To Return and Restore

wallefinal — Wall•E movie poster. Source: Pixar Talk.

Wall•E is a 2008 American computer-animated science fiction, action-adventure, comedy film produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Andrew Stanton, the film follows a robot named Wall-E on his fantastic journey across a universe of never-before-imagined visions of the future.

I’m writing about this film because science fiction (sci-fi) is my favorite movie genre, most especially films that depict apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and futuristic ideas, settings, and technologies. I enjoy being taken to worlds that are beyond my imagination, utopian and dystopian alike. There’s a reason it’s called sci-fi, yet I just can’t help but get fascinated and think that these works of fiction may actually be possibilities. While watching sci-fi movies, I would unconsciously imagine myself being involved in the story and scenes. What would I do if family and friends turn into zombies, just like in World War Z? What faction would I be in if I live in Divergent’s society? And in this movie Wall•E, would I want to live in my home planet despite its dystopic destiny?

When I was brainstorming for a movie topic for this blog, I was really narrowing down my choices to sci-fi films. But then there’s a lot that I like; I’ve already mentioned a few. And then I remembered, back in high school, we were doing this environmental education campaign, wherein our group spearheaded a series of activities to inculcate some sense of environmental awareness and responsibility among our schoolmates. One of our activities, which students (including I) really enjoyed and learned a lot from, was a film-showing of Wall•E.

Well, apart from that sci-fi movies really interest me, Wall•E really deserves to be watched, shared, analysed, and written about because it is truly a remarkable film on all levels. Movie critiques would agree to this. The film was met with critical acclaim, gaining an approval rating of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. According to this widely known film review aggregator,

Wall-E’s stellar visuals testify once again to Pixar’s ingenuity, while its charming star will captivate younger viewers – and its timely story offers though-provoking subtext.

Aside from that, it topped TIME’s “Best Movies of the Decade” and grossed nearly $522 million worldwide. It also won various awards such as

The 2008 Golden Glove Award for Best Animated Feature Film,
The 2009 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form,
The Final Nebula Award for Best Script,
The Saturn Award for Best Animated Film, and
The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

This goes to show that Wall•E not only satisfies, but even excels in all aspects of its genre, of which we’ll be focusing more on literary aspects. You may want to take a peek at its cinematic aspects, though:

In the succeeding parts, we will look into the film’s plot and themes. We’ll see how a film of such genre will be able to capture some geography and serve some social and political relevance.

The story

Set in the far future, no human or any life form is to be found on Earth anymore. What’s left are mountains of garbage. And a robot named Wall-E!

walle_progression_08_m — Lone Wall-E wanders in a city of garbage skyscrapers. Source: Frankwbaker.

In the first minutes of the film, we watch Wall-E as he moves around a deserted city, doing his usual day-to-day task of smashing garbage into small cubes and piling these up into tall structures. As we follow him, we see clues to why and where humans have gone. Garbage, products, and digital advertisements of the megacorporation Buy N Large (BnL) are seen left and right in the place, showing that our planet has been abandoned by humans due to all pollution and waste left by this corporation and perhaps many others of its kind.

Advertisements of different sorts of BnL products and services amidst abandoned buildings and garbage towers. Screen capture.

Flashed advertisements also show that 700 years back, BnL spacecrafts evacuated Earth’s population to a fully-automated space fleet named Axiom. What remained on Earth were Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class trash compactor robots or WALL-E, in short. These robots are programmed to clean-up the planet for people’s eventual return. However, we see that this plan failed, as only one robot of this kind remained; that is Wall-E!

axiom_wallpaper_by_max_liksys — The *Axiom* in outer space. Source: Deviant Art.

So, we have seen how life is for Wall-E. He has been lonely like that for the longest time, until one day, a spaceship lands and delivers the robot EVE. As implied by the meaning of her name, Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, Eve is a robot who is on a mission to seek evidence of life on Earth.

Upon Eve’s arrival, Wall-E gets curious and secretly follows her around. Though cold and aggressive at first, Eve eventually befriends and bonds with Wall-E. However, as he shows Eve a small green plant, which is a one-of-a-kind collectible of his, Eve automatically keeps it inside herself and goes into standby mode.

Eve watches Wall-E dance to a tune from his favorite musical, “Hello, Dolly.” Screen capture.

Soon, the spaceship returns for Eve and brings her back to the Axiom. Wall-E, wanting to protect Eve, tags along and gets to the Axiom as well. He discovers that all humans have been living in this super high-tech space fleet all this time. In the Axiom, he sees that everyone has become so obese after centuries of microgravity effects and reliance on the fleet’s automated systems for all their needs.

Meanwhile, it is revealed that the discovery of the plant is a sign that people can finally return home to Earth. The plant, when put in the detecting machine, would automatically send the fleet back to the planet. However, some intelligently-programmed robots, who have much control over the fleet, try to sabotage this process. These robots were programmed to keep the fleet from coming back to Earth forever. This is, apparently, the plan of the fleet creators right from the start.

“Out there is home. And it’s in trouble. I can’t just sit here and do nothing. It’s all I’ve ever done. That’s all anyone in this blasted ship has ever done. Nothing…. I don’t want to survive. I want to live!” The fleet’s captain (middle, holding the plant) responds as the fleet’s autopilot (right) stops him from returning to Earth. Screen capture.

Still, Wall-E and Eve, together with the fleet’s captain and some robot friends, fight to protect the plant. After many close escapes, they are able to put the plant in its rightful place, enabling the fleet and all passengers to return to Earth.

Humans and robots finally come back to Earth. Screen capture.

Back on Earth, Wall-E finds a new companion in Eve. And more importantly, humans and robots restore Earth as its home.

A critique on society

Wall•E brings up issues of social and political relevance, that’s why it is widely recognized as a critique on society. Centering on environmental issues, one prominent theme in the film, among others, is consumerism and waste management.

consumerism-stats_50290c18d4a8c_w1500 — Consumerism in numbers. Source: Visually.

This infographic shows how much people consume and how over-consumerism is a root cause of our environmental problems at present. It tackles how three major consumerism materials – food, cars, and trash – adversely affect the environment. It also teaches us some ways to go green.

Wall•E shows a similar idea. Large corporations, particularly BnL, appear to be one of the main causes of Earth’s destruction in the film. Here are some lines from its catchy advertisement:

Buy N Large is your superstore, we got all you need and so much more!

Too much garbage in your face? There’s plenty of space out in space!

Spend your five-year cruise in style, waited on 24 hours a day by our fully-automated crew, while your captain and autopilot chart a course for nonstop entertainment, fine dining, and with our all-access hover chairs, even Grandma can join the fun! There’s no need to walk. The Axiom, putting the star in executive star liner. Because at BnL, space is the final fun-tier!

Blue is the new red!

With the use of such aggressive and manipulative advertising strategies, people get trapped in an over-consumerist and market-driven system. If we really think about it, rich and large companies like BnL would not be able to thrive if people would not let them. Just like what humans in the movie did – abandoning the easy yet dictated lifestyle that they had in the Axiom to restore their home planet – we should strive to escape this system that we’re accustomed to.

As corporations act as producers and aim for profit, common people act as consumers and aim to earn and satisfy their needs and wants. Thus, a mutually reciprocated relationship. What I am trying to say here is that efforts to curb anti-environmental habits should come from both collective and individual levels, and it’s in the latter level that we have a control over.

Aside from consumerism, it would also be interesting to look into power relations between characters in the film. According to Anderson in his book “Understanding Cultural Geography – Places and Traces,”

…it is not simply humans that contribute traces to places. Non-human actions and interactions also shape the cultural geographies of place.

By non-human, Anderson refers to other life forms like plants and animals, as well as to environmental phenomenon like weather disturbances. In the movie, however, another form of non-human agent actively takes part in the cultural geographies of the places. These are robots.

We know that robots are just designed and programmed by humans, yet we see in the film how the main characters, Wall-E and Eve, develop free will and emotions through time. This may just be another science fiction idea, yet it would be very interesting to analyse its politics using concepts of cultural geographies. We would be surprised to find some parallelism between it and our society.

Wall-E and Eve falls in love. Screen Capture.

Anderson further elaborates on the idea of shaping cultural geographies and suggests that there is a dominating power that creates cultural order and geographical borders in a society. This dominating power imposes its own ways on others, eventually creating a cultural orthodox or norms.

In the film, megacorporation BnL confines all humans to new borders inside the space fleet Axiom, wherein order is also dictated by it. We have seen in the video clip above how people live in the fleet. Their lifestyle may seem absurd to us, but we have to realize that is has become a norm already. Just like how we do not see that we’re gradually becoming slaves of our techie gadgets. Or how we do not realize the bad we’re doing to the environment because we already got used to it, thinking that there’s nothing wrong at all.

Futuristic cultural orthodox. Screen Capture.

Relating this idea to our discussion of consumerism, we can say that BnL is a symbol of a dominating power that blinds us with the idea that consumerism is a way of life. This norm is actually more prevalent in some countries like the United States (US). In fact, I believe that it is the US society that’s being mainly critiqued by Wall•E.

Meanwhile, we can also look into the power dynamics between human and robots. At first, robots were created as helping tools to human. Wall-E robots, for example, were created to clean-up people’s mess on Earth. As the film progresses, though, we see that instead of humans controlling the robots, it’s now robots that’s been controlling humans. People are not only dependent on robots, they are being controlled by these intelligent machines! We must be aware of this, we’re getting close to becoming just like them, sitting all day in front of our computers and tablets.

“A is for Axiom, your home sweet home. B is for Buy N Large, your very best friend,” teaches the professor robot. Screen Capture.

In the film, no one questions this system, until Wall-E and Eve open the idea of life on Earth, which Anderson would call resisting power. Often times, a dominating power succeeds in keeping its status, yet in the movie, the opposite happens! The norms are broken upon people’s return to Earth.

Conclusion

One might be surprised that a movie of such nature – cute, comical, and fictional – could be of social and political relevance. In fact, instead of being a limitation on being relevant, Wall•E‘s genre makes it more powerful as a medium. Because of its appeal, it communicates otherwise unexciting yet crucial matters to a wider audience. I find the following words by Palis and Finn on-topic

…our geographical consciousness is, at all times and in all places, shaped both by the content of mediated messages and the mediums through which we receive them. Understanding and analyzing our place in the world demands a serious engagement with multiple intersecting and oftentimes contradictory geographies of the media through which we experience, shape, and are shaped by the world.

The message – what over-consumerism could lead to and how power dynamics could affect (b)orders, among others – and the medium – an enticing movie – together create our experience and shape our geographical consciousness.

Meanwhile, I would like to share with you the lyrics to the song that’s featured over the end credits of the film. It’s a nice way to end this entry since it talks about appreciation of our planet as our home and a realization that we need to change our ways for its betterment. Here’s Peter Gabriel’s song entitled “Down to Earth”

Did you think that your feet had been bound
By what gravity brings to the ground?
Did you feel you were tricked
By the future you picked?
Well, come on down

All those rules don’t apply
When you’re high in the sky
So, come on down
Come on down