WALL-E: Slaying Corporations or Saving Capitalism?

LOOKING AT WALL-E’S BIG BUSINESS THEME

By Mande Wilkes

FITSNews – July 14, 2008 – As if there’s not enough pundit fodder around this election year, everybody and their mama seems to have something to say about the political implications of the latest Pixar masterpiece, WALL-E.

And since DJ Slick is slackin’ on the job – and since we’ve been gunning for his job anyway – the FITS gals figured we’d join in the WALL-E brouhaha.

Highlighting the division between left and right, conservatives reject the movie as liberal fear-mongering while liberals dismiss it as conservative agitprop. Neither party wants to own WALL-E, volleying the little guy back and forth between them like a hot potato.

So, where does WALL-E fall along the political spectrum? It turns out that despite everyone’s determined pigeon-holing, the movie actually shuns allegiance to either party, proffering praise and criticism for both.

So who is the little robot responsible for this big debate?

WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class) is a sentient robotic trash collector living on 22nd century Earth, enduring the lonely aftermath of a universe propelled by excess into disintegration.

No humans remain on Earth – they’ve been relocated to outer space by the aptly-named corporate conglomerate Buy N Large, which runs everything including government.

Power-usurping big business? This smacks immediately of a liberal Hollywood “warning,” but underneath the wrist-wringing veneer lies a deeply conservative foundation.

While WALL-E toils in solitude on Earth – salvaging spare parts from broken-down robots to keep going – we get a glimpse life in space for humans under the auspices of Buy n Large (B & L).

Directed to “consume, consume, consume” by B & L, humans are corpulent slobs confined to floating robotic chairs, mindlessly relying on automation and these “flying La-Z-boys” to meet their every desire.

Paradoxically, WALL-E is more human than the humans, who amount to little more than robots themselves.

Anyway, the apparent demonization of B & L is conservatives’ most salient talking point about the movie.

Ever at the ready to defend the honor of capitalism, conservatives get all earnest at the notion that B & L ruined the world. But – regardless of Hollywood’s intention – the message is not that corporations are bad. That would indeed be a liberal theme, but in fact the message transcends liberalism and conservativism and instead appeals to plain ole’ common sense.

And because common sense is not mutually exclusive to either party, WALL-E’s message regarding big business is one which finds support in both parties.

Conservatives like corporations because conservatives like capitalism; liberals bemoan corporate influence because liberals bemoan the loss of free choice.

Capitalism and free choice are, at their core, parallel forces, and also intersecting forces. The goals of capitalism and free choice run symbiotically alongside one another, criss-crossing in layers to build a solid system within which people retain that God-given right to decide.

In this way, B & L is not a worthy target for a liberal lashing, and consequently it cannot serve as a shield for conservatives to raise in defense of capitalism.

While conservatives’ ire was raised by the notion that B & L’s omnipotence was apoplectic, they missed the nuanced conservative message within the B & L storyline.

You see, B & L was not only a mega-merchant, it was the government.

Why? Because it governed, providing its citizens with all of their basic needs and much more.

Not quite what conservatives mean by running government like a business, B & L exacted such influence over humans because it ruled like a government while operating like a business.

Frankly, if WALL-E contains a warning at all, it is that our government, under the guise of entitlements to the disenfranchised, is morphing from medium to merchant, selling services rather than overseeing them.

The U.S. government is increasingly involved in selling us stuff, providing us food, education, healthcare, and much more in exchange for our tax dollars. Except taxes are less a tariff than the currency with which we trade with the governent for everything we need, and increasingly for what we want.

WALL-E’s ostensible corporate crucifiction belies a theme that, while appealing to liberals on the surface, in fact contains a more dimensional message. Although left-leaning at times, WALL-E is not incongruous to conservatism, at times representing to a tee the conservative paradigm.

Beat that, DJ Slick.

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