WALL-E: Receding to Human’s Primordial Side

WALL-E: Receding to Human’s Primordial Side

Written by Otty Widasari

Monday, 08 June 2009 15:17

Upon seeing the people as depicted in Pixar/Disney’s WALL-E, I was instantly reminded of a day in anthropology class back in my university days. That day, the professor elaborated human physical evolution which is only predictable to anthropologists long before it would actually take place. According to his elaboration, in future centuries, man will start to look rounder, owing the shape to the all-computerized fulfillment of needs. Even today, human dependency level to computers is already high. An example to that process might as well be me. I am one of those people oblivious to technological advances, yet my wish to have a personal computer have grown even stronger since my works began to demand greater accessibility. Then, ever since I own my personal computer, it feels strange not to turn it on even for a day, even if I only use it to play games. To play is my basic need. Previously, I did crosswords and Sudoku. I can even be content playing checkers or chess solitaire, without partner, if so happens there isn’t anyone to play against with. But since I’m absorbed in computer games, I no longer touch crosswords or Sudoku, let alone checkers and chess which pawns are prone to get messy once my kid starts to play skate inside the house.    Hence in only a few months time, my life pattern incidentally cycled with each day passes. Right after dropping my son at school I go to the office, open up my computer to get connected (either seriously working or playing games). That would continue until around noon. Then I pick up my son, spend some time at home for lunch and play. When he starts to play his game, I will also get busy with my own computer game. During the afternoon, I would get back to the office, interacting yet again with my computer, up until the evening. I even use to stay up late with my computer. Within these few months, I, who normally weighed 53 kg, easily gained weight to 61 kg. We might not need to wait as far as 2775, the year when WALL-E travels to the spaceship Axiom; that ball-like round man is here, now: me, for instance. What about human interaction when my son and I are guiltlessly absorbed in each other’s game? He can play an online vector game for hours, or watch his lovely Pingu in the Antarctic, also online. His tranquility enables me to uninterruptedly chat with my high school friends via Facebook after 17 years not seeing each other, while also simultaneously chat with my husband—which during one time was in Tokyo—via Yahoo Messenger. I can show him a picture of our son that I took with Photobooth. Within minutes he received the picture of our little one playing online game thanks to photo transmission app provided in Yahoo instant messaging. Then he would miss us even more and invited me to turn on my webcam. We were as if seeing each other in real life.  What happens, then, if eventually sex life is enabled through such immediate, virtual shortcut; when a wife no longer minds the borders of a computer monitor framing her husband’s face in another part of the world? When it no longer matters to her to touch his handsome facial feature and feel it through the censors on her fingertips? Then how are the babies in Axiom be born when one of the scenes show how John and Marry, two citizens of Buy ‘n Large corporation of the opposite sex feel tingled when their hands touched, indicating a life force sucked dry by computerized corporation? Furthermore, we may as well assume that the babies are inseminated. If they are, I curiously expect a scene that would tell me of how man of the future defecate because Andrew Stanton, the director, seems to be obsessed to depict detailed description of how this waste controller robot—whose directive is to clean up the Earth for the next 500 years, left on Earth while still fully operating when the last batch of human race has departed from the planet to avert poisonous pollution—is able to bring back that humane emotion through little things such as: falling in love. A reenactment of Genesis is drawn in the film to remind human race of salvation; to love life, a blessing bestowed by natural plantations or fertility, which was the directive of EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), a vegetation-seeking robot personified as Eve, the mother of all human being. The creators of the film, such as the director, hold their ground of earthly bliss, of utter loving of life, depict Earth as a human’s divine land, by way of picturing WALL-E as Adam personified, originated from Earth, met EVE, and fell in love. After EVE located a growing sprout and store it inside her, they descend to a world where life takes place, the spaceship Axiom built by Buy ‘n Large, a central power not unlike a country in a form of a corporation. Computerized system as applied in this new world figuratively depicted as an overpowering evil. Thus a sprout-containing piece of soil will bring back human life to the land of divinity, believed as a beginning to a new life. Apparently the director and creators describe the life in Axiom as a final phase of human life, as they picture a stable, constant, computerized life system that’s been going from year 2105 to 2775. These round-shaped human no longer interact directly to their counterparts. They communicated through a hologram screens, with their eyes and ears directly connected to devices, and also fingers to touch command buttons—very little used and take only little amount of muscle-work. The director emphasizes this by presenting images in immediate distance to the user’s senses. When WALL-E accidentally switched off Marry’s hologram screen, only then was she amazed upon realizing her surroundings. Marry, as well as other people, didn’t even realize that they have a pool, eventhough they often spend time by the poolside.    At Axiom, since early in life, babies are dogmatized as we currently are by religion: ‘A’ is for Axiom, your home sweet home. ‘B’ is for BnL, your very best friend. So life goes for 700 years. The only change is, in fact, the way human brain works that’s getting more and more autistic. On Earth, where WALL-E dwells, there are commercials portraying life in Axiom as the ultimate destination for man, complete with all kinds of entertainment. Men, then still slender, enjoy all of the above while interacting with other men with semi-conventional means of communication. In reality, what happens in 2775, men interact virtually even when sitting next to one another. WALL-E’s presence brought changes in Axiom; his ancientness made people rediscover the humanity inside them and led people to destroy the hundred-year-long running computerized system and robotics. His presence also exposed an age-old top secret conspiracy concerning Earth’s intolerable toxicity level which makes it impossible to be inhabited by human. BnL’s initial plan was for Axiom to return after 500 years, an estimated time frame for WALL-Es to finish cleaning up. Every now and then, Axiom launches EVE to find a vegetation specimen that might survive Earth’s toxic environment. All of them returned empty-handed. In 2110, BnL CEO recorded a testament to Axiom Autopilot that the plan to return after 500 years would have be aborted due to Earth’s hostile toxicity. So it was, and thus all WALL-Es are deactivated save for one small-sized WALL-E. Single-handedly he kept classifying garbage into compact squares and stacks them for hundreds of years. WALL-E is portrayed as a robot capable of emotions just as humans are—a capacity he inferred from the movie Hello Dolly where men and women are destined to pair and express their feelings by holding hands, clasping fingers. WALL-E learned something from the movie he watched through an iPod and magnified through a flatscreen television. The scene implies WALL-E’s lonesome fingers, with no other pair of hands to hold on to. When an EVE robot was launched in 2775, she finds a specimen of a growing plant presented by WALL-E as his expression of love, leading them to depart the Earth—just as Adam and Eve descended from Eden later to the violation of forbidden fruit—for the sake of taking action to return to Earth, the Eden for mankind. Finally, Captain B. McCrea decided to take a stand to revolt against robot and computer domination and persisted to return to Earth upon reviewing the sprout that eventually survived. Thus, mankind returns to their primordial nature (the Earth) to start afresh a new life. Apple’s Subtle Promotion Pixar Studio, which in its working process uses Apple computers, was probably trying to deliver a message on humanity, on the transitory power of computers—an even more transitory one compared to human life. A power utterly destructible. Humans are, after all, the creator of all kinds of computer system. On the other hand, Pixar was seemingly advertising Apple products. Anyone who watches WALL-E would see the hints of Apple designs—old, new or even imaginary—in the film. Take WALL-E, a robot who starts his day by charging his solar power and produces a sound that rings to a fully-charged Apple Macintosh; he plays a mini DV tape using an iPod, enlarging the image through a flatscreen. These commercials are vividly inserted, noting that Steve Jobs, the founder of Pixar, is also co-founder of Apple. Take a closer look at EVE who resembles a future Apple robot—if indeed Apple is planning to launch a robot. Andrew Stanton wanted to make EVE as pretty as possible. To guarantee this, Steve Jobs sent Jonathan Ive to do a one-day consultation at Pixar. Ive is the man behind nearly all Apple products (since the first iMac in 1998, iPod in 2001, and recently, iPhone). EVE is, to say the least, Apple’s sensibility. Her egg-shaped body is round and sleek. She doesn’t have any visible button. Her arms are locked without joints on her side. Light indicator radiates from behind her casing. Her white surface resembles the white shine of Macbook’s plastic cover.