There Are No Consequences to Laziness

Disney presents WALL-E, a futuristic, yet not so faraway possibility of what the earth and the human race could look like in the next several hundred years. In this movie, the earth was abandoned by the humans because it was no longer livable, as it was filled with garbage, and had no resources left. Meanwhile, the humans were living on a large spaceship. WALL-E, the main character, a trash collecting robot, was sent to earth to discover if earth was once again livable. There, WALL-E met EVE, an unresponsive and unemotional robot compared to himself, whose function was to find any signs of plant life on earth (a signal that the humans could go back to earth). WALL-E showed her the plant he found in a shoe and brings it back to the ship. However, although the humans are too lazy and obese to do anything other than watch TV and sit on their moving chairs, the artificial intelligence running the spaceship attempted to prevent WALL-E and EVE from giving the plant to the captain (a human who wants to return to earth).

The satire, WALL-E, exhibits irony and hyperbole in its showing of what could possibly happen to earth if we, humans, continue to consume and dump trash everywhere. WALL-E gives us a tour of post-human inhabitant earth and makes real the possibility that that could be us. The joke of the outlandish world created in WALL-E is made to seem a possibility as the viewers realize that what could happen: an over accumulation of trash, too much reliance on technology, and not enough human motivation, all leading to the world of WALL-E. Our reliance on technology in today's world is mocked by WALL-E, which shows that human reliance on technology leads to laziness and no motivation to do anything of use. For example, in the movie, the humans are exhibited as obese creatures laying on machines that give them everything they need without moving from their chairs. Not only does WALL-E show a very realistic future, it also comments on every human beings weakness: laziness. It describes what laziness can do, which is cause us to become aimless and obese and without a purpose. The movie exaggerates the effects on the earth if we continue to dump trash onto the earth for the next several hundred years and what could become of us if we do.

WALL-E brings light to our environmental situation in a kid-friendly comedic approach to make the topic seem more harmless than it actually is for exposing what most in society want to deny: the effects of human waste on earth - which kills life (plants and animals). This movie does a fantastic job of framing the humans as inadequate, unthinking, useless characters and the robots as the most helpful and useful characters in their society. This approach attempts to persuade the humans watching that it is ridiculous for robots to become the top of the food chain and the humans at the bottom. The ridiculousness of this presentation of class in WALL-E, gives way to serious thought about how humans should proceed on earth in the next couple hundred years. Overall WALL-E makes impressive social commentary on environmentalism and technological dependence (both of which society tends to ignore or deny).