Robots in 2110 will be the same as in 1972. Pixar has built an empire on slick animated films that are ingeniously able to please both kids and their parents. They've made billions of dollars, afforded them the ability to throw a little bit (or a lot) of a political message at the young minds they arguably have the largest role in shaping.
Pixar's latest, Wall*E, is the tale of a lovable little robot, his search for love, the anthropogenic destruction of our planet and really fat Americans. Wall*E is the lone robot left on earth after human excess has driven all other forms of life away. The robot watches old movies, learns about love, and falls for a sleek visiting robot who's technologically light years ahead of him. The film takes the shape of an old-fashioned romantic film; it begins as your standard clunky-boy-chases-hot-girl narrative. But for all its provincial posturing, Wall*E offers some welcome reprieve from the text Disney's been regurgitating for about a century. Eva, the hypercapable Angelina Jolie of the robot world, ends up saving Wall*E's clunky ass (straight out of 1972's Silent Running) in ways that Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, or Belle could never even imagine.
Eva comes to planet earth looking for signs of organic life. We later find out she was sent by humanity, which by the year 2775 has morphed into obese soda-slurping slugs who live in a large mall in outer space, rendered actually unable to walk. They'd like to return to earth (in "Operation Recolonize", the perfect unwitting semantic gaffe for the 21st century), which this generation has never seen and can only return to when they receive signs of organic material. Wall*E gives Eva the only plant on the planet to woo her, and suddenly her heart beats green as she prepares to return to the mothership. Evil robots try to steal the plant, thwarting the plans the fat and happy president (think John Goodman) and his minions. Wall*E and Eva run (float, slide) from the evil robots, and the world is saved, thanks to the droid couple. Humans then return to earth, learn how to farm and live in harmony with all life forms on the planet.
For all of it's skepticism of technological development, Pixar fetishizes the robots and other sleek machinery presented in the film. Not only are they superhuman, but they even surpass human emotional capacities. A human couple is inspired to gaze into each other's eyes after watching Wall*E and Eva gallivanting in the night sky outside the spaceship. In 2775, humans are robots, and robots are humans. If children learn how to become humans through the ubiquity of the media, one can't help but wonder what a generation of people who learn from this robotic attempt at humanity will look like in ten or fifteen years.
The film will surely be criticized for its heavy handedness, (hello, Day After Tomorrow) but as a culture, we've all but forfeited the means for understanding subtlety. Pixar has recognized this and opts to hit us over the head with what some will deem their "(evil) liberal agenda." Buy n' Large, a superstore that's even on the moon, right next to the American flag, is traced to causing the end of life on the Earth. At points, the film reads as unhinged disgust with the Bush administration. A bumbling politician (or "Global CEO"-- whoa! Fuck you, contemporary Western political/economic system!) who ends up being wrong about everything preaches to his subjects the importance of "staying the course." Basically, Pixar has grabbed their audience of millions by the throat and told them what a lot of us have known for a while now. Has any major film, especially one aimed at kids, used the word "unsustainable"? And they smeared it all in a sweet little love story to make it go down easier. This isn't the first time and won't be the last that someone's used their wide, captive audience to get their own political message across. But if we now can't grasp the subtlety of suggestion, Wall*E appears at the perfect time. And by perfect, I mean probably about thirty years late.
Pixar films are ubiquitous in any house with kids, and they most likely assume the role of babysitter or even parent to a lot of kids. If kids have to be brainwashed by the media, there aren't many options that offer a more progressive perspective. Science fiction may prove more healthy and productive for both the planet and each kids than romantic fiction.
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