Cynthia’s Thoughts: WALL-E is a Futuristic Look At What Could Be
Loading ...Cynthia Cheng
Not all animated movies are for kids. WALL-E certainly isn’t. In fact, there are lots of things in WALL-E that kids wouldn’t even understand. To kids, WALL-E is about robot love. To the grown-ups, it’s about a bigger issue. The movie is about how many people, especially those of us in North America, over consume. In the movie, humans have all left the earth and are living in a 1960s sci-fi like vehicle. The humans are all obese, sit on hover chairs all day and communicate via a screen that is within close proximity to their face.
The scary part is that it’s very possible that we could really end up like this. Our world is all about buying and consuming. In North America, we have been led to believe that quantity is better than quality. Many people balk at a $300 item, yet would purchase 10 similar things at $30 each, when it isn’t necessary to have 10 of the same thing. The movie illustrates the point not only by the megachain, Buy ‘N’ Large (in 2700, Buy ‘N’ Large controls everything, including the vehicle that humans have migrated to), but also in the robot’s name – WALL-E, which many bloggers claim is a reference to Wal-Mart.
Communication is an issue too. While we aren’t quite at the point where we talk via a hovering screen just yet, we are fairly close. Many of today’s young people prefer texting to actually speaking to a friend on the telephone or meeting up with them in person. The humans in Wall-E aren’t fat only because they get their nutrition via high calorie drinks, but also because of lack of physical activities. They just don’t move. This isn’t that different from many of us, who sit in front of a computer all day. In addition, one of the characters in the movie was shown to not know how to open a book (and not to mention, have difficulty reading). It seems like humans in the future only know what they are told, and what they’re told is what they see on the screens. Traditional methods of knowledge and discovery would disappear.
It was very interesting that a company under Disney got away with criticizing large corporations. Disney is clever to package the message in a kids movie. It is very nicely done. As kids drag their parents to the theatre, adults will have an opportunity to reflect on the message while their kids are enjoying the very entertaining movie.
However, I’m not sure if even some adults “get it.” And sadly, if we continue to behave this way, we really would end up like the humans in the movie.
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