![[2-22-08-wall-e-gamecube.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdjc_eI22CrD6YRSxUM6-vvvVuGb2xJwepIkTL1nCkWhX6Vm2A2KUwEVApPwwSUEonpQStmT1_rwAJKfGH6vQoHMHIhYewCsIrP52dmCqO_2sIrc8ck6Dq4ez5HJgO4qTe1Wg5RCGfhpg/s1600/2-22-08-wall-e-gamecube.jpg)
As you can see, Opportunity needs to work on its puppy-dog eyes.
Just as Reuben (who saw it just before I did) predicted, the entire movie was an AWWW-fest for me, and I enjoyed every moment of it. More than that though, I thought it spoke volumes about the human condition.
It's obvious that the characters were deliberately portrayed so that we would generally sympathize more with the robots than the humans. They are cuter, I guess, and they are in love, and they are more alive, somehow. But it's at first rather strange that we would sympathize more with a hunk of metal than a chunk of human. The humans on board the Axiom are not evil, they are pretty nice, actually, docile. Wouldn't evolutionary urges dictate that we be more sympathetic to our own kind?
It is likely not so simple. Consider your reaction to a part of your body after it has been separated from you. The famous 'spit in the metal basin' experiment. Few people enjoy swallowing back their own spit once it leaves their mouths and falls in a clean metal container. What about your reaction to strands of hair that are one instant being lovingly conditioned and shampooed, and the next instant found at the bottom of your bathtub? Would you rather pick up dog poo than human poo - even your own? I think human society, as it's portrayed in the movie after 700 years of physical and spiritual atrophy, is the hair that is found sticking to the bottom of humanity's bath tub. It's okay when there are a few strands, easy to ignore, but we're all forgiven for worrying about the day when there will be more than just a few. When it becomes the norm.Sure, the humans depicted were a gross (triple pun!) parody of where we're headed physically and spiritually as a species led by the affluent "West", but is it really so far off? For example, many people actually had to be told that this 'news footage':
was a fake. Many thought it was real (read the first few comments) and reacted with a disgust not unlike that which is cast upon our own bodily abjections. I knew it was fake right away, but it doesn't matter, parodies by nature have to be based on some grain of truth, on some extrapolation of a stark trend in reality, and its humourous effect is fueled by unspoken fears. I sure lmfao'd at that vid, but it was partly a nervous laugh.
My unspoken fear is that convenience is threatening human spirit. Not necessarily right now, but since when did we only worry about now? What about the rest of our lives? We take the most convenient route now in order to save time now so that we can later afford to correct the wrongs we previously inflicted upon ourselves in order to save us a few minutes or pennies in the short run, all the while forgetting what our end goal is. More convenience? More money? To ultimately never have to move your arms to pick up a Big Mac? You can tell me the feed bag idea is ridiculous and will never fly. Of course it won't, if only because it would mess up the taste, and because it looks nasty. For now. We've gotten used to and normalized a lot of nasty things over the course of our evolution, always with some noble justification. Just imagine being able to eat a fast lunch even quicker, and best of all, hands-free. Why not drive while you munch on your hands-free lunch so that you have more time to get back to the lab and find the cure for heart disease?
Do we merely want to survive, or do we want to live?
In WALL-E, one of the human characters (the captain), who has never been to earth, asks his voice-activated computer to "define dancing" after hearing about it in descriptions of former life on earth. Outside, WALL-E and his femme EVA are twirling in space. It's beautiful; it's human, we hope.
