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[jsnlxndrlv]

Wall-E is an excellent and interesting movie.  I enjoyed it a great deal.  What's more, it includes a rather controversial theme which I feel merits further discussion.  Both the movie and this discussion about it will be more pleasant for you if you experience them in the proper sequence.

If you haven't watched Wall-E yet, pretend every post in this thread is composed only of that text.  Do yourself a favor and don't read this until you've seen the movie.  The only reason I made this a separate thread rather than a wall of [spoiler]spoiler text[/spoiler] is because my girlfriend's mac doesn't highlight spoiler boxes right, and I have to hit the Quote button to read their contents.

So.  Wall-E.

The movie was excellent, but one of its themes has really been bothering me.  This idea that "the Earth is irreparably toxified, but we can save it if we just BUILD MORE FARMS" is just incredibly naive and counterproductive.

The first issue is one of plausibility.  How much time was supposed to have passed between the Axiom's launch and its subsequent return?  705 years?  That isn't enough time for really gross anatomical changes, but I have a hard time believing that this entire population could spend that much time isolated in a near-sterile space environment where machines take care of their every need without being physically and culturally incapable of adapting to the rigors of agriculture without a truly massive die-off.  Even with the machines helping them, even with the presumably-functioning support systems on the Axiom: their mortality rate is going to skyrocket.  But I guess that's what choosing life over survival means.

Retreating from industrialization to survive on the fruits of your own two hands is a romantic image which almost never actually happens.  But that's the little issue.

The big issue is that farms are a huge part of what's destroying the world.



[pretend this is an image of a farmer standing in his field photoshopped to look like one of those old war posters with the caption "THIS MAN IS A FARMER.  // HE IS A FRIEND TO THE PLANET."]



Maybe I'm getting caught up in little details.  The big thing Wall-E has to say is that things like complacency, duty, routine, and stability aren't as important as figuring out what's important and doing everything you can for the sake of what's important, which is pretty moving on the big screen but problematic in the real world.  I DUNNO I GUESS IT WORKED WELL FOR HITLER LOL and now that I've self-Godwinned we can move on to you telling me how wrong I am for raising niggling little objections to the most moving movie to move me in the modern millennium, etc.

DISCUSS

[Royal☭]

Wow, geez, I can't believe I regarded a family movie with so little social consequence.  But you've opened my eyes, Newbie.


BURN THE ROBOT!  BURN THE ROBOT!

Who will join me?  We must stop Pixar's reign of mirth and entertainment before it's too late!  There is clearly a problem here, people may begin feeling that a movie with spaceships and talking robots may provide simple and pat conclusions to problems that are complex and deep in the real world.  Next, our children will begin thinking that they shouldn't hide their unique talents from the world, or that anyone can succeed at a task regardless of their hurtles in life!  Hell, they might even grow up accidentally.  These CGI monstrosities must be brought to task.  Who will join me?  Who will stop Pixar before they kill again?

BURN THE ROBOT!  BURN THE ROBOT!

[jsnlxndrlv]

Yeah, sorry, but when you load your popular entertainment with a pretty heavy-handed pro-environment conscientious communalism theme, it isn't somehow exempt from analysis along those lines just because it's "only" popular entertainment.  Hell, I was just reading about this:

When I was applying to grad school I wrote that I wanted to study pop culture because it seemed more important to dissect what Top Gun and its ilk were doing to the culture than to dust off things like Paradise Lost that are basically only read at universities. Similarly, if you're going to make fun of a bad movie, why choose something that was shot in three days forty years ago, played a week at an Oklahoma drive-in and has never been seen since? Why not pick on the equally bad movie that just made $300 million?

[Royal☭]

My point is largely that I do not think that people will suddenly start abandoning their spaceships 700 years from now to start farms.

[Dooly]

I'm pretty sure they still lived in the landed ship while maintaining the farms.  Certainly the first generation back.

[Mongrel]

That or they all died instantly once the first coriolis storm hit 'em.

But seriously newbie... you -  like so many other people - are missing the fiction forest for the make-believe trees. The key with almost any work of fiction is to accept that fiction on it's author's terms. If you don't, you're pretty much doomed to unenjoyment.

[Royal☭]

See, he seems to be thinking that film's themes of personal responsibility and independence are actually about magical cures in a world that doesn't really exist.  Wall-E isn't saying that if the Earth becomes uninhabitable we can just build farms and fix everything, it's saying we should step up and prevent that in the first place.

[Mongrel]

Also: God forbid that a children's movie show unbridled optimism or hope.

And that's is ME saying this - I should think that I've sufficiently demonstrated my credentials as a bitter, ascerbic, cynic by now.

Side note: I find that the most apt description of the movie that I've heard so far has been "Chaplin meets Kubrick".

[Rosencrantz]

I'm pretty sure they still lived in the landed ship while maintaining the farms.  Certainly the first generation back.

We pretty much know this as a fact, as the ending credits sequence shows the people living in escape pods and then emerging to gather around the campfire. And I have a feeling that the people (or at least the Captain) sort of knew that they wouldn't make it, but the children would, based on when he said something like "You kids are going to grow all sorts of plants!"

[Doom]

You find it plausible that we could render the Earth uninhabitable in 3ish centuries(They leave at 2110? ish?) but entirely impossible that an ecosystem would begin to correct itself in seven of them? 

Fiction forest for the make-believe trees indeed. But I sort of just try to silently sneak away when people begin discussions of the social philosophy bias in The Incredibles, so I probably shouldn't be trying to open this can of worms.

Wall-E was perfect and I basically felt that if any group of humans could make a movie this good then I guess the Human Race wasn't such a bad idea after all!

Wall-E was so good that it reaffirmed my faith in Humanity. You know, even after seeing them become giant meat balls. I really loved the juxtaposition of realistic humans to future pudgekins.

It is divinely entertaining. It is fantastic.

Ok, return to your standard debate.

[Royal☭]

But I sort of just try to silently sneak away when people begin discussions of the social philosophy bias in The Incredibles, so I probably shouldn't be trying to open this can of worms.

Explain.  The Onion AVClub made a comment about the Incredibles being facist, but I haven't read or head anything about that.

[Doom]

I am surprised you cannot find it on demand, but..

You know the part where Syndrome details his plot to save the world with his gadgets, live as a hero, then retire and sell his inventions so that "When everybody is super, nobody will be?" I'm very fuzzy on the specifics, but this(and the overall message of heroes in general) is proof that everybody at Pixar is tickling Ayn Rand's asshole or something. It's mostly limited to message board debate, not some sort of actual study or anything.

And apparently Wall-E has inherited the "KID'S MOVIES AREN'T ALLOWED TO INVOKE THOUGHT" curse and is being panned for liberal bias or something..

[Classic]

As well it should be. It's more effective propaganda for environmental protection than a million Al Gores.

[Zach]

I'm very fuzzy on the specifics, but this(and the overall message of heroes in general) is proof that everybody at Pixar is tickling Ayn Rand's asshole or something. It's mostly limited to message board debate, not some sort of actual study or anything.

Weaklings should not be allowed to hold back the celebration of the spirit that is the super-man. Dash should have ground his peers into paste, Violet should have been wooed by every inferior flesh-being. The gifted, moral man does what he wants and celebrates in his superior abilities because it's being true to himself. Altruism is just masturbation.

As Dreth pointed out, WALL-E furthers this agenda by placing the burden of heroism on those who were locked away for being mad and antiquated. Only when they smash the current social order can they find proper, self-actualizing outlets for their "malfunctions."   



I'll write that paper, do that study, but I don't rightly that Pixar is a bunch of whacko Objectivists. If that's how the movies are interpreted though, it doesn't rightly matter. I sure could go for a cupcake-in-a-cup.

[Zach]

Buy n' Large World News has some spot-on stories. The bit about protesters of rampant consumerism being marketing opportunities struck me as particularly intelligent. Either resistance is repackaged and sold, or it encourages people to break apart from the dominant fashion -- which spawns desires for new goods.

[Mongrel]

Buy n' Large World News has some spot-on stories. The bit about protesters of rampant consumerism being marketing opportunities struck me as particularly intelligent. Either resistance is repackaged and sold, or it encourages people to break apart from the dominant fashion -- which spawns desires for new goods.

That's actually the entire thesis, in detail, of a book I read a while back. It's good - well worth the read. I think I may have even recommended it here (well, on the pyoboards) at the time.

[Zach]

Hey, I read that one too! It was the American release though, so I couldn't be sure that it was the same book until the end of the article where it was revealed that the name was changed for some reason.

That's why I'm taking the movie as a more useful critique of consumerism than of environmental problems*. We've been hearing reduce-reuse-recycle since the Captain Planet days, if not earlier.

* The inevitable WALL-E merchandise bothers me here. I haven't really looked into what's available to see if it's any different than the usual deluge, however.

[Ocksi]

I'm a little late, but I thought it might be worth noting that while modern (or, more accurately, industrial) agriculture is bad for us, there are actually modern sustainable farms that benefit not only the environment but also consumer health.  These sustainable farms use the power of science to modernize and produce more than previously thought possible for a sustainable farm; the downside is these farms are more labor-intensive and you might have to eat your food somewhat seasonally (gasp).

Point is, proper farming, rather than food manufacturing, isn't the problem.

[TA]

I would not hold up Joel Salatin as the ideal of what farming should be.

High points: complaining he can't hire underage labor to do dangerous farm work at below the minimum wage without paying taxes and housing them in tents and observing no safety regulation.  Or feed his pigs on cow shit.  Or run a conglomerated store for local farms without a business license.  Or just generally basically comprehending the idea or purpose of regulation, the very idea that whether or not he can and would slaughter his animals without there being ridiculous levels of disease, such laws are necessary because the absence of them demonstrably and inevitably leads to most producers realizing "Hey, if I don't make any effort to keep this meat untainted, it's more profitable for me", which just leads to problems.

[Royal☭]

You linking: bad.