TOY STORY

By Barbara Ehrenreich

Memo to: Disney Screenplay Department

You must get hundreds of proposals like this every day, but I'm talking major blockbuster here: one of those great social-conscience flicks, like the way you folks at Disney handled genocide in Pocahontas (awesome!) or class struggle in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (way cool!). Only this one is about child labor, which is a hot topic every Christmas when the kids unwrap all these toys labeled "Made in Inner-City Dakar." Here's the treatment:

Scene I: The Pure Joy Toy Factory, located somewhere in the Third World. It is dawn, and the children are marching in to begin the day shift, singing "Hi ho, hi ho, It's off to the multinational workplace we go!/ Oh it's joy, joy, joy, to make a first-class toy/ For some lucky girl or boy/ Who can play, play, play/ All the livelong day!"

Enter Cruella, branch manager of Pure Joy Toy, wearing a gray cashmere business suit accessorized with a tasteful black riding crop. "Good news, children!" she announces in a voice that lets you know she's had her usual breakfast of boiled bunnies and Dalmatian pups. "Thanks to the upsurge of consumer confidence this Christmas season, I'm able to offer you unlimited forced overtime right through Christmas Eve! And to make it easier for you to focus on the task at hand, all exits and rest rooms will be locked for the duration!" As she leaves, we hear locks clanking ominously.

The children, some of whom were already fainting and drooping at their work stations, gasp in horror. But little Maria leaps up, crying out, "She's gone too far this time! We've got to do something!" They all drop their tools and start yelling excitedly: "Call Human Rights Watch!" "What about Ghostbusters?" "Someone out there has to care!" Between painful hacks caused by a bad case of industrial emphysema, Tiny Kim sputters, "Let's go all the way to the top! I know Santa wouldn't put up with this!"

In a frenzy the children set the ultra-laser-bearing Power Rangers loose on the locked doors, then pour out to march on Cruella's office, singing, "Arise, ye prisoners of globalization!/ We're going to find the ceo, the wonderful ceo of toys/ We're kids too, he's bound to see/ Then he'll downsize Cruella and set us free!"

Scene II: Cruella's office. On the wall is a large plaque, saying "To Cruella P. Joy, for Outstanding Productivity, 1988," and on her desk is a stuffed toddler--Maria's little sister, who was caught several years ago trying to eat the plastic contents of a Mattel refrigerator. Cruella cackles wildly at the raggedy mob. "Fools! Santa isn't here. He doesn't even know you exist--that's the beauty of subcontracting!"

Scenes III-VII: The children continue their search for Santa, from city to city and through layer after layer of subcontractors, while Cruella, leading her own army of death-dealing action figures, pursues them. Jack Nicholson in his Joker outfit shows up somewhere along the way as, say, a Hong Kong-based export-import whiz, and at one point Jack and Cruella break into a duet: "Tiny wages for tiny people/ That's the way it goes/ They're lucky to have work/ As everybody knows/ You don't need money anyway, if you're only eight!"

Finally, after moving up through subcontractors from Tijuana to Taipei in their search for Santa, the kids get to the Manhattan headquarters of We R Toys Inc. They ascend to the top floor, where they've been told the ceo will be found, and knock timidly on the boardroom door. But alas, they find only a group of identical pudding-faced men in pinstriped suits, sitting around an oval table. One of the executives rises and smiles warmly at the kids. "We heard about the personnel problems down at Pure Joy, and do we have a big surprise for you--Cruella will be going on a week-long mandatory executive sensitivity-training program at our corporate retreat in Belize!"

"Wait a minute," Tiny Kim rasps, looking frantically around the room, "You mean there's no Santa at the top of the corporate hierarchy? No eternal spirit of altruism and self-sacrifice for the benefit of little children everywhere?"

The We R Toys executive chuckles. "Things aren't that bleak, Son. When it comes to self-sacrifice, there are always the little child laborers of the world. Which is why we've had these Santa suits manufactured for each and every one of you. And guess what? They're flame retardant in case a fire breaks out while you're locked inside the factory."

Eagerly the children don their Santa suits and march back to work, singing, "Deck those dolls with joyful smiles/ Wind those action figures up/ Don we now our hard-earned apparel/ Tiny Santas of the world!"

So what do you think? I could flesh out this treatment, and cameras could begin rolling by Easter, just in time for a Christmas release next year. I mean, if other people are getting rich off child labor, why not an essayist like me?