10. Toy Story Is All About That Gaze
Slavoj Žižek is as close as philosophy ever gets to a rock star. Probably the best-known intellectual of his time, the Slovenian Marxist is at his best when he's applying his keen analytical mind to culture and, more specifically, film. He's written himself about The Dark Knight Trilogy in a political context and starred in a documentary applying Lacanian psychology to popular movies. Žižek is so influential he's inspired a journal dedicated to applying his theories to all sorts of works. A recent edition
included a whole essay about his interpretation of Lacan's gaze theory to the first two Toy Story films. Lacan was any early psychoanalyst, and Žižek's version of his gaze is all about how people act when they're being watched. In film terms that gets broken down in audiences, characters looking at things, what the camera highlights, and how all of those interact. In a movie where toys can only move when there are no humans around to see them, there's a lot to unpack there.