WALL-E

Last weekend, my daughter and I went to see Pixar's new movie, WALL-E. As Mazurlanders know, I'm partial to anything touched by Steve Jobs, so of course, I loved it. It's the story of a robot who has been busy for the last 700 years cleaning up the mess that humans made of Earth, while those humans inhabit a monstrous mother ship in space, waiting for the planet to once again become inhabitable. I thought the film's portrayal of slovenly, dependent humankind was hilarious. And, as usual with Pixar, the animation was excellent. WALL-E falls in love with a more "modern" robot who had been sent to Earth to look for signs of life. I won't give the whole story, but their poignant relationship which develops, with essentially no dialog, speaks volumes about the animators' skill.

What bothered me was that some people reflexively assumed that since Earth was in trouble, this film was some liberal, environmentalist, anti-capitalist propaganda. I just didn't find that to be the case. I defended the movie with this comment on another website:

In the movie, the thing that got the world into trouble was man's hyper-consumerism and gluttony. I think most of us here would agree that that is the case. How many threads on ARFCOM do I see around Christmas time complaining about just that: our pathetic focus on consumption. Or threads about fat-*ss, lazy Americans. If anything, this movie has a conservative message. It tells us to shut off the TV, stop being victims to marketing, and reconnect as humans. And the irony is we're being shown how to do this by a couple robots.

The Incredibles also had conservative messages: the importance of family, and the importance of being able to show your strengths in a PC world that wants to squelch the concept of "winners".

It was a very good movie, and I didn't feel there was a liberal agenda. And like I said, two conservative rags loved it (National Review and WSJ).

Well, I happened to stumble upon this review, which supports my opinion.

Some conservatives have written the film off as anti-capitalist propaganda. If the intent of capitalism is to cater to the basest instincts of the human heart, requiring us to indulge our every whim and desire, leading to a dependence on government, then I guess I, too, am an anti-capitalist. However, capitalism can only arrive at that end when all of the restraints of personal responsibility are removed. In this sense, WALL-E is a brilliant exposure of liberalism’s flaws.

WALL-E is the story of what results when a liberal vision of the future is achieved: government marries business in the interest of providing not only “the pursuit of happiness” but happiness itself, thus creating gluttonous citizens dependent on the government to sustain their lives. The result is a humanity consisting of self-absorbed, isolated individuals with no affection for others, who thus defy what it means to truly be human.

Read the whole thing. I highly recommend the movie, even if you don't have kids.