he sells sanctuary

Saturday afternoon, the Spousal Unit and I took our visiting mother-in-law to see Wall-E, the new Pixar animated feature that is, to put it mildly, sweeping the nation. Not only did I get all dewy-eyed at the plucky little robot with the expressive googly eyes who falls in love with a a sleek newer model named Eve -- I sobbed uncontrollably, especially when it looked for a moment like our hero might not, you know, pull through. You can never tell with Disney. I've never forgiven them for Bambi's mother. [MAJOR SPLOILAGE DELETED BY POPULAR DEMAND. Oops. My bad.]

Given this message of hope and rejuvenation, I find it odd that so many conservative pundits choose to take offense at the movie, just because it's set in a post-apocalyptic world where the Earth has become so toxic, humans had to go live in outer space for 700 years while an army of robots cleaned up the mess. Except the robots break down until only Wall-E is left. He survives because he develops intelligence, and figures out how keep himself going, making repairs, recharging his solar battery, and so forth, even befriending a pet cockroach -- all the while dutifully cleaning up the mess, one sector at a time.

Look, people: it's just a cartoon. It might poke fun at human foibles, but in the end it celebrates humanity's ability to beat the odds -- with the help of our robot friends. It's really not about promoting one party's message, or the other's, and the people saying it does are just reading their own biases into it. The film is a smash hit because it's fantastic movie-making, and weaves a terrific tale of overcoming nigh-impossible odds (a common theme in Pixar movies) -- even when the human race stacks the deck against itself. Wall-E is the  little robot that could. In fact, the more hardcore liberal pundits are annoyed that the humans get off so easily. *sigh*

Personally, I don't understand why everybody wouldn't want to do their utmost to help the environment. It shouldn't be about political affiliation, but about our survival as a species. It makes sense to clean up after ourselves because it's in our best interests. Period. Who cares if you don't like Al Gore, or hate the Bush administration?

I'm sure Gore loves the movie. So does Frank Rich of the (supposedly liberal) New York Times, as well as uber-conservative Charlotte Allen. Writing in The Los Angeles Times, she hits the nail on the head:

"[T]he point of art, whether movies or books or paintings or television shows, is exactly not to preach anything. Art can make social points, or poke fun satirically, as Wall-E does, at societal weaknesses. But to the extent that art becomes mere ideological drum-beating it fails. [Wall-E] is simply too accomplished a work of art to be reduced to mere propaganda by either the left or the right."

So apparently Wall-E has done the impossible and found some common unifying ground between the two ends of the political spectrum -- a kind of political sanctuary where we can forget about all the divisive infighting and cheer our plucky robot friends. Go, Wall-E, go!

As Allen says, there are some pointed elements in the film that reflect aspects of our world today -- that just doesn't make them propaganda. For instance, disposal of hazardous waste is a serious issue, and we certainly could run out of landfill sites to dump our tremendous amount of waste. And it's true, when Wall-E hitches a ride onto a spacecraft to follow Eva when she's "collected" and returned to the Mother Ship, the craft has to blast its way through a thick field of space junk (which I've blogged about previously). You know what else reflects our present-day world? The helper bots! Roomba has been available from i-Robot for years now, and per this io9 article, there's also paint-stripping robots, ship-cleaning robots, and even swarm robots that communicate wirelessly. Surely there's no hidden liberal agenda in that.

There's other environmental threats that don't get mentioned in the movie, such as noise pollution, specifically, the impact human activity has on natural habitats. I bring it up mostly because the current issue of New Scientist features my Q&A interview with Bernie Krause, a bioacoustician who spends the bulk of his time collecting recordings of wildlife soundscapes for his archive, Wild Sanctuary. Krause is a colorful character: he was a musician in the 1960s, one of the first to play the Moog synthesizer, playing first with the Weavers, and later teaming up with Paul Beaver (Beaver and Krause). They recorded a record in 1970 called In a Wild Sanctuary that featured recordings of wildlife sounds, made by Krause -- because Weaver was a bit too citified for field work, apparently.

Making his first field recording literally changed Krause's life, and he eventually left music to earn his PhD in bioacoustics. He's worked in the field with Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, among other famous names, and is currently the CEO of Wild Sanctuary, the largest archive of natural soundscapes in private hands. Krause isn't focusing on the vocalizations of specific species, like birds or frogs, but on what he calls "biophony": what the world sounds like in the absence of human-generated noise. He makes spectrograms of wilderness recordings, mapping each of the component sounds according to pitch, and the result, per this Wired reporter,"looks like the musical score for an orchestra."

He's been telling biologists for years that natural soundscapes are at risk, and since human noise diminishes the ability of certain species to communicate, some populations are declining rapidly -- such as the spadefoot toad in Yosemite. "It's getting harder and harder to find places that aren't contaminated," he says. Back in 1968, it would take him 15 hours or so to collect usable material (i.e., natural soundscapes without human generated noise). Now his quest is taking him further and further afield, into ever-more remote regions, and getting usable material can take a year or more.

Anyway, Krause has clearly thought deeply about this issue and feels strongly about it. He's currently trying to transfer his sound collection -- over 3500 hours of material from all over the world, spanning 40 years -- to Purdue University, to "create a global center for the study and recording of the remaining untrammeled sites across the planet. We believe that in order to fully understand our human impact, we need the holistic acoustic baseline recordings by which to explore these shifts in the soundscape." It isn't mentioned in the article, but Krause is currently trying to raise the funds to complete the transfer. So if you've got a spare $5 million or so lying around gathering dust, you can reach him through the Wild Sanctuary website -- although naturally, they also have a blog. Wall-E would totally approve.

Comments

[Traums]

Awww you put spoilers in the first paragraph!!!

[Some guy]

I dunno. I found it a bit too formulaic and cloying. Plus the idea that we ought to have all our eggs in one basket (Earth), so we'd better take care of it was too much to swallow.

[Mike]

It really didnt help that they had the president say "stay the course." Or that a walmart-like entity screwed the planet and generations of humans over.

while I understand that it's just fiction, there is clearly a political bias present that just shouldn't be there in a freaking kids' movie. It's disgusting that people are trying to recruit kids to-and onl heir own, of course-politics from such a very young age.

[Mike]

I'll also add that if I had kids, I would still have them see it. I regard the points that I made above to be annoying but certainly nothing outrageous enough to keep my kids-should I ever have them, and I pray to God that I don't-from seeing the flick.

I also thought the movie had nothing compared to Ratatouille. A cheap, formulaic plot with cliched, while cute, characters just doesn't cut it after seeing the work that they're capable of.

[Jennifer Ouellette]

Mike: see above comment about foisting one's personal biases onto a movie that does nothing more than poke sly fun at certain aspects of American culture.

And um, sorry about the spoilers! :)

[andy.s]

Haven't seen it yet, but I intend to. From the trailers and assorted buzz, I have several comments:

1) What does she SEE in him?
2) Who programmed a garbage bot to fall in love? (You can probably tell I'm a programmer).
3) I wouldn't be surprised if it was some warped/lonely programmer. Lot of those around. Sigh.
4) Wouldn't mind a cartoon-with-a-message, but why does it always have to be the SAME message? Endlessly repeated. Groan.
5) Did they manage to work in global warming, too?
6) "It's just a cartoon." Yeah, but even fairy tales are scrutinized for (for example) non-feminist nuances. Nothing is safe.
7) On the whole Pixar/Disney is a great company. And would be a valuable addition to anyone's stock portfolio.
8) Yes, I have some shares. What's your point?

[Fred]

Whyyyyyy do you tell how it ends?!

[Glendon Mellow]

I unabashedly love this movie. It is artistic in execution far beyond good graphics.

And I'm on the other side. So what if it has a message? Too many things these days from op-ed pieces to straight news try to show both sides of an argument to the point it makes little sense. Wall-E had a strong environmentalist-ethic. Good.
Hey kids, don't make so much garbage; there is no "away". Good.
Even when the world is trashed, there is still room for beauty and wonder: our grandkids will be okay. Good.
Two robots from different backgrounds and cultures meet and fall in love. Good.

It also had the bext use of Louis Armstrong's wonderful world since Good Morning Vietnam.