WALL•E

[dvandom]

Just saw WALL•E, loved it. The main message isn't anti-tech or anti-futurism, it's anti-sitting-on-your-ass-ism...the ending makes it clear that the whole point of this was "Technology can fix everything, but only if we don't give up!"

In the end credits montage, we see a stylized series of images in various art styles (from cave painting through impressionism) of Earth being revived. From a dirtball barely able to sustain a cockroach and a weedy little plant, it goes to a nigh Eden with full biodiversity. And it's implied that this happened within the span of a few years, decades at most.

They had the technology to repair Earth, had it all along, but spent 700 years on an extended cruise because the president of Buy N Large believed that the planet couldn't be fixed and gave orders to HAL, er, AUTO to never let the ship come back.

Sure, there's a lot of heavy-handed anti-consumerism messaging along the way (when Fred Willard plays your corporate master guy, you know subtlety wasn't even in the early notes), and a lot of non-verbal railing against rigid routine and the surrender of initiative to The System. But unlike a lot of stories in which space colonists return to Earth, it's not anti-technology. Just anti-mental-laziness.

Comments

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

Again, all I know is what Wikipedia said:

...it's anti-sitting-on-your-ass-ism...

Which is what I meant by "anti-extropian bigotry," the idea that the best a space-faring, AI-driven society can do is resort to wheelchairs tweaked me the wrong way. Pixar seems to be of the opinion that the best humans can (maybe "should" if you factor in The Incredibles) do is keep our primitive prosthetics. I'm just not down with that.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Well, the sit-on-ass-ism seems to have been the culture on Earth before going into space, fostered by the corporate masters of the world. It's anti-corporate, the idea that big business will screw up our chances at a proper space-faring AI-driven society.

It's not even anti-corporatism

[(Anonymous)]

It's not even anti-corporatism as much as anti-rampant-consumerism, IMO. I never got the impression that the Buy-N-Large corporation was evil or even malicious; rather, they simply provided their customers what they wanted, which was an opportunity to buy lots of stuff and not do much. Insofar as there is a "villian" in this movie, it's the attitude (that the captain rails against) of merely settling for survival instead of living life to the fullest.

--R.J.
http://www.electric-escape.net/

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It seems to be more what was done with the tech than the particular state of the art itself.

[outlawpoet.livejournal.com]

looks like what it's really pushing is our robot children will be better than us. which ain't that shocking a conceit, from my point of view.