I can see a JoCo song / mashup for this little guy. But I digress.
It’s really going to be the future soon. Wall-E is one future but let’s me just say that I have nothing to add to the 97% rating that he’s enjoying over there on Rotten Tomatoes.
Why this movie works for me.
Wall-E has more character than the prior Pixar incarnations because you come to him pure, he doesn’t need to fit into car shape, rat shape, fish shape or any of the pre existing personalities from the toy box. 700 years of exposure to our ephemera and the worst that happen to him is show tunes. ( maybe the right wing folks had a point;) ) Wall-e being seen as antithetic to the humans that made him is a point made in many reviews has been annoying me.
I have to be simplistic here and claim that the US division of thought falls into right /left wing ideologies ( basically the same fundamental idiocy that reaches divergent conclusions on how it’s best to steal from others for their own benefit, a setup you may know better as democracy.)
This movie has been seen as a massively pro environment/ anti capitalist movie by both ends of the moebius strip so I find myself on familiar ground in the contrarian position that both sides are wrong.
So in my usual Socratic ( that means avoiding having to actually solve shit;) ) manner I have some questions and observations about both side.
1) How is this movie anti capitalist? The monopoly position is not practically achievable in capitalism without the intervention of the state and BnL didn’t get that way without help.
2) How is Wall-e not a reflection on those that created him, how can we be the bad guys in this piece? Humans made it to space, they made a fricking society that looks pretty close to socialism ( cradle to grave all needs met) and it pretty much looked like what the left has wanted to sell us for decades. They also tried to solve the problem.
3) The bit I really don’t like. Farming. We get to the stars I and the idea that we circumvent millennia of improvements to go back to nature. As if to think that farming is a default human condition.
I was brought up on a farm have a non romantic view of animals( unlike the Welsh) and have managed to escape the daily need to hunt food, shelter and the myriad other niceties of living pre dentistry , pre anesthesia and pre Tetris. The environment, would it help to call it location? in Wall-e is a background and necessary for his existence, character development. Basically the framework isn’t built to hang your ideas of the world on and both sides do this movie a disservice by trying.
To end on a rant.
People that find this liberal really need to get a dictionary and perspective. The root of conservative means what again? It’s more than a greeny trope and can just as easily be seen as an indictment on a socialized system that keeps people stupid , fat and reliant on the state ( corp) from cradle to grave. Seriously politics are what’s stopping most of you from enjoying one of the more touching love stories/ characters in the last few years.
Why bother saving our place on this planet if this is the kind of thought that we’re preserving?
