Day 25

I saw WALL-E yesterday, and now I have an urge to dissect it. I don't usually do so, since I actually dislike it when people over-analyze movies. But hey, what the hell.

Now, first off, don't be fooled by WALL-E's cutesy exterior; this may be a kids movie, but in name only. Sure, it was silly, and geared towards kids, but there was quite a lot going on under the surface. Science fiction is well-known for it's examination of the human condition and contemporary issues, and I think that the things that the creators of WALL-E decided to touch on are an interesting commentary on the issues of today.

The first, and most obvious, is consumerism. In WALL-E, humans have deserted planet earth to escape the massive amounts of trash they've created; the mountains of garbage have literally made the planet uninhabitable. In the spectacular vistas there are advertisements galore, giant super stores, gas stations large enough for fifty cars, all of which have the Buy n Large logo. It's the ultimate Wal-Mart.

Depicting the future earth as covered in trash may seem like an exaggeration, and maybe it is. I doubt we'll ever get that far in our excess. Still, stories about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a giant raft of plastic and other debris that accumulates due to the area's circular rotation, are eerily reminiscent of the possible future as shown in WALL-E.

A friend of mine, after we watched the movie, mentioned that she wished it had focused more on the environment. That would have been interesting, but I think it misses the point. By focusing on consumerism and excessive waste, the creators of WALL-E looked at the real cause of the environmental mess that we're in. Why are our forests and other natural habitats disappearing? Why is toxic waste finding its way into our rivers and oceans? How on earth did there get to be a giant raft of plastic in the middle of the sea? In the end it all comes down to stuff. We deplete our resources and destroy the natural world to make stuff. We create toxins through the manufacturing of stuff. And when we get tired of our stuff, it gets thrown away as waste.

Moving from the planet earth to aboard the spaceship Axiom one finds more social commentary. Much has been made of the humans and how fat they are in the movie; they've become so dependent on machines and robots that they never leave their hover chairs. But what's more interesting, at least in my view, is what the humans on Axiom do. Their interactions are regulated to talking to one another on holographic screens, so much so that even when they're floating right next to each other they don't look at each other. They just watch their screens.

Much of our interaction in the developed world these days is through technology, be it texting on a cell phone, posting on web forums, or conversing through email or instant messaging. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; new communications technologies have opened up faster ways of doing business, ways to talk to people abroad, and ways to connect with people who have similar interests but you'd never meet in real life. What WALL-E shows us, though, is that perhaps, like most things, this could be taken to far; in the end, nothing beats face-to-face interaction, and if we were to lose that we'd be losing a lot.

I could go on—how the "meals in a cup" found on Axiom are a commentary on our fast food society of today, for example. But I'd like to skip the end of the movie. (SPOILERS AHEAD!)

There's been a lot of talk lately about "green technologies" and how they're the future. They're being touted as the answer to our prayers, as the solution to our environmental, perhaps even our economic woes. But there's something fishy about them in my mind. We're led to believe that with the right technology we'll be able to wean ourselves of fossil fuels and go on our merry, over-consuming ways.

I do believe that green technologies are the answer, but there's a catch. I don't think we'll be able to live the same lives we do today. Will we fall back into the Dark Ages? Hardly. But there's something terribly ironic in the idea that we'll fix all our problems, which stem from our consumerist culture, by buying more stuff just because it's "green."

When the humans in WALL-E returned to earth, they returned to an earth in which technology had failed it. The plan to clean up the earth using robots like WALL-E has failed, and what do these humans do? They grow plants. The radically change their lives, moving from a consumerist culture to one that grows things, and builds things. And it's this change that turns the earth green again, not a continuation of their previous lives.

It makes you wonder what we'll have to do to make our earth green again.