Discuss.
Mark Fisher talks about Wall-e in Capitalist Realism.
Take Disney/ Pixar’s Wall-E (2008). The film shows an earth so despoiled that human beings are no longer capable of inhabiting it. We’re left in no doubt that consumer capitalism and corporations – or rather one mega-corporation, Buy n Large – is responsible for this depredation; and when we see eventually see the human beings in offworld exile, they are infantile and obese, interacting via screen interfaces, carried around in large motorized chairs, and supping indeterminate slop from cups. What we have here is a vision of control and communication much as Jean Baudrillard understood it, in which subjugation no longer takes the form of a subordination to an extrinsic spectacle, but rather invites us to interact and participate. It seems that the cinema audience is itself the object of this satire, which prompted some right wing observers to recoil in disgust, condemning Disney/Pixar for attacking its own audience. But this kind of irony feeds rather than challenges capitalist realism. A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called ‘interpassivity’: the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief.
On top of the interpassivity argument, he also mentions later that Wall-E vindicates the all consuming growth of capitalism at the end. Climate change is a temporary setback solved with technology, the earth (or other planets) are recolonized and the zombie flesh beast of capitalism continues feasting without even the destruction of the planet to limit it.
Edit: Found the 2nd quote, in relation to climate change
In the end, Wall-E presents a version of this fantasy - the idea that the infinite expansion of capital is possible, that capital can proliferate without labor - on the off world ship, Axiom, all labor is performed by robots; that the burning up of Earth's resources is only a temporary glitch, and that, after a suitable period of recovery, capital can terra form the planet and recolonize it). Yet environmental catastrophe features in late capitalist culture only as a kind of simulacra, its real implications for capitalism too traumatic to be assimilated into the system. The significance of Green critiques is that they suggest that, far from being the only viable political-economic system, capitalism is in fact primed to destroy the entire human environment. The relationship between capitalism and eco-disaster is neither coincidental nor accidental: capital's 'need of a constantly expanding market', its 'growth Capitalism and the Real fetish', mean that capitalism is by its very nature opposed to any notion of sustainability.
Nothing more to add really. It's difficult to imagine what a truly radical movie would look like, at least any kind that would end up with a wide release. Doing something revolutionary-shaped can just as easily serve as a release valve for social energy as can incite it. Winning the culture war would probably hurt the actual war, because it would produce the illusion that we've already won.
Idk while phone bad is definitely high in the messages I think it’s pretty in your face about how catastrophic corporate consumption was on earth and even has the CEO of BnL be the president of the US. Also even though the end is hopeful this new society would have to clean up for generations because of the greed from 2000-2100 when they left
Here's a really fucked up thing about Wall-E that goes unmentioned:
The Earth is uninhabitable. The entire remains of humanity live on one spaceship. Now, it's a big spaceship, but it's not seven billion people big. In fact it's doubtful that there are enough resources in existence on this planet to launch a significant percentage of our population into space. That must mean that the billionaires used their immense accumulated capital to escape the doom that the rest of humanity was consigned to, and the humans in the film are their descendants, living essentially in the People's Republic of Buy N Large.
Also, the robot Eve upon meeting Wall-E for the first time shoots at him without any hesitation. I put it to you that her robot type is an autonomous drone that was previously used to guard the mega-rich as society broke down, shooting to kill the poors as they desperately tried to get on board the spaceships, and repurposed to scourge the Earth at regular intervals to make sure that a new society doesn't rise up on the planet while the rich are on their space yachts. Eve herself most likely has indiscriminately vaporized tens of thousands of people with her plasma gun.
I think it's suggested that there are more Buy N Large space arks out there, but probably not enough for 7 billion people so your point still stands.
Absolutely I bet she’s where that Tom Cruise movie got it’s idea for the earth roving drones
The robots are kinda running a planned economy on the ship, aren't they? And we never see any evidence of money onboard. Sure, the people are descendants of the wealthy elite who could afford to leave earth, but there doesn't seem to be any class or resource disparity. Everyone's... content? Complacent? They see no need to question their hermetically sealed environment until an outside force compels them too.
While the show places blame for the destruction of earth squarely on capitalism, its social critique seems to be targeting Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.
Edit: Although, as was rightly pointed out, that critique begins and ends with 'phone bad'.
That critique also includes "People inside this communist society are an infantilised collective with no individuality and are incapable of criticising it, their lack of struggle under capitalism turns them into lazy decadent blobs, only a return to struggle and work will give them individuality again, they must free themselves from communism".
From that angle it's a little fashy.
Yeah, when I watched this movie as a kid I remember saying that I didn't see the ship situation as that bad. Wasn't it even better than what we had today? I was told something like, "But they're all fat and lazy!" which really did not convince me.
this is what I came here to say. Every right-winger I know interpreted wall-e as a scathing criticism of communism.
we never see any evidence of money onboard
There's kind of one actually: it's the 700th anniversary of the ship lifting off so the captain says people can ask for a "free cupcake in a cup".
I got this film for Christmas after it came out. I watched every day for a week. You have rightly put my Wall-e knowledge to shame.
lmao. I only remember because at the time I immediately thought "wouldn't everything there be free?".
Hmm good point I’ll have to rewatch with this in mind. I thought it might be implied that capital still rules on board because of things like changing outfit colors via ads but no so sure anymore
It's not even the most anticapitalist Pixar movie, there's still A Bug's Life
The greatest mainstream anticapitalist movie of all time is It's A Wonderful Life.
Good point but wasn’t mainstream for quite a while after release. But good call
