Wall-E
Brett penned a great post about his reaction to the movie "Wall-E," and I have to say that I was also really affected by this movie emotionally. I don't know if it's the movie plus the affect of a pride celebration hangover, but today I have been really depressed, not to mention drained of energy.
Wall-E struck a chord with me mostly because of the irony that a lonesome machine longed for contact with another while existing on a trash infested, abandoned Earth. All the while, humans were floating in space getting fat, and were completely ignorant of their surroundings or one another. I thought the leitmotifs of "Sunday Clothes" and "It Only Takes a Moment" from Hello Dolly! were brilliant choices. Both songs are cheesy, trite, and hackneyed (I know because I performed them my sophomore year in high school), but the simple themes in both are often ones that make us smile and feel connected to one another, whether it be loved ones or strangers. In our world of technology and consumerism these simple pleasures are the most fragile, and when we begin to lose them, we begin to lose ourselves and our care for who and what is around us.
The levels that one can peel off from Wall-E range from ecological to sociological, and I'm glad that the shock of the magnificent desolation in Wall-E has caused Brett to pause and think about his consumption and and his interconnectedness to humanity. I hope that other adults react in this way, and more importantly I hope a generation of children are compelled to feel the same. Wall-E was the little engine that could, and he saved us and our planet in a movie but we all need to be a little like Wall-E if we're going to survive.
So, think about what you consume, and where it goes when you're done with it, and think about the people you love and strangers around you. Because if we don't, we're alone, in a world of junk.
