Toy Story and the Inner World of the Child

Karen Cross, PhD, is a Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton, UK. She has published widely on the topic of digital visual culture and its impacts on society. She is a Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council and the Founder of Healing Media.

"Karen Cross' excellent book provides an essential intervention into the currently underexplored intersection between play and animation. Adding to the body of work on the Toy Story franchise, this is indispensable reading for those interested in animation studies, critical theory, play and children’s culture. Cross takes the innovative approach of combining psychoanalytic thought with critical theory resulting in a fascinating exploration of how play shapes our childhoods and ongoing lives, as represented onscreen." - Dr Caroline Ruddell, Reader in Film and Television, Brunel University London"In a long overdue interrogation of the relationship between the ‘Toy Story’ franchise, and the toys, children and psycho-cultural life it embodies, Cross offers an insightful critique that moves play beyond the pleasure principle into the realms of fear, anxiety, and loss. Simultaneously, Cross re-reads digital culture through a lens privileging unconscious phantasy in animation - and its production contexts - offering a complex and challenging analysis that revises the status of play, gender politics and technological progress. This is Woody and Buzz re-thought, rendered less as nostalgic playthings, and more as figures at the centre of the perpetual negotiations of human endeavour and doubt." - Paul Wells, Professor of Animation and Director of the Animation Academy at Loughborough University, UK

• Series PrefaceCaroline Bainbridge and Candida YatesAcknowledgementsIntroductionCHAPTER ONEAnimation and the inner worldCHAPTER TWO‘Laser envy’ and the myth of technological omnipotenceCHAPTER THREEFear, guilt and defence against lossCHAPTER FOURAdolescent control and preserving toy storiesCHAPTER FIVEFeminine playscapes: transgression of form and control of spaceCHAPTER SIXVoice and inclusion in newly mobilised statesPostscript