WALL-E (2008)
The animated film, WALL-E, gives us a big hug to the soul with endearing characters. Even if we get lost in the protagonists' love story, the film's central theme is posthumanism. In the movie, we follow the only robot left on Earth, Wall-E, whose mission is to collect the planet's waste to make it habitable again for humans. Meanwhile, the humans have been sent on a ship to space where they do nothing and are treated as if they were still on an all-inclusive vacation. In addition, a robot, Eve, is sent to Earth to find out if the planet is viable for humans, where she finds Wall-E and a plant he was guarding. Then they are brought back to the ship so humans can return to earth as a natural life form was found. However, the ship was programmed never to return, so it is a conflict between the technologies to see who will succeed, return to Earth or stay in space.
I found it interesting to add an animated film among the selected films to analyze, as live-action or animated films can deliver their content differently. As they are two different ways of embodying fictional characters, their impact is different, especially considering that the main demographic of WALL-E is children. I think it's easier to bring up controversial subjects like posthumanism with animation. Animation makes it possible to give the robot a positive image, as this genre is only found in the imagination. Moreover, animation allows us to distance ourselves from the subject and to become less attached compared to real-life actors that can show us a reality much too close to ours, which makes the film unsettling. However, the movie WALL-E has almost no human presence. It is wholly centred on technology; the film's protagonists are two robots, Wall-E and Eve, and the film's villain is also a robot.
Humans are not central to the story considering we only see them in the film's second half. Thus, the film is post-anthropocentric as there is a reversal in the roles of humans as they are not the central subject anymore, either in the movie or even on planet Earth. Henderson, in his article "Wall-E" reflection: When robots are human, and humans are robots," demonstrates that the roles of humans and robots in the film are reversed. Humans act as machines by living in what she defines as a "digital world" as opposed to robots that take on the tasks that humans should be doing (Henderson 2nd par.). A striking theme of the film is the environment. From the movie's beginning, we can see that the planet is uninhabitable; there are mountains of waste higher than the few skyscrapers still standing. All this environmental damage has been created because of high consumerism. This has stayed the same on the ship as humans only consume technology.
To establish that humans are no longer the central species, those we see on the ship have no personality. They are bound and addicted to technology. They are not living by themselves but only surviving through technology. At the same time, robots have developed subjectivity and even personality. For example, Wall-E on Earth has always done the job he was programmed to do, but he discovers a passion for collecting things. You can watch here a scene I analyze that shows the subjectivity of robots. I believe that the movie Wall-E offers a relatively positive vision of robots for the future as a solution to help us restore the planet, as the environment is a big issue. Moreover, the movie also shows the risks of technology if it is used only for consumption and entertainment; unfortunately, it brings us nothing positive in the long term. In the future, we have to give technology a chance because it is probably not as harmful as we think, depending on the function we provide it.
This page has paths:
- WALL-E (2008) Scene analysis Diliana Proulx-Castro
- I, Robot (2004) Scene analysis Diliana Proulx-Castro
- Posthumanism and Cinema Diliana Proulx-Castro