Plenty.
My oldest and I went to see WALL*E the other day. He loved it for the story and the characters. I enjoyed it for those reasons as well as others. Generally speaking, I am in agreement with Professor Tolkien in that “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.” WALL*E is chock full of allegory, and if I were a different person, I'd probably hate the movie for being too preachy. But since I'm me, I enjoyed it, and since you folks are here, you will probably take a certain amount of comfort, as I did, in the fact that other people understand the importance of sustainable living, and those people have a big audience.
WALL*E lives on a desolate, toxic future Earth that has been abandoned by humanity some centuries ago. He is, as far as we know, the only functioning robot on the planet. His only companions are a cockroach and a collection of relics he has painstakingly assembled. One day, he finds a plant. He's never seen one before. He puts it in his collection.
Later, Earth is visited by another robot, whose mission is to find proof that Earth is habitable again. WALL*E follows the new robot back to her mother ship, which turns out to be the home of what's left of the human race.
These people are the product of a processed-food diet taken to the extreme. They don't move much, all their food comes in a cup, they never see dirt, they communicate entirely electronically. They don't seem to have touched one another in a long time. And that's the way it's always been for them.
When WALL*E and his friend show up with their plant, though, things change for the better.
What are these preachy messages that I was talking about?
- Blind obedience is bad.
- Big box stores are not to be trusted.
- Dirt isn't something to be afraid of.
- Go play outside once in a while.
- Food comes from farms.
- If we don't start living sustainably, we're going to wreck the planet.
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