Meta: Jessie and Confinement in Toy Story
Jul. 9th, 2012 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
afterandalasiaTitle: Jessie and Confinement in Toy Story
Author:
afterandalasia
Kink: Confined/Caged
Word Count: 1,507
Summary: Some thoughts on the theme of confinement in Toy Story, as it relates to Jessie, rambling onwards into how it could affect sexual situations for her.
Notes: My eternal thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ashleybenlove for proofreading and her input on this as the Disney Kink meme's resident Jessie expert. :)
The character of Jessie appears in Toy Story 2 and continues into Toy Story 3. She is rambunctious, enthusiastic and enthusiastic about life – but it is also notable that she is a rare example of an invisible disability made visible. Jessie suffers from crippling claustrophobia which is seen to cause panic attacks and affect the way in which she interacts with the world. Whilst linked to a background in Toy Story 2 which seems to play into themes of abandonment and might almost be seen as a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, in Toy Story 3 it becomes an important theme of the story: abandonment, separation and reunions. Prior to Brave, Jessie is one of the female characters who comes closest to having a main role in a film, and she is an unusual choice precisely because of these mental health issues.
Within Toy Story 3, these wider issues become part of the thoughts of all of the toys, but in Toy Story 2, they are relatively specific to Jessie. It is worth noting, however, that the extent to which Jessie is affected by her anxiety does wax and wane. When she first springs out of her box, she shows no ill-effects – canonically, presumably because she is so excited to meet Woody, but from a storytelling point of view because it would not make for a smooth introduction and would not really do justice to her overall character. On having to return to the box, she is clearly nervous but can be talked out of her anxiety by the Prospector; presumably this is because Bullseye is with her and/or because Woody’s arrival has reassured her that things will change soon. She appears to not be affected at all when she is placed in a glass case, and it is possible that being able to see (rather than being in the dark, in a stuffy situation, surrounded by Styrofoam peanuts) helps here. The most obvious, and most understated, example of her fear is at the end, however: when the suitcase in which she is in is opened on the plane, she is curled into the foetal position and difficult to get a reaction from. This is the scene which makes it clear that this fear can be absolutely crippling, and which makes it, to me, more than just a thrown-in character trait.
So, how does Jessie’s point of view make Toy Story 2 and 3 different, especially when the issue of confinement is so strongly raised?
For a start, Toy Story 2 gains a far happier ending. For Woody, the story is bittersweet – he returns to Andy, but knows that it won’t last forever. For Jessie, however, the story is one of redemption, a second chance, with almost a sense of passing through purgatory and entering a reincarnated state. This is, in a sense, the main arc of Toy Story 3: in other words, Jessie passes through the same narrative twice, once alone and then a second time in the company of the others. Company or no, it is easy to see why the beginning of Toy Story 3 is so much more viscerally frightening for Jessie (about eight or nine minutes in, there is a remarkable scene where, whilst the other toys are talking and freaking out, she can be seen and heard having a panic attack and hyperventilating), and why she makes the first decision to go to the daycare instead of waiting in the attic: last time, she was only freed by moving on, so it makes sense to do the same this time.
This makes the double-confinement of Toy Story 3 all the more troubling for her, as having passed through the threat of the attic, she now finds herself trapped within Sunnyside at the whims of Lotso instead. Although the fact that the toys are placed in boxes at the end of each day is not lingered on, doubtless at least some viewers will have noticed it, and winced on poor Jessie’s behalf at the thought. Being passed on to Bonnie, therefore, is both a relief for Jessie and a reminder that things end – in some ways, for Jessie, the end of Toy Story 3 is not that different from the end of Toy Story 2. This is Jessie’s bittersweet ending, a decade later than Woody’s.
Of course, with Buzz and Jessie being one of the more written Disney pairings (certainly featuring heavily at Disney Kink) and with this essay being written for Kink Bingo, it would not do to focus merely on the narrative kink of confinement. My original fic idea was to put Jessie and Buzz in a confined space and see the result, with a vague intention of a h/c sort of dynamic and probably sex. Although I haven’t managed to write this piece, the image was particularly striking to me, and I found myself asking why.
The simplest answer is that fear is a very powerful emotion. Fear can of itself produce a very particular, and sometimes very deep, headspace for an individual to enter. It is why edgeplay is so iconic, and why emotion play speaks so strongly to us: fear, despite being a perfect abstract (an emotion, with no tangible existence) has a very concrete effect on our bodies. It is a way of playing with the power which we have over ourselves, and either losing that power or handing it over to another is an incredibly daunting idea.
For Jessie, confinement is the thing which can spur this deep, visceral emotion, and it has a powerful effect on her as well as on the mind of the audience. It is certainly a striking enough part of her character that when faced with the words “confined/caged”, and with probably forty or more fandoms with which I am familiar, Jessie was the character that came to mind. (That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of characters I would like to see get hot and bothered in a tight space, but none of them had the blow-to-the-gut impact that thinking of Jessie did.)
In terms of kink, of course, a lot of play and scenes are about using emotion, headspace and physical response to a greater or lesser extent. Putting a character as severely claustrophobic as Jessie into a confined space is automatically going to produce a mental and physical fear reaction – racing pulse, trembling – and a very intense headspace. A scene of her exploring this reaction, with Buzz or any other character, in a consensual setting seemed to me as if it would be very powerful and very intimate.
Of course, the flip side of this is that they are toys, and at Disney Kink are usually written as such. Of course, human AUs are present, but kink memes are probably infamously inventive, and the notion of toy sex is one that seems to intrigue and amuse the Disney crowd in equal measure. And these toys exist in a world of humans, humans who do not know that they are alive and treat them as inanimate objects. (Hey, there’s plenty of room for objectification kink in this fandom as well, but there you go.) This means that the situations of confinement which Jessie was in, over the course of the films, were pretty explicitly non-consensual, and yet at the same time the human characters did not know what they were doing.
The darkness of this situation is not one that I particularly felt that I was ready to engage with just yet, and is probably the major reason why I chose to write meta on this subject rather than fic. It is probably difficult to overstate how daunting and frightening the idea of confinement is to Jessie, the state in which it can put her, precisely because it is not just based on fears to which humans can relate, but also on those which are more difficult to understand: the feeling of being used by godlike creatures who do not even know that you are alive. Scratch the surface, and the Toy Story universe is quite frightening, but that is beyond the extension of this meta.
So... there, I suppose, you have it. The very word ‘confinement’ bought to my mind Jessie from Toy Story, and how her personality and viewpoint on the narrative is shaped by her experience of, and fear of, confinement and enclosure. From a narrative point of view, confinement becomes a far more integral part of the story, one which is engaged with on multiple occasions in ways which doubtless feel to her like a reliving of old fears. From the point of view of kink, it is almost certain that confinement has the potential to draw up emotions of almost unparalleled strength in Jessie, and would make for a scene of quite incredible intensity (one which, sadly, I do not yet feel ready to attempt to write).
Confinement: yet another kink to be found in Disney films, but possibly the only one which this strong of a canonical effect on a character.
Author:
afterandalasiaKink: Confined/Caged
Word Count: 1,507
Summary: Some thoughts on the theme of confinement in Toy Story, as it relates to Jessie, rambling onwards into how it could affect sexual situations for her.
Notes: My eternal thanks to
ashleybenlove for proofreading and her input on this as the Disney Kink meme's resident Jessie expert. :)The character of Jessie appears in Toy Story 2 and continues into Toy Story 3. She is rambunctious, enthusiastic and enthusiastic about life – but it is also notable that she is a rare example of an invisible disability made visible. Jessie suffers from crippling claustrophobia which is seen to cause panic attacks and affect the way in which she interacts with the world. Whilst linked to a background in Toy Story 2 which seems to play into themes of abandonment and might almost be seen as a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, in Toy Story 3 it becomes an important theme of the story: abandonment, separation and reunions. Prior to Brave, Jessie is one of the female characters who comes closest to having a main role in a film, and she is an unusual choice precisely because of these mental health issues.
Within Toy Story 3, these wider issues become part of the thoughts of all of the toys, but in Toy Story 2, they are relatively specific to Jessie. It is worth noting, however, that the extent to which Jessie is affected by her anxiety does wax and wane. When she first springs out of her box, she shows no ill-effects – canonically, presumably because she is so excited to meet Woody, but from a storytelling point of view because it would not make for a smooth introduction and would not really do justice to her overall character. On having to return to the box, she is clearly nervous but can be talked out of her anxiety by the Prospector; presumably this is because Bullseye is with her and/or because Woody’s arrival has reassured her that things will change soon. She appears to not be affected at all when she is placed in a glass case, and it is possible that being able to see (rather than being in the dark, in a stuffy situation, surrounded by Styrofoam peanuts) helps here. The most obvious, and most understated, example of her fear is at the end, however: when the suitcase in which she is in is opened on the plane, she is curled into the foetal position and difficult to get a reaction from. This is the scene which makes it clear that this fear can be absolutely crippling, and which makes it, to me, more than just a thrown-in character trait.
So, how does Jessie’s point of view make Toy Story 2 and 3 different, especially when the issue of confinement is so strongly raised?
For a start, Toy Story 2 gains a far happier ending. For Woody, the story is bittersweet – he returns to Andy, but knows that it won’t last forever. For Jessie, however, the story is one of redemption, a second chance, with almost a sense of passing through purgatory and entering a reincarnated state. This is, in a sense, the main arc of Toy Story 3: in other words, Jessie passes through the same narrative twice, once alone and then a second time in the company of the others. Company or no, it is easy to see why the beginning of Toy Story 3 is so much more viscerally frightening for Jessie (about eight or nine minutes in, there is a remarkable scene where, whilst the other toys are talking and freaking out, she can be seen and heard having a panic attack and hyperventilating), and why she makes the first decision to go to the daycare instead of waiting in the attic: last time, she was only freed by moving on, so it makes sense to do the same this time.
This makes the double-confinement of Toy Story 3 all the more troubling for her, as having passed through the threat of the attic, she now finds herself trapped within Sunnyside at the whims of Lotso instead. Although the fact that the toys are placed in boxes at the end of each day is not lingered on, doubtless at least some viewers will have noticed it, and winced on poor Jessie’s behalf at the thought. Being passed on to Bonnie, therefore, is both a relief for Jessie and a reminder that things end – in some ways, for Jessie, the end of Toy Story 3 is not that different from the end of Toy Story 2. This is Jessie’s bittersweet ending, a decade later than Woody’s.
Of course, with Buzz and Jessie being one of the more written Disney pairings (certainly featuring heavily at Disney Kink) and with this essay being written for Kink Bingo, it would not do to focus merely on the narrative kink of confinement. My original fic idea was to put Jessie and Buzz in a confined space and see the result, with a vague intention of a h/c sort of dynamic and probably sex. Although I haven’t managed to write this piece, the image was particularly striking to me, and I found myself asking why.
The simplest answer is that fear is a very powerful emotion. Fear can of itself produce a very particular, and sometimes very deep, headspace for an individual to enter. It is why edgeplay is so iconic, and why emotion play speaks so strongly to us: fear, despite being a perfect abstract (an emotion, with no tangible existence) has a very concrete effect on our bodies. It is a way of playing with the power which we have over ourselves, and either losing that power or handing it over to another is an incredibly daunting idea.
For Jessie, confinement is the thing which can spur this deep, visceral emotion, and it has a powerful effect on her as well as on the mind of the audience. It is certainly a striking enough part of her character that when faced with the words “confined/caged”, and with probably forty or more fandoms with which I am familiar, Jessie was the character that came to mind. (That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of characters I would like to see get hot and bothered in a tight space, but none of them had the blow-to-the-gut impact that thinking of Jessie did.)
In terms of kink, of course, a lot of play and scenes are about using emotion, headspace and physical response to a greater or lesser extent. Putting a character as severely claustrophobic as Jessie into a confined space is automatically going to produce a mental and physical fear reaction – racing pulse, trembling – and a very intense headspace. A scene of her exploring this reaction, with Buzz or any other character, in a consensual setting seemed to me as if it would be very powerful and very intimate.
Of course, the flip side of this is that they are toys, and at Disney Kink are usually written as such. Of course, human AUs are present, but kink memes are probably infamously inventive, and the notion of toy sex is one that seems to intrigue and amuse the Disney crowd in equal measure. And these toys exist in a world of humans, humans who do not know that they are alive and treat them as inanimate objects. (Hey, there’s plenty of room for objectification kink in this fandom as well, but there you go.) This means that the situations of confinement which Jessie was in, over the course of the films, were pretty explicitly non-consensual, and yet at the same time the human characters did not know what they were doing.
The darkness of this situation is not one that I particularly felt that I was ready to engage with just yet, and is probably the major reason why I chose to write meta on this subject rather than fic. It is probably difficult to overstate how daunting and frightening the idea of confinement is to Jessie, the state in which it can put her, precisely because it is not just based on fears to which humans can relate, but also on those which are more difficult to understand: the feeling of being used by godlike creatures who do not even know that you are alive. Scratch the surface, and the Toy Story universe is quite frightening, but that is beyond the extension of this meta.
So... there, I suppose, you have it. The very word ‘confinement’ bought to my mind Jessie from Toy Story, and how her personality and viewpoint on the narrative is shaped by her experience of, and fear of, confinement and enclosure. From a narrative point of view, confinement becomes a far more integral part of the story, one which is engaged with on multiple occasions in ways which doubtless feel to her like a reliving of old fears. From the point of view of kink, it is almost certain that confinement has the potential to draw up emotions of almost unparalleled strength in Jessie, and would make for a scene of quite incredible intensity (one which, sadly, I do not yet feel ready to attempt to write).
Confinement: yet another kink to be found in Disney films, but possibly the only one which this strong of a canonical effect on a character.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 10:26 pm (UTC)I've been planning on writing a fic revolving around a character with an anxiety disorder, but was having problems sorting out exactly how to approach it. I was concerned about fetishizing her very real fear, as most of her fear in canon is non consensual that was something that I wasn't comfortable with. For whatever reason I'd totally overlooked the possibility of using an established, positive, relationship as the setting for my fic. So for that I thank you twofold.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-10 06:34 pm (UTC)I think that part of the issue is that in most canons, situations that could look kinky are quite often non-consensual. Because... kink is bad on TV or something.
I get the feeling that it would be really intense, though, because it would probably be the result of a really deep level of trust between the characters. With characters I was more used to, I might be up for writing something like that, but I don't write much Buzz/Jessie so I was a bit more tentative about them. :)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-13 01:17 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm not sure I could pull that off at least not in a new fandom, as this would be, but I was toying with the idea of making it solo kink/fantasy kind of feeling it out through the character. I'm intrigued so I definitely want to do something...
no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 04:40 pm (UTC)(Also, 'Daisy' should be 'Bonnie' as Daisy was not canonically associated with Jessie.)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-12 05:00 am (UTC)