New Ideas

Above is a trailer for the movie "The Pixar Story."

As a person who has a passion for writing I thought blogging would come easy to me, but for some reason I couldn't think of anything to blog about. It's probably because I've always liked having structure in my life and not having a topic was killing me.  I've decided, since time is running out, that I'm just going to blog about what I know, and what has been stuck in my mind throughout the last week. After watching the movie The Pixar Story this week I've decided to write about how hard it is to make new ideas acceptable.

The founders of Pixar had to go through a long, hard fight to get the approval to do a 3-D animated film. The producers at Disney Studios were afraid that this new form of animation would wipe out the artistic creativity of the 2-D films. People at the time thought that computers would do all the art and there would be no need for artists anymore. They were completely wrong, however, because it just gave artists a new way of designing animation that would look great on the screen too. Disney Studios even fired a man for proposing that they try making a film with 3-D animation. That same man was one of the founders of Pixar and he is one of the reasons why the Toy Story movies and every other Pixar film even exists. Can you imagine a life without Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and Cars? I know I can't, and that is all because one man didn't give up on his dreams. He had to break away from Disney Studios and it took a lot longer than expected to see his first movie on the big screen.

The struggles he faced reminded me of my history class where we are learning how long it took for women to get the right to vote. The idea was first mentioned at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, but it took 72 years of fighting for them to finally gain their right. There were many people opposed to the idea, even women, but the suffragists didn't give up. The women who went to the convention were called society's misfits and life's losers because they were for women's rights. They fought for a greater cause, and because it took so long some of the women leaders of the movement died before the the 19th Amendment was even passed. It just seems so wrong that so many people thought women were not equal to men and that they shouldn't have a say in the government. Maybe our generation is just more open to new ideas, but I can't imagine a world that degrades people because of their sex. I'm just glad that there were women back then that knew this way of thinking was wrong, and refused to accept it.

People don't like change. It scares them, because they're afraid they will miss the way things were. Change is meant to improve life and make things better, but most people like to just stick to what they know. This is such a sad way to live life, because people block themselves off to new opportunities. A person should never stop thinking about challenging what has always been accepted, or discovering new ways to accomplish a task. We all have the power to make the world different based on the actions we take, and wouldn't it be cool to be able to say something only exists because you were thinking unconventionally.

Obviously it's hard to make new ideas acceptable in society and even when someone has one all the odds are against them. Maybe that's the point, though. If something is really worth people's attention it should be a long, hard fight to make it a reality. Maybe there's one big question we should ask ourselves before we take any action in life: Is it worth fighting for?