Technological Advancements In The Pixar Film, Wall-E

Over the last few decades technological advancements have proven to be both assistive and destructive to society. Wall-E is a Pixar film that illustrates the impact that technology has already started to have on our lives. The film shows us what it might be like in the distant future if we continue to increasingly rely on technology. An article on the film in the New York Times explains the movie as a “cartoon version of our own potential extinction” while also touching on the dangers of consumer capitalism. In the film humans had been living on a space ship called Axiom for 700 years, because the earth became inhabitable. Wall-E is a robot programed to clean planet earth. He falls in love with Eve, a robot programed to look for signs of

These advancements have provided ways to communicate, to interact socially, and even to do everyday tasks. The film Wall-E reveals significant negative consequences that are occurring in real life today and will to continue to worsen if the entire population continues to rely on technology without consideration of a proper balance. In the film, and reality, technology has caused people to become lazy and wasteful creatures who lack not only awareness of the world around them, but also the ability to have interpersonal experiences. The film discloses that technology itself is not the villain per se, but it is our increasing dependence that may be harming our human

The idea of being sucked into our screens is shown in The Numbing of the American Mind: Culture as Anesthetic by Thomas de Zengotita. This article talks about the American culture and their tendencies to start to fall into the shows and superficial lives that they are seeing on their screens and start to see them as a reality. He believes that media finds a way to persuade thoughts and views, and creates preconceived notions and exaggerated fantasy. This is shown in Wall-E by people being so totally obsessed with their screens that they lose any interaction with the environment, and even knowledge of their surroundings which eventually causes them to literally leave Earth behind. The people were so out of touch with reality and sucked into the fictional worlds of their screens that they did not realize that they were leaving Earth because it was inhabitable but instead thought it marketed to them as some sort of lavish vacation. Even in Axiom, another “world”, they remained so glued to their screens they did not even know that there were stars or a pool on their ship. We are reminded of this disconnect when Mary gets her screen knocked away from her face and suddenly becomes curious about the place she is living in. Through this accidental “unwiring”, she eventually finds time to splash in the pool. Much like the people of Axiom, with our faces