with a robot, please.
Frank went to see Wall-E and thinks that he would make a spiffy president, considered how let down he feels about Obama and McCain, but mostly McCain. As in the AP story, the Pixar animated film serves as a springboard to belly flop about how bad things are all over. Even little children of the digital age understand the fierce urgency of now. (I knew this from firsthand experience already, having driven long distances with some of them).
Humanity is not dead in “Wall-E,†but it is in peril. The world’s population cruises the heavens ceaselessly on a mammoth luxury spaceship that it boarded in the early 22nd century after the planet became uninhabitable. For government, there is a global corporation called Buy N Large, which keeps the public wired to umpteenth-generation iPods and addicted to a diet of supersized liquefied fast food and instantly obsolete products. The people are too bloated to walk  they float around on motorized Barcaloungers  but they are happy shoppers. A billboard on the moon heralds a Buy N Large outlet mall “coming soon,†not far from that spot where back in the day of “Hello, Dolly!†idealistic Americans once placed a flag.
And yet these rabid consumers, like us, are haunted by what paradise might have been lost. How can they reclaim what matters? How can Earth be recolonized? These questions are rarely spoken in “Wall-E,†but are omnipresent, like half-forgotten dreams. In this movie, a fleeting green memory of the extinct miracle of photosynthesis is as dazzling and elusive as the emerald city of Oz.
Let it be known that it is never too early to teach the children that humanity is a pile of greedy misery. And yet, to be fair, this depressing cosmic vision is uplifting to behold, because it demonstrates that some people (the geniuses at Pixar and NYT op-ed columnists) understand the profound suckiness of the way things are. If they are ever to make good progglodytes, this is the just the sort of message that has remorselessly to be pounded into their impressionable little skulls, because it’s the antithesis of the feckless optimism of Hello, Dolly or The Wizard of Oz.
It is axiomatic among Marxists that the success of capitalism makes possible the new material order of communism. And so, too, does material technology make possible the extraordinarily lucrative dystopian fantasies of Pixar, though you would never know it by reading Rich’s piece.
At the end they clapped their small hands. What they applauded was not some banal cartoonish triumph of good over evil but a gentle, if unmistakable, summons to remake the world before time runs out.
Which is why at the end of the piece he suggests that the technophobe McCain* ought to be forced to watch the film in order to realize how out of touch he is, the medium being the message, after all. Obama probably ought to see it too, but only in order to recapture the Camelotty once-and-futureness that is bound to be his legacy. Because only by admitting that we are the problem can we proceed to get ourselves back to the garden. When you get right down to it, robots are better people than we–excepting, of course, American soldiers.
Now if only Pixar could fix the NYT.
*Amato seems to think he’s serious when he cracks wise, saying, “I hate the bloggers.” Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t read blogs, and may not even “get” YouTube.
Took my kids to see it a couple days ago. I knew exactly what I was getting in to with that, but they had already seen the other cartoon movie (Kung Fu Panda) and wanted to see the cute robot. What I should have done was buy a ticket to any of the other films playing in the enormo-Plex (Zohan, especially)and then go into the Wall-E theater so that Pixar would not get my money.
But a funny thing happened while I was in the movie: all the children HATED it. “Is it OVER ALREADY?”, “This is really stupid” and “But, they’re ROBOTS, who cares?” were among the comments that the future generation was snapping in the theater. As I’m rapidly being forced to learn by my daughters, kids have an innate sense of knowing when they’re being preached to/lectured.
Or maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part. The movie was actually a little better than I expected it to be, but I still wish I hadn’t given Pixar my money for it. Wake me the next time Brad Bird makes a movie . . .
Frank Rich needs to go ahead and hang himself before things get worse.
Please.
I really enjoyed the movie in spite of the grossly over exaggerated message.
It’s important that the elastic band be snug without cutting off circulation.
“It is axiomatic among Marxists that the success of capitalism makes possible the new material order of communism.”
True… which brings up a point not often considered. The new left has become the old [as in Euro] right. Anti globo, green, anti-materialist… this is not Marxism / the old left.
I don’t like either of the two but I think this is something that many people don’t think about. Maybe they should.
This preachy nonsense was in Cars, too–the unconcealed pompousness that everything was better before life became easier for humanity. The reality is that the writers of that movie would never set foot in one of those podunk Route 66 towns. When Lightening McQueen calls it “Hillbilly Hell” he’s merely echoing what the creators actually think.
SPOILERS BELOW
Wow, did anyone see the same movie I did? The kids in the audience were very much wrapped up in the movie, as was I. Preaching? Not so much, unless you’re hyper-sensitive to anything that looks like it might possibly resemble a message typically carried by those you oppose in the political ring. I’ve caught myself doing that lately and it’s annoying.
Relax and enjoy the show. It’s a lovely and warm movie set in a dirty world, a world that has an extreme problem we’ll never see (unless they insist on dumping ALL the trash of the world in New York city for the next two centuries). Movies are about extremes; extreme characters, extreme troubles, and extremes of the heart. Really now, would the movie have held the same poignancy if the world had only been kinda messed up? No. The world had to be messed up for the foogle (the plant) to really work. The world had to be messed up in order to really show how heroic Wall-E was, merely for doing his job alone for 700 years.
For those of you obsessing on the “greenie preaching,†what about the philosophy espoused by the Captain of the good ship Axiom? To quite the man as large as his spirit “I’m tired of doing nothing! All I’ve ever done is nothing!†It’s a cry, no, a battlecry against a pampered and pointless life of super e-connectedness and easy convience (food in a cup). The guy in charge of the whole shebang rebels against the pampered socialist-welfare lifestyle granted to him from birth. Good grief people, the glass is more than merely half-full, it’s almost over-flowing with spirited striving and manly doings. WALL-E chases the woman he loves into space by holding onto her rocketship with his hands! He navigates trash-chutes, escapes sabotaged pods, and willingly faces his own death to make sure the mission succeeds.
The movie has romance, humor, adventure, adversity, and a good dose of robot-on-robot arsekicking! I mean, really, Fred Willard as the President? How’s that NOT funny?
That being said, Frank Rich watched another movie completely, as well as having a serious case of “The Projections.†/shrug
“When Lightening McQueen calls it “Hillbilly Hell†he’s merely echoing what the creators actually think.” Or, the character is actually saying what the character thinks, because the character is being written in a consistent and believable way, and it’s foreshadowing the eventual changing of his mindset as the character himself changes.
The problem wouldn’t be so much of one if you didn’t know for damned sure that leftists will use this movie, somehow, as proof much like I’ve seen people use that shitty movie The Day After Tomorrow similarly to somehow prove their point. Or at least think they proved their point.
The “prosperity is evil” meme is a key tenet of the “Hollywood Variant” of the religion we know as “the far left.”
I listen to a lot of movie commentaries. I like Sci-Fi. Therefore, I hear that tenet expressed a lot.
That being said, it’s difficult to expose children to just about any media these days without explaining to them that it’s all a pack of cynical lies – and I’m not sure how much better that is than the alternative.
Haven’t seen the post-apocalyptic cartoon, probably won’t. I am one of those people who is sensitive to being “preached at” by my entertainment… so you can imagine I have to play with bottlecaps and make paper airplanes a lot.
And chrisbg99, it’s not that propaganda movies “prove” anything, they just become part of the background assumptions people use to (mis)judge new information. They help form the kind of beliefs that people are unable to source when you ask them, but they just “know it’s true.”
Ted Turner’s “Planet Rangers”, anyone? “Day after Tomorrow” is an absolutely ridiculous and misleading movie, but my son thinks it’s real. These bozo’s (God rest his soul) are not after us, but they are after our children.
My son is eight, and is being deluged with this “America is bad, and responsible for all evil in the world” crap. He won’t even listen to anything I have to say. I feel like Johnny Appleseed trying to plant seeds that I will probably not be around long enough to see take root. It kind of scares me that for my son, by the time the seeds do take root, it will be too late.
I think half the problem is that these “writers” have never been more than a mile from their front door, but know just how the world works from looking inside their heads at their own problems with life.
And Frank Rich? I have always loved the fact that an unbelievably bitchy food writer is now trying to tell me what to think…
What a riot!
“…a gentle, if unmistakable, summons to remake the world before time runs out.”
Amazing.
Jonah Goldberg is once again right.
Fascism with a smiley face.
Oh, and this is just too precious not to share (via Lucianne):
AP Exclusive: US removes uranium from Iraq
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107ap_iraq_yellowcake_mission.html
“The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program – a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium – reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” – the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment – was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy.”
Something else to depress Frank Rich.
Good.
The sick irony of Wall-E is that people are learning the stupid stuff through the ultimate consumerist industry Hollywood while sitting in a massively large air-conditioned room where the popcorn is popping and the soft drink are flowing.
So how many in Hollywood’s world have thrown away their Star Wars merchandise; you know the garbage killing our planet?
And, how many polars bears did Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Steven Speilberg and et al kill in order to make their luxury items?
As one who was formerly in the business, what the audience never hears what is said in the actor’s dressing rooms about those who show up, and pay huge sums of money to keep the annoying ones in the wealthy consumerist lifestyles they’re so accustomed; botox, silcone and steroidal youth juice is expensive and so are their handlers.
Hollywood is for suckers; I won’t be a sucker who is willing to pay $10 for two hours of suckered.
One more thing…this talk about ‘character’..David Mamet summed up several year ago when he basically pointed out that Hollywood is dead because all it can sell anymore is eyecandy.
Oh and Mamet made that observation long before he dissed ‘brain-dead liberalism’.
For all of the propagandizing of consumerism and teh planat looting/burning in the popular children’s media, none of it has had the impact of that big heaping pile breathless, overwrought chaos called “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Despite the fact that several of Gore’s own scientific supporters have winced at the gross exageration of the potential disasters, I’m still arguing with eight olds’ who don’t want their parents to take them to Disney World because “I don’t want to drown when the seas rise. ” (actual quote from 8 year old Simeon.) The rest of the mass media bombs from the mega consumer hypocrites are merely supporting staves for Gore’s House of Carbon Credits.
And yet … and yet … A significant majority of people are still unconvinced that teh Gaia has a Fee-vah and requires us to seek our inner agrarian, forsaking all consumerism like post modern Amish, only with baseball caps. Don’t give up the fight for reason, please!
“with a robot, please”
You don’t like libbots?
“impact of that big heaping pile breathless, overwrought chaos called “An Inconvenient Truth”
Imagine, all those consumers of such miserable tripe were sitting in air-condidtioned theaters munching the popcorn and sucking up the soda getting all high and mightly righteously holy about saving the planet all the while people in Africa are dying in droves of malaria because Western Enviromental Snobs deny them DDT, are forced to dig cow dung to heat water because Western Environmental Snobs deny them electric power plants, are starving to death because Western Environmental Snobs are dening them seeds which are scientifically designed to survive harsh environments.
I mean… the fact that Drew Barrymore doesn’t even know what it’s like to shit in the fucking woods shows just how snot-filled is Hollywood and the miserable crap dug deep from their bowels continues to be.
Frank Rich’s columns:
“The inevitable end result of a clueless newspaper appointing an equally-clueless, medium-talented food and theater writer to a position that demands far more mental acuity than he can deliver.”
Corollary: This result is exacerbated by the facts that said writer is totally unaware of a place called “New Jersey” and who, furthermore, “researches” his columns (when he’s not attending Broadway opening night parties and carousing with chorus boys in trendy restaurants) by skimming through other articles and op-eds in…the New York Times.
[…] for president? How about just replacing Frank Rich. See protein wisdom for the […]
Shitting in the woods is clean. The Barrymore clan knows filthy degredation like the back of their hands.
“And yet these rabid consumers, like us, are haunted by what paradise might have been lost.”
No Frank. What you mean is: And yet these rabid consumers, like me, are haunted by what paradise might have been lost. Pronoun abuse. What can be done?
The reality is that they did. It didn’t make the movie any less tedious, but at least they did their research.
Anyway. Frank Rich slamming Americans for being bloated is, well, rich. Are we bald too, Frank?
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if McCain actually did hate blogs and bloggers, Dan. Nor would it surprise me if he expressed wishes that they be shuttered up for the common good, particularly near election time.
To keep out the special interests. With the state doing the shuttering. I’ve heard he has something of a track record in this regard.
Jeff,
I think you meant Dan, but I agree with you there.
True, Jeff.
Oops. I was changing that while you guys were commenting. Would have been done faster, but I got caught up in Treacher’s link. Sally? I’d do her.
McCain has done lots of blogger conference calls. Cap’n Ed told me. And those Powerline people when I used to read them. No? I don’t feel like scrounging for links right now. McCain’s campaign financey thing was not related to any hostility to free speech. He just felt bad cause he got caught being a moneywhore so he got on board Pew’s campaign finance astroturfing and Pew’s NPR agreed to make him out to be all righteous and reformy. McCain didn’t get as much mileage out of this as maybe he’d hoped, but hey it got him this far.
Jeff, that’s what the evil genius Treacher does–casts his net of distraction and we just flop around like…fish caught in a net of distraction.
We hates him, we does!
When McCain has me in on a conference call, then I’ll believe him. Preaching to the GOP choir doesn’t impress me.
For real, if you want to know what a McCain Administration will look like, just look at Mr. Schwarzenegger. It’s not impressive, but it’s way better than what we had, and Republicans in the legislature have more than held their own.
Baracky Pelosi Reid together could sure cause a lot of mischief I think, so Mr. McCain is really the better choice, if you look at it that way.
McCain’s a sack of dung, and should never have been the nominee. His “maverick” press cred is only good against other Republicans, not Democrats. But we’re stuck with him now, and he is less dangerous than Obamarama-fo-fama the Magic Marxist.
Sucks when you have to choose between the moldy bread and the maggoty meat.
Yay! Looks like we have the beginnings of a rally here.
Hey, there’s always Bob Barr. Christine Smith lost her mind when Barr got the nomination. Her email letter whining about it was quite entertaining.
Re: Bob Barr–Dad was an ATF agent, so that’s just not going to happen.