Nick

Week 4

After we watched Wall-E this week, the idea of conserving and saving the earth struck me. Clearly the movie is set in an decomposing world where one robot attempts to clean all the trash that the humans neglected to, while the humans lounge in space while their bones shrink. But was there some subliminal environmental advocacy in this movie? Was that the filmmakers' intention?



So as i scrounged through the internet, I stumbled upon this interview with Andrew Stanton, the filmmaker of Wall-E. The article is interesting, but what stems from it is 'what's the meaning of this movie? Is this an advocate for environmentalism or what?'

And believe it or not, the answer will surprise you. Stanton's themes with Wall-E were regarding the bible and love. Stanton talks about he would like a premise where love is existent everywhere, even in this terrible state, between two robots who are literally programmed to not love. There isn't a huge mention by him on how this reality of the world where there's a quest for a single plant might be a scary reality of the world in hundreds of years. It's much more of a focus on the lapse of humans into a very nice, conservative environment, and as a result, demorph. In the end of it, Stanton's message with Wall-E has nothing to do with the environment; instead, it's meant to be a biblical one on how love truely does exist everywhere.

I guess this kinda puts a dampering on why we watched Wall-E in school. Instead of learning about why we should deal with 'sustainability' we're instead learning about Christ's commands about love. Now I'm not trying to give a negative implication on that in anyway (not trying to start a religious beef here so please don't interpret it that way) but i just found it interesting that despite what all of us think of Wall-E, that wasn't its intention.

That being said, Wall-E, whether it intended to or not, portrays a world where so much trash, litter, and mismanagement by humans has led the world to be destroyed. And of course, instead of cleaning it up, humans run away and leave robots to do it. Whether Stanton intended to or not, the idea of environmental sustainability is received by the reviewers, and for good reason. We need to clean up our world, whether it via the oil drilling, global warming, fossil fuels, excess water consumption, or anything else. The world is a marvelous place, but it can't last forever. And despite what the movie shows, I don't think we have the technology nor the manpower to be able to build a ship that leaves everybody in a lap of luxury.

=?