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“WALL-E” as liberal propaganda?
My first reaction to this commentary that film critics didn’t sufficiently warn readers that Pixar’s latest animated feature WALL-E was liberal propaganda was a mental ‘Get a life, guy.’
For one thing, while admittedly pro-environment (which most reviews I saw had mentioned, including mine), the movie doesn’t paint government as the solution, as you might suppose for an intentionally political film. It affirms (towards the film’s close) inventiveness and initiative as fundamentally human traits (as do entrepeneurs) and attacks materialism and sloth, which some conservatives target as well (conservative Christians who feel pollution violates God’s command to be stewards of his world, in the first case, and, in the second, our own McLennan County Madman Ted Nugent, who frequently rails against parents who allow juvenile couch potatoes to grow in their homes). And, at its core, WALL-E’s a love story.
The hyperventilating tone of Bill Wyman’s piece probably irritated me more than his point and I had to wonder if he was so angry because it was a family film or because Pixar is so successful at whatever it touches.
Then I saw the enormous comment thread on Kyle Smith’s similar takedown of WALL-E and marveled at several things: the variety of comment; the ease at which comments and opinions were distorted by others; the ideological filters through which some people perceive everything; and the heated passion stirred up over a single movie, as if the millions who watch this would suddenly change their political views and consumer habits rather than simply laugh with their kids and pass the supersized popcorn.
Hmm. The impact of one family film vs. television commercials ingested daily that tell us our lives are incomplete unless we buy product A, B or C?
I can’t tell from my vantage point whether this “controversy” is merely the Internet showing off its strengths of speed and diversity - or a post-critical future where arts commentary is (to borrow a recent observation on American spirituality) “3,000 miles wide and three inches deep.”
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Comments
By Scott Baker
July 3, 2008 4:56 PM | Link to this
If you reduce Art to merely utilitarian purposes, that’s what you’ll get. If you deny it intrinsic worth, and it is only the sum of its ability to convey ideology, then the criticism will reflect the same.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I hope that I’ll be able to take it in as a work of Art first.