Child's play: The political imaginary of international relations and contemporary popular children's films

Abstract

Many scholars in International Relations (IR) have drawn from popular films to examine various problématiques that have informed the discipline's main theorisations. As Cynthia Weber remarks, popular films are powerful because they engage in the very ‘serious political work’ of mythologising the ‘truths’ and ‘realities’ which provide the foundation for many of IR's main theoretical envisionings of our world. To date, however, children's films have received very little attention. For the purpose of this paper, three have been isolated: Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998) and Rescue Heroes: The Movie (2003). Children's films, it can be argued, help to craft and restore certain perspectives for each new generation of young minds during the crucial years when the world is being textualised for the first time. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to read these films as working towards producing and sustaining the power/knowledge that seeks to defend contemporary forms of world order while concurrently extending and disseminating the rule of these forms of world order through the medium of children's popular cinema.

1. This paper stems from a series of questions posed to me by my two oldest sons, Alexandre and Nicolas. Their questions were prompted by their recent awakening to various dimensions of our contemporary political imaginary and the massive violence it can tolerate. Making sense of this world in terms other than those presented to them in the films they enjoy motivates my writing both here and elsewhere. I would like to thank my colleague and friend Miguel de Larrinaga for his insightful comments, most notably with regard to his layered reading of Toy Story. I would also like to express my appreciation to the participants of the Cultural Studies Group at Saint Mary's University for their comments and suggestions when the first draft of this paper was presented to them on 26 March 2004. Finally, I am grateful to the reviewers of this journal for helping me clarify my analysis. As always, any errors or omissions remain mine.

Notes

1. This paper stems from a series of questions posed to me by my two oldest sons, Alexandre and Nicolas. Their questions were prompted by their recent awakening to various dimensions of our contemporary political imaginary and the massive violence it can tolerate. Making sense of this world in terms other than those presented to them in the films they enjoy motivates my writing both here and elsewhere. I would like to thank my colleague and friend Miguel de Larrinaga for his insightful comments, most notably with regard to his layered reading of Toy Story. I would also like to express my appreciation to the participants of the Cultural Studies Group at Saint Mary's University for their comments and suggestions when the first draft of this paper was presented to them on 26 March 2004. Finally, I am grateful to the reviewers of this journal for helping me clarify my analysis. As always, any errors or omissions remain mine.

2. Walt Disney, quoted in Henry A. Giroux, The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), p. 17.

3. I use the terms ‘political imaginary’ and ‘discursive economy’ in the same way that they have been used by various poststructuralist writings in international relations (IR). They refer to an understanding of the realm of international politics as discursively constructed most often through a series of dichotomies hinged on the inside/outside space of the nation state.

4. See, for instance, Mark J. Lacey, “War, Cinema, and Moral Anxiety”, Alternatives, Vol. 28, No. 5 (2003), pp. 611–636; Cynthia Weber, International Relations Theory: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2001); and Joanne P. Sharp, “Reel Geographies of the New World Order: Patriotism, Masculinity, and Geopolitics in post-Cold War American Movies”, in Gearóid Ó. Tuathail and Simon Dalby (eds.), Rethinking Geopolitics (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 152–169. Some have contended that the use of cinema and other fields, such as fiction, poetry, art, music and architecture, in IR theory is part of a broad ‘aesthetic turn’. As Gerard Holden notes in his critical assessment of this approach, the turn is not entirely new but it has gained momentum in the last few years, as made evident with the publishing of two special issues in Millennium (Vol. 30, No. 3, 2001) and Alternatives (Vol. 25, No. 3, 2000). See Gerard Holden, “World Literature and World Politics: In Search of a Research Agenda”, Global Society, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2003), pp. 229–252. See also Roland Bleiker's reply to Holden's critique, “Learning from Art: A Reply to Holden's ‘World Literature and World Politics’”, Global Society, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2003), pp. 415–428, and Holden's reply to Bleiker, “A Reply to Bleiker's Reply”, Global Society, Vol. 17, No. 4 (2003), pp. 429–430.

5. Weber, ibid., pp. 133–134.

6. Of course, children's films have received a great deal of attention outside the field of IR. However, save for cursory remarks, the analyses tend not to focus on the representations of politics that would be relevant to IR. See, among others, Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Hass and Laura Sells (eds.), From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender and Culture (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995); Eric Smoodin (ed.), Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom (New York: Routledge, 1994); and Giroux, The Mouse That Roared, op. cit.

7. Marsha Kinder, Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), p. 2.

8. Giroux, The Mouse That Roared, op. cit., p. 84.

9. There is some debate as to whether recent children's films such as the ones examined here are in fact targeting young children since, as Dick Hebdige notes, their stories often play with puns, jokes and situational comedy only accessible to older audiences. See Dick Hebdige, “Dis-gnosis: Disney and the Re-Tooling of Knowledge, Art, Culture, Life, etc.”, Cultural Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2003), p. 152. This point is well taken. However, in the case of the three films explored in this paper, the target audience does indeed appear to be younger children. Both the storyline and the merchandising of the films tend to appeal to pre-adolescents.

10. On the general concept of “Disneyfication” see Alan Bryman, “The Disneyization of Society”, Sociological Review, Vol. 47, No. 1 (1999), pp. 25–47; Hebdige, “Dis-gnosis: Disney and the Re-Tooling of Knowledge, Art, Culture, Life, etc.”, op. cit., pp. 150–167; and Giroux, The Mouse That Roared, op. cit., chapter three.

11. On the tension between liberalism and democracy, see Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso, 2000).

12. Jacques Derrida expands this and sees it as a problem of founding all forms of legal authority. The authority of the law is incapable of providing for its own ground and must therefore always call upon “a mystical foundation”. Jacques Derrida, “Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”, in Jacques Derrida (ed.), Acts of Religion, with an introduction by Gil Anidjar (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 239.

13. Bonnie Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). Honig notes that Rousseau for instance relies upon a foreigner as the lawgiver for the democratic community.

14. Although such a resolution is expedient, it does nevertheless produce an unsettling paradox for the democratic form and its principle of autonomy. As Honig notes, the usage of a deus ex machina introduces a foreign element in the foundation of what is meant to be a self-generated political regime.

15. Giroux, The Mouse That Roared, op. cit., pp. 98–101. As Laura Sells cautions, however, the standard sexual stereotyping of female characters in children's films, notably those by Disney, often produced multiple meanings of female gender roles. Although clearly some of these meanings (re)produce forms of patriarchal domination that subjugate and objectify women's bodies, others can trouble the very stereotypes they deploy and consequently provide sites of autonomy and agency. See Laura Sells, “‘Where do the Mermaids Stand?’: Voice and Body in The Little Mermaid”, in Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Hass and Laura Sells (eds.), From Mouse to Mermaid, op. cit., pp. 175–192. A similar argument is also provided by Elizabeth Bell, “Somatexts at the Disney Shop: Constructing the Pentimentos of Women's Animated Bodies”, in Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Hass and Laura Sells (eds.), From Mouse to Mermaid, op. cit., pp. 107–124.

16. Nikolas Rose, “Government, Authority and Expertise in Advanced Liberalism”, Economy and Society, Vol. 22, No. 3 (1993), p. 287.

17. Michel Foucault, “Governmentality”, in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordin and Peter Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 87–104.

18. Rose, “Government, Authority and Expertise in Advanced Liberalism”, op. cit., p. 285.

19. A student in my introductory course to IR pointed out to me that Andy also marks his toys. Woody and Buzz bear Andy's hand-written name on the sole of their foot, and this mark is clearly seen as a badge of honour by the toys. One scene shows Woody expressing feelings of dejection as he realises that Andy's name is fading, unlike the writing on Buzz's sole which is shiny and new. Andy's name on the toys may serve to highlight the parallels and differences in how regimes of liberal governmentality and totalitarian regimes mark social bodies. Both extend down to managing individuals through complex apparatuses of rule. However, one creates an order in which the marking appears as an exercise of terror, whereas the other succeeds in creating an order in which the individual internalises it and wears it proudly as a socially recognisable mark of honour and prestige.

20. Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?”, The National Interest, Vol. 16 (1989), pp. 3–18.

21. Interestingly enough, Woody's initial response is to try to reason with the toys by seeking to calm their fears. Ultimately, he is unsuccessful in his efforts and must acquiesce to what appears as a clear desire on the part of the toys for a military response. The film's suggestion, therefore, is that leaders of liberal democracies only reluctantly respond militarily, and when they do it is in reaction to a clear expression of the will of the people. One does not need a detailed historical account of military actions to understand that such claims can only hold in the fictional world of Hollywood films.

22. Michael Dillon, The Politics of Security (London: Routledge, 1996).

23. Michael Dillon, “Security, Philosophy and Politics”, in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities (London: Sage, 1995), p. 161.

24. Rob Walker, “Security, Sovoreignty, and the Challenge of World Politics”, Alternatives, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1990), pp. 11–12.

25. Antz (1998), released shortly before A Bug's Life, had a very similar storyline. Although the film was also computer animated, by most accounts it was not primarily intended for younger children and therefore is not examined in this paper.

26. By rewriting the fable's moral and ending in this way, the film suggests that the grasshoppers have at long last understood the lesson of the fable, i.e. “it is best to prepare for the days of necessity”. But rather than prepare themselves for the coming days of necessity, they resort to the use of force to extract surplus labour from the ants. Although ultimately this extortion ends with the defeat of the grasshoppers, the lesson that force and violence are not exceptional when dealing with others is nonetheless conveyed.

27. A brief, but concise, summary of La Boétie's work as it relates to the study of dissent in IR can be found in Roland Bleiker, Popular Dissent, Human Agency, and Global Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 53–68.

28. In what appears as the film's troubling endorsement of state-sanctioned assassinations, Flik lures Hopper near a bird which then captures, kills and feeds the grasshopper to its hatchlings. Flik, as an agent of the state, is thus seen as engaging in state-sponsored homicide, or more accurately in this case ‘insecticide’.

29. It should be noted that there are both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foreigners in A Bug's Life. In addition to the evil enemy grasshoppers, the film also introduces an unlikely group of foreign bugs—part of an out-of-work second-rate circus troupe—that eventually help the ants defeat their arch enemies. Thus, as with Toy Story, A Bug's Life also integrates the element of foreignness as a necessary enabling symbolic pole in the construction of community identity. It follows the same pattern that Honig identifies in the narratives about community in other popular films.

30. On how American xenophobia directed towards Mexicans is bound up with statecraft, see notably Roxanne Lynne Doty, “Desert Tracts: Statecraft in Remote Places”, Alternatives, Vol. 26 (2001), pp. 523–543. Racial stereotyping is also found in other recent children's popular films such as Aladdin, The Lion King and Mulan. As Giroux notes, such stereotypes “produce representations and codes through which children are taught that characters who do not bear the imprint of white, middle-class ethnicity are culturally deviant, inferior, unintelligent, and a threat”. See Giroux, The Mouse That Roared, op. cit., p. 106.

31. Lacey, “War, Cinema, and Moral Anxiety”, op. cit., p. 621.

32. On the role of geography in the construction of American identity, see notably Joanne P. Sharp, Condensing the Cold War: Reader's Digest and American Identity (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

33. Giroux, The Mouse That Roared, op. cit., p. 90.

34. Ibid., p. 97.

35. The company that produced Toy Story reports that within the first year of its release, the film earned over 350 million US$ with approximately 190 million of this amount coming from non-domestic sales. A Bug's Life earned over 360 million US$, with close to 200 million coming from markets outside the US. These figures place both films in the ‘blockbuster’ category (above 100 million US$), and make them among the top ‘box-office hits’ for the years they were released. Importantly, these figures do not include other revenue streams from merchandising or other sources of commercialisation.

36. Author's personal communications with the distribution company.

37. It should be noted, however, that the global reach of children's films may not be as extensive as that of other genres. According to Franco Moretti, children's films represent 25% of recent box-office hits in the US, whereas outside of the Western world the percentage can be much smaller. He attributes this to the fact that children usually attend films accompanied by adults, which assumes a certain level of disposable income not available in many parts of the world. This is also partly confirmed by the languages into which the three films discussed here have been translated and/or dubbed, which for the most part are spoken in wealthier countries. See Franco Moretti, “Planet Hollywood”, New Left Review, 9, May–June (2001), pp. 96–98. I am grateful to one of the reviewers for suggesting Moretti's article.

39. See <http://www.fisher-price.com/us/rescueheroes/>, accessed 26 May 2004.

38. It should be noted that contrary to the previous films, Rescue Heroes is produced by a Canadian rather than an American-based company. This may explain to some degree the intent to present a multilateral vision of world order.

40. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

41. Ibid., p. xii.

42. The Independent Commission on Kosovo, for instance, found that while NATO's intervention may not have been legal it was nonetheless legitimate, based on humanitarian criteria. The report is available online: <http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/thekosovoreport.htm>, accessed 9 June 2004.

43. David Campbell, “Why Fight: Humanitarianism, Principles, and Post-structuralism”, Millennium, Vol. 28, No. 3 (1998), p. 498.

44. Hardt and Negri, op.cit., p. 35.

45. Hardt and Negri, op. cit., p. 17.

46. On the manner that Black Hawk Down dehumanises Somalis, see Lacy, “War, Cinema, and Moral Anxiety”, op. cit., pp. 618–624.

47. Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, “Global Governance, Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergencies”, Alternatives, Vol. 23 (2000), p. 128.

48. As Dillon and Reid note following Agamben, “sovereign state power is a protection racket that de-worlds human beings in order to re-world them as sovereign subjects, subject of course to the operation of sovereignty, on the grounds minimally of securing them security” (Dillon and Reid, ibid., p. 129).

49. Giorgio Agamben, Homer Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 18.

50. Ibid., p. 18.

51. Hardt and Negri, Empire, op. cit., p. 38. See also Hardt and Negri's more recent Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004). Jacques Rancière makes similar claims with regard to how the US has sought to justify its war on terror. See Jacques Rancière, “Prisoners of the Infinite”, Counterpunch, 30 April 2002, available: <http://www.counterpunch.org/ranciere0430.html>.

52. Giroux, The Mouse That Roared, op. cit., p. 114.