WALL·E first came out when I was 4 years old, and I honestly didn't remember anything about it. My film criticism & theory class happened to have WALL·E on the syllabus, so I gave it another viewing, and it is one of the best animated films of all time.
By Alex Richard
I would consider WALL-E politically engaged art. At its core, WALL-E is a critique of capitalist excess and its destructive impact on the environment. The film highlights the consequences of prioritizing profit over ecological sustainability, portraying a world where rampant consumerism has led to environmental collapse and the displacement of entire populations. WALL-E also shows the harms of technology and how it affects our everyday lives.
The Earth has been abandoned, due to an ecocide. Corporation Buy n Large shipped off the rest of humanity into space to live on a spaceship, while having robots clean up the garbage and trash so that Earth can eventually become once again habitable. 700 years later, the Earth is still uninhabitable and our WALL-E is the only cleaning robot still running.
This is an example of the need for change immediately, and not waiting until the last minute. If these companies decided to act on the environmental issues as they were occurring, instead of after the breaking point, the chance of Earth being saved would be much more realistic. This can be related directly to what is happening in our modern world with climate change. So many people, including some with lots of power, have and continue to deny that climate change is real/is an issue. I am not an expert, but it sure does feel like we may be too late to stop the super long-term effects. Humanity loves waiting until the boiling point to try and fix something, and WALL-E gives a glimpse of a possible future.
WALL-E also touches on the harms of technology and what we miss out on due to our obsession. When WALL-E travels to the spaceship where all the humans are currently living, society has collapsed. Every person travels on a hover-chair that brings them wherever they want to go, while they don’t have to take their eyes off their scenes. Everything is convenient. They have even lost the ability to walk.
No one even notices that WALL-E is there until he knocks one man, John, off of his chair and the “technology glasses” off of a woman’s head. The two humans later interact in the movie, playing in a pool and looking out the window at the stars together. An impactful line in the film is when the woman, Mary, looks around at the glorified hotel she’s lived her entire life at with her technology and says “I didn’t know we had a pool.”
Through WALL-E's encounters with the remnants of Earth's natural beauty, such as a growing plant or a starry sky, the film emphasizes the awe-inspiring wonders of the world that have been overlooked in humanity's pursuit of material wealth and technological advancement. Now the pool maybe isn’t the most beautiful thing in the world, but it shows how oblivious the world can become when they are all sucked into their screen. This is also shown through the captain. He goes on a journey of discovery of what Earth was like and he craves it.
WALL-E is an example of politically engaged art, shedding light on pressing issues such as capitalist excess, environmental degradation, and the consequences of technological dependency. How ironic that it came from Disney.
Comentários