TOY STORY 3 Is A Holocaust Story?

I remember watching featurette for TOY STORY 3 and director Lee Unkrich said that he and his team had to watch a lot of prison movies as part of their research. And if you’ve seen TOY STORY 3, you’d know that half of the plot is about Woody and the gang escaping Sunnyside daycare. Now, UGO’s Jordan Hoffman has this theory that may sound a bit crazy but it kinda makes sense of you think about it.. that TOY STORY 3 is Holocaust Metaphor. I doubt it’s Pixar’s intention to give out such impression or maybe Hoffman is taking this movie way too seriously, interesting review though nonetheless. But check out the excerpt after this jump and let me know what you think in the comment section. Heads up, the following may contain SPOILERS…

Andy is seventeen and about to leave for college. These toys are left behind, just as host nations left behind the Jews as the Third Reich conquered Europe.

Woody holds a meeting, where the assembled toy family discusses possible outcomes for their new position in the world. Change a few words and it is the same exact scene at the train station from Roman Polanski’s award winning Holocaust drama The Pianist. No, we won’t just be abandoned. Surely we can be useful to them somehow. Yes, we’ve lost friends (Bo Peep), but surely that can’t happen to us.

Buzz Lightyear stands forward and suggests sanctuaryIN AN ATTIC. Are you kidding me?

The cattle car comes for the toys in the form of a horrible garbage bag – but they don’t go straight to extermination. They find themselves alive and at Sunnyside where they are put “to work.” (Consider this, then, Dachau instead of Treblinka.)

Once there, they meet the toy version of Sonderkommando, toys who live the stay fed and well-sheltered (like Ken in his dream house) while leading other toys to a certain death. Newcomers are bashed and abused in the “Caterpillar Room” by non-age appropriate children until they resemble Muselmann and are eventually thrown into the trash chute.

The trash chute leads to a systematic sorting of metal (e.g. any last valuables) until, eventually, the fiery crematoria.

Our heroes get saved at the last minute, of course, and they find themselves a new homeland. It is a place where many of their kind already live and have an established foothold, and it would appear that security, finally, is at hand if they are vigilant.