A recap from the last report:
Wall-E is an animated movie made in 2008 that depicts a world similar to what we might envision our possible future to be. It is a family-friendly social commentary of sorts. In Wall-E’s world, humans have not been doing their job as Earth’s custodians. They weren’t conscientious of how much trash they produced. When they eventually came to the realization that so much waste is not sustainable, early responses to all the trash they’ve produced is to shovel it into machines and compact it, but eventually, the world was over-run with junk. In the year 2105, the Earth is no longer habitable; the landscape resembles a huge Dust Bowl, the sky is covered over in a layer of pollution, buildings lay decrepit, and not a green organism to be found. Humanity is now aboard the mega corporation Buy-N-Large’s Axiom Starliner, where they’ve been for 700 years, 695 more years than they were supposed to live on that ship.
Evidently, people did not learn from previous efforts to clean up that the way to getting rid of trash is not by compacting it because they left Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-Class (aka Wall-E) to restore cleanliness to Earth’s surface. He’s the last working model of his kind and he’s developed a personality over the last 700 years. During his daily adventures, he finds a plant seedling in a shoe, which he takes home for his collection. One day, he runs into EVE (an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) sent from the Axiom to collect data on whether or not Earth has plant life again so the humans may return to the surface. He shows her the plant and she takes it from him, entering into a dormant standby mode until a ship comes to collect her. Taking the plant, and inadvertently, Wall-E, up to the Axiom reveals a secret plot to keep humanity aboard the Axiom. Unbeknownst to the robots and even the humans of the ship, Axiom’s automated system, named AUTO, has directions to prevent humans from returning because of the belief that Earth is uninhabitable forever. With the help of the ship’s captain, McCrea, and some malfunctioning robot friends, EVE and Wall-E are able to shut down AUTO. The ending shows humans and robots lovingly tilling plants on Earth.
We discussed who pollution affects, how we can get rid of our trash in a more effective manner, and what we as individuals can do to impact society as a whole.
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The report will be a continuation of last report’s subject, the movie Wall-E, but this time the focus is on the role of consumerism and the parallels between our society and the one portrayed in the movie.
Please click on the link and watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1BQPV-iCkU
The first theme explored in Wall-E is the portrayal of rampant consumerism. Almighty commercialism is what landed the humans on the Axiom in the first place but people have not learnt anything from it. The mega corporation Buy-N-Large profits directly from all the people being on the ship. BNL was the one who orchestrated the move to space and is now capitalizing on fulfilling everyone’s materialistic needs day in and day out. People have no other alternatives, as they cannot leave the ship. As seen in the clip, you can’t look at any space on screen without seeing ads are everywhere, a panorama of which foods to buy and flashing words like “Buy, Shop, Live!”, and commercials which exclaim, “Buy-N-Large, everything you need to be happy! Your day is very important to us!”. Even the children are being primed to be good little consumerists. In their daycare the bot tells them, “A is for Axiom, your home sweet home. B is for Buy-N-Large, your very best friend.”
Examples of this materialism are very obvious in the movie, but this is also seen in a more subtle and insidious way in our own lives. The US ad market was expected to spend $207 billion on media advertising in 2017. That kind of money spent on enticing us to buy more shows up in almost every aspect of daily society. During the day, we are bombarded with the message that we need to buy more than we really do. We see 3500 ads a day and we can’t even escape them on the radio (sometimes there’s more ads than there is music on air) or on our phones because apps make money letting companies advertise to us. Algorithms on search engines collect data about what you search for and then show you things it thinks you’d like to buy. I was reminded that companies take advantage of people's’ fear of missing out on the newest, on trend, or most technologically “advanced” thing that is being released at the moment when I saw the scene in which an ad says, “Try blue, it’s the new red!” and every person wearing a red suit ooh’s and aaah’s over it and switches their own suit to blue. Our consumerist culture is particularly apparent, and ironic, when I think of Thanksgiving, a time in which to celebrate being with family, the safety of home, being grateful for the things we have in life, and then the night of Thanksgiving, the stores open for Black Friday, where people can buy things they don’t need.
The people on the Axiom spend every waking moment of their lives being told by a corporation to buy things they “need”, and we are not so different. The Axiom people have no sense of the time they’ve been on the ship because they are submerged in the consumerist mire. They never look away from their screens, they don’t see the way everyone has changed around them. Their reliance on technology and robots that can do everything for them has made them blind. In a way, materialism can be understood as a diversion from the real problems they face, mainly getting back to Earth and the deterioration of the ability to move independently of their chairs. Our problems are climate change, creating clean energy, maintaining drinkable water, figuring out ways to cut down on our wasteful habits, and preventing further loss of wildlife from our actions.
Quiz Questions:
How long have people been living on the Axiom?
What is the name of the mega corporation who built the Axiom?
How much was the US ad market expected to spend in media advertising in 2017?
Name some signs of consumerism seen in the clip
Wall-E is an animated movie made in 2008 that depicts a world similar to what we might envision our possible future to be. It is a family-friendly social commentary of sorts. In Wall-E’s world, humans have not been doing their job as Earth’s custodians. They weren’t conscientious of how much trash they produced. When they eventually came to the realization that so much waste is not sustainable, early responses to all the trash they’ve produced is to shovel it into machines and compact it, but eventually, the world was over-run with junk. In the year 2105, the Earth is no longer habitable; the landscape resembles a huge Dust Bowl, the sky is covered over in a layer of pollution, buildings lay decrepit, and not a green organism to be found. Humanity is now aboard the mega corporation Buy-N-Large’s Axiom Starliner, where they’ve been for 700 years, 695 more years than they were supposed to live on that ship.
Evidently, people did not learn from previous efforts to clean up that the way to getting rid of trash is not by compacting it because they left Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-Class (aka Wall-E) to restore cleanliness to Earth’s surface. He’s the last working model of his kind and he’s developed a personality over the last 700 years. During his daily adventures, he finds a plant seedling in a shoe, which he takes home for his collection. One day, he runs into EVE (an Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) sent from the Axiom to collect data on whether or not Earth has plant life again so the humans may return to the surface. He shows her the plant and she takes it from him, entering into a dormant standby mode until a ship comes to collect her. Taking the plant, and inadvertently, Wall-E, up to the Axiom reveals a secret plot to keep humanity aboard the Axiom. Unbeknownst to the robots and even the humans of the ship, Axiom’s automated system, named AUTO, has directions to prevent humans from returning because of the belief that Earth is uninhabitable forever. With the help of the ship’s captain, McCrea, and some malfunctioning robot friends, EVE and Wall-E are able to shut down AUTO. The ending shows humans and robots lovingly tilling plants on Earth.
We discussed who pollution affects, how we can get rid of our trash in a more effective manner, and what we as individuals can do to impact society as a whole.
*************************************
The report will be a continuation of last report’s subject, the movie Wall-E, but this time the focus is on the role of consumerism and the parallels between our society and the one portrayed in the movie.
Please click on the link and watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1BQPV-iCkU
The first theme explored in Wall-E is the portrayal of rampant consumerism. Almighty commercialism is what landed the humans on the Axiom in the first place but people have not learnt anything from it. The mega corporation Buy-N-Large profits directly from all the people being on the ship. BNL was the one who orchestrated the move to space and is now capitalizing on fulfilling everyone’s materialistic needs day in and day out. People have no other alternatives, as they cannot leave the ship. As seen in the clip, you can’t look at any space on screen without seeing ads are everywhere, a panorama of which foods to buy and flashing words like “Buy, Shop, Live!”, and commercials which exclaim, “Buy-N-Large, everything you need to be happy! Your day is very important to us!”. Even the children are being primed to be good little consumerists. In their daycare the bot tells them, “A is for Axiom, your home sweet home. B is for Buy-N-Large, your very best friend.”
Examples of this materialism are very obvious in the movie, but this is also seen in a more subtle and insidious way in our own lives. The US ad market was expected to spend $207 billion on media advertising in 2017. That kind of money spent on enticing us to buy more shows up in almost every aspect of daily society. During the day, we are bombarded with the message that we need to buy more than we really do. We see 3500 ads a day and we can’t even escape them on the radio (sometimes there’s more ads than there is music on air) or on our phones because apps make money letting companies advertise to us. Algorithms on search engines collect data about what you search for and then show you things it thinks you’d like to buy. I was reminded that companies take advantage of people's’ fear of missing out on the newest, on trend, or most technologically “advanced” thing that is being released at the moment when I saw the scene in which an ad says, “Try blue, it’s the new red!” and every person wearing a red suit ooh’s and aaah’s over it and switches their own suit to blue. Our consumerist culture is particularly apparent, and ironic, when I think of Thanksgiving, a time in which to celebrate being with family, the safety of home, being grateful for the things we have in life, and then the night of Thanksgiving, the stores open for Black Friday, where people can buy things they don’t need.
The people on the Axiom spend every waking moment of their lives being told by a corporation to buy things they “need”, and we are not so different. The Axiom people have no sense of the time they’ve been on the ship because they are submerged in the consumerist mire. They never look away from their screens, they don’t see the way everyone has changed around them. Their reliance on technology and robots that can do everything for them has made them blind. In a way, materialism can be understood as a diversion from the real problems they face, mainly getting back to Earth and the deterioration of the ability to move independently of their chairs. Our problems are climate change, creating clean energy, maintaining drinkable water, figuring out ways to cut down on our wasteful habits, and preventing further loss of wildlife from our actions.
Quiz Questions:
How long have people been living on the Axiom?
What is the name of the mega corporation who built the Axiom?
How much was the US ad market expected to spend in media advertising in 2017?
Name some signs of consumerism seen in the clip
Discussion questions:
Are humans oblivious to the our situation? Why or why not?
What do you think about the way consumerism was represented in the movie?
Is materialism a diversion for our problems? Who benefits from it?
What do you think about the way the movie represented the environment and both the action and inaction that people take when dealing with environmental issues?
I believe that consumerism is a problem in today's society, in that we are consuming at a rate that will most likely one day become unsustainable. But, I don't necessarily think this is the sole result of companies using ads to sell their products.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, yes, consumerism does benefit businesses and they do perpetuate it at time, but I don't think that they should be blamed for making ads and trying to sell their products. This is what they are meant to do. I think the issue really lies with the consumers and the culture that we have ALL created.
I think we like to shirk the responsibility off on the businesses saying, "It's their fault - they made these ads that said I needed their product, so I felt like I had to buy it". My question is, why is it their fault? What about self control and rational thinking? I mean, I see those same ads, yet I do not feel the need to go out and buy something just because an ad tells me I should. I think instead of getting mad about companies doing what they are made to do (sell products) we should turn out attention to the consumers.
I'm in avid support for the petition of consumerism even if I have to goto Walmart to buy picket materials. I think that the issue Wall-E acknowledges is, what do we do when we've run out of space to dump things. Ofcourse we would enjoy the ability to just float about in space but it doesn't necessarily solve anything. Even in today's society it isn't enough to acknowledge our wasteful habits. I think it will take us running out of 'space' or endangering our own species to realize that change is necessary. Hopefully by then it isn't too late and the land hasn't become a desolate wasteland. One major factor of this is changing the corporate idea that people are commodities and to instead appeal to quality products and renewable sources of energy.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG2GJZcBKOE
ReplyDeleteMaybe this is why most millennials decide to minimize their home space, some people recognize their waste and decide to be more efficient. Matt D'avella, an independent filmmaker takes some time to explain what minimalists do not do: spend a lot of time picking out an outfit (this is called a capsule wardrobe); spending intent time with social media, spending time on doing the things you really WANT to do, prepare for the day by making lists: to do, to buy, alarms, ect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkRooRaR2yk tips on how to begin your decluttering journey! baby steps on how to improve. Write down the reasons you want to incorporate minimalism in your life and go through your closet. Box your clothes up! What ever you don't take out of the box in a specified amount of time, donate it to charity! There's a lot of tricks to try!
Wall-E is really just about my worst nightmare vision of a possible human future, the cute little cyborg love story aside... I fear that consumerism + automation will result in a sedentary race of bored and lazy slugs who lay about yawning, eating, boring one another to death. As Einstein said, we've got to keep MOVING... and we need to turn off our screens when we do.
ReplyDelete