AudioShocker

For this week, we have a special guest culturologist analyzing culture along with me: none other than Audioshocker's own Nick Marino. We've decided to structure this as a debate, so hopefully you all will be able to chime in in the comments section as well (and I don't feel like Nick has really had his last say yet, at any rate). This came up, initially, in the comment section of another post on the site, so we've decided to salvage it and put it in the spotlight: WALL-E: Good or Bad?

Nick: WALL*E just happens to have a tape recorder built into his chest to record and play back old Disney movies. *shameless*

Pete: I'll start with the easiest one first. The movie that Wall-E plays back is Hello, Dolly, which was first a musical on Broadway, and then turned into the movie version which Wall-E is obsessed with; this movie was released by Fox, not Disney, and was clearly chosen for its thematic relatedness, not any kind of "shameless" historical studio-plugging.

Nick: okay, color me corrected. but it's still the type of bland schmaltz that Disney wheels and deals in. and why the f*ck would a robot with artificial intelligence and a responsible directive have a tape recorder? you think they could have at least given the damn thing a DVD recorder or something a bit less far-fetched, right? i mean this is supposed to be a fictional fantasy that is a future extension of our own world that we live in right now, correct?

Pete : Okay, this particularly point has boiled down to just an "opinion," which isn't as interesting critically (I suppose, then, that my goal for this debate is to convince you to admit that Wall-E is a good movie that you just don't happen to like, rather than there being anything "wrong" with it). I would imagine that many people out there, and many people in Wall-E's intended demographic, in fact, like musicals, and think that they're good entertainment and not schmaltz at all. I think, given that all the other Wall-E robots are dead when the movie starts—remember, he raids their corpses for spare parts—there is already something special about Wall-E as part of the premise of the movie. I think for many viewers, myself included, this was not "far-fetched," anymore than there being an intelligent trash compactor at all. Maybe the VCR is a bit atavistic, but at the same time, again, it doesn't seem that crazy to me; the robot did, after all, have all kinds of access to all the trash everywhere in New York. But this is the sort of thing that happens in any kind of animated fantasy. I mean, Panda's only eat bamboo, so what the hell was Kung-Fu Panda doing eating noodles? That's just ridiculous! (See what I mean?)

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Nick: i find the character motivations either ignorant or irrational, and i find the entire premise of the film to be built out of vaguely offensive cultural assumptions about love, self-interest, and responsibility

Pete: One of the basic notions that the viewer is expected to accept is that Wall-E himself is lonely there on the abandoned Earth. One might think that he doesn't become lonely until he is made aware of a mysterious Other (the female robot, once she shows up), but I think there's sufficient exposition in the beginning to show that Wall-E is more-or-less aware that Earth has been abandoned by humans. Also, since Wall-E has been watching Hello, Dolly so obsessively, he is aware that when EVE shows up, he is to fall in love with her; by this we see that the "cultural assumptions" of Wall-E are in direct reference to already existing tropes. Given that, I don't see at all what you mean about the character motivations being "either ignorant or irrational." Yes, the plot is not "original," but what about that makes it ignorant?

Nick: i never complained about the unoriginality of the plot. in fact, i love a good story whether its been done many times before or not. but i do feel that the failings of the WALL*E plot are easily explained. i mean "ignorant and irrational" in a sort of tag-team way that applies to most of the character motivations: 1. to me, it's completely insane that a robot would fall in love with another robot just because they are of the same "species" (wouldn't he instead have a crush on a roach, his primary accompanying life form on a day-to-day basis?) - this motivation to me equates to the typical homogeneous thinking of Disney where white characters hook up with other white characters and black characters hook up with other black characters (see High School Musical for more) because they look the same; 2. it's beyond insane that the humans would decide to return to Earth - physically, they're all going to die, and emotionally there was little-to-no precedent for that kind of sweeping (and poorly-made and self-destructive) decision in their satellite culture; and 3. why in the hell would WALL*E fly out all the way into space after a robot he barely knows and only has a purely lust-style infatuation with, despite the fact that she tells him "NO!" again and again... WHY? because WALL*E is a creepy robot stalker.

Pete: This is a tricky one. Wall-E as a "creepy robot stalker." I think you're misusing the notion of "species"—white characters hooking up with white characters and black characters with black characters is NOT an issue of species, but an issue of the biologically insignificant notion of "race." Now, Wall-E has two relationships in the movie: 1) his friendship with the cockroach, and 2) his "stalking" of EVE. So, why didn't he "hook up" with the cockroach, well, it's a matter of "species," here. His relationship with the cockroach is more like a human would have with a dog (your own notorious "exploits" with various 4-legged mammals aside). So, yes, EVE is the first being in a long time that Wall-E could have even conceivably had a "relationship" with, but is that speciesist or even racist? I don't think so—what else could it have been? And the sad-sack character chasing after the boy or girl that is out of his or her league is a well known plot that's been around way longer than just Disney; given all the things that are innovative about Wall-E, I don't see the familiarity of it's basic plot structure as a problem.

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Nick: to me, WALL*E was the story of a robot who inexplicably falls in love with the first robot "he" sees and then stalks this feminized machine out into deep space, upon which said "man" robot ultimately sends an orbiting satellite full of obese humans back to a near-barren planet that by all accounts is uninhabitable (despite the fact that one very small specimen of plant life was discovered amid the vast landfills).

Pete: Again, the "inexplicable" aspect of Wall-E falling in love can be explained by his loneliness and his own expectations as created by his obsessing over Hello, Dolly. I do agree, though, that there was no particular reason to have the plot be so boy/girlish when we're dealing with asexual robots, however, I don't think that this detracts from the quality of the story, once its seen as being non-progressive in its politics. And the humans totally go on to refound humanity on Earth, so I have a hard time excepting that as a mark against Wall-E's motivations

Nick: ***see previous answer***

Pete: I'll take this opportunity to expand a bit on what I see as being the aspects of Wall-E that are most excellent. The main one is it's structure. The movie divides pretty evenly into two sections, the first part on Earth, and the second on the spaceship. They're actually fairly separate from each other, each existing unto themselves as smaller plots. This is a vast improvement over most animated features, in that the exposition of the movie is already in service of the plot; that is, all the key information that the viewer needs in order to understand how and why the spaceship exists is embedded into the world-building process of the first part of the movie, so its not noticed as exposition as such, but rather important details to Wall-E's interaction with his home planet. Also, having both romantic leads barely talk and communicate almost entirely visually is an incredible achievement, especially in an age where most animated movies are marketed based on what super-stars are giving voice to the characters. The, as I'm calling it, world-building nature of the exposition is a technique that's rare in all movies—so, even if the "story" and the character motivations are familiar, the plotting and structure are still innovative an fresh.