This paper explores how Pixar films (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).3

New Hollywood block-busters were often made to fit into the PG category that would draw and thrill teen audiences (think Steven Spielberg’s Jaws [1974] or Raiders of the Lost Ark[1981]). But Pixar has helped to revive the idea that the cinema should address everyone—and has restored audience interest in the G rating.

The use of “innocent”-looking films to address complex issues is not new to Hollywood but originated during the era of the Production Code, when studios used ambiguity and indirection to connote censorable issues onscreen.

Pixar has made over the twenty-seven years since its inception, it has garnered not only ex-tremely high box office figures but also (at least until 2011 with Cars 2) aston-ishingly uniform critical praise.

New Hollywood block-busters were often made to fit into the PG category that would draw and thrill teen audiences (think Steven Spielberg’s Jaws [1974] or Raiders of the Lost Ark[1981])

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.

By Ellen ScottPixar, Deniability, and the Adult SpectatorPixar, Deniability, Toy Story 3 (2010) be-gins with Andy’s toys playing pretend