Monsters with a message
Monsters, Inc. is constructed around the premise that monsters have their own city called Monstropolis and it runs on the energy from children’s screams. The monsters go into children’s closets, make them scream and collect the scream to keep their world running. James “Sulley” Sullivan (John Goodman) is the top scarer at Monsters, Incorporated. Everything is going great for Sulley and his one-eyed wing-man Mike Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal) until a small child follows Sulley to the other side of the closet. The child, whom he dubs Boo, is a precocious little girl who steals Sulley’s heart, as well as the viewer’s, because she’s the most cuddly cartoon kid ever drawn.
My son is currently nuts about this movie, so we have watched it about a dozen times in the last week. Yeah, yeah, I let my kids watch too much TV. That’s not the point. The point is I’ve been able to analyze the film’s many layers even though I don’t pay complete attention when he’s watching it. I’m always cooking, checking e-mail, folding laundry, sneaking chocolate snacks while the kids are distracted, etc. So, it’s taken me a while to get the weight of the overall message.
The first viewing is certainly impressive. It’s a great movie, just as you’d expect from Disney Pixar. It’s funny for children and adults, with sweet lessons about friendship.
By the fifth half-ass viewing, the message about the repercussions of prejudice really hit me. The monsters are afraid of the children, the children are afraid of the monsters, but neither is dangerous. They are actually capable of forming familial bonds, like in the case of Sulley and Boo.
Somewhere between half-ass viewings five and ten, I realized the big message: alternative energy sources are necessary to sustain our world. Monstropolis is suffering from an energy crisis, a scream shortage. Sulley’s nemesis, a chameleon-like monster named Randall Boggs (voiced by the fantastic Steve Buscemi) is researching an easier way to get the screams from children. It’s a horrible device that extracts the screams straight from their throats, further straining monster/human relations. Boo’s presence in Monstropolis is due to the scream extraction conspiracy and it goes all the way to the top, baby!
Through Sulley’s interactions with Boo, he learns that the laughter of children provides energy more efficiently and humanely than the screams. The cleaner, humane energy source provides a happy ending for everyone involved. It’s an important message that is applied in a way preschoolers can understand.
I admit to being one of the least politically aware people alive. Between the small children in my house who keep asking me for stuff and my trying to put the pen to paper and keep the house in some semblance of order, I have let my knowledge of current events go by the wayside. But I do know that politicians have spouted big talk about alternative energy since the Carter administration. Maybe if we all thought about it simpler terms, change would be accomplished rapidly and we would have one less thing to fight over.
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Oh good, I’m glad I’m not the only one that spends long hours thinking about kids movies I haven’t “watched” so much as “listened to”. I drive my wife crazy saying things like “you know what the problem with Cars is? It’s not internally consistent! If they’re all cars, why are they growing corn? Why do they have doors?”
Ahem. But, er… Monsters Inc was the first Pixar movie I saw in the theater and I’ve always liked it. It’s totally internally consistent.
Thanks, Nate. I feel much less dorky about this post now.
Dude, you’re completely right about the alt energy message! In point of fact, this is straight up my favorite Pixar movie so far. I’m glad repeated viewings gave you more to look at!