What I learned From Buzz Lightyear!
Woody: Oh yeah? Well, if *you* hadn’t shown up with your stupid little cardboard spaceship and taken away everything that was important to me…
Buzz: Don’t talk to me about importance! Because of *you*, the future of this entire universe is in jeopardy!
Woody: WHAT? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Buzz: Right now, poised at the edge of the galaxy, Emperor Zurg has been secretly building a weapon with the destructive capacity to annihilate an entire planet! I alone have information that reveals this weapon’s only weakness. And *you*, my friend, are responsible for delaying my rendezvous with Star Command!
Woody: [pauses and looks incredulous] YOU! ARE! A! TOYYYYY! You aren’t the real Buzz Lightyear! You’re – you’re an action figure!
[holds hand up to eyes indicating something small]
Woody: You are a child’s play thing!
Buzz: You are a sad, strange little man, and you have my pity.
[waves in military fashion]
Buzz: Farewell.
[starts to walk away]
Woody: Oh, yeah? Well, good riddance, ya loony!
What I learned from Buzz Lightyear was very sad.
I saw how he was in total belief that he was the real high-tech super dude, super Space Ranger. When I watched this for the first time, and probably every time after that I always shed a few tears for Buzz (sound strange – well not really for me) when he finds out that he is really just a child’s toy. Poor Buzz is so deluded, and arrogant, forceful and pushy with everyone and he thinks that he can deal with Zurg and anyone else. It didn’t take long for some of us to look at Buzz and think that he was an idiot or fool.
Why cry? Well when he sees the television advertisement for Buzz Lightyear toys and the shock on his face when he realises what he really is, he discovers that he is not so great. That he is not a super Hot Shot Space Ranger – like many of us he just finds out that he is just himself. Many of us go through this and it hurts, it really truly hurts, and it hurts deep.
Then on the stairs, on the top Buzz tries to grasps some small belief that he can really fly (this part really tears me up) he jumps to only find out that he has found the truth. he now knows who is. What he has been. And how people have tried to help him and set him right, but he did not listen. He now sees his arrogance and foolishness. This can be very hard for anyone to take. Its a big shock.
Now comes the realization period of total devastation and misery.
Buzz: One minute you’re defending the whole galaxy, and, suddenly, you find yourself sucking down darjeeling with Marie Antoinette… and her little sister.
Buzz freaks out totally and is uncontrollable and totally lost as to who he really is. This part breaks my heart and although they try to milk some jokes out of this it is really very devastating and scary. Buzz has lost the Belief-System that he was arrogantly strutting around in. He found out the truth and it hurts greatly and knocks him totally off his high perch. And yes I do shed tears over this because to me this is all too real and all too sad.
Later on Buzz meets another Buzz (in the second movie) who is deluded as he was and as poor Buzz tried to straighten out this new Buzz, our Buzz who has finally accepted who he is and likes his real decent nice self, is totally frustrated at the arrogance of the new Buzz and knows how Woody & co tried to once help him.
When we change we have old friends who come to see us and we try to tell them of who we are now and they scoff at us sometimes with disbelief and they think that the “new us” is crazy because those people are the “old deluded us”. They are who we used to be and we have to accept that and move on leaving them behind but always be ready to help them should they ask for our help in the future. But mostly we should never let them drag us back to their ways just because they are our old friends.
Another thing to realise here is that Buzz was preprogrammed by others and therefore believed the untruths that he had been fed. So if a person has been fed untruths for a long enough period, especially when young, they will come to believe what they have been told to be true even though it isn’t. There is hope for all of us just as there was hope for Buzz. Eventually through trial and error Buzz comes to realise who he really is and he accepts that. This is the important part and then Buzz becomes a good person in society and can live again. He becomes an individual and not part of the Buzz Lightyear collection of toys (not one of the masses that all go and do things without thinking for themselves) and Buzz can now live with himself and grow with new inner-strength.
All the best from
James M Sandbrook.
14th February 2013.