From shelf to screen: toys as a site of intertextuality

Intertextuality, as defined by Julia Kristeva, is ‘the passage from one sign system to another’, or rather, the inherent interconnectedness of all signs and, by extension, all texts.‘Any text’, she claims,‘is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another’. It is true that no text is created or received in a vacuum, and all authors and readers bring with them their past experiences, whether textual or otherwise. A text such as Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), though, explicitly activates and draws upon these links more than most.

Here, I focus on the connections established by the toys themselves, and in particular the meanings they can create for a child audience. With its combination of world-famous products licensed from companies such as Hasbro and Mattel, and original characters who can not help but bring to mind other real-world toy box fixtures, Toy Story goes out of its way to make sure that it includes recognizable toys that any kid watching can own or play with. In this chapter, I look at the various effects and uses of this particular form of intertextuality in the film, which range from world-building and establishing tone to informing thematic concerns.