lacanian theory (that in most cases has already been discussed) to support and validate her argument with in-depth sequence analyses. In the remaining chapters, Munk Rösing offers an insightful and interesting approach by effortlessly linking the film and the theory with production notes from the studio. In Chapter 7 ‘More than Super: The Incredibles’ (pp. 93–104), the scene in which Helen Parr explains to her son Dash that he must control his power (his super speed), is supported with Lacan’s idea that-which-is-in-you-more-than-yourself and then linked with director Brad Bird’s challenge to animate ‘it without making it too big’ (p. 96). Here, Munk Rösing shows how the idea of containment follows a thread from the film to the theory to the animation studio and it is in these moments where she succeeds, not only in making psychoanalytic theory clear, but also in relating her argument back to a wider study on Pixar. Munk Rösing suggests that ‘the pressure of being super is also the pressure of being Pixar’ (p. 96), offering a space (though not fully realized) to engage with contemporary debates that challenge the studio’s apparent infallibility, debates that have been recently reignited following the release of Cars 3 (2017).

Throughout Pixar with Lacan, Munk Rösing integrates a discussion of psychoanalytical theory with Pixar’s technological accomplishments as the subject of ‘the critic’s pleasure’ (p. 167). Overall, the book successfully introduces the reader to Lacan’s complicated writings and lectures, by analysing Pixar’s films through Lacan, while also allowing for further discussions on the position of Pixar, and animation, in contemporary culture.