I spent seven days in the world Walt Disney built during the school break, and now that I have been home for a few days, I’ve had a chance to digest the experience.

We spent two days at Disney World: one in the Magic Kingdom and the other in Disney’s Animal Kingdom.  Then my son and I met up with my sister, her two girls, and my parents for a four day Disney cruise.

Now Disney culture is sensory barrage that is designed to be perfectly perfect all the time.

The food is never to spicy or in any way unpredictable.

The employees exist in a perpetual stupor of chipper sincerity and gleeful good cheer.

You get the point.

But there is one place in the Disney empire where all of that perfection gets  turned on its head: Pixar Studios.

As the mother of a five-year-old child, I recently watched more than my share of Disney movies.  Some classics, like my personal favorite, Mary Poppins, really hold up.   Others, like Tarzan, do not.

Part of what I love about Mary Poppins, is that despite the Disney dilution of the original book, the movie retains a certain sanguine regard for human arrogance that I appreciate.   Movies like Tarzan, and several other recent straight Disney pictures, stand in glassy-eyed awe of humanity.  Maybe that’s why I hate so many of the Disney Princesses–they’re too perfect.

Pixar movies are the contemporary heirs of this more sanguine view of humanity.  The movies assume oppositional perspectives:  nightmares from the perspectives of monsters; racing from the perspective of cars; food from the perspective of rats. Pure genius; play from the perspective of toys.  This approach puts heat on the screen nearly every time because it introduces surprise into every movie from the beginning.

The other thing that Pixar movies do to generate  heat on the screen is that they reveal some dimension of human ugliness.  First of all, humans are never physically attractive.  Second of all, humans are shown in their worst moments of selfishness, greed, or pettiness.

In other words, Pixar movies put heat on the screen by showing people what’s ugly and small in the human condition, and for once, in the Disney bubble, they don’t sprinkle ANY  sugar on top of it.