(Wall-E and the Toy Story trilogy [1995, 1999, 2010]) expand the limitations that have traditionally bound “family enter-tainment” under the G-rating by em-ploying a postmodern adaptation of the “principle of deniability,” a producer-designed multivalence that flourished in Hollywood from 1930–1968 under the Production Code (Vasey 104–13).

Pixar’s Toy Story (Dir. John Lasseter, 1995) and WALL-E (Dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008) are “innocent” animated film about ob-jects, their value as cinema lies in their ability to complexly address human—and sometimes wholly adult—fears about meaninglessness, apocalypse, and oblivion.

Toy Story 3 (2010) be-gins with Andy’s toys playing pretend. The setting is the Old West. Sheriff Woody fights the Potato Heads-cum-bandits to rescue a moving train full of orphan trolls. The Potato Heads escape the train in Barbie’s dream car. But the train is headed toward the precipice at the end of a dynamited trestle. Despite Woody’s efforts, the train plunges off the edge. We hear it thud below and see smoke rise from the chasm. Cow-girl Jessie’s jaw drops in utter disbelief and disappointment. For several long seconds as the energy of the action se-quence diffuses, we believe that Woody has failed. Then Buzz lifts the train out of the hole. But the threat is not, as we had imagined, contained but is instead reanimated and escalated. The toys are assailed by a mushroom cloud of “death by monkeys” and finally an unnamed threat behind a red button in Evil Dr. Porkchop’s dirigible.