SOUL - How Pixar Uses Damnation in Nearly All of Their Films
One of the things that make Pixar’s films so powerful is how dark they go. Yes, many of them deal with death or grief, but a lot of them deal with something arguably even more terrifying: damnation. What is damnation exactly? According to the dictionary it’s “condemnation to eternal punishment in hell.” Hell being the key word here - a specific kind of hell tailored especially to the world it belongs to and the character that encounters it. I also associate this “hell” with a sense of soullessness. Pixar almost always offers some scenario to that effect, a situation where one of its plucky protags finds themselves trapped in their version of damnation, unable to control their life anymore. Sounds too dark? Let’s see:
In SOUL, Pixar introduces the “lost souls”: dark, cycloptic monsters, who represent what happens to our beautiful, luminous souls when we become obsessed with a single thing that blinds us to everything else life has to offer (never happened to me, nope, have no idea no idea what they’re talking about). In the film, we can see soul number 22 trapped inside this dark creature, reciting her own worthlessness, until Joe saves her.
But we also saw this kind of situation towards the end of WALL-E, where for a moment after he restarts, Wall-E seems to be “just” another robot intent on compressing trash, without any of the characteristics that made us love him: his curiosity and ability to love. In TOY STORY 3, Buzz’s modes are changed to make him a mindless soldier-drone, doing Lotso’s bidding (though the real damnation in that film might be resigning to the limbo of lying in a bag in Andy’s attic for eternity, or the endless, constant abuse of the kindergarten children). THE INCREDIBLES 2 offers similar mind control shenanigans. INSIDE OUT had perhaps the most poignant example of this idea, in how Riley’s emotions experience her creeping depression: their control panel freezes, denying them any ability to be who they are and to make Riley feel. Woody also considered damnation, when he was tempted to spend an eternity behind a glass case in a museum, just so he would never have to deal with being neglected by his owner in TOY STORY 2. Even RATATOUILLE has a subtle example of this. It’s one thing to ignore or neglect your talent, or to use your talent and fail, like happened to Gusteau when his restaurant closed. But Skinner wants to use Remy (and Gusteau‘s spirit) to manufacture mediocre microwave food - that is damnation for talent. Keeping it alive, but trapped, confined and bastardized.
This isn’t a coincidence. Like I say in my book, grand life-or-death/end-of-the-world stakes can be thrilling, but can also get bland fast (just look at WONDER WOMAN 1984: which part was more interesting, Barbara grappling with her newfound power and charm, or all the surrounding grand scale chaos and nuclear war?). Pixar’s films make sure to create specific kinds of hells in each of their worlds. There is an important human, social truth there: the fear of death is universal, but everyone, every group has its own version of hell. Whether within a country or a couple, there is some agreement on what is good, what is bad, and what is simply the worst. A full story - both narratively and thematically - conjures up and explores what is this “worst”, this damnation, within the world of your story. Some of the examples I mentioned above are comedic and tangential to the main story, but some are poignant. SOUL is all about not shying away from living life. Joe might have been avoiding life to some extent - but the worst scenario isn’t exactly missing out on some of life, but becoming so obsessed about some small part of it, that you become blind to the whole experience. Joy and Sadness quibble throughout INSIDE OUT about what Riley should feel, only to find that sad moments are positively a dream compared to a human who can’t feel anything at all. UP’s heartbreaking opening montage shows us how one couple’s dreams of adventure end up tragically unfulfilled. However, losing the best adventure of your life isn’t the same as losing your innate sense of adventure, which is what Carl has lost but eventually rekindles.
This idea isn’t just limited to fantastical scenarios. The wonderfully realistic, human and moving drama SOUND OF METAL has its own version of this. In that film, Ruben struggles with becoming deaf. At first he refuses to accept his new situation, but thanks to a loving counselor and a rehabilitation center he finds a loving community, learns sign language, processes his feelings, and learns how to be deaf. But then he sells everything he has to get an implant that would allow him to hear. The implant, while technically allowing him to hear words and sounds, distorts everything he hears, putting him right in between hearing and being deaf. Furthermore, he won’t be accepted back into the deaf center, as their entire ethos is not treating deafness as a problem or handicap, which Ruben’s action counters. These events strand Ruben in what the film suggests is a lonely, painful, no man’s land: Ruben is alone, neither hearing nor deaf, unable to accept his situation (often these “worst” situations are a result of an inability to accept something bad, which causes the characters to compromise something important to them for a simulacrum of what they want) . Ruben saves himself at the film’s last moments by disabling the implant and finding stillness in deaf silence.
Robert McKee mentions a similar idea in his book, STORY. McKee talks about the Negation of the Negation, a distortion of the negative value that makes it even more tragic. McKee’s value-based approach is only one way to reach these poignant scenarios - another way is through truly exploring your world and finding its darkest corners, like Pixar does.