Tuesday, July 30, 2019

The Bible and the Pixar Theory

Andy and Woody, from the "Toy Story" movies. Image source.
I watched Jon Carlin's video How Toy Story 4 Fits Into The Pixar Theory and so now I want to talk about the bible and the Pixar Theory. I stand by what I said in my 11/29/18 blogaround:
10. The COMPLETE Pixar Theory (posted October 30) Personally, I don't believe in the Pixar theory, but I LOVE it because this is EXACTLY how apologetics works. Take a bunch of different works, produced for different reasons over a long period of time, claim that all of them are happening in the same universe and telling one giant logically-consistent story, spend tons of time and energy making up convoluted explanations for the contradictions, absolutely refuse to abandon your theory no matter what new evidence comes out, and end up with a bizarre understanding of the material that the creators certainly never intended... all the while believing you understand it better than anyone else because you got there by treating every single tiny detail as irrefutable fact.
Yep.

(And on a related note, the Super Carlin Brothers' youtube channel is one of my favorites. Highly recommend if you like fan videos about Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Harry Potter, and Star Wars.)

For those of you who don't know what the Pixar Theory is: It's a fan theory that says all Pixar movies take place in the same universe. Yes, everything from "Toy Story" to "A Bug's Life" to "The Incredibles" to "The Good Dinosaur" to "Inside Out" to "Monsters Inc" to "Brave" to "Coco" to "Cars" and so on and so on. "Wow," you may be thinking, "that is quite a diverse group of movies, how on earth could they possibly all exist in the same universe? Like, in 'Cars' there are no people, there are just cars that act like people, which is completely different from, say, 'The Incredibles', which is basically normal modern society but with superheroes." WELL YOU SEE, all of these happened over a very long timespan, where humans were dominant for a while but eventually went extinct and sentient cars took over. Obviously.

Yep, you start from the very simple idea "all Pixar movies take place in the same universe" and then you develop more and more complicated explanations for how that would work.

Let's look at Jon Carlin's "Toy Story 4" video. Here's a part from about the 1:00 mark:
On that timeline though, all the "Toy Story" movies take place roughly during the year they actually came out to the public. Which would put them after "The Incredibles" but before "Up." During this time period, on the timeline, humans are at their peak, and BNL (the mega corporation run by machines and artificial intelligence) are on the rise after the invention of the Omnidroid. You can see Buzz's batteries in "Toy Story 3" are produced by BNL, and they're also the company responsible for evicting Carl in "Up."
Oh my god, this is FASCINATING. He's stating some of the doctrines held by people who follow the Pixar Theory, and backing them up with sort-of-loosely-related bits from the canon. Yes, for people who believe in the Pixar Theory, it's quite obvious that the Pixar movies tell a story of humans becoming more and more advanced, until artificial intelligence starts to develop and eventually takes over, I mean this is OBVIOUS because look, in "The Incredibles" we see super-powered humans fighting against the newly-invented Omnidroid, a machine which can learn. From there, the machines get more and more powerful until we see in "WALL-E" the AI made by BNL literally controls every part of people's lives and the earth is a trash dump. See, OBVIOUSLY what happened in between was that BNL got more and more powerful- indeed, look at these little Easter eggs alluding to BNL in "Toy Story 3" and "Up." The source material is clear.

(Oh, and later in the video, Jon Carlin talks about how, after humans left the earth, cars [as seen in the "Cars" movies] then came alive because of the memories from the people who once owned them.)

This is EXACTLY THE SAME THING as Christians who say "I believe marriage is between one man and one woman. That's the biblical definition of marriage. See, look, in Matthew 19 Jesus says so. The bible is clear."

Or how about this: "Christians have to be pro-life because the bible says life begins at conception, see, look at Psalm 139:13 which says 'for you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb" and in verse 16 'your eyes saw my unformed body.'"

Or this: "The bible teaches that being a Christian means having a PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD. That's what it means to be saved and that's how you go to heaven."

And: "The bible teaches that non-Christians go to hell. See, look, here are a bunch of verses with the word 'hell' in them, therefore the bible is clear on this."

In every one of these cases, if you already believe in that ideology, then you look at the given references to the source material and you say "yep, that's what the source material teaches." But if you just let the canon stand on its own, just take it for what it is, if you consider the time period when it was produced, and the reasons, and the intended audience ... then wow it doesn't say that AT ALL.

Humans keep advancing, to the point where some of them are superheroes, but then AI starts to take over, and then eventually cars come alive because of human memories ... no, none of the Pixar movies say this. None. Not a one. Not a single one. If you just watched all the Pixar movies, knowing that they were created over a span of 20-some years and the creators didn't intend to make them fit together (but do enjoy putting in little Easter eggs that reference other Pixar movies), then no, you would NEVER come away with the idea that "Pixar is telling a story where human society reaches a superhero peak but then gets taken over by machines- like sentient cars."

It requires this weird artificial construct that you superimpose on top of the movies, in a way that the producers never intended. And then, after you do that, after you say "well they MUST be in the same universe" and you come up with a giant fan theory to make them fit- after you've spent a lot of time and energy on this, then you start to believe that it's "clear", that this actually *is* the story that Pixar is telling.

A weird artificial construct, where the books of the bible are infallible and essentially handed to us directly from God, rather than being products of the place and time they were each written, over a span of thousands of years, heavily influenced by the writers' and audiences' own political biases. A very weird construct that says this is God's love letter to us, that every part is valuable to our lives in the 21st century, and being a good Christian means you have to spend time every day reading it. If you superimpose that idea on top of the bible and try to make everything fit, then yes, you might end up with an ideology that says the most important thing is "getting saved" at an individual level, and society-wide injustice doesn't matter that much, and God is very concerned about everyone's sex lives, and God loves Americans the most. And you might think that's what the bible "clearly" teaches.

Ohh, the Pixar Theory is just ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTFUL. People go on and on making these videos hashing out the specific details of what this or that movie teaches us about the Pixar universe- as if there is such a thing as "the Pixar universe." And Christians go on and on about how "the bible says" this or "God says this" or "this is the biblical view" as if there is such a thing as "the biblical view." ... Yeah, the bible doesn't actually say any of those things, just like "Toy Story 4" doesn't tell us how the cars from "Cars" come to life (even though Jon Carlin's video is all about how "Toy Story 4" totally answers the question of how toys AND CARS come to life).

What a fun fan theory. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that's what the canon actually says. Then we would miss the entire point.

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Related:
The Bible Stories As I Read Them Were Never Actually In The Bible
This Star Wars Fan Theory Is EXACTLY How Apologetics Works

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