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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.
5 comments:
FIRST COMMENT! PWNED!
Does that mean that your Xanga, which has now been cast-off, is equivalent to the hair in your bathtub's drain? Will you avoid it from now on?
excellent review. I agree with your points, but I felt your usage of commas was a bit questionable. I just thought I'd mention that.
BUI! I totally sympathize more with the chunks of metal, but this may be because I am currently surrounded by them. Though their eyes are not so much puppy-dog as beady, and they are not so much cute as horrifying (in the "oh god they are just biding their time, what have we unleashed" cylon kind of way). Either way, I am betting on robots in the long run: all hail our glorious electromagnetic masters! Long may the feedback control system remain stable!
I'm not sure I follow your spit in the basin analogy, but maybe it's because I haven't seen the movie yet? Are you saying that the movie's humans are excretions of...what? History? Or is this just your high-falutin' way of saying you think they are shit? =P
"My unspoken fear is that convenience is threatening human spirit." There will always be recidivists who enjoy doing things the hardest possible way, but of course these will only be a vanishingly small proportion of the population. But I'm kind of an optimist in this regard: I think that if ever we find ourselves with too many gadgets etc doing things for us, then we will eventually get bored and go on a luddite binge. Because people aren't just lazy, they are easily bored, and when bored we get antsy and somewhat destructive. There may be periods where we are content to let all our work be done for us, but eventually we will feel the need to get off our collective asses and figure out this shit on our own. I hope.
"Do we merely want to survive, or do we want to live?" Did you write the rest of the post as a lead up to that line?
Reuben: Yes :)
Gautam: Thanks! Yeah, I know my grammar and punctuation has gone to the dumps lately. Which part in particular bothered you?
Irfan: Yeah I think you definitely have to see the movie. I didn't mean that they were shit, exactly, more that the humans in the movie are a part of the 'human race' and so we have to identify with them, but they are a part that we are disappointed in and have somewhere, along the way, lost control over. Like an unruly family member that you wish you could just banish to the island of Elba because they are ruining it for the rest of you who carry the same family name.
Also, I think you need a blog :).
Also, I agree with you that people's boredom is what might eventually save us from complete disgrace. Hopefully the boredom will not kick in too late.
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