Wall-E and American Waste

Wall-E, a 2008 Pixar animated film about a trash compacting robot of the same name, is set roughly 700-800 years in a future where Earth has been utterly decimated by pollution and the population of Earth has taken to the stars for refuge. This population, as it turns out, has completely forgotten about the Earth it left 700 years ago as it has slowly digressed into a society of morbidly obese people devoid of interaction, activity, or progress. Their only legacy is little Wall-E, left on earth to compact trash and rearrange it into skyscrapers to free up the land, a task he has been faithfully doing since his creation long ago creation.

The cause for humanity's exodus is quite evident from the very start of the movie with the opening scene depicting a city choked with trash in piles taller than the skyscrapers. At the start of the movie Wall-E is traveling through this filthy city and passes by a train station with video advertisement queued by a motion detector. The advertisement that is played is one for a luxury space cruise liner called the Axiom, complete with all manner of luxuries. The primary statement in the advertisement shows a picture of WALL-E (WALL-E is an acronym of Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth Class) robots compacting trash while the narrator states that they will clean up the mess while the Axiom's patrons are away. Wall-E's purpose is now evident, he was left behind by a race that was escaping an environmental problem as a solution to the problem, a last ditch effort to clean up the planet. However, on the advertisement the cruise is portrayed as being short term (only a few years) and there are many WALL-E robots, but humans have not returned to Earth in 700 years and Wall-E is the only one of his kind still known to operate (the first few minutes of the movie show other WALL-Es that have long since broken down). What could have waylaid humanity from returning so long, and why was this short-term solution the only one implemented?

The state of the North American city is outstandingly atrocious. Later on in the movie Wall-E is introduced to a new robot character that comes from space, and as he is traveling around the city with her (the robot is feminine in contrast with Wall-E) the viewer sees oil pools, a group of rusting hulks that used to be tankers in a dried up port, dust storms caused by an utter absence of all vegetation, and other signs of decay. One can only wonder that, if this was the state of the environment when humans left, how our race could have let the earth become this way.

The only hint of an explanation is a possible super-consumerism culture that could have existed at the time of the human migration. Later in the movie a film of the president (one does not know if he is the president of the United States or the world) giving instructions on how to deal with a certain situation. This president is also the CEO of "Buy 'n Large", the corporation that funded the Axiom and still has advertisements all over Wall-E's city. On the Axiom everything is produced by Buy 'n Large, and advertisements for Buy 'n Large are abundant. The explanation can only be found in this monopoly of a capitalistic society, where it would seem consumerism went rampant.

In analyzing this film one could take many paths to deduce the meaning behind the work. It is very clear that Wall-E does have some type of structural inspiration; a race left it's home, leaving behind one being who has the key for their return, yet a force begins to step between the race and that fated return, allowing the lone being to become a hero once again by defeating the evil force and allowing the race to return to the place of its origin. Taking this structure one could compare this film with a traditional hero model, studying how Wall-E acts as a hero, but the themes of the movie would go unaddressed.

The themes present in Wall-E allow for an allegorical model of modern society with the characters playing roles in that society. The Earth has been polluted into a horrid condition, yet there is a group of beings devoted to reversing this catastrophe. This group would parallel the Green Movement that has swept across the United States in the past forty years, with the members devoting themselves to fixing the problem of American pollution and over use of resources. EVE, a missionary-like being sent to find the evidence of conditions suitable for human return, could easily represent a government outreach intended to involve the government in the salvation efforts. The meddling of the former president in the film could depict government timidity or reluctance to get involved in the work of the Green Movement, while the population of obese humans could represent the ignorant masses in America that need to take action like the members of the Green Movement.

The problems with this interpretation are primarily found with the intentions of the director Andrew Stanton, which included nothing of the previous comparison. When asked about the environmental themes of Wall-E, Stanton responded, "I certainly see the parallels, but honestly, all those factors came from very different places. All my choices in the film came from what I needed to amplify the main point, which was the love story between these robots."⑴ If the environmental themes were simply tools to amplify the love story of two robots and were not present in a didactic or cautionary role one must rather view these themes as an accepted quality of the future rather than a conjectured possibility. Their presence must be seen as plausible material used in Wall-E rather than a cry to the masses for pollution awareness.

The environmental themes, therefore, cannot be analyzed as warnings, but their actual presence can speak to the culture in the United States from which Wall-E originates. A fictional story is always comprised of cultural dreams, desires, nightmares, fears, etc., that are as much a part of the culture as it's truths. A little girl enjoying a fictional tale of a princess being rescued by a knight in shining armor (cliché as it is) is indicative of the society that girl is raised in. While this is laden with escapism it also reveals that the little girl's society values wealth, security, bravery, and frowns upon evil and the opposites of the established values. Wall-E must be a product of our society, woven of our values, fears, expectations, and speculations.

In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson put forth the first federal regulation on waste called the Waste Act, an amendment to the Clean Air Act.⑵ These were not necessarily laws governing how trash was dealt with, but they were the first legal considerations of waste and waste management.⑶ Clearly by this point trash was becoming a problem, evident due to the government's intervention, meek as it was. One could undoubtedly say that U.S. culture today has a lot to do with trash. Whether it is simple disregard, disdainful attempts at dealing with it, or worrisome strivings to solve it, trash is a problem for our consumer society. In the American past, "[r]efuse [was] considered a nuisance that brought temporary discomfort or inconvenience rather than serious environmental danger. . . . Few individuals cared what became of the waste after it [was] discarded."⑷ I would argue that this sentiment is still present, if not in a higher capacity then a broader range, in our society today. Trash and its inherent difficulties are engrained in our society, especially since these problems are so fresh on our culture's mind. "The rampant increase in solid wastes was a central feature of environmental problems in American cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."⑸ Clearly this sets the stage for a movie such as Wall-E to come about in the early twenty-first century, having two hundred years of trash past.

While one could further this model to say that obesity and consumerism are heavy on the American conscience (a fact prodded at by many Wall-E reviews), but dealing primarily with environmental implications one can see that Wall-E is produced from a social awareness, if not in some ways dread, of massive waste pollution and a threatened environment. Though many reviews claim that Wall-E draws a parallel between obesity and ecological depravation, it is very clear that the ecological destruction of earth transpired before "humans [grew] too bloated to walk and too lazy to think."⑹ The topic therefore centers on the human treatment of Earth in modern America, whether as a representation or exaggeration, that can be derived from our cultural thoughts on waste and waste management. Wall-E is a perfect representation of these modern considerations.

In conclusion, though Wall-E cannot be taken as a stark warning against consumerism or environmental carelessness, one can view this movie as a product of our culture, a representation of American thoughts about society, trash, and the environment. Wall-E is a far cry from an American future, but it is ultimately constructed by an American mindfulness of the destructive abilities and implications caused by the abilities of a consumer-based culture as a result of our complex history with waste.

1. Christianity Today, The Little Robot that Could, Mark Moring
2. Melosi,Mark V.. Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reforms, and the Encironment. rev. ed. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005, 200.
3. Ibid.,190.
4. Ibid., 227.
5. Ibid.
6. Slate.com, Fat-E, Mark Melosi