Why TOY STORY is about CULTS

warning even though this video is about a series of movies that are geared towards children this video is not for kids it's going to deal with a lot of intense subject matter so if any of these things make you severely uncomfortable I suggest that you do not watch this so I think that this requires a little bit of context I was at work one day and my co-workers were talking about the minions and somebody brought up that the minions were basically a ripoff of the three-eyed aliens from Toy Story and I joked about how the three-eyed aliens are cooler because the three-eyed aliens are basically a doomsday cult naturally this was followed by a lot of awkward silence and stairs to which I had to elaborate well think about it they all wear identical uniforms they have an intergalactic inspired space background and they have an obsession with a giant claw taking them away and descending them to a better place and in a very messed-up way it reminded me a lot of the infamous Heaven's Gate cult goddangit I swear to God I don't have an obsession with thinking of incredibly dark theories to correspond with children's movies but since you're here and watching this already let me try and humor you with my explanation in Heaven's Gate all of the members wore matching space uniforms their whole religious belief system was fueled by science fiction and pop culture and they had a fixation with alien life-forms taking their souls and carrying them off to a better place and because I have a very warped sense of the word fun I thought it would be fun to make a video that critically examined this so let's find out do the three-eyed aliens from Toy Story qualify as a doomsday cult because I'm not a professor or an actual expert in this field they're gonna be three main cults that I'll use as reference throughout this video Heaven's Gate the Branch Davidians and the People's Temple which I know is not a doomsday cult but we'll get into that later let's start with Heaven's Gate and I want to give a last warning to turn back if these things make you uncomfortable even though I want this video to have a light-hearted and fun tone this is the part where we talk about a very real gruesome and disturbing tragedy in 1974 Marshall Applewhite and his partner Bonnie nettles founded the Heaven's Gate group in California together Applewhite and nettles known to their followers under many names including DOE and T began spreading their bizarre ideology that there were signs of extraterrestrial involvement in Christian theology and created a whole new Dogma based around this this radical dogma believed that the earth was going to be recycled by these forces and the followers of Heaven's Gate would rely on a spaceship called tella which would carry all of their souls into the next level doe and T's twisted new-age version of an afterlife after nettles died from liver cancer in 1985 Applewhite became increasingly more unhinged his major fixation was on the arrival of the hale-bopp comet a once-in-a-lifetime event that Applewhite believed was going to signify the date that they were ready to ascend to the next level on March 26 1997 the bodies of all 39 members of Heaven's Gate were found dead lying in cots everybody wearing the exact same clothing a patch for their away team which was in fact a reference to Star Trek and a pair of Nikes so that way their bodies could be properly identified and their souls could rise a mass suicide so bizarre and catastrophic it's still remembered over 20 years later and then there's Toy Story and the lingering question do these guys qualify as these guys well as I master watches who will go and who escaped I have been chosen farewell my friends gone to a better place actually no see in order to be a doomsday cults your religious belief system has to include an actual doomsday an Advent some kind of apocalyptic event that would trigger something like a mass suicide Heaven's Gate had the hale-bopp comet just like the Branch Davidians believed in the opening of the seventh seal see the People's Temple and Jim Jones weren't doing this because of some religious Advent they did it as a warped act of political resistance and Jim Jones was a drug filled maniac so not every cult involved in a massacre is a doomsday cult the three eyed aliens aren't focused around a specific event they're just waiting at the mercy of the claw but their behavior is still somehow odd and culty maybe they aren't specifically a doomsday cult maybe they are a death cult a cult fixated around the idea and obsession of death and the afterlife except in the second movie mr. Potato Head totally saves their lives and then they become as kids and clearly they value life so what are they not including additional source material from The Buzz Lightyear cartoon show because that'd be a whole other thing but for the sake of this silly little video how do you classify the belief system that they have while palling around for research for this I came across this top tens article by this guy Jim Siskel and he proposes that the aliens actually practice a form of totemism totemism is basically the belief that a group has a religious and spiritual relationship with a sacred animal or object while typically with a wild animal it could extend to relationships with like trees or nature or other different objects which brings the question can you have a totemic relationship with an inanimate claw well you're literally dealing in a universe where you have inanimate toys that are somehow alive maybe these creatures perceive this claw as some sort of organic material rather than the people that are controlling it and maybe from their perspective that makes the claw and the animate cream and not necessarily a machine now while it's cool and interesting to look at it as a form of totemism really the three eyed aliens believe can be boiled down to plain old idolatry the belief in worship of an idol they're just so obsessive about it that their religious extremism can be misconstrued for something much weirder so there you have it it was just some odd real-world parallels of course it would be so silly to assume that the three eyed aliens were a cult because we all know that the real cult and toy story was the roundup gang oh you want me to explain that one all right if you're with me this far and if you're willing to follow me down a very bizarre rabbit hole all of this was just a preamble here's the real video an in-depth exploration of the dark secret theology of Toy Story so I want to set some ground rules before we get too far into this this video isn't meant to be a statement on real religion but rather an examination of religion in the context of toystore see whether it was intentional or not pics are made of really interesting world dynamic in the Toy Story series specifically in the role that children play think about it like this all that the toys in Toy Story want are to be adored and played with by their children they love these children they basically worship these children I think it's really safe to say that in this universe the children in Toy Story basically play the role of these great deities or gods which I will kind of use a shorthand again not God in like the creator myth sense more like a demigod or a deity or a very powerful entity that these toys want to appease if you think I'm crazy you watch the first Toy Story and replace every time they say Andy or kid with God that'll be a really fun Friday night and regardless of whether or not you think gods exist in the real world in Toy Story they're real they play a very active part but unlike our world there's an interesting role reversal in most real world religions God is looking down on us God is aware of everything that we are doing and we aren't aware of anything that God does but in Toy Story this is reversed in Toy Story the toys are the ones that are observing and aware of the gods and the gods lack complete awareness of what the toys are doing isn't that kind of neat to think about Siskel's articles cites this as an example of disti ism the idea of an indifferent God that is neither good and not evil in this case I don't think this the ISM is the quite proper term because these gods aren't unfeeling they're just ignorant unawareness is different from unfeeling this they still do love the toys they just don't realize that the toys love them back Siskel's article inspired a lot of the latter half of this video so I want to give him a huge handful of credit of course there are some things that he says that I think are completely ridiculous like the idea that mr. Potato Head is a Mormon but we'll get into that starting from the beginning let's try and take a look at these movies from a theological perspective in Toy Story 1 woody is Andy's favorite toy he's the most devout in the most beloved there isn't any trace of Woody's backstory which gets brought up in Toy Story 2 rather his whole identity is devoted to being Andy's number one his favorite deputy if you watch this movie you realize that he doesn't question a single decision that Andy makes of course once Buzz Lightyear enters the picture Buzz Lightyear is much more attached to its false identity as a Space Ranger than his literal identity as Andy's toy since we're examining Toy Story in the context of religion one can't help but compare the idea of Buzz Lightyear's belief that he is some sort of intergalactic Savior to the Church of Scientology right now poised at the edge of the galaxy Emperor Zurg has been secretly building a weapon with the destructive capacity to annihilate an entire planet I alone have information that reveals as weapons only weakness yo my friend are responsible for delay in my run if it was starpha man only in the sense they're both belief systems that were mainly fueled by science fiction so after Buzz's arrival woody is straight-up forsaken like literally if you look up forsaken this is the definition his whole world got turned around and Andy his God had abandoned him this leads to a struggle between Woody and Buzz that actually does a pretty fine job of paralleling the story of Cain and Abel [Music] the to go on a series of adventures and they end up trapped in SIDS room and Buzz is confronted with the fact that his entire backstory and belief is a lie so he attempts a literal leap of faith to prove that he's a Space Ranger only to end up completely broken metaphorically and literally leading him to drink beyond the point of comprehension in a scene that honestly feels pretty straight at home in a Sartre play and all of this is some pretty heavy stuff for a g-rated movie also I forgot about the parts where they made a shout-out to alien and The Shining all of this isn't a kid's movie you guys the villain of the first movie is Sid Sid is this sort of mad God that's dedicated to destruction he turns all the toys around him into abominations for his own amusement in the context of this theology Sid is almost like a miner Lovecraftian deity yeah I just said that so in the end buzz realizes that even though he isn't a Space Ranger he can still be a hero and even though his whole world has fallen apart he finds the strength and will to make his way in this new one would he also makes his own realization and that he can share Andy's love with Buzz and that pretty much wraps up Toy Story 1 well I'm not gonna say they live happily ever after because we're about to head into Toy Story 2 and this is where things start to get really done noise story 2 is really a meditation on a lot of things it was Pixar's first sequel and Pixar probably tried to make the greatest sequel of all time by paying homage to one of the other greatest sequels of all time The Empire Strikes Back and like Empire this movie significantly darker in a lot of ways than the first one specifically it has to do with trauma and cult recruitment Toy Story 2 begins with woody receiving a traumatic injury one that makes him reckon with his mortality and his relationship with Andy later on he gets abducted and winds up in the company of the roundup gang and yes they deliberately made that shot as terrifying as possible because the premise behind these characters is actually really frightening they reveal Woody's secret significant past they made him feel special and important they made him feel like he was some part of a bigger plan they said they were going to take him to a far-off paradise where they would be worshipped and admired forever the only catch is that they'll be in a display case the whole time and never get to talk to any of their friends and family again now call me crazy but doesn't that sound almost exactly like what we just dealt with with Heaven's Gate maybe without the aliens but if you replace the plane with the spaceship and Japan with the next level you can see that Pixar set this up as a direct way to mimic how cults work see the real leader of the cult and the person who has the most benefit from all this is the prospector the prospector actually is the perfect profile for a cult leader and oddly parallels the life of infamous cult leader David Koresh see David Koresh was born Vernon Wayne Howell he was a dyslexic rock musician who couldn't get any gigs ended up joining the seventh-day Adventist Church and rose to power before creating his own radical offshoot of it the Branch Davidians changing his name from Vernon to David Koresh stinky Pete the prospector was always portrayed as a bumbling Oh to Jesse he's only known as the prospector but in the past he was called stinky Pete like david koresh this name change was a way of assuming a whole new role now because of the roundup gang he could have a chance to finally mean something he didn't need any other god but himself spending a lifetime on a dime store shelf watching every other toy be sold luckily for pete all of the other members of the roundup gang were the perfect example of people who are susceptible to joining a cult contrary to popular belief cults don't look to recruit crazy and unstable people they actually look to recruit very stable people who are incredibly emotionally vulnerable this vulnerability can sometimes come after serious trauma or tragedy tragedy like Woody's injury or how jessie has severe PTSD after being abandoned by her owner this movie takes Jesse's PTSD very seriously and again pretty shocking that this is all in a kid's movie so with no family and nowhere to go back to Jessie and woody were perfect targets for the prospectors manipulation tactics the prospector does a great job of using love and affection to induce inner guilt and make them stay and to me this is some of the coolest plot writing that Pixar has ever done how long will it last woody do you really think Andy is gonna take you to college or on his honeymoon Andy's growing up and there's nothing you can do about it it's your choice woody you can go back or you can stay with us and last forever you'll be adored by children for generations yeah I'm having a hard time not hearing that as something really culty and then like all cult manipulators what starts off with love and affection eventually turns into brute force and coercion look we have an attorney to spend together in the museum let's not start off by pointing fingers shall we I also love how the prospector likes to maintain his mint condition purity and ends up getting sentenced to live with a little girl who's going to draw on him so woody initially declines buzzes help for rescue then realizes even though Andy's eventually going to leave that's still no reason why he shouldn't try and be there for him now then there's a lot of big chase scenes an epic moment where woody saves Jessie from the very vessel that was going to take them away and then more members are added into Andy's fold perfectly setting up the stage for Toy Story 3 aka the movie with teddy bear see [Music] and now we're on to the final chapter in the book of handy and there's a really interesting morose vibe that's over the whole thing now again in the mythology of the Toy Story world these gods aren't immortal and this is what happens when a god sort of moves on all the toys start off abandoned and while woody ends up in the hands of a new owner the other toys end up at Sunnyside daycare where things are being run by a giant pink teddy bear named lot so while Lotso seems initially kind and warm and welcoming in a shocking twist on the Pixar formula he turns out to be a bad guy and why is he a bad guy well his owner literally cast him out once a being of love is now a being of scorn and hate this fallen teddy bear sounds a lot like a certain fallen angel doesn't it now because this is the Internet you all probably assumed that I was referring to freaky deaky Aleister Crowley Baphomet do what thou wilt Satan but I see lots o as more of a Miltonic Satan and his whole Ark really mimics the idea of Paradise Lost now having been scorned by humans if he can't have love nobody can as the infamous quote from Paradise Lost goes I'd rather rule in Hell than serve in heaven okay yeah you know it's not that exact quote that's the basic idea and the caterpillar room at Sunnyside is actually a really good version of hell think about it you have these giant monstrosity 'he's ripping you apart limb from limb all while all the toys in the next room enjoy a nice quiet playtime that to me seems like some genuine hellish torture unlike the prospector there's no real overarching plan to what Lotso is doing he's literally just inflicting suffering for the sake of creating more suffering so that way all might feel like he does really out of all the villains in the Toy Story franchise he's the most twisted then in the finale which happens to be around a giant fiery pit if you've been playing the switch kid for God game this one's a no-brainer and when all hope is lost when these characters who have known for over a decade are about to face oblivion in its purest hopeless form and literally the devil himself is winning what saves the day oh yeah that's right we just went full circle back to the start of the video and that stuff was planned believe it or not it's a literal deus ex machina a God out of the machine in this case it's the three-eyed aliens god the claw and what happens to lot so a fate pretty much befitting the Lord of the Flies we are now at the end of this video and I wanted this to be more than just a series of stray observations and I think that if you look at Toy Story through this lens you'll actually see a different light on what these movies are about grace in every movie these toys comp against huge life-changing events that they can't really do anything to prevent all they can do is affect how they handle it like Andy getting a new toy or what are you realising that Andy's going to grow up to Andy actually growing up and leaving them behind what do you do when your entire purpose for existing doesn't need you anymore well you find your own little ways and you handle it through friendship and you handle it through finding a new purpose and it's about being open-minded that there are more solutions than what you initially thought of at first woody was ridiculing the idea of the cloth as ludicrous joke's on him when it actually saved his life in the beginning I think the clouds in Andy's room painted a very deliberate image of Nirvana and heaven we end the same way that it began with a blue sky and a kid and a bunch of toys that are ready to be played with I wanted to get this video out before the fourth one came around because I grew up with these three movies and I wanted to get my thoughts out on them before this new one came out it's interesting how each movie has covered a different aspect of toy life so far the bedroom collecting preschool this new one seems to be looking at what happens when you make toys and carnival games so I'm interested to see how that pans out either way looking back these movies are just freakin perfect they're original they're smart and honestly have a really beautiful and uplifting message and as a reminder I'm not trying to say that this is some sort of religious conspiracy I'm just saying that Pixar darn good at what they do and you can find amazing patterns when you look at the way that stories are weaved and thanks again to Jim sisal for writing the article that inspired most of this video and Kevin MacLeod the god of web royalty-free music if you like this you should check out some of our other stuff we have another crazy film theory that is more successful than anything I will ever do ever again and a really cool miniseries called to Kauai for comfort that actually just got a shout out from pros edy this is Reiner Stu and I hope you have been humored [Music]

Channel: Rhino Stew

Views: 136,544

Rating: 4.9473314 out of 5

Keywords: Toy Story, Pixar, Cult, Doomsday, Religion, Tom Hanks, Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Disney, Theory, Film Theory, Movie, Conspiracy, Video Essay, Snowpiercer, Willy Wonka, Heaven's Gate, Tim Allen, Aliens, Illuminati, Rhino Stew

Id: R4EBWLBHRow

Length: 23min 18sec (1398 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2019