Swimmer One: Comments

We’re all doomed (part 7)

Went to see WALL-E on Monday night. Everyone else is writing about it so why can’t I? Here’s my angle. The whole film is a classic example of climate change denial. If you haven’t heard that angle before, read on. If you have, that’s fine, away you go.

It’s easy to see why WALL-E has caused such anger and confusion politically. Some right-wingers have denounced it as left-wing propaganda; others have sung its praises for the way it apparently espouses old-fashioned, conservative values (as represented by Hello Dolly, the wholesome musical that WALL-E adores). Left-wingers have been equally divided and confused. The film is all things to all people, and if so it’s because politically it’s contradictory and toothless. It’s testament to how clever the film is, probably, that so many adults are taking its politics seriously enough even to have these conversations. But for heaven’s sake, it’s a children’s film that dabbles with politics, and does so in a simplistic, naive and, well, childish way.

Like a child, it contradicts itself constantly. It seems to be an attack on passive consumption, with its drone-like humans unable to function without their TV screens, but WALL-E, the hero whose role is to save them, is also a passive consumer – an obsessive collector of trinkets who watches the same musical every single night, and goes to work for a corporation every day without ever questioning the point of it (there is, obviously, no point to his job at all, and hasn’t been for centuries).

Also, the film seems to be an attack on wasteful, destructive capitalism, which in this scenario has bled an entire planet of its resources, but the company whose logo is all over everything, Buy and Large, has also come up with a plan to save mankind, sending people on a life raft into space with their every need catered for – how do we know that they’re not the saviours of earth rather than its destroyers? A single corporation couldn’t have destroyed ALL the earth’s resources, surely.

Also, as some right-wingers have pointed out, is Buy and Large a big company or ‘big government’? Buy and Large is the only brand name we see in the entire film, so a corporation has effectively become the government. If you’re a left-winger, you might see that as an attack on the huge power of corporations. If you’re a right-winger, you might point out that the problem is that Buy and Large became a monopoly.

A central problem is that it is deeply unclear how, exactly, the earth’s resources all got used up, and how it was decided who would get to go on the escape ship. Who got left behind? Were people left to die? What difficult decisions were made? When and how exactly did Buy and Large get to be in charge of everything? And how, exactly, are all those people surviving on that spaceship? There seem to be no plants at all. What are they eating? And if they have the technology to make food from nothing, why did they have to leave earth in the first place? But these questions are too difficult and complicated for a children’s film to deal with, as is the question of how mankind will get out of the state it has got itself in, so the film dodges all of them with sentimental, simplistic answers. At the end, inspired by their captain and WALL-E’s discovery of a plant on the earth’s dusty surface, the people wake up and decide to return home and start again! And, like, grow vegetables and stuff instead of sitting around eating pizza all the time. Simple. If only they’d thought of that before.

Realistically, though, that enterprise is surely doomed. One plant does not an ecology make. It’s too late. The world is a dusty junkyard hellhole, ravaged by storms. Just surviving day to day is going to be hellish, probably impossible. Most of the people on the spaceship are probably going to die. But WALL-E is a children’s film so that ending isn’t an option, despite its bleak, haunting beginning. So it tells us that everything is going to be alright, because a cute robot is going to sort things out.

In the real world, of course, there are no cute robots to sort things out. The world is in a dire state and a lot of people are going to die because of the effects of climate change. A lot of people already are dying. I came away from WALL-E thinking that the film’s simple, optimistic view of the world is the problem. Just like Live Earth tells you that by going to a pop concert – ie: doing exactly the kind of things you would normally do - you are helping to stop climate change, WALL-E encourages you to think you that you are helping to make the world better by going to see a children’s film, that a multimillion pound movie by Disney, of all people, is part of the solution rather than part of the problem. It’s ok, you can carry on living exactly the way you are living, as long as you drop a bit less litter and maybe grow some stuff in your garden, and pay a bit more attention to what’s going on around you (as long as that involves paying attention to trailers for other Disney films). Everything is ok more or less as it is. Do not panic. Yes, maybe the film will encourage children to drop less litter and appreciate nature a bit more, which is good, but it won’t teach them that their entire lifestyle is the problem. That would be too scary for children. Apparently it is too scary for adults too.

And yes, this kind of critique is possibly unfair to WALL-E – it’s probably impossible to explore global politics effectively in a children’s film without grossly simplifying the issues. And judged purely as a piece of cinema, WALL-E is breathtakingly clever. It reminded me of Star Wars in the way that it was a kind of love letter to cinema, referencing loads of films the director obviously loves - 2001, Hello Dolly, ET and Charlie Chaplin most explicitly, but also Brave New World, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Alien, Planet of the Apes, Sleeper, Star Wars and loads more - but still felt fresh and new rather than like a copy of a copy. For some young children it might kickstart a life-long love of cinema, particularly if they have parents who know the film’s reference points and can point them towards the originals. Compared to the lazy, formulaic drivel Hollywood usually throws at children - Dreamworks, hang your head in shame - it’s a delightful way to spend an evening. It’s a film made with a lot of love, and it shows in every scene.

See how I copped out there? Yes, I enjoyed WALL-E, in a passive sort of way. It swept me a long with its well told story and fantastic visuals. But it didn’t warm my heart the way it seems to have done with a lot of people. Afterwards I felt guilty, ashamed, restless, and very pessimistic about the future. I felt exactly like those passive drones in the film, not for the way I live my life, but for having just sat through a film like that instead of doing something more constructive. Maybe that says more about me than it does about the film. Or maybe the fact that so many people think WALL-E is charming, uplifting and inspiring shows how much trouble we’re in.

Andrew

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We’re all doomed (part 7)

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