disney – Ainsley MacIntyre

The GOAT Farm Class of 2018

January 23, 2023by ainsleymacintyreLeave a Comment

The thing about inventing an imaginary honor society that doles out imaginary annual awards is that you can’t just in media res things and hope that the imaginary audience is following along. There’s got to be a preamble. A clarification of the rules. An explication of the acronyms. An attempt to impose some sense upon all of the nonsense.

So in case you haven’t read The GOAT Farm’s Inaugural Post/Ceremony— and also in case you did read it, two years ago, and somehow didn’t memorize its vagaries— The GOAT Farm is a pop culture hall of fame with a pastoral aesthetic. Inductees must patiently endure a five year waiting period between when they were first experienced and when they are GOAT-eligible, which is why all of today’s honorees are from 2018. The only judge is me.

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25 Years of Pixar Tears: Ranking The Saddest Moments (5-1)

December 16, 2020December 17, 2020by ainsleymacintyre2 Comments

{This list is a continuation. You can read part one here.}

It was partway through organizing this top five that it first dawned on me, what an absolutely insane task I had assigned myself. Who volunteers to endure this much consecutive emotional turmoil? And then decides the next step is to take all of that pain and analyze it, attempt to pinpoint exactly which pain levers had been pulled and how hard and why? Me, apparently, and you, thankfully, if you’re reading this. It took me longer than expected to gather myself up between making my sad, sad points. It took me more boxes of Kleenex than I expected as well. I can only nervously hope that reading it is a more pleasant experience. Godspeed

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25 Years of Pixar Tears: Ranking The Top Ten Saddest Moments (10-6)

December 2, 2020December 16, 2020by ainsleymacintyre5 Comments

I wrote yesterday about the significance the Toy Story movies have had for me at various moments throughout my life, and the general reverence I have for the culture of creativity that Pixar has fostered. This list of the studio’s saddest ten moments was originally supposed to be attached, but because brevity is a skill I have not been blessed with, I thought I’d break it up in the interest of giving your reading/crying eyes break. In fact, two breaks. Please enjoy items ten through six today (as much as you can, considering we’re discussing moments of unfathomable sadness), and check back for five through one tomorrow.

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25 Years of Pixar Tears: What The Toy Story Movies Mean To Me

November 30, 2020December 1, 2020by ainsleymacintyre3 Comments

People love museums and documentaries and historical fiction in part because it’s fun to imagine what it might have been like to live in different eras, but I’d like to submit to the court that the best time to have been born was, definitively, the five year period between 1987 and 1992. Is this narrow window also the microgeneration of which I am a part? Yes, but this is only a minor bias.

Please consider these objective truths: everyone in this cohort got to grow up with the best parts of the internet (easy access to information, instant messaging, Neopets) but none of the worst (cyberbullying, social media toxicity, alt-right extremism); they got to experience the Harry Potter phenomenon as it unfolded in real time, and most importantly, they had the privilege to come of age alongside Pixar’s revolutionary computer animation technology.

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The Most Basketball Place On Earth

September 5, 2020May 3, 2021by ainsleymacintyre2 Comments

You never like to preface your work with a disclaimer that it’s dumb and unimportant, but sometimes the surrounding context and cultural conversation gives you no choice. This piece, in which I’ve gone to great lengths to examine each NBA team and find its analogue in the Disney library, was a bit ridiculous when I first set out to write it. After the momentous real life events of the past week, it feels laughably absurd.

When the Milwaukee Bucks decided to forfeit Game 5 of their first round series against Orlando in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, they could not have known how far the echoes of their protest would ring. The other four teams scheduled to play that day quickly opted out of their games as well, as did teams playing for the WNBA, MLS, MLB, and even tennis player Naomi Osaka. The NHL, as usual, arrived a day late and a dollop of sincerity short. But the message was clear. Athletes were unwilling to be a source of distraction while the Black community continued to face an emergency that showed no sign of getting better.

For a few hours it seemed like “The Bubble” really had burst, and the season might once again be over. Then the players made the collective, if reportedly contentious, decision to return to play. They were able to earn a few more action-oriented concessions from the league and the team owners, but the real goal was always to bring awareness to the systemic, international issue of racism. To keep the volume turned up on a conversation that only finally became mainstream this past June.

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How Pop Culture Was Revived In 2019 (And Why It Might Save The Planet In 2020)

January 1, 2020June 29, 2020by ainsleymacintyre5 Comments

“Pop culture died in 2009.” Or so the saying goes over at one of my favorite websites on the internet, a contextless virtual time capsule of the so-called naughty aughties. They have a point. Though it was merely a decade ago, scrolling through the remnants of trucker hats, chunky highlights and Us Weekly headlines feels a little like taking part in an archaeological dig. Everything seems to have changed, from the celebrities we’re fascinated by and the ways we engage with them, to the platforms we consume entertainment on and the pace at which we consume it.

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