Deconstructing WALL E

I just read this piece on Slate on how WALL E is a commentary on obese Americans.

Wall-E tells us that if we don’t change the way we live, we’ll all get really fat and destroy the world.

Do any of these cinema deconstructors like Daniel Engber actually see the movie there are writing their might-as-well-be-undergraduate-term-papers on? Or do they just leave after the first half hour?

Wall-E is an innovative and visually stunning film, but the “satire” it draws is simple-minded. It plays off the easy analogy between obesity and ecological catastrophe, pushing the notion that Western culture has sickened both our bodies and our planet with the same disease of affluence. According to this lazy logic, a fat body stands in for a distended culture: We gain weight and the Earth suffers. If only society could get off its big, fat ass and go on a diet!

But the metaphor only works if you believe familiar myths about the overweight: They’re weak-willed, indolent, and stupid. Sure enough, that’s how Pixar depicts the future of humanity. The people in Wall-E drink “cupcakes-in-a-cup,” they never exercise, and if they happen to fall off their hovering chairs, they thrash around like babies until a robot helps them up. They watch TV all day long and can barely read.

When humans first appear they are mostly as Engber describes. They are obese, they look at their computers all day, and they are unable to move without assistance and thrash about. If I had left the cinema at that moment, I may have gotten the same impression as Engber. But Engber is more describing The Triplets of Belleville, a French film that depicts Americans as obese and all the humans (American or not) are deprived of any feeling.

I have no idea what Engber is talking about when he says humans are “weak-willed, indolent, and stupid.” Quite the contrary, when the humans first look beyond their computers we find that they are stunningly caring, curious, and hopeful. When pressed they take risks in order to turn around the direction of their lives. I was especially touched by the scene where the babies are slipping and the two humans characters rescue them. I also found the captain’s sheer joy learning about Earth a very special commentary on what makes humanity what it is.

I would also like to say that there is a scene explaining why the people are so fat and unable to move amiably. In zero gravity for 700 years, the humans have had a bit of bone loss and they lack the muscle power to move themselves around.

There are plenty of movies that degrade humanity. Daily we open the paper to read about jerks who make us feel hopeless about our species. But WALL E is not one of those movies. In fact, it’s trying to do the opposite. It says wake up kids, you can make a difference. Even at the bleakest times in life you have the power to make change.

Picture via doobybrain.com.

Update: Apparently this is a big issue, and I’m starting to think I was a tad too harsh on Slate. You can read about the controversy here. My feeling is still the same. Perhaps the difference is that when I see obese people, I don’t automatically think they are disgusting horrible consumer’s responsible for all the world’s ills. I love the three human characters we get to know. They are endearing and I don’t think that says anything bad about being fat.