More Thoughts on Wall•E

Warning: there are spoilers in this post.
Note: see my review of Wall•E here.

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I just saw Wall•E again. I think it is my favorite Pixar movie, which puts it awfully close to being my favorite movie ever. I love Pixar's past films, with their impeccable storytelling and rich humor, but Wall•E tops them by having an extra emotional element that works far better than you'd expect. The titular character's single-minded determination to win E.V.E. is incredibly enduring, and the culmination is perfectly-executed. It's not too sappy, it's not too subtle: it just works.

Wall•E also has an extra amount of depth in its brilliant critique of the direction we are heading, not just in regards to the planet but to ourselves. The film has been drawing a lot of criticism from ultra-right-wingers like Glenn Beck for having an environmentalist message. I should state than on moral issues, particularly abortion and homosexuality, I am as conservative as it is possible to get. Furthermore, I am not convinced that global warming is a genuine threat. However, I am with the environmentalists in wanting to conserve and protect the natural beauty around us. My reasons are a little different than theirs: I don't want to be "green" for the planet's sake but for our own. Think of a place like New York City. Why would anyone take the ant-hive — complete with dirt — of New York over a place where natural beauty is not confined to a park but is all around? Obviously not everyone in New York city chooses to live in those conditions, but there are thousands who do. I wonder that they can stand it. Of course I know that the economic factors are huge and that these cities develop in the way they do because of thousands of factors beyond our direct control, but surely we can exercise a little better foresight and planning and make even a big city more aesthetically pleasing. I'm not a rabid save-the-whales, help-help-the-sky-is-warming environmentalist. I'm really just standing up for good taste here.

Furthermore, as a Catholic I have two very large reasons for wanting to be surrounded by natural beauty. One is that we are stewards of what we have been given by God, including the earth itself. Yes, it will be destroyed by God, not by man, in His own time, but that doesn't mean that we can treat it with abandon and take it for granted. The second reason is that natural beauty evokes Joy, Joy with a capital "J," an intense longing for the very source, the very epitome of the beauty; for Beauty itself. It is a desire which is in itself more delightful and desirable than any fulfillment of desire that we have ever experienced, because it is, if we only recognize it as such, a desire for God. We need natural beauty. It's good for the soul.

I think Wall•E brings across this anthropocentric conception of environmental concerns. If you compare it to Happy Feet you can see the difference. Wall•E creates a sense of appreciation for natural beauty by contrasting it first to garbage and then to the sterile decks of a spaceship, and presents its message in the context of an engaging story that has nothing to do with environmentalism. As a matter of fact, the message is a side-effect of the story; Andrew Stanton set out to tell a story about the last robot on earth and this is how it happened to develop. Happy Feet, on the other hand, is a heavy-handed bit of preaching about mending our ways in order to save some annoying animated penguins on some god-forsaken bit of ice. Environmentalism is the story. I walked away from Happy Feet with an urge to shoot penguins, but I walked out of Wall•E and rejoiced at the way the nearby mountains looked in the summer evening air.

Beyond environmental issues, Wall•E is a gentle critique of the direction we humans are moving. The first time a space-bound human is seen in the film, he is relaxing in a hoverchair, talking to staring his friend's image displayed on a screen that stretches across his field of vision. Then the camera moves out and we see that the friend is right next to him. Though the two are close enough to touch each other, their entire conversation takes place in the digital realm in front of their eyes. The humans in Wall•E zoom busily around, always moving, always talking, always engaged in activity, but, as the Captain observes, not actually doing anything. They are so plugged in that when they finally get unplugged they are astonished to find that there is more to look at in the real world than they had ever imagined (including sections of the spaceship that they never knew existed). Does this remind you of our society of television and cell phones, of Myspace and Facebook and, yes, blogs, of Flikr and Youtube and Twitter? We can be busier than ever without accomplishing anything of value, for others or even for ourselves. With so many distractions we often fail to notice that life itself is passing us by. Like the denizens of the giant luxury space-liner Axiom, we are running on autopilot.

Interestingly, the end credits of Wall•E show the humans engaged in farming, sinking wells, and other worthwhile pursuits. As time progresses the imagery proceeds from cave art through an ancient Egyptian style to impressionism. The implication is clear: art returns with meaningful activity.

Now I'm getting off this computer and going outside. The sun is starting to set.