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Toy Story 3 and our kids’ own stories

Posted By Scott Warnock On In technology,virtual children by Scott Warnock | 5 Comments

Like many adults, I left Toy Story 3 a little sniffly. As I drove home and tried to uncover the source of my maudlin mood — my three kids were not helping encourage this analytical state — I realized how much I was struck by the play scenes that open and close the movie. In both scenes (no spoiler alert needed here, by the way) a child is immersed in play with a variety of different toys, assigning roles based on their own plot. Mr. Potato Head is a villain. Cowgirl and spaceman dolls work together. Monkeys from a Barrel of Monkeys have their own part. A cardboard box is a major prop. Even a piggy bank is a character.

In essence, the kids take whatever toys are at hand and create their own stories with them.

It seems we played like this a lot when we were little. My view of this isn’t (I hope) just the Grandpa Simpson in me saying, “Durn it, things were better in the good ol’ days!”; these scenes struck me so much because I wonder if our kids are being increasingly raised within prescribed narratives, largely living through other people’s stories and roles. Will this detract from their ability to do the great thing we all must do in our lives: Create our own stories?

Children today have gorgeous play sets, but does every toy in the game play the role the manufacturer assigned to it? They play video games that offer amazing screenscapes, but the action happens in a prescribed world created by game designers. They play organized sports in front of whistle-blowing, red-faced adults. They also watch appealing TV, and they watch a lot of it, seeing not only well-crafted shows but commercials as well (you know the one about how the kids pretend they’re doing their homework when dumb old dad strolls in, bumping his head as he enters…). None of these things is itself a problem (except maybe for that dumb old dad archetype), but the sheer amount of time kids spend in such prescribed activities and their shrinking opportunities to operate outside of these confined spaces might be.

Because these experiences collectively mean kids spend a lot of time living within someone’s view of how things happen. Despite the tantalizing graphical beauty, the stories are ultimately someone elses’. Sure, there have always been great tales that we modeled our own experiences on, but it seems clear that today’s kids are consuming these stories at a much higher rate than in the past (type [how much TV children watch] into Google Scholar for studies about TV viewing habits) and, more importantly, have less time and opportunity to create their own alternatives.

I wasn’t all weepy at the end of Toy Story 3 just because I was longing for my own lost childhood (actually, it was just something that was caught in my eye…). I was reminded by the beauty of kids’ imaginations. Employers and decision-makers of all kinds always say one thing they want most is people who can critically think outside the box. How do we get people to think outside the box if when they play with that cardboard container when they’re young, we throw it in the trash so we can set up the real toys that were within it?

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Scott Warnock [4]

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.
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