A timid little penguin bounds into the scene, squeaking with every bounce. Woody the cowboy doll asks him how he’s doing and Wheezy replies, “I feel swell. In fact, I think I feel a song coming on!” A big-band, Vegas-inspired rendition of “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” begins to play while Wheezy sings—with the voice of Robert Goulet, no less.
Although Randy Newman’s song is key to the original Toy Story, its role in Toy Story 2 is even more powerful in communicating a message of friendship—a foundational virtue in Pixar films and in ethics.
“You’ve Got a Friend in Me” served to establish the friendship between Woody and his owner, Andy, and later underscored the friendship between Buzz Lightyear and Woody. The song also highlights the friendship between the toys and reminds Woody of his friendship with Andy.
As Buzz and the other toys leave Woody behind, Woody watches a scene from Woody’s Roundup featuring an acoustic guitar version of “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” performed by a Woody puppet. “The real treasures are your friends and family,” says the puppet. As Woody watches the song being performed, he rubs paint off the bottom of his boot, revealing the word “ANDY” (complete with a backwards N) and is reminded of his friendship with Andy, as well as his identity and purpose as a toy. His change of heart is immediate, and he decides to return to Andy. Friendship is more important than standing behind glass in a toy museum.
Our Friendship Will Never Die
On some level, we all understand what friendship means, but on another level, a successful definition eludes us. Is friendship a virtue? Ideally, it should be, but like so many other virtues, friendship is often fleeting, superficial and even twisted into forms that are less than virtuous.
We live in a world of online social networking where we instantly can become someone’s “friend” (see chapter 11) and where degrees of friendship abound. Despite the haziness of the definition, however, there’s no doubt that much of the happiness we experience in life is due to friendship.
So, what is friendship? It is valued, sought after, enjoyed and maintained, sometimes over the course of a lifetime. When we know we have made a friend, on some level we experience joy. Deep and meaningful relationships all require friendship. Sometimes these relationships bring opposites together merely through the fact that the opposites share a common joy.
Friendship is a recurring theme in Pixar films. In WALL-E, a garbage-compacting robot is friends with an indestructible cockroach. In Ratatouille, a rat is a friend to a human. In Up, a disillusioned old man learns to be a friend to an eager boy.
Pixar revels in portraying unexpected friendships. Perhaps this is merely a storytelling method to make films more interesting, but maybe there is more to it. Do we tend to seek and maintain only the sorts of friendships that seem comfortable and expected, rather than those that might make us uncomfortable and are unexpected?
Some of the friendships found in Pixar films are unexpected. In Cars, Piston Cup race car Lightning McQueen literally lives life in the fast lane. His purpose in life is to win races, not to cultivate friendships. He briefly realizes this when his agent offers him 20 free tickets to a race to pass on to friends. McQueen pauses, unable to think of anyone. It is only through a series of mishaps that McQueen ends up in Radiator Springs, a forgotten town off Route 66. The adventures he finds there lead him into an unexpected friendship with a rusty, dilapidated tow truck named Mater, who eventually becomes his best friend. The “odd couple” pairing of McQueen and Mater leads to friendship—something McQueen lacked despite his success on the racetrack.
In Monsters, James P. Sullivan (“Sulley”) and Mike Wazowski are best friends. They are just two everyday blue-collar workers who spend their days in a power plant. They’re also monsters. Sulley is an enormous, blue-furred creature with horns on his head, while Mike is a small, green, one-eyed ball of energy. In Monsters Inc., it’s their job to scare children in order to capture the power of screams.
In Sulley and Mike, Pixar once again manages to take strange characters, place them in situations everyone can relate to and craft a believable and emotionally powerful story. Throughout the film we learn bits and pieces of information about the two monsters. We know they are coworkers and roommates, that they went to school together since at least the fourth grade and that they are both intent on breaking the all-time scare record at their factory, Monsters, Incorporated.
As in any meaningful friendship, Sulley and Mike don’t always get along. Sulley and Mike are banished to the Himalayas in the middle of a blizzard. It is there that their friendship faces a real test. Sulley’s only concern is to help Boo return to her own world safely, but Mike is distraught over being banished. They are found by another banished monster, the abominable snowman; but the tension between Sulley and Mike continues, even though the amusing abominable snowman recognizes that the two are best friends.
“You and I are a team,” Mike tells Sulley at one point. “Nothing is more important than our friendship…I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, but I am now.”
Friendship and Love
In the four New Testament gospels, what example does Christ set for us in relation to friendships? Did He do what was expected, comfortable and ordinary; or did He color outside the lines of typical expectations of friendship?
Even a cursory reading of the gospels reveals Christ’s eclectic friendships. Men, women, children, criminals, fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans, Pharisees, “sinners”: Christ befriended them all, reaching out to them with God’s love.
Biblically speaking, friendship has its foundation in love. In the New Testament, the word often used for friendship is philia, while the term for fellowship, a form of friendship, is koinonia. In one sense, biblical friendship is no different from other forms of friendship. Friends spend time together, share common joys, talk with one another about what is meaningful and offer support and advice.
The key difference in Christian friendship is that God is the foundation of friendship, as He is so often the foundation of other virtues. While some forms of belief see a chasm so great between God and human beings so as to allow no friendship whatsoever between them, Christianity acknowledges a level of friendship between humans and God. Being friends with God is not the same as being friends with fellow humans. Friendship with God is conditional on our obedience.
Christ moreover equates friendship with sacrifice when He says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (
Christ teaches us that friends need not be alike but may indeed be different, each one contributing to the friendship his or her own unique traits, for better or worse. Friends also share common interests, whether it is their work, hobbies or other things. Friendship brings about joys that are greater when shared than when alone.
Reconciliation is also important in friendship, as it requires us actively to participate in and understand restoration. What is involved in reconciliation? There needs to be repentance—a sincere turning away from whatever it was that resulted in tension and division to begin with. Repentance also requires humility—the opposite of pride. In sum, tensions in friendship that require reconciliation help us grow virtuously as individuals.
What about reconciliation between ourselves and God?
A Theology of Friendship
Most of us probably don’t think too much about a theology of friendship, but doing so will yield some beneficial results. For instance, the natural desire for friendship offers many insights into human nature.
Why do we want and seek friendship? One reason is that we long for something in this world to offer fulfillment and joy in our lives. We may seek this fulfillment in materialism, by accumulating possessions, through hobbies, by occupying our time with diversions and other activities and in some cases through friendship. This does not diminish the inherent value of friendship, but it does indicate that we are missing something. In this sense, friendship points us to God.
Christian theology also offers an example of friendship as well as a foundation for love. Within the nature of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are involved in a dynamic interplay—one God revealed in three persons, united and complete. In
A proper Christian theology of friendship encourages the cultivation of long-term, enduring friendships, meaning they move beyond the superficial and into rich and meaningful interaction over a long period of time. Unfortunately, the contemporary world often makes it difficult to foster these kinds of friendships. More than ever before, the world is moving at metaphorically incredible speeds, as we travel at fast speeds, move from one area to another and perhaps live many miles from where we work.
Often we no longer know what it means to be part of a community or how to build theologically healthy friendships. Even the term friend is diminished, skewing our perception of what friendship should be in a biblical sense. True friendship does not exist for the sake of personal gain of any kind, other than the natural virtuous gain of being friends. In other words, friendships that are solely utilitarian—that is, those who are forged only to be useful to us—are not true friendships.
We should not seek friendships merely for personal gain or as some sort of technique that we may use for our own purposes. True friendship helps us in some small way better understand the goodness of God. Moreover, it’s easy for us to establish and maintain friendship only with those who are more like us than not. Doing so will result in Christians having primarily or perhaps even exclusively Christian friends. As the example of Christ demonstrates, our friendships often need broadening.
Moving beyond our comfort zones in friendship will provide opportunities to not only grow in character ourselves, but help others grow, too.
Discussion Questions
1. What are some examples of friendship in Toy Story 2?
2. Mike and Sulley are best friends, but even so they face their share of difficulties. What sort of attitude is necessary to foster reconciliation? How does Mike go about reconciling with Sulley?
3. What role does love play in a biblical view of friendship? How is God involved in friendship?
4. In what way are we friends with God? Discuss the meaning of
Christ’s sacrifice in relationship to love and friendship.
Taken from The Wisdom of Pixar: An Animated Look at Virtue by Robert Velarde. Copyright(c) 2010 by Robert Velarde. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515. IVPress.com.
