The most overtly political Hollywood movie since Fahrenheit 9/11.
I just got back from the 10:25AM showing of Pixar’s “Wall-E.” [Don't laugh. I went with my 3-year old. His nap time is at 1PM. When else was I going to go?] It’s everything that the review I read last week suggested and more.
By the year 2110, the Buy ‘n Large Corporation has sold Earth’s citizens so much crap that the planet became uninhabitable. And there’s no mistaking what company Buy ‘n Large is supposed to be. They were a retailer with giant stores, they owned their own bank and had a fleet of barges to import everything (undoubtedly from China). But the point Pixar is making is much bigger than Wal-Mart.
Seven hundred years after human beings abandoned the Earth in 2110 to robots like Wall-E, the survivors live on a space ship that is a cross between the Death Star and the Love Boat. With Buy n’ Large catering to their every whim, they have become obese babies with nothing to do but drink soda, lounge by the pool and talk on their video-phones. In short, the movies is an outright assault on consumerism in general, not just Wal-Mart in particular. And this is not some subtext that I’m reading into the movie. It’s the frickin’ text!
A blogger on the Huffington Post, while avoiding the movie’s overtly political message, asks an excellent question:
[H]ow does an apparent indictment of consumerism spawn a full set of robot products, from the inevitable WALL-E Lunch Box to the MP3-compatible iDance WALL-E?
That’s easy. Disney, which owns Pixar now, has completely separated its marketing arm from the people making the film. Similarly, you can buy lots of Wall-E junk at Wal-Mart.com even though the movie is a barely-veiled attack on Wal-Mart and a direct attack on the lifeblood that keeps Wal-Mart going: mindless consumerism. It reminds me of the time Jeff found that pornographic comic book there. One hand of the corporation doesn’t know what the other hand is doing and as long as it makes money neither hand really cares.
And since people seem to think I’m a communist anyway, doesn’t this also remind you a bit of Marx’s line:
The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.
Apparently the right has noticed the theme of this movie and has gone ballistic over it. A sample overview (from the left):
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/02/larson-robot-marriage/
[...] there soon. After all, they don’t want everyone who shops there to look look like they just stepped out of “WALL-E,” do they? On second thought, don’t answer that [...]