The reassurance of nostalgia often anchors innovation’s newness. Despite being the first digitally-animated feature, Pixar’s debut, Toy Story (1995), was deeply nostalgic—reenacting the baby boomer’s fond memories of growing up within the material prosperities of post-war America. The tension between Woody (Tom Hanks), the all-too-earnest cowboy, and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), the lovably-misguided astronaut, replayed the transition from a `50s obsession with frontier Westerns to the `60s atomic-age space race. This generational address was more acute in Toy Story 2 (1999), which foregrounded Woody’s status as a valuable antique explicitly based on a 1950s television show. Somewhere in the eleven years between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, however, that narrative faded.

The third film’s nostalgia resonated for a very different audience. Its powerful ending, where a now teenaged Andy gives up his beloved Woody to a little girl, was more about the generation of kids who grew up with Toy Story. One couldn’t reproduce this effect with children today—it’d require showing them the first one, waiting four years before letting them see the second, and then another eleven years before seeing the conclusion. No child would go along with that (and, generally, our media consumption habits are such that if we discover something new—such as a television series on DVD or Netflix—the inevitable temptation is to devour it all at once). The specific effect that Andy’s decision has on teenagers and twenty-somethings today could never be repeated for another generation—it’s a useful demonstration of how historically specific audiences’ relationship to media texts can be. I suspect, over time, Toy Story 3 will lose some of its luster.

I spent so much time unpacking the nostalgic trajectories of the Toy Story trilogy because I feel somewhere in there is also the story of Pixar’s continuing challenge. The premise of Monsters University, where Sulley (John Goodman) and Mike (Billy Crystal) head off to college, is a symbolic continuation of Andy’s departure for school at Toy Story 3’s conclusion, reflecting how Pixar’s core demographic is also now college-aged. It’s simple enough to highlight Pixar’s artistic rut by recycling properties over and over, rather than explore more original, ambitious narratives, such as 2008’s Wall-E. Yet the truth is the company is very much beholden to its loyal audience in ways that restrict the kind of innovation that helped distinguish Pixar in the early days of computer animation. Or, perhaps, the innovation comes in how to carefully negotiate those nostalgic impulses.

Pixar’s journey over the years is not unlike that of the parent company it’s often fairly but misleadingly tied to—Disney. The idea is that Pixar is focused on squeezing older properties dry because of Disney’s corrupting corporate influence, but this requires a more nuanced understanding of Uncle Walt’s company. Like Pixar, Disney defined itself in the beginning through cutting-edge innovation in animation—the first successful integration of sound (as much the reason for Mickey’s popularity as anything), the first use of three-strip Technicolor (1932’s Flowers and Trees), the first feature-length cartoon, Snow White (1937), and so forth. Like Pixar then, Disney was both critical and commercial darling in the 1930s. The 1940s, however, were generally unprofitable, with government WWII contracts keeping the company afloat. But on the eve of “Disneyland” in the 1950s, the company discovered a whole generation of parents now nostalgically recalling their memories of Mickey and Silly Symphonies. This generational nostalgia sustained the ABC program of the same name, and paid for and promoted the theme park in Anaheim.

Yet like Toy Story 3’s success with college-aged audiences today, it was somewhat luck—Disney leveraged broadcast rights to its old properties out of financial desperation. Meanwhile, Pixar waited so long in making sequels/prequels precisely because it feared being perceived as money-driven and creatively bankrupt (there’s also a parallel to Disney’s reluctant embrace of the now-ubiquitous “Princess” films, explaining why it took fourteen years after Snow White to return to the fairy tale genre with 1951’s Cinderella). In short, it’s not only about creative stagnation, but about an awareness that such recycling negotiates and reinforces the powerfully self-sustaining nostalgia which anchors the company’s success—both for Disney in the 1950s, and Pixar today.

Brave caught my attention because it shines a bright light on Pixar’s main failing: the majority of stories the acclaimed studio tells are about and targeted to men and boys. Released on June 22, Brave tells the story of a young, determined Scottish princess named Merida who struggles with her mother for the right to make her own way in life. The film makes a strong break from the fairy tales parent company Disney usually tells about girls’ lives: Merida is not perfectly groomed, she does not put others before herself, and though she has a good relationship with her horse, Angus, animals do not flock to Merida as if she is Mother Nature. More importantly, Merida has no interest in learning to properly present herself as a princess and she is more interested in archery than romantic love. In fact, Brave’s plot is driven by Merida’s attempts to avoid the forced marriage for which her mother has spent years grooming her. Though Brave is by no means perfect, it has won critics’ praise for being “shockingly radical for a mainstream movie” and “a much-welcome corrective to retrograde Disney heroines of the past and the company’s unstoppable pink-princess merchandising.”

Princess stories aside, Brave also has called attention to the influence of the studio’s male-dominated workplace on the stories it tells. Brave is the first Pixar film conceived of and directed by a woman, Brenda Chapman (the film’s story is reportedly based on Chapman’s daughter), but Chapman was removed from the film in October 2011, apparently due to “creative differences.” Chapman’s dismissal raises questions about Pixar’s innovativeness—and the media industry’s attitude toward feminine formats as a whole. Time’s Mary Pols put it best: “I have no doubt there are a lot of good men at Pixar, but if they’d grown up in an environment in which it was totally normal for them to see movies with girls in the lead, maybe it wouldn’t have taken 17 years for the studio to get around to making a girl the star.”

Since its first feature, Toy Story, in 1995, Pixar has built a reputation for being one of the most innovative and successful animation companies in Hollywood. Pixar’s distinctive stories and visual style have been well received by critics and audiences of all ages:  its twelve major releases have earned a total of $7 billion in box office sales and a long list of honors, include Emmy, Academy, and Grammy Awards. Brave’s first weekend draw of $66.7 million keeps intact Pixar’s record of first place openings with every feature since Toy Story—in fact, Brave’s opening was Pixar’s fifth best. Despite this, many critics have suggested that Brave is a sign that parent company Disney has finally consumed Pixar’s innovativeness. For example, The Wall Street Journal warned, “This is less a film in the lustrous Pixar tradition than a Disney fairy tale told with Pixar’s virtuosity.” Salon’s review suggests that Brave is a “departure from Pixar tradition in many ways” and argues, “Brave feels a lot more like a Disney film than a Pixar film.” Indiewire asserts that Brave marks the end of Pixar’s quality entertainment, “A once-complex house of stories has been downgraded to the happy meal alternative: ‘Brave’ is a movie for six-year-olds.” Merida is spunky and adorable, but I hardly think that a female-focused film with a feminine storyline will destroy Pixar’s status. But these reviews raise important questions: if Pixar is truly a cutting-edge animation studio, why did Brave take seventeen years? And are innovation and feminine forms incompatible?

The answers to these questions suggest that the media industry assumes that “quality” means men’s and boys’ stories packaged in normative (read: masculine) narratives. This was made clear in the Huffington Post‘s concern about “Whether young boys will push their parents to see the film once they hear that it’s a quintessential mother-daughter story with only a smattering of action set pieces.” Having endured much of what the industry has offered my son (even excluding the most offensive stuff), I can say that there is a relatively untapped, assuredly lucrative market for smart media that enriches children’s lives instead of dumbing them down—and I think it’s especially important for boys to learn to value stories by and about girls. Brave is a late, but great start, and my son and I thoroughly enjoyed it. With twin daughters growing up right behind him, I’m hoping that Brave‘s success and its positive reviews will send a strong message to studios like Pixar, encouraging them to be brave enough to produce media for girls and boys alike.

After an extensive pre-release campaign, and whole lot of hype, Tron: Legacy opened to a rather disappointing weekend, only generating $44 million at the box office.  Its second weekend compounded the disappointment, given that its box office draw dropped 56%. Actually these numbers might have been anticipated, given that the original Tron movie wasn’t a great success, either commercially or critically.  Indeed, the mediocre performance of the first film explains why it took Disney about 30 years to release a sequel.  Tron, however, had maintained a loyal core fan base over the years, and as Todd McCarthy notes, “Kids who caught the original at 12 when it came out are 40 now and may recall it through a fog of uncritical nostalgia.”

Disney was not only banking on the foggy nostalgia of this group, but also the real possibility that these folks now have kids of their own.  Disney’s marketing strategy was quite clear:  get these former kids to pass on their love of Tron to their own kids, and thereby revive the franchise with a new audience.  This strategy is implied in the title of the sequel, and Tron: Legacy is a sequel in every respect, with a narrative that extends from the original film, and Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner returning to reproduce their roles as Kevin Flynn and Alan Bradley respectively.  Legacy’s central character, however, is Flynn’s abandoned son Sam (Garrett Hedlund), and the film focuses on the renewed relationship between father and son, a narrative that certainly complements Disney’s marketing strategy.

Tron was one of the first films to use CGI animation, and although the quality of the animation is significantly better in Legacy, certain design elements remain.  The light cycles from the original movie return, but now move in three dimensions, to best exploit the 3D release no doubt.   The costumes and the sets in Legacy are decidedly darker, but they are all still outlined with lighted elements.  In fact, almost everything in the film is wrapped in a neon glow, including the Disney logo in the opening credits.

Of course, redoing the studio logo in the design aesthetic of the film is not an uncommon practice, but it struck me as a visual metaphor of how CGI has overtaken, and some might argue corrupted, Disney’s cultural production.  I have always associated the decline of Disney’s cell animation production with Toy Story, their first collaboration with Pixar.  That is an easy association to make, given the success of Pixar’s films and the fact that Disney’s own CGI films have not come close to the commercial and critical success enjoyed by Pixar.  Although Disney bought out Pixar in 2006, Pixar maintains its autonomy to develop its own projects independently, and Disney merely handles distribution and marketing.

It’s also difficult to chronologically associate the decline of cell animation with Tron, given that Disney’s most successfully animated features, including Lion King and Aladdin, were released well after the film.  Yet Disney, not Pixar, first introduced CGI to film-going audiences with Tron, so may be a more accurate point at which to locate the beginning of the end for Disney’s cell animation.

After the disastrous Home on the Range in 2004, Disney shut down all of its cell animation studios.  In November 2010, the LA Times reported that Disney’s last cell animation feature, The Princess and the Frog, would indeed be its last cell animation feature.  In other words, the real legacy of Tron may be the death of the one cultural form that once elevated Disney to a Magical Kingdom: there may never be another Snow White, another Bambi, or even another Lion King.  Admittedly, there are plenty of reasons to question the “magic” of Disney, but they appear to have traded in their tradition in animation for a $44 million opening weekend.  That’s some legacy.

1. Jeff Price has launched a six-part series looking at the state of the music industry, from revenue to piracy and everything in between. Former UK music exec Rob Dickens suggests radically lowering the price of music to save it from piracy and boost revenue, an idea which Ian S. Port agrees with and insists won’t devalue music. Google is testing a new search engine designed to curb digital music piracy in India, but the music industry doesn’t think Google is doing enough to fight piracy.

2. Google is trying to keep up with Apple in mobile activations, but despite Google’s impressive revenue results lately, Henry Blodget insists the company is just a one-trick pony of search wonders. Pretty good trick, though, like Google Instant, which is garnering fans, if not more revenue. Google has figured out another trick: avoiding paying taxes thanks to a complicated overseas scheme.

3. Apple has tons of cash laying around, so if I was the 9-year-old iPod, I’d ask for a really expensive birthday present (maybe an iPad?). It’s still too early to tell if the iPad will make a ton of cash from magazine and newspaper sales but apps sales for Apple devices have reached the 7 billion mark, and a Nielsen study shows consumers increasingly connected to such devices. Apple needs to watch out, though, because its fart app supremacy may be in jeopardy. (I’d bet the 9-year-old has suggestions for improvement there.)

4. New York Times ad dollars have declined, as have magazine launches this year, and online advertising is thriving, but UK journalist Peter Preston says the evidence just isn’t there to prove that the internet is killing print. Also counter to what most would assume, a market analyst study claims that hard news generates more ad revenue online than LiLo news. And I’m sure we’d all be in much better moods for clicking on ads if newspapers could figure out better ways to counter abusive commenters.

5. The Weinstein Co. has hired a new production president, who will hopefully get them back on the award-winning track. Weinstein Co. does have a few films nominated for the Gotham Awards, which apparently hosts a great party. The Weinsteins can fill hours of cocktail conversation at the party with tales of their battle against an NC-17 rating for Blue Valentine. Also a good Gotham Awards party conversation starter: the MPAA ratings and male nudity. If Ken Loach shows up at the party, be sure to have a big drink handy; he might talk your ear off about how cinema has been debased by Hollywood and TV.

6. The two studio news stories I haven’t linked to lately because I got bored of hearing about them have now threatened to become one: MGM and Lionsgate. Hearing nothing but glowing praise for Pixar can get a little boring, but here comes a little bad press to shake things up: accusations of sexism for the firing of its first female director. Steven Zeitchik has some info on movies you’ll never hear from again, and you’ll likely be hearing more about 3D sound — literally! Ha! See what I did there?

7. Netflix this, Netflix that, Netflix the other. Blockbuster? Not so much. Sorry ‘bout that, DVDs and video stores. And sorry studios, you coulda had a piece of that.

8. Redbox is entering the video game rental business, while game sales continue to decline, and EA’s stock price took a hit allegedly due to negative Medal of Honor reviews. Maybe EA should follow the Kinect’s lead and have Oprah give it away to her audience; I’d buy stock in whatever it is that makes people act like that. But such passion raises a question: should game developers be swayed by fan input?

9. Twitter is popular in Brazil, but not at the Washington Post, and Twitter is more popular than Facebook for click-throughs. Facebook Places has not hurt the popularity of Foursquare yet, nor has The Social Network hurt Facebook’s popularity. And internet popularity might be measured more by social networking than searching soon, as long as we’re not measuring popularity by actual profits.

10. Some good News for TV Majors links from the last two weeks: Ratings Delineation, Mad Men finale reviews and good tweets, Cable & Satellite Future, Albrecht Profile, BBC Freezing the Fee, Over-the-Top Competitors, Glee Cast in GQ, Quitting Cable, Networks Block Google, Creator Demands.

1. Digg is trying to renew its influence with a redesign, Perez Hilton might be losing his influence, and the influence of blogs in general could be fading. Conversely, user-generated porn is on the rise (be on the lookout for the .xxx domain). And whether it’s used to access news, celebrity gossip, or porn, every citizen in Finland now has the legal right to broadband.

2. Google is gunning for Facebook, though tech insiders say its odds are long. Google is also still trying to make things work with China; MG Siegler is disappointed with Google’s concessions therein. Finally, Google Wave is now open to everyone (now that no one cares about it anymore), and the company is now enabling same-sex domestic partner health benefits for employees.

3. The FTC ordered Twitter to be more careful with user information and account security, which is ever more important, as the social media service is growing across the globe (heads up, Mark Zuckerberg). This growth is also reflected in the number of cool stories about Twitter this fortnight, including about the use of the hashtag, how tweeting is physiologically like falling in love, the importance of tweet cred, Twitter scholarship, Coke’s success with Twitter ads, and how Twitter has transformed NBA free agency.

4. There was a bunch of news about the dynamic between print and online this fortnight, most of which you heard plenty about (such as Rolling Stone sitting on the McChrystal story and seeing online outlets run with – or steal – it), but there were a few other stories that might have gone under your radar: newspapers’ share of revenue from digital advertising is declining; traditional media is having fun with Tumblrs; iPad magazines aren’t impressing yet and aren’t effectively social; YouTube trumped traditional media with the news that BP has been burning up turtles; and News Corp.’s paywall for online access to The Times is now up, a move Steve Blacker says Rolling Stone should take note of.

5. Pixar rules, Jonah Hex drools. The U.S. government cracks down, a file sharer battles back. A Fox marketing executive takes the heat for Knight and Day, but Cruise’s stardom likely fights on for another day. Screenwriters are struggling to find work, while Fox struggles to treat screenwriters like they matter.

6. indieWire offers a mid-year report on the specialty box office; the foreign-language Oscar winner The Secret in their Eyes could end up earning an impressive $7 million, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is headed toward becoming one of the 25 highest-grossing foreign-language films of all time. Restrepo and Cyrus also saw impressive earnings in recent weeks.

7. DVD’s days as a regular WAYM entry may be numbered: Blockbuster is being dropped from the NYSE due to its low share price (though the company has been granted more time by lenders to restructure its debt), Apple is backing streaming video online over Blu-ray, Ryan Lawler sees Hulu Plus as a DVD killer, and Will Richmond agrees with Jeffrey Katzenberg that DVD ownership may soon be a thing of the past.

8. Video games as a business: Console sales are down but games were up slightly in May, Microsoft says it’s going to wait and see on 3D, and UK tax relief for the games industry has been canceled. Video games as art: Tom Bissell argues that video games deserve more respect, Roger Ebert relented in his games-aren’t-art battle but gamer Gus Mastrapa was disappointed that he did, and Dennis Scimeca has a mixed response to a handful of video games presented as art exhibits.

9. Two researchers who argued back in 2004 that peer-to-peer file-sharing did not have a negative impact on recorded music sales have now reversed their position, while T Bone Burnett decries the fact that creators aren’t being rewarded financially for their music. A new company has cropped up to help boost that reward by licensing music for YouTube videos, and Peter Kafka says even though digital music distribution is a terrible business. Google is right to get into it.

10. Some good News for TV Majors links (and please note the new URL at the site – the “blogspot” is out): Pay TV Doing Fine, Network Summer, Captive Audiences, Daily Show & Women, Hulu Plus, Ratings Kick, Viacom Loses, Multi-Cam Dominance, Til Death Weirdness, Treme Finale, Franco Returns.