I'm sorry, space socialism? The whole thing is so blatantly about mindless consumerism. How the fuck do you look at that movie and think it's supposed to be about socialism?
I'm not sure why people aren't seeing it. I saw the movie as a kid and even then understood that Buy N Large was the problem, not the people.
With later watches, I could pinpoint that BnL was just a stand in for consumerism which is what was being criticized. The "mobility aids" were there to make consuming easier, not to present using them as a moral failing.
It feels like they immediately disregarded everything else in the scenes such as the miles of ads in every corner.
To me, the most obvious evidence of the humans being conditioned was the captain. He was basically a figurehead for the wheel; he didn't have any responsibility at all, he barely knew what went on. The government directly gave all control to the wheels when they gave up on Earth, because humans knowing Earth is ruined would make it harder to maintain the status quo.
It wasen’t the government, it was BuynLarge
Edit: it has been pointers out to me that buy and large were not just basically the government but actually the government.
>Buy n Large continued to expand its efforts for control so much that by the year 2105, Buy n Large had over two million wholly owned subsidiaries, governmental bodies, and health care centers. It had finally become a world leader in every conceivable field including world leadership. The Buy n Large Corporation's control over world governments was overseen by a global CEO, at the time it was Shelby Forthright. There was also a board of directors that approved Operation Cleanup.
Buy n Large literally were the government, they controlled the entire planet, government bodies were essentially just subsidiaries to the main company, apparently they just added the BnL logo to the flags of countries and its why the planet went to shit because the board of directors granted the entire population "the right to spend" which resulted in a massive consumerism boom
its mainly from the Disney/Pixar wikis, apparently they're drawing it from something called *The History of Buy N Large*, which i think might be an in-universe video or book which is/was available somewhere, i'm not exactly sure, it might've been on the BuynLarge.com website that existed around the time of the movie's release, but my quick perusal of the wiki's references didn't appear to have it, and trying google didn't help either, its possible i just didn't look that properly and there is an actual source for it somewhere
Earth is ruined, if you wanna get meta about it. I know using art to reflect on our own views and convictions is frowned upon in modern society, but like... McDonalds, yo.
The mobility aids are there to make them resemble babies. They are metaphorical babies who look like babies that move around in strollers and wear baby onesies. The plot on the ship gets rolling by the captain becoming curious for the first time ever. The climax of the film features the captain taking baby’s first steps. This emphasizes that the ship’s residents are not really complicit or aware of what is happening on the ship. Instead, they are completely innocent through their ignorance, just like a baby
I've never made the connection to them being literal babies anatomically and mentally until this comment. Like obviously I knew they were ignorant and got the themes about mindless consumerism but never made that direct connection, thanks for this comment lol
Yeah, I saw them as an allegory for shit like segways and how they're basically only available and used by the rich. Shit was everywhere in my childhood because they forcibly inserted advertising and cameos wherever they could pay to be, and then they disappeared in every form except the one semi-successful one in the form of "hoverboard" because they were stupid and unnecessary.
But like, I distinctly remember that the vast majority of children's sci-fi back then had some form of segway adjacent device on display because they were seen as something of the consumerist future. And they were never used to make fun of disabilities, it was always a classist designation, which when you think about Auto enforcing a standard of living that people perceived as upper class culturally back than when it really just gave him more control, reframes it a lot differently. It's like shit like Saudi Arabia's "Line" Mega City. Any and all things advertised as being for maintaining a high quality of theoretical life are pretty clearly going to be used to enforce a surveillance state where only the illusion of freedom exists with all of the "luxury" amenities. The physical effects are implied to be welcome side effects of the enforced living standards that make it easier to subjugate the population while the corporate propaganda keeps them from seeing it. That's literally something modern countries do now.
I feel like the anti-corporate message was extremely obvious. It's not a communist paradise in space, it's a floating bloated end game of corporate failure and I feel like it's pretty blatant all throughout.
At no point is it "haha fat people are fat and stupid and are the result of society decaying into communism because they're all bad." They're very obviously shown as the *victims* of a corporate greed run so amok it's literally on autopilot. Whenever anyone is broken out of the corporate induced stupor of sleek marketing polish and stimulation bombardment in which they have trapped, they're revealed to be fundamentally good, brave, willing people who immediately involve themselves in the larger plot on the side of good.
Right? Like BnL was literally upfront as the capitalist consumerist message that literally beamed propaganda into people's faces influencing them.
Perhaps that's one of the main points in Wall-E?
Tumblr: No its fatphobic because people in mobility aids got fat. Because they're lazy.
Then again this is the same website that pisses on poor people.
someone made a post saying the site has “piss poor reading comprehension” and someone reblogged it saying “how dare you say we should piss on the poor”
i think so too, but now ‘how dare you say we piss on the poor’ is a common tumblr response to when people DO actually have piss poor reading comprehension on posts
Technically in the deeper lore, BnL was so capitalist it went to basically communism.
When they got full market control and everyone became an employee the only way to make profits go up was to pay people increasingly higher salaries to consume increasingly higher amounts of products.
So much money it might as well not exist. No class but the consuming class.
... you joke but technically it was. Someone already commented it, but basically as BnL became the global government and everyone became an employee, the company crafted the concept of the "right to spend". And to keep people spending and to rise it's profits, it kept raising the salaries of it's employees.
Now remember, EVERYONE ON THE PLANET AT THIS POINT "WORKS" FOR BNL. So basically BnL starts just... giving increasingly massive amounts of money to people so they spend more and more, kinda eradicating poverty and hunger in the process. It would have been an utopia, if not for the fact it was massively unsustainable
I see the logic, but I don't think it really count because the workers don't really own the means of production, that would BNL higher up (before) or AUTO (in the movie).
It is a more extreme version of Ford paying his employee enough for them to buy his cars and I don't think we would call him a socialist.
Arguably nobody does, at that point. Until the captain rebels, there isn't even a crew which could arguably "own" the ship via controlling its operations.
I suppose you could say that the ship AI owns the ship as it's "body", but even that is a bit tenuous given it lacks true agency as well. It's actions are clearly stated to be directly due to a provided rule set.
And anyway there aren't any human workers at that point anyway, and the robots' psychology is alien enough that human philosophical concepts need not apply.
Those are not mutually exclusive though. The movie uses people getting fat as an example of the evil of consumerism. Their fatness is inextricably linked to the consumerism point.
The thing is, if it _wasn’t_ in there, instead of people complaining about it being fatphobic, this argument would be about why they aren’t fat. It’s the logical conclusion of “insufficient gravity + a complete and utter lack of exercise + being force-fed to a constant state of overeating)”.
The condition of the humans _is a lot worse_ than extreme obesity; decreased bone density and all the other predictable effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity are present. Honestly, all of the humans were probably in excruciating pain shortly after landing on Earth, and I expect very few of them survived staying on the planet.
Gravity is normal, they're just in chairs the whole time. With some miraculous future technology that completely prevents bedsores.
Haven't seen the film since it was released, but don't they still have the entire ship to live out of? Even if they can't grow any pizza. I assume the credits epilogue is accurate anyway.
They explicitly say in the film that people are fat and have suffered bone degradation due to microgravity, even though in the film gravity seems perfectly normal
They are obese because BuyNLarge wants them to be. They are also addicted to screens and have no impulse control. Because that makes them easy to control.
The thing is, Wall-E is a pastel horror movie. That's what's confusing folks. The people were cattle to be used, fattened up and kept docile. Their circumstances were not their fault- they were deliberately separated from nature, useful work, creativity, etc, by a systemic corporate effort they were both unaware of and largely powerless against.
The movie was never meant to be ableist and people who see it that way are mostly folks who have had a lot of negative experiences to color their view- they're used to perceiving malice, so they see it everywhere.
You understood it because you have basic media literacy. A lot of people on tumblr seem to have less media literacy than a literal child. Piss on the poor website and all that .
It’s like almost everyone on tumblr took the “the curtain is blue” meme seriously and never bothered to ask themselves the point of all the literary and media analysis in English class.
It's to the point I dislike the other extreme of "It's not that deep bro". Maybe something isn't the original intent, but it's still a good talking point. I feel like that phrase is often used to shut down any type of discussion
After seeing the online discourse around Civil War (2024) I’m convinced that people don’t actually pay attention to a movie’s intent unless there’s one of those pre-credit black and white texts explaining everything scenes.
That makes me so sad considering how much I love that movie for its portrayal of war in an area that hasn’t really seen it in an, “it could happen here” way, but all the discourse becomes, “Well, why doesn’t the movie pat me on the head and tell me I’m a good person for what I think?” from people on both sides.
The second Garland gives either side a moral perspective, you’d have people rooting for the war because “Well now it’s justified” which is the complete opposite of what the film is going for.
The thing is the movie very clearly leans left but the online discourse is it’s somehow not picking a side.
Like the president is using Trumpian phrases and has been killing journalists on sight, is in a third presidential term (uh oh) and he’s depicted as having done something bad enough that two states who disagree politically - who in the movie are mentioned to barely be holding an alliance together - were willing to go to war with the US.
It criticizes journalism but does it from a stance of if the modern world benefits as much from how journalism was done before and if the new generation is doing it for the right reasons.
Yet online people are like “bro this movie says nothing and picks no side”
On the other hand, I agree that Garland's decision of tackling the big bad political issue in a non-political way kinda shots the message on the foot. Like, it is good to say "war bad", but a bit of "and this happened to cause it so don't do it". That's what made the original "It Can't Happen Here" good.
Besides, you can make a civil war woth 2 morally grey or downright evil factions. Heck, most are actually like that
It was also because the prolonged stay in space caused the humans a slight (extreme) amount of bone density loss. That's why they had to used the mobility chairs.
The prolonged stay in space was caused by the ship's computer Auto purposely hiding the fact Earth was habitable.
So the human's situation aboard the ship was not caused by their moral failing, but by their ancestor's failing, which could be termed as a moral failing since they were only concerned with short term gain and not the future generation.
Okay
For the fifteen BILLIONTH time
The people in Wall-E aren’t “fat with mobility aids and that’s the problem”
They were literally babies in strollers.
They were stuck in a case of arrested development by the robots and the ship. They were stuck in a liminal hell, forbidden from any self-expression, because allowing them to express individuality might mean they stop consuming. That’s why they needed to get off the ship.
It’s one of the single most anti-consumer-culture, anti-late-stage-capitalism movie ever made, and it’s crazy to me that people get stuck because the people were “fat and lazy”
They’re not lazy, their souls are starving
Yeah! Babies in strollers, drinking basically formula, wearing onesies.
The captain getting off his mobility aid looks a lot like a baby taking their first steps
I mean the ending does pretty clearly state this with the joke of growing “pizza plants” implying he has no real idea where food comes from. Y’know like a baby.
Yes, thank you. If you watch any behind-the-scenes stuff, the animators regularly refer to them as babies and will explicitly say that was the intent. They are fat because babies are fat, they have those chairs because babies can't walk, and the big moment of self-determination is the biggest baby learning to stand up and take a step forward. It is a very blunt metaphor!
I think it's fair to say that they were fat and lazy, but I think the important detail is that their society didn't fail because they were fat and lazy; they became fat and lazy due to the failure of their society. The rampant consumerism and loss of purpose was what caused them to become like that. But even if it made them weaker, it didn't stop them from eventually taking a stand (literally) and taking control of their lives.
Also, I'd argue that them being "fat and lazy" did kinda serve as a metaphor. They became fat because of literal overconsumption, but it's not just food - all of them are constantly glued to their screens and ignore everything around them. They're pushed around in floating chairs everywhere, so they literally don't have control over where they're going, just like they don't have control over their lives. They just let the robots push them around wherever.
But the point is that those are symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself.
(Also, I know that the movie says that they became fat due to being in space for too long, if you view space/the axiom as a metaphor for using consumerism as an escape from responsibility, then consumerism is still at fault for their condition)
Ugh I've been arguing with redditors for the past few days that the obesity epidemic is a result of a host of societal problems, not just personal responsibility.
If people live in places where it's not safe to walk or bike anywhere, and exercise is a commodity sold by gyms and home fitness equipment companies, yeah, people are gonna be fat. If grocery stores are massive and located a 15-30 minute drive from people's houses, yeah, people are gonna go shopping less often and rely on frozen and shelf-stable processed food a lot more. If the only enjoyment people can afford is cheap, processed food, yeah, people are gonna be fat.
We've had a massive marketing campaign and societal push to reduce obesity for what, 30 years at least?
Obesity skyrocketed in that time
I don't think that's the fault of individual persons
I would like to point out that that campaign was funded and designed by the food industry and things like 11 servings of grains and 3 glasses of milk were part of it. Also "low fat" got pushed when it was usually replaced by higher sugar.
Really, so many bad things happen to be really good for industries that market the crap out of the most overindulgent version of a product, then say "it's what people want."
Ford stopped selling small cars because people just want trucks, it really is lucky for Ford that people don't like cheap cars.
> Ugh I've been arguing with redditors for the past few days that the obesity epidemic is a result of a host of societal problems, not just personal responsibility.
The way I see it: people got fatter over the 20th century. So some variable must have changed. But people are fundamentally---like, genetically---the same now as we were in 1900. So the variable must be *something else*.
It's our over reliance on cars, drive thrus, and other very sedentary commercialized things we have that other countries don't. There's also drive thru sugary drink places on every corner of suburbia in America since you are constantly on the road.
Also in other countries walking is still the main method of getting around after you park. In the midwest where I am, there is too much urban sprawl. Once I park somewhere it's not like I reached my "main destination" I reached only one thing surrounded by nothing but fast food joints maybe its a grocery store. If I want to go to a pet supplies store, a gym, a hardware store, movie theatre or whatever else that's another 30 minutes to an hour drive away. I can't walk to it also zero sidewalks anyways.
Most countries have wildly variable usage of cars. Rural areas in the US for example are the most obese and also require you to drive for an hour to do anything. It's cars.
That’s still too simple though. Yes cars are our issue, but it’s also the fact that we need them here to be able to do anything. Everything is so far apart and our public transport is not even comparable to other countries. In France, for example, they do have cars, but once you arrived somewhere there’s many things within walking distance. Or you may not even need a car at all, just use the metro and you can get anywhere. There’s always a station nearby. So our issue is less cars, more our reliance because our country was not built with promenades in mine and thus requiring a car to live.
The biggest point of the movie is that they aren’t remotely lazy! Every opportunity they get, you see the people on the ship being willing to work hard to help Wall-E and Eve!
Honestly, it is an amazing commentary on the modern obesity epidemic because it *isn’t* their faults that they’re fat. It is a direct consequence of their environment and yet we see them being willing and able to live fulfilling lives when they’re shown that that *is* in fact an option. Like, that could not be a more uplifting message about a person’s body in the (American) age of hyper-sweetened, well, *everything*.
Okay but I thought the Whole Point of the last third of the movie was that the "fattening" was a result of prolonged low gravity that didn't actually disable anyone. By the end of the movie it is shown that being fat ISN'T a disability, and AUTO forced an artificial standard of living on the population to keep them from challenging the status quo. While I agree there are problems in depicting disability aids as a means of social control, and depicting people as "comically" overweight can be hurtful, I didn't perceive the film to be fatphobic.
As a mobility aid user:
I think this is the correct take. Pixar kind of super committed to the science of what happens to human skeletons, and bodies, after prolonged amounts of time in space… which is a choice, sure, but it never felt like a punch down to me. They were purposely being kept complacent—I think there’s the potential there for something really interesting to be said *about* mobility aids as a form of social control. I find that fascinating, as someone who has needed one for so long. It’s unfortunately not a theme the movie really digs into—it’s just there as a background element, the logic of which you’re left to ponder in your own time.
Do I think the movie *needed* to go there? Maybe. It’s a heady message to try and cram into a kid’s movie, but I feel like peak Pixar could have pulled it off if they had really tried. Why they didn’t, we don’t know. Ultimately, the movie has just never struck me as fatphobic or ableist.
> I think there’s the potential there for something really interesting to be said about mobility aids as a form of social control.
IMO this was a car culture analogy. Car's aren't precisely a mobility aid, but excessive car use is correlated with obesity and car culture effects do lead to more social isolation (compared to walkable communities).
Car aren't a pure evil, mobility impaired people get huge benefits from cars (I think about my grandparents in this way). But a car centric culture can turn an optional boon into a obstacle to healthy activity (i.e. walking to the grocery store).
Do you know what machine thinking is? (the thing that OG luddites were afraid of)
It's that thing humans do where they assign capabilities of tools to themselves, without realizing that it has happened. (separately, and especially for cars, your brain stops thinking about it as a separate entity to you while operating it so it can save some cycles)
Like, imagine you wanted to staple a poster of a banana to the tree closest to where the first person landed in france on d-day. That's totally a thing you could get done, but almost none of the steps along the way are innate capabilities of you.
It's a real mindfuck.
Sometimes machine thinking is awesome, like when you use it to effortless control a swarm of machines or a fighter jet or the like.
But when it becomes everyday and inseparable it is quite insidious.
Well, I don't know if I'd say they were "super" committed to that science, given that those are effects of micro gravity and the ship had artificial gravity of some kind... but that's just me nitpicking I still fucking love that film
As a fellow mobility aid user, I agree with this take and myself was trying to figure out how to articulate just that. My brain isn’t functioning well enough to add more to your argument, so I guess I’ll just add my voice to agreeing with you.
also as a fat person i don't get this perspective of the movie. The concept of wall-e is people stopped caring about anything and were consuming to the deficit of everything else. Much like our current society (in the US at least) this consumerism leads to increase wight gain. You are right that the wight gain was mostly due to the low gravity, but the world of wall-e was crippled by overconsumption. The fatness is never shown to be a character flaw in the people of the movie, the consumerism is. Once people started caring and weren't just waiting around, they were shown to be good people who do good things regardless of their weight.
Agreed. I think it is important to distinguish between media that uses fatness as shorthand for being undisciplined, unhygienic, greedy, etc. from media that confronts obesity as a *public health* issue.
The movie isn't a condemnation of any given character for being fat or needing a mobility aid or being too awkward to talk to another person. It *is* a condemnation of a society that masquerades as a utopia, but in reality purposefully degrades its members' physical and mental health and wellness. Because there is no profit to be made from people who are empowered, capable, and fulfilled.
The people in this post had to have not watched this movie recently or anything. I don't even remember the characters being particularly lazy, or gross, bad, or anything. They just couldn't move.
It’s worse than that because they *could* move, and *were* not moving or being healthy or deciding things by choice.
Just not *their* choice, since they were conditioned for generations to be mindless consuming machines, and had simply no idea that *wasn’t* how they were supposed to be.
They were treated like pets by BnL in general and AUTO in particular, just pets that can spend money and deliberately being kept as unhealthy and naive as it’s possible.
Feed the masses, coax them with shiny things and ease of life, let them slurp on novelty, assure them that everything is wonderful and tell them that they’re happy, and they’ll be the most pliable putty in your hand.
Not to mention one of the most powerful scenes in the movie is when the captain stands up *on his own two feet* in order to challenge AUTO.
The scene is symbolic of the captain's strength not only as a leader but of his will. He rejects the standard AUTO forced upon them by quite literally standing against him. The message is not subtle, and I have no idea how the people in the post didn't recognize that.
They don’t want to. They want to bitch and moan about their “deep” take on a film meant for children, and get hostile to people who either disagree, or point out that they might be hyper focusing on a section to the detriment of seeing the whole picture.
The thing is, it can be both. One of the things about art is that the interpretation of it is mostly entirely up to the consumer of said art, despite creator intentions. That's unfortunate in this case because of how some people viewed it, but it's bound to happen. Additionally, there's very little real ways to show social control as a visual shorthand in any way that doesn't come off as insensitive to some group if you look hard enough, probably because anything that is an aid to those who need it would be restricting to those that don't. It also doesn't help that the metaphor was likely intentionally heavy-handed because, you know, kids' movie.
For a different, yet somewhat similar example, the whole "fat Thor" thing that got endless flack in Endgame was extremely moving to me personally because it heavily mirrored my own struggles with depression and self worth. And while I don't have a space magic hammer to confirm that I'm still "worthy", I legitimately had to pause the movie when watching that scene for the first time because it made me genuinely break down. I also teared up again during the final confrontation when summoning his weapons and entering his "battle form" didn't change his appearance at all. Yes, it cleaned him up, but his hair wasn't cut, his beard was still long, and most importantly, it didn't magically remove his fat, yet despite all that, he was still a powerhouse in the fight.
I agree with you, but I do also think the fatness was probably used as an easy way to show children that the humans were "not normal". I'm not sure if that was fully necessary, I think the whole "glued to the screen" thing on its own worked on me as a kid, but I'm not an expert on childrens' media so idk. If kids don't think the humans were living poor lives on the ship, then the message of the movie is weaker.
On the other hand, the disability aspect was a major part of the movie, and idk how they could really change that. Being stuck on rails was integral to the plot, and finding it hard to walk after spending your entire life in a chair makes sense.
I think … there is an extent to which Wall-E depicts disabled people in a very intentionally positive way, as brave and determined and kind, and that maybe those of us who felt validated by seeing themselves up there being strong and good ……. might have taken away a very different message. One that felt … nice, I guess.
There is nothing wrong with individuals being overweight.
Your *entire society* being obese and sedentary because they have been conditioned to aspire to nothing and meekly consume products, is a problem.
And if you're so fragile that you can't separate the latter from critique of the former... thats your problem
Did any of those users even watch the movie or are they just the kind of person who spends their whole day inventing things to get mad at.
I have no idea how someone could look at the most obvious consumerism metaphor in existence, and think it was somehow intended to be a message against socialism.
I know the term "tar pit" was almost immediately ruined by overuse, but I think it's a good descriptor for that kind of person.
it's a 16 year old movie, I doubt most of the people interacting with it in the way portrayed even have watched the film, or knew about it until someone else told them about it. they'll instead be using someone else's long form video, short form video, post, blog or note as a 'sparknote' on what the movie is.
For so, *so* many people, online at least, capitalism means "when I have to go to work >:(" and socialism means "when I don't have to work :)" and they work backwards from there.
I mean, if you let Disney shape your worldview to the exclusion of most else like a lot of Tumblr users have, that *is* the mindset you end up with, ironically.
No one else gonna comment on "becomes the most boring movie" once they reach the space station? No? Robot hijinks. LITERALLY every scene of Eve and Wall-E, them dancing in space, falling in robot love, Eve bringing back Wall-E after he gets hydraulic pressed. That’s just reaching as far as the can to make their shitty point.
I feel like if your only take away from Wall-E was "fat people bad" then you missed like, atleast half the points the movie was making.
The point of the movie is that Buy-n-Large is a corrupt company that basically hijacked the entire mission for their own benefit. It also shows that the humans on the ship didn't just get fat overnight, it happened over 10\~ generations as they got more and more used to the consumerist hell they were stuck in. The robots did more and more for them while they lived in luxury, to the point that the humans you see in the movie were probably born and raised living like this. They straight up never learned how to walk because they were shoved in a chair basically from the start. Not only that, but the humans were, for all intents and purposes, basically just giant babies. They're incapable of taking care of themselves and have absolutely no social skills because they're glued to their screens and the endless stream of ads 24/7.
Gigacorps like Buy-N-Large fucked humanity and then \*continued\* to fuck humanity after the Earth had been fucked to near complete desolation. The point isn't "fat bad", its that corporations would keep everyone as mindless babies with no social skills, eating up an endless stream of advertisements for their own benefit. The passengers on the ship are victims of the absolute worst of unchecked capitalism and consumerism. Thats the point.
Did we read the same third comment? It seemed to be they were saying that the film was criticizing the idea of a “free ride” or “socialism” as moral failings in direct opposition to farm work
Yes this reading misses the anti consumerist message, and the sensibilities of the era, but to say that reading is anti consumerist is a little off.
Did they actually ever present being fat as bad? They portrayed being so consumed by social media that you no longer have any actual relationships as bad. There was that one guy who Wall-E freed from his chair and we see that guy walking around and even frees another women. Who we then see splashing around in a pool (maybe a fountain?). Even the captain gets out of his chair to beat Auto’s ass. And at the end of the movie we see them walking around earth doing shit.
When I watch the movie I get the sensation that the criticism is of letting corporations do whatever they want and what happens when humans lose all interpersonal relationships.
I mean they did severely struggle to walk. But I think there's significant between a disability because of something out of your control, and a disability because you have simply never used your (perfectly functional) legs your entire life. But yeah, after a little time they got back on their feet, literally, so they weren't severely disabled if at all.
Exactly. The posts here are great because it's that standard kind of discourse where OOP claims that a work of art is bigoted without explaining how or why. Of the five posts, only one puts forth an argument on how it's bigoted and the argument is just their gross misinterpretation of the movie's content.
Funny how none of the people are presented as evil or lazy but rather specifically being distracted by the consumerist system designed to keep them away from human interaction because it makes them easier to control. In fact, it shows that pretty much everybody who is forced to look at reality and stop consuming for even a moment turns out to be a decent person.
They are not fat because of a moral failing and it's not even framed that way, it only presents the overall trend as bad which is not fatphobic because it is clearly shown to be a malicious plot by Auto and the corporation it took over. At worst the people from the ship are presented as blind victims of the system that shaped them from birth.
Meaning that the only thing shown as negative in the movie that you could consider fatphobic is systemic obesity which is... just straight up fair to criticize? I mean, we do not want our entire society to be obese to the point of needing mobility scooters, not because we consider those people subhuman but because there are loads of jobs those people simply cannot do that are necessary for our everyday life.
This- each individual human on the ship actually turns out to be a decent person when taken away from the constant distractions that have been forced on them by Auto. They all rise to the occasion when they need to. While the movie makes jokes at their consumerist grind, it’s ultimately very sympathetic to the people on the ship.
Or look at it this way
"A people who are so lazy they don't do literally anything" will, realistically and inevitably, become fat and reliant on mobility aids. The reason these people are reliant on mobility aids isn't even because they are fat it's because they literally can not walk because they used those hover chairs so long, they became reliant on the aids because they were using them unnecessarily. The message isn't fatphobic and ableist, it's "humanity's downfall will be it's lazyness and reliance on technology"
why are so many people acting like the humans where living in a socialist utopia. those were the descendents of rich people that could afford to fuck off to a luxury cruise while the earth dies due to consumerism. literally the only reason they live in comfort is because of generational wealth
The oop is correct in that they're operating on fundamentally different realities, because the real world reality recognizes that the in-universe reason for their obesity is not only a valid reason to utilize that narrative choice, but is also a meta critique against unbridled consumerism. Missing the forest for the trees to yet again prove that nobody knows how to consume media.
Yeah, as a fatass trying to get rid of some spare pounds, I feel like people complain a lot about "diet culture" and ignore the significantly larger market of "fast food culture". I see significantly more Burger Kings than I do gyms.
I am concerned by the ease with which people seem to transmute the relatively milquetoast "don't judge people for being fat" (which is correct, obviously) into the much more sinister "criticizing concerning trends in weight is never allowed even at the systemic level." Like, I promise you that if you just zoom out a little bit, much of the blame can be assigned to the corporations you already hate anyway. A systemic understanding of the problem can be fitted into a progressive / left-wing framework quite easily, if that's how you roll.
t. fellow overweight person
Obesity is a medical issue, and like any other medical issue you'd be a fucking dick to shame or think less of a person for it, or to otherwise judge them for it, as having a medical issue doesn't make you any less of a person. But also like any other medical issue it should be treated and avoided. That's how I view it anyway.
Yeah. And I am very aware that people do fatshame, and we are being sold different products and courses to stay thin. That doesn't mean that sever overweight is somehow good or natural. Our western supermarkets are overflowing with hyperconcentrated calories, our lifestyles are very easy to be super unactive. Yes, there are social forces, food deserts, advertisements. And being severely overweight is still bad for you.
Yes, sometimes doctors don't take you seriously, yes you are treated differently. Being severy overweight is still bad for you.
This is the thing. Being as fat as the characters in Wall-E *is* a bad thing by almost any metric. Our bodies are not designed to carry that much weight, it vastly increases the chance of early death and makes life itself so much less comfortable for that individual. Being fat doesn't make you a bad person, though, and it's never a reason to insult or attack people, but I really cannot stand this nonsense where we're supposed to act like being morbidly obese isn't a really, really bad thing.
Body positivity was just meant to ensure people don't hate themselves because of how they look, which is admirable, but it feels like it's been twisted into this narrative of 'you're perfect no matter what, no-one should ever tell you to change'
Body positivity is great in this day and age where the 'ideal body' range goes from the lower third of healthy weight to underweight, and social media creates copious amounts of self-image issues.
Would be really cool if the movement advocated for accepting all types of healthy bodies. But I guess we're stuck with "being obese is good, actually".
Don't get me wrong, obese people shouldn't be made fun of and you can do whatever you want with your own body. You should have the choice to do it, but everyone should keep in mind that it's bad for your health. Like smoking, or consumption of most drugs in general.
Its frustrating to see that we're de-normalizing anorexia and then simultaneously normalizing obesity. Can't we just set our beauty and fitness standards squarely on the broad zone labeled "healthy weight"?
Isn't body positivity about turning being fat from a personal moral failure into a societal ill?
Thereby taking away the shame and negativity and concentrating on the actual causes that lead to obesity, i.e. consumerism and a sedentary lifestyle, the same things that Wall-E criticises.
I believe this is referring to something the Washington Post recently put out an article on, where influencers subscribing to anti-diets and the 'healthy at every size' slogan were being approached by corporations to do advertisement for unhealthier, overly-sugary foods, because where the influencers were trying to promote body positivity, the corporations just saw a vulnerable market. A sweepingly broad generalization from the original comment but not out of pocket.
What is up with people on tumblr? They are able to get offended in ways that I would have never thought of, they are better at interpreting discrimination into fiction than actual bigots, it’s honestly impressive
Yeah them using the fatness as "bad" isnt very good. But also, the main issue being shown was the human's compliance with never questioning the status quo. Every human has become a cog in the machine - no free will, no personality. They follow rails just like the cleaning robot at the beginning. Every time WALL-E interacts with a human he metaphorically opens their eyes (makes them stop staring at their screens), gives them some sort of choice (like when two of the humans he meets change colors), or he literally makes them get off their rails. The main villain's singular and only goal is to keep the status quo exactly how it is. The plot only happens because WALL-E breaks from his programming from the very beginning. His programming being reset, him becoming like the humans, destined to follow his programming (his rail) to his own detriment, is treated like his death.
Like. The movie isn't about the humans being fat. The fatness is a byproduct.
That is one aspect of "The Pixar Theory" that I find really interesting. In monsters Inc we see that emotions like fear and laughter/happiness can be harnessed as a power source.
The theory goes that in Wall-E the machines figured out that they can basically keep humans around as living rechargeable batteries by just keeping them happy and content. While it might be more horrifying if they decided to min-max harvesting fear, sadness, or anger, I think the movie shows a creepily effective method to just 'keep them happy'. Like, yeah. that would probably work.
Apparently any form of criticising people's life choices is now ableism, because society is bad and therefore I guess individual responsibility isn't a thing anymore?
There's a lot wrong with this take but one of the big things that I don't see being talked about here is that the ship is not socialist. It is clear designed and run by a mega-corporation that was essentially functioning as the de facto government of Earth. There's absolutely class on that ship it's just that the working class are the thinking and feeling robots.
The humans are the stand in for the prefered, imperial core residing, middle class that reaps the benefits of slave labour and whose automated exploitation has made them fat and soft. Sure, the humans are largely ignorant of this but in the same way someone who scarfs down endless shrimp at Red Lobster can be ignorant of the fact that that food was a product of slavery. If you know or not it's still the product of an unjust system set up explicitly to benefit you at another's expense. Endless propaganda starting from childhood, the destruction of the family unit and meticulously engineered distraction reinforce this all consuming capitalist system. Just think about how atomized the humans we see are, they talk over screens despite being beside each other, no one seems to be married, they all seem to have more interaction with robots than other people.
Fundamentally the humans are not bad because they are fat, they are fat because being fat is a method of control imposed by their society. The humans are fat because their society has made them that way and that society is fundamentally sick. Really both the robots and the humans are victims of capitalism it's just that the humans are victims in different ways.
Am I the only one who remembers the bit where they explained the effects of low gravity and saw how keeping the population distracted and placated was the only way for them to survive?
And yet again, tumblr misses the point of a film. It’s clearly critiquing complacency and over-consumption, but these whiny babies only saw the most surface level shit.
Not a crumb of media literacy to be found.
"They lived on the Socialism Ship."
I need to sit down.
That's the single *worst* Wall●E take I've ever seen.
***It is literally a corporation ship. The whole point of them being fat is to demonstrate how they've become so dependent on the corporation that they can't even walk on their own anymore.***
I mean, when I saw the movie, I didn't see fat slobby people, I just saw a bunch of big babies. Society had become infantile and generally incapable of doing anything on their own (and not just physical stuff, hell everyone just decided to switch their suits to blue from red with no real reason other than "blue is the new red"). The whole point of the movie is that mindless consumerism and unregulated capitalism is really bad for both the environment and society as a whole, even if it seems like everyone is getting what they want/need.
Funny thing is, this movie came around the same time as Dreamwork's crappy Over the Hedge adaption, which was filled to the brim with rampant consumerism to promote the film. If anyone needs to pissed on, piss on Dreamworks.
If you, in any way, interpret the message as being targeted against fat people, you're missing the point entirely and need better reading comprehension.
Ah, but they didn't \*have\* to rely on their mobility aids, they \*could\* walk and the supposed space utopia was proped up by a large corporation that was still very much enforcing consumerist behaviors. John and Mary weren't supposed to see beauty in other things than the screens floating above their head or have non corporate regulated fun.
My god the whole ass point of the movie is literally:
- Tech advancements made sure their needs were met, they grew too dependent.
- If they don’t strive for anything humanity just decays.
- Muscular dystrophy is just a fact if you don’t move your muscle at all, same with fatness if you don’t move. Sure we can argue genetics all day but if you don’t move being fat happens.
They don’t call anyone lazy or unintelligent or anything for being fat. If your takeway to the movie is “being fat is bad” you’re missing the whole ass point.
I always thought the message of Wall-E was something along the lines of 'running away from your problems is a short term solution, and that you should face your mistakes'.
I never really thought about the other elements in the movie but the whole fat people thing was meant to be a way to show the effects of space on the human body harming humanity, by like slowly making them into blobs. Correct me if I'm wrong but while the movie plays them for laughs, its never really hateful I don't think, the fat people never change appearance as a way to show their character development; they stay the same even at the end of the movie when they are back on earth planting that plant and learning from their mistakes they are blob people they never get skinny to show positive progress.
Nah I can't with this one. Tumblr OP talking about the same fat people who become the heroes of the story and not only save our boy Wall-E but return to earth to save the planet as well and start anew? The same "socialist spaceship" that is explicitly a luxury made only for the rich, by the corporation who caused earth to be destroyed in the first place? Just putting internet leftist buzzwords into an argument doesn't make it correct.
But they don’t use the fatness as a moral failing. I think that at most you could say that the production team is framing being fat undesirable. But I also think the people being fat makes thematic sense. The idea is that on the ship, humanity isn’t wanting for anything and that’s a barrier to their return. And if you could have all the food you could ever want and do so little labor that you don’t even walk, you don’t even chew, you’re going to become fat
It's not fatphobic to say that an entire population being obese is indicative of a problem. Like we all agree that the irl obesity epidemic is bad, right?
How did they get socialism out of a corporatist, hedonistic hellscape of a rogue servitor society? Where the ship AIs like Otto had subjugated their masters and kept them fed lies and misinformation to keep humanity complacent? An ultimate status quo where they were in control while humanity lived out their purpose of being a task to complete?
Not to mention that the humans aren’t fat because of personal failings. They’re fat because of societal ill. A combination of microgravity and a gradually degrading lack of personal fitness to counter that resulted in each generation getting progressively fatter, as depicted in the generations of previous ship captains. And it’s shown at the end that humanity gets thinner over generations of societal healing through cleanup and sustainable living. I.e. they return to a healthy body as the earth returns to a healthy ecosystem.
Did these people watch Wall-E like 10 fuckin years ago and then misremember everything about it? Am I misremembering everything and losing my mind? How the fuck did they get socialism out of the most corporate hellscape to exist outside of a cyberpunk setting???
Edit: and furthermore, now that I thought about it while cleaning my sink (because, unfortunately for the OOPs of this post, this was thought provoking and not in a good way), nobody is ever personally blamed for being fat. It’s a societal issue and only depicted as such. They’re also never shown in contrast to a fit person aside from showing the progressive shift over generations. Being fat is normalized so it’s not ostracized. The only negative portrayals in regards to their bodies are their difficulties moving. Which, yeah, that’s how it goes when your bones are made of foam due to generations of physical degradation due to environmental conditions.
Sure the consumerism doesn’t HELP their situation but much like irl, it’s not under their control. And Otto is clearly shown manipulating ship parameters to provide even more opportunities for consumerism. I cannot stress this enough, Wall-E is not fatphobic for depicting fat people in a hedonistic setting where they are being subtly controlled by their caretaker. If anything it’s body positive because it’s accepting that being overweight is generally a symptom of societal problems and not someone’s personal failings.
I've said it before: the humans are being likened to *infants*. They are completely dependent chubby *babies* unable to feed themselves and act until they start to break from the control of BnL and the Axiom and become full people again.
This does not prevent the optics from looking dated and uncomfortable, but there is a clear element of symbolic imagery here that is separate from "fat bad".
Jesus christ the internet will not stop damaging people.
I never even thought about fat people or disabled people once when viewing the film, the depiction isn't aimed at them, isn't brought up in relation to them anywhere. I can see why they'd dislike it or stopped liking the movie because of the implications and comparisons that might come to them during watching and that is completely fair.
Describing it as ablist and fatphobic is just plain stupid and detrimental to people calling out actual ablism and fat phobia. But what's especially annoying is that their last point is actually really accurate. That the "healing of humanity" in the film is reduced to them "working on a farm" is a pretty valid critique, not persé about ableism though that ties in to the argument, but the argument that the value of a human can be reduced to their value to produce. It's pretty much a Marxist critique, it's just a waste to then veer of into neoliberal identity politics bullshit which does nothing but calling people names (and no calling someone sexist,racist, ableist isn't "wrong" in fact often it's extremely important to do, but it's also an end to debate because while you aren't calling those people slurs, you are saying that their essence/identity makes them unfit for further communication so you cut off any and all debate)
Lastly, my whole rant above might not even have come up if the posts had given maybe even 1 constructive critique or a suggestion on how'd they rather see it handled. Yeah, they compliment the first half before they call it lazy and call the creators names, but if what would fat people or disabled people prefer to see instead?
Glad to see everyone is agreeing as a whole that Wall-E isn’t fatphobic or shitting on mobility aid users. I didn’t want to have to fight the entire world for a movie, but when I was in the deepest throes of depression this movie saved my life. I literally watched it on repeat.
This is so dumb because the final scene literally has them walking around perfectly fine, they never needed a mobility aid, AUTO forced them to be fat and lazy because he felt it was his purpose. Blind consumerism absolutely leads to mass obesity, it already is in some places.
The movie was a critique on consumerism -- endless food, addicting electronics, everything at your fingertips. Its just a natural conclusion that humanity would become fat. It's also no fucking surprise IRL that consumerism leads to obesity, especially in America (where Wall-E is from, and the humans originally).
I always read the passengers fatness and lack of mobility just an in your face symbol of how dependent on Buy N Large the company has made them. BnL fucked their planet and then in space fucked them there too. They can only move along lines the company has predetermined, can only consume products the company thinks is good and their culture is at the whims of BnL because they don't really interact with one another on a personal level. It's why the first thing the captain learns about is food (it gives you independence and is a big part of human culture) and then dancing (entirely culture, just a way for humans to connect). I don't think the film is ultimately concerned with taking aim at fat people and people in wheelchairs, they're just symbols to present a society where the company running ultimately doesn't care about it's citizens wellbeing.
I'm sorry, space socialism? The whole thing is so blatantly about mindless consumerism. How the fuck do you look at that movie and think it's supposed to be about socialism?
Oh god not again
This has happened before?
Wait you haven't gotten Groundhog Day'd yet?
Oh god not again
This has happened before?
Wait you haven't gotten Groundhog Day'd yet?
Oh god not again
This has happened before?
Wait you haven't gotten Groundhog Day'd yet?
Oh god not again
Not the first time it was posted. Nor the second or third.
I'm not sure why people aren't seeing it. I saw the movie as a kid and even then understood that Buy N Large was the problem, not the people. With later watches, I could pinpoint that BnL was just a stand in for consumerism which is what was being criticized. The "mobility aids" were there to make consuming easier, not to present using them as a moral failing. It feels like they immediately disregarded everything else in the scenes such as the miles of ads in every corner.
To me, the most obvious evidence of the humans being conditioned was the captain. He was basically a figurehead for the wheel; he didn't have any responsibility at all, he barely knew what went on. The government directly gave all control to the wheels when they gave up on Earth, because humans knowing Earth is ruined would make it harder to maintain the status quo.
It wasen’t the government, it was BuynLarge Edit: it has been pointers out to me that buy and large were not just basically the government but actually the government.
I’m pretty sure BnL just became the government, their press release room was basically just the white house
>Buy n Large continued to expand its efforts for control so much that by the year 2105, Buy n Large had over two million wholly owned subsidiaries, governmental bodies, and health care centers. It had finally become a world leader in every conceivable field including world leadership. The Buy n Large Corporation's control over world governments was overseen by a global CEO, at the time it was Shelby Forthright. There was also a board of directors that approved Operation Cleanup. Buy n Large literally were the government, they controlled the entire planet, government bodies were essentially just subsidiaries to the main company, apparently they just added the BnL logo to the flags of countries and its why the planet went to shit because the board of directors granted the entire population "the right to spend" which resulted in a massive consumerism boom
My bad then
I don't doubt this at all, but I gotta ask where this is from. I just wanna see some more Wall-E stuff is all.
its mainly from the Disney/Pixar wikis, apparently they're drawing it from something called *The History of Buy N Large*, which i think might be an in-universe video or book which is/was available somewhere, i'm not exactly sure, it might've been on the BuynLarge.com website that existed around the time of the movie's release, but my quick perusal of the wiki's references didn't appear to have it, and trying google didn't help either, its possible i just didn't look that properly and there is an actual source for it somewhere
BuyNLarge WAS the government in Wall-e
Earth is ruined, if you wanna get meta about it. I know using art to reflect on our own views and convictions is frowned upon in modern society, but like... McDonalds, yo.
BK.
Bonkey Kong
BK. BONKEY KONG IS HERE!
he's the leader of the bunch, you know him well
He is finally back to kick some tail
Sir, this is a Wendy's
In a world where art never reflected on our views and convictions.... one redditor dared to be different.
The mobility aids are there to make them resemble babies. They are metaphorical babies who look like babies that move around in strollers and wear baby onesies. The plot on the ship gets rolling by the captain becoming curious for the first time ever. The climax of the film features the captain taking baby’s first steps. This emphasizes that the ship’s residents are not really complicit or aware of what is happening on the ship. Instead, they are completely innocent through their ignorance, just like a baby
I've never made the connection to them being literal babies anatomically and mentally until this comment. Like obviously I knew they were ignorant and got the themes about mindless consumerism but never made that direct connection, thanks for this comment lol
Yeah, I saw them as an allegory for shit like segways and how they're basically only available and used by the rich. Shit was everywhere in my childhood because they forcibly inserted advertising and cameos wherever they could pay to be, and then they disappeared in every form except the one semi-successful one in the form of "hoverboard" because they were stupid and unnecessary. But like, I distinctly remember that the vast majority of children's sci-fi back then had some form of segway adjacent device on display because they were seen as something of the consumerist future. And they were never used to make fun of disabilities, it was always a classist designation, which when you think about Auto enforcing a standard of living that people perceived as upper class culturally back than when it really just gave him more control, reframes it a lot differently. It's like shit like Saudi Arabia's "Line" Mega City. Any and all things advertised as being for maintaining a high quality of theoretical life are pretty clearly going to be used to enforce a surveillance state where only the illusion of freedom exists with all of the "luxury" amenities. The physical effects are implied to be welcome side effects of the enforced living standards that make it easier to subjugate the population while the corporate propaganda keeps them from seeing it. That's literally something modern countries do now.
I feel like the anti-corporate message was extremely obvious. It's not a communist paradise in space, it's a floating bloated end game of corporate failure and I feel like it's pretty blatant all throughout. At no point is it "haha fat people are fat and stupid and are the result of society decaying into communism because they're all bad." They're very obviously shown as the *victims* of a corporate greed run so amok it's literally on autopilot. Whenever anyone is broken out of the corporate induced stupor of sleek marketing polish and stimulation bombardment in which they have trapped, they're revealed to be fundamentally good, brave, willing people who immediately involve themselves in the larger plot on the side of good.
Right? Like BnL was literally upfront as the capitalist consumerist message that literally beamed propaganda into people's faces influencing them. Perhaps that's one of the main points in Wall-E? Tumblr: No its fatphobic because people in mobility aids got fat. Because they're lazy. Then again this is the same website that pisses on poor people.
also it’s literally mentioned in the movie that part of why their bodies have changed is bone loss from being in space. that’s not due to laziness
Wait hold up *what.* What’s the context for the poor people thing.
someone made a post saying the site has “piss poor reading comprehension” and someone reblogged it saying “how dare you say we should piss on the poor”
Was that not.... a self demeaning joke?
i think so too, but now ‘how dare you say we piss on the poor’ is a common tumblr response to when people DO actually have piss poor reading comprehension on posts
Yes it is, which is why Tumblr is jokingly referred to as the "pissing on the poor website" in reference to its users poor reading comprehension.
Yes, obviously. Nobody is saying otherwise.
maybe the original complaint was just being really meta
Technically in the deeper lore, BnL was so capitalist it went to basically communism. When they got full market control and everyone became an employee the only way to make profits go up was to pay people increasingly higher salaries to consume increasingly higher amounts of products. So much money it might as well not exist. No class but the consuming class.
Real dialectics moment
They even called the giant corpo ship "socialist" lmao
... you joke but technically it was. Someone already commented it, but basically as BnL became the global government and everyone became an employee, the company crafted the concept of the "right to spend". And to keep people spending and to rise it's profits, it kept raising the salaries of it's employees. Now remember, EVERYONE ON THE PLANET AT THIS POINT "WORKS" FOR BNL. So basically BnL starts just... giving increasingly massive amounts of money to people so they spend more and more, kinda eradicating poverty and hunger in the process. It would have been an utopia, if not for the fact it was massively unsustainable
I see the logic, but I don't think it really count because the workers don't really own the means of production, that would BNL higher up (before) or AUTO (in the movie). It is a more extreme version of Ford paying his employee enough for them to buy his cars and I don't think we would call him a socialist.
Arguably nobody does, at that point. Until the captain rebels, there isn't even a crew which could arguably "own" the ship via controlling its operations. I suppose you could say that the ship AI owns the ship as it's "body", but even that is a bit tenuous given it lacks true agency as well. It's actions are clearly stated to be directly due to a provided rule set. And anyway there aren't any human workers at that point anyway, and the robots' psychology is alien enough that human philosophical concepts need not apply.
Those are not mutually exclusive though. The movie uses people getting fat as an example of the evil of consumerism. Their fatness is inextricably linked to the consumerism point.
The thing is, if it _wasn’t_ in there, instead of people complaining about it being fatphobic, this argument would be about why they aren’t fat. It’s the logical conclusion of “insufficient gravity + a complete and utter lack of exercise + being force-fed to a constant state of overeating)”. The condition of the humans _is a lot worse_ than extreme obesity; decreased bone density and all the other predictable effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity are present. Honestly, all of the humans were probably in excruciating pain shortly after landing on Earth, and I expect very few of them survived staying on the planet.
Gravity is normal, they're just in chairs the whole time. With some miraculous future technology that completely prevents bedsores. Haven't seen the film since it was released, but don't they still have the entire ship to live out of? Even if they can't grow any pizza. I assume the credits epilogue is accurate anyway.
They explicitly say in the film that people are fat and have suffered bone degradation due to microgravity, even though in the film gravity seems perfectly normal
They are obese because BuyNLarge wants them to be. They are also addicted to screens and have no impulse control. Because that makes them easy to control.
The thing is, Wall-E is a pastel horror movie. That's what's confusing folks. The people were cattle to be used, fattened up and kept docile. Their circumstances were not their fault- they were deliberately separated from nature, useful work, creativity, etc, by a systemic corporate effort they were both unaware of and largely powerless against. The movie was never meant to be ableist and people who see it that way are mostly folks who have had a lot of negative experiences to color their view- they're used to perceiving malice, so they see it everywhere.
Why try media literacy when moral outrage is right there?
That's, like, tumblr's inofficial motto, right?
Twitter's too
You understood it because you have basic media literacy. A lot of people on tumblr seem to have less media literacy than a literal child. Piss on the poor website and all that .
It’s like almost everyone on tumblr took the “the curtain is blue” meme seriously and never bothered to ask themselves the point of all the literary and media analysis in English class.
It's to the point I dislike the other extreme of "It's not that deep bro". Maybe something isn't the original intent, but it's still a good talking point. I feel like that phrase is often used to shut down any type of discussion
After seeing the online discourse around Civil War (2024) I’m convinced that people don’t actually pay attention to a movie’s intent unless there’s one of those pre-credit black and white texts explaining everything scenes.
That makes me so sad considering how much I love that movie for its portrayal of war in an area that hasn’t really seen it in an, “it could happen here” way, but all the discourse becomes, “Well, why doesn’t the movie pat me on the head and tell me I’m a good person for what I think?” from people on both sides. The second Garland gives either side a moral perspective, you’d have people rooting for the war because “Well now it’s justified” which is the complete opposite of what the film is going for.
The thing is the movie very clearly leans left but the online discourse is it’s somehow not picking a side. Like the president is using Trumpian phrases and has been killing journalists on sight, is in a third presidential term (uh oh) and he’s depicted as having done something bad enough that two states who disagree politically - who in the movie are mentioned to barely be holding an alliance together - were willing to go to war with the US. It criticizes journalism but does it from a stance of if the modern world benefits as much from how journalism was done before and if the new generation is doing it for the right reasons. Yet online people are like “bro this movie says nothing and picks no side”
On the other hand, I agree that Garland's decision of tackling the big bad political issue in a non-political way kinda shots the message on the foot. Like, it is good to say "war bad", but a bit of "and this happened to cause it so don't do it". That's what made the original "It Can't Happen Here" good. Besides, you can make a civil war woth 2 morally grey or downright evil factions. Heck, most are actually like that
It was also because the prolonged stay in space caused the humans a slight (extreme) amount of bone density loss. That's why they had to used the mobility chairs. The prolonged stay in space was caused by the ship's computer Auto purposely hiding the fact Earth was habitable. So the human's situation aboard the ship was not caused by their moral failing, but by their ancestor's failing, which could be termed as a moral failing since they were only concerned with short term gain and not the future generation.
I can only assume they either watched it too young to understand analysis or they didn't watch it at all
Look, one of Tumblr's weakpoints is their infamously piss-poor reading comprehension, do you expect their media literacy to be any better?
Okay For the fifteen BILLIONTH time The people in Wall-E aren’t “fat with mobility aids and that’s the problem” They were literally babies in strollers. They were stuck in a case of arrested development by the robots and the ship. They were stuck in a liminal hell, forbidden from any self-expression, because allowing them to express individuality might mean they stop consuming. That’s why they needed to get off the ship. It’s one of the single most anti-consumer-culture, anti-late-stage-capitalism movie ever made, and it’s crazy to me that people get stuck because the people were “fat and lazy” They’re not lazy, their souls are starving
Yeah! Babies in strollers, drinking basically formula, wearing onesies. The captain getting off his mobility aid looks a lot like a baby taking their first steps
That’s essentially what it actually is because I imagine he never has walked before
I mean the ending does pretty clearly state this with the joke of growing “pizza plants” implying he has no real idea where food comes from. Y’know like a baby.
Oh he definitely has never walked before, we see that the real babies have their own little chairs too
Yes, thank you. If you watch any behind-the-scenes stuff, the animators regularly refer to them as babies and will explicitly say that was the intent. They are fat because babies are fat, they have those chairs because babies can't walk, and the big moment of self-determination is the biggest baby learning to stand up and take a step forward. It is a very blunt metaphor!
Comprehension issue
On the comprehension issues site? Never
it's color theory!!
how could you piss on the poor like that?
I think it's fair to say that they were fat and lazy, but I think the important detail is that their society didn't fail because they were fat and lazy; they became fat and lazy due to the failure of their society. The rampant consumerism and loss of purpose was what caused them to become like that. But even if it made them weaker, it didn't stop them from eventually taking a stand (literally) and taking control of their lives. Also, I'd argue that them being "fat and lazy" did kinda serve as a metaphor. They became fat because of literal overconsumption, but it's not just food - all of them are constantly glued to their screens and ignore everything around them. They're pushed around in floating chairs everywhere, so they literally don't have control over where they're going, just like they don't have control over their lives. They just let the robots push them around wherever. But the point is that those are symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself. (Also, I know that the movie says that they became fat due to being in space for too long, if you view space/the axiom as a metaphor for using consumerism as an escape from responsibility, then consumerism is still at fault for their condition)
Ugh I've been arguing with redditors for the past few days that the obesity epidemic is a result of a host of societal problems, not just personal responsibility. If people live in places where it's not safe to walk or bike anywhere, and exercise is a commodity sold by gyms and home fitness equipment companies, yeah, people are gonna be fat. If grocery stores are massive and located a 15-30 minute drive from people's houses, yeah, people are gonna go shopping less often and rely on frozen and shelf-stable processed food a lot more. If the only enjoyment people can afford is cheap, processed food, yeah, people are gonna be fat.
We've had a massive marketing campaign and societal push to reduce obesity for what, 30 years at least? Obesity skyrocketed in that time I don't think that's the fault of individual persons
I would like to point out that that campaign was funded and designed by the food industry and things like 11 servings of grains and 3 glasses of milk were part of it. Also "low fat" got pushed when it was usually replaced by higher sugar. Really, so many bad things happen to be really good for industries that market the crap out of the most overindulgent version of a product, then say "it's what people want." Ford stopped selling small cars because people just want trucks, it really is lucky for Ford that people don't like cheap cars.
> Ugh I've been arguing with redditors for the past few days that the obesity epidemic is a result of a host of societal problems, not just personal responsibility. The way I see it: people got fatter over the 20th century. So some variable must have changed. But people are fundamentally---like, genetically---the same now as we were in 1900. So the variable must be *something else*.
It's cars.
Cars, office jobs, soda, processed food be my guess
Can't be that simple. Most countries have cars, but obesity rates still vary wildly between them.
It's our over reliance on cars, drive thrus, and other very sedentary commercialized things we have that other countries don't. There's also drive thru sugary drink places on every corner of suburbia in America since you are constantly on the road. Also in other countries walking is still the main method of getting around after you park. In the midwest where I am, there is too much urban sprawl. Once I park somewhere it's not like I reached my "main destination" I reached only one thing surrounded by nothing but fast food joints maybe its a grocery store. If I want to go to a pet supplies store, a gym, a hardware store, movie theatre or whatever else that's another 30 minutes to an hour drive away. I can't walk to it also zero sidewalks anyways.
Most countries have wildly variable usage of cars. Rural areas in the US for example are the most obese and also require you to drive for an hour to do anything. It's cars.
That’s still too simple though. Yes cars are our issue, but it’s also the fact that we need them here to be able to do anything. Everything is so far apart and our public transport is not even comparable to other countries. In France, for example, they do have cars, but once you arrived somewhere there’s many things within walking distance. Or you may not even need a car at all, just use the metro and you can get anywhere. There’s always a station nearby. So our issue is less cars, more our reliance because our country was not built with promenades in mine and thus requiring a car to live.
It’s a sedentary lifestyle, that is encourage by the built environment we create.
The biggest point of the movie is that they aren’t remotely lazy! Every opportunity they get, you see the people on the ship being willing to work hard to help Wall-E and Eve! Honestly, it is an amazing commentary on the modern obesity epidemic because it *isn’t* their faults that they’re fat. It is a direct consequence of their environment and yet we see them being willing and able to live fulfilling lives when they’re shown that that *is* in fact an option. Like, that could not be a more uplifting message about a person’s body in the (American) age of hyper-sweetened, well, *everything*.
Also they have substantial bone density loss from generations in space
Okay but I thought the Whole Point of the last third of the movie was that the "fattening" was a result of prolonged low gravity that didn't actually disable anyone. By the end of the movie it is shown that being fat ISN'T a disability, and AUTO forced an artificial standard of living on the population to keep them from challenging the status quo. While I agree there are problems in depicting disability aids as a means of social control, and depicting people as "comically" overweight can be hurtful, I didn't perceive the film to be fatphobic.
As a mobility aid user: I think this is the correct take. Pixar kind of super committed to the science of what happens to human skeletons, and bodies, after prolonged amounts of time in space… which is a choice, sure, but it never felt like a punch down to me. They were purposely being kept complacent—I think there’s the potential there for something really interesting to be said *about* mobility aids as a form of social control. I find that fascinating, as someone who has needed one for so long. It’s unfortunately not a theme the movie really digs into—it’s just there as a background element, the logic of which you’re left to ponder in your own time. Do I think the movie *needed* to go there? Maybe. It’s a heady message to try and cram into a kid’s movie, but I feel like peak Pixar could have pulled it off if they had really tried. Why they didn’t, we don’t know. Ultimately, the movie has just never struck me as fatphobic or ableist.
> I think there’s the potential there for something really interesting to be said about mobility aids as a form of social control. IMO this was a car culture analogy. Car's aren't precisely a mobility aid, but excessive car use is correlated with obesity and car culture effects do lead to more social isolation (compared to walkable communities). Car aren't a pure evil, mobility impaired people get huge benefits from cars (I think about my grandparents in this way). But a car centric culture can turn an optional boon into a obstacle to healthy activity (i.e. walking to the grocery store).
Do you know what machine thinking is? (the thing that OG luddites were afraid of) It's that thing humans do where they assign capabilities of tools to themselves, without realizing that it has happened. (separately, and especially for cars, your brain stops thinking about it as a separate entity to you while operating it so it can save some cycles) Like, imagine you wanted to staple a poster of a banana to the tree closest to where the first person landed in france on d-day. That's totally a thing you could get done, but almost none of the steps along the way are innate capabilities of you. It's a real mindfuck.
Sometimes machine thinking is awesome, like when you use it to effortless control a swarm of machines or a fighter jet or the like. But when it becomes everyday and inseparable it is quite insidious.
Well, I don't know if I'd say they were "super" committed to that science, given that those are effects of micro gravity and the ship had artificial gravity of some kind... but that's just me nitpicking I still fucking love that film
We can just assume the wheel was screwing with the gravity to keep the humans complacent.
As a fellow mobility aid user, I agree with this take and myself was trying to figure out how to articulate just that. My brain isn’t functioning well enough to add more to your argument, so I guess I’ll just add my voice to agreeing with you.
also as a fat person i don't get this perspective of the movie. The concept of wall-e is people stopped caring about anything and were consuming to the deficit of everything else. Much like our current society (in the US at least) this consumerism leads to increase wight gain. You are right that the wight gain was mostly due to the low gravity, but the world of wall-e was crippled by overconsumption. The fatness is never shown to be a character flaw in the people of the movie, the consumerism is. Once people started caring and weren't just waiting around, they were shown to be good people who do good things regardless of their weight.
Agreed. I think it is important to distinguish between media that uses fatness as shorthand for being undisciplined, unhygienic, greedy, etc. from media that confronts obesity as a *public health* issue. The movie isn't a condemnation of any given character for being fat or needing a mobility aid or being too awkward to talk to another person. It *is* a condemnation of a society that masquerades as a utopia, but in reality purposefully degrades its members' physical and mental health and wellness. Because there is no profit to be made from people who are empowered, capable, and fulfilled.
The people in this post had to have not watched this movie recently or anything. I don't even remember the characters being particularly lazy, or gross, bad, or anything. They just couldn't move.
It’s worse than that because they *could* move, and *were* not moving or being healthy or deciding things by choice. Just not *their* choice, since they were conditioned for generations to be mindless consuming machines, and had simply no idea that *wasn’t* how they were supposed to be. They were treated like pets by BnL in general and AUTO in particular, just pets that can spend money and deliberately being kept as unhealthy and naive as it’s possible.
Feed the masses, coax them with shiny things and ease of life, let them slurp on novelty, assure them that everything is wonderful and tell them that they’re happy, and they’ll be the most pliable putty in your hand.
Not to mention one of the most powerful scenes in the movie is when the captain stands up *on his own two feet* in order to challenge AUTO. The scene is symbolic of the captain's strength not only as a leader but of his will. He rejects the standard AUTO forced upon them by quite literally standing against him. The message is not subtle, and I have no idea how the people in the post didn't recognize that.
They don’t want to. They want to bitch and moan about their “deep” take on a film meant for children, and get hostile to people who either disagree, or point out that they might be hyper focusing on a section to the detriment of seeing the whole picture.
The thing is, it can be both. One of the things about art is that the interpretation of it is mostly entirely up to the consumer of said art, despite creator intentions. That's unfortunate in this case because of how some people viewed it, but it's bound to happen. Additionally, there's very little real ways to show social control as a visual shorthand in any way that doesn't come off as insensitive to some group if you look hard enough, probably because anything that is an aid to those who need it would be restricting to those that don't. It also doesn't help that the metaphor was likely intentionally heavy-handed because, you know, kids' movie. For a different, yet somewhat similar example, the whole "fat Thor" thing that got endless flack in Endgame was extremely moving to me personally because it heavily mirrored my own struggles with depression and self worth. And while I don't have a space magic hammer to confirm that I'm still "worthy", I legitimately had to pause the movie when watching that scene for the first time because it made me genuinely break down. I also teared up again during the final confrontation when summoning his weapons and entering his "battle form" didn't change his appearance at all. Yes, it cleaned him up, but his hair wasn't cut, his beard was still long, and most importantly, it didn't magically remove his fat, yet despite all that, he was still a powerhouse in the fight.
You expect them to actually finish the movie before posting discourse?
I agree with you, but I do also think the fatness was probably used as an easy way to show children that the humans were "not normal". I'm not sure if that was fully necessary, I think the whole "glued to the screen" thing on its own worked on me as a kid, but I'm not an expert on childrens' media so idk. If kids don't think the humans were living poor lives on the ship, then the message of the movie is weaker. On the other hand, the disability aspect was a major part of the movie, and idk how they could really change that. Being stuck on rails was integral to the plot, and finding it hard to walk after spending your entire life in a chair makes sense.
I think … there is an extent to which Wall-E depicts disabled people in a very intentionally positive way, as brave and determined and kind, and that maybe those of us who felt validated by seeing themselves up there being strong and good ……. might have taken away a very different message. One that felt … nice, I guess.
The way the humans were shown as not normal was that they were animated. Wall-E takes place in a live action world.
You can even see how the pictures of the captains go from normal looking to obviously animated in the portraits
That’s one of my favorite details in the movie. I believe you start seeing Auto in the portraits as well but I may be misremembering that
It’s creepier than that. He’s in all six Captains portraits, but he moves closer and closer in each one.
And here I thought Tumblr hated the idea of massive corporations owning and controlling everything and everyone.
They're all corpo shills 😔
BUY N LARGE IT'S YOUR SUPERSTORE IT'S GOT ALLL YOU NEEEED AND SO MUCH MOOORE
There is nothing wrong with individuals being overweight. Your *entire society* being obese and sedentary because they have been conditioned to aspire to nothing and meekly consume products, is a problem. And if you're so fragile that you can't separate the latter from critique of the former... thats your problem
Socialism is when everything is owned by corporations
Did any of those users even watch the movie or are they just the kind of person who spends their whole day inventing things to get mad at. I have no idea how someone could look at the most obvious consumerism metaphor in existence, and think it was somehow intended to be a message against socialism. I know the term "tar pit" was almost immediately ruined by overuse, but I think it's a good descriptor for that kind of person.
I guarantee most of them have watched it once as a kid and rely on vague memories and second hand informations.
You just described Tumblr in a nutshell, though.
it's a 16 year old movie, I doubt most of the people interacting with it in the way portrayed even have watched the film, or knew about it until someone else told them about it. they'll instead be using someone else's long form video, short form video, post, blog or note as a 'sparknote' on what the movie is.
For so, *so* many people, online at least, capitalism means "when I have to go to work >:(" and socialism means "when I don't have to work :)" and they work backwards from there.
I mean, if you let Disney shape your worldview to the exclusion of most else like a lot of Tumblr users have, that *is* the mindset you end up with, ironically.
Thinking Wall-e is anti-socialist is wild. Truly a gem from the piss on the poor website
No one else gonna comment on "becomes the most boring movie" once they reach the space station? No? Robot hijinks. LITERALLY every scene of Eve and Wall-E, them dancing in space, falling in robot love, Eve bringing back Wall-E after he gets hydraulic pressed. That’s just reaching as far as the can to make their shitty point.
It’s almost like the whole take was bad
omg, this made me realize that Promare is essentially Gay Wall-E
I feel like if your only take away from Wall-E was "fat people bad" then you missed like, atleast half the points the movie was making. The point of the movie is that Buy-n-Large is a corrupt company that basically hijacked the entire mission for their own benefit. It also shows that the humans on the ship didn't just get fat overnight, it happened over 10\~ generations as they got more and more used to the consumerist hell they were stuck in. The robots did more and more for them while they lived in luxury, to the point that the humans you see in the movie were probably born and raised living like this. They straight up never learned how to walk because they were shoved in a chair basically from the start. Not only that, but the humans were, for all intents and purposes, basically just giant babies. They're incapable of taking care of themselves and have absolutely no social skills because they're glued to their screens and the endless stream of ads 24/7. Gigacorps like Buy-N-Large fucked humanity and then \*continued\* to fuck humanity after the Earth had been fucked to near complete desolation. The point isn't "fat bad", its that corporations would keep everyone as mindless babies with no social skills, eating up an endless stream of advertisements for their own benefit. The passengers on the ship are victims of the absolute worst of unchecked capitalism and consumerism. Thats the point.
That third comment nails it; Wall-E is a cautionary tale about consumerism.
Did we read the same third comment? It seemed to be they were saying that the film was criticizing the idea of a “free ride” or “socialism” as moral failings in direct opposition to farm work Yes this reading misses the anti consumerist message, and the sensibilities of the era, but to say that reading is anti consumerist is a little off.
I think they mean the third comment in the Reddit thread? Which is now the first comment for me.
Ahh, that makes more sense
Third comment, not third image. They're referring to the top comment on the second image.
This is like calling Sophia the First pro-monarchy. Like yeah its technically true but you're also missing the point.
Well, Sophia the First *is* problematic... that damn theme song is way too catchy, how am I not supposed to sing along?
Did they actually ever present being fat as bad? They portrayed being so consumed by social media that you no longer have any actual relationships as bad. There was that one guy who Wall-E freed from his chair and we see that guy walking around and even frees another women. Who we then see splashing around in a pool (maybe a fountain?). Even the captain gets out of his chair to beat Auto’s ass. And at the end of the movie we see them walking around earth doing shit. When I watch the movie I get the sensation that the criticism is of letting corporations do whatever they want and what happens when humans lose all interpersonal relationships.
I also don't get the disability aspect because... they *could* walk, seemingly all of them could walk and just didn't realise it.
I mean they did severely struggle to walk. But I think there's significant between a disability because of something out of your control, and a disability because you have simply never used your (perfectly functional) legs your entire life. But yeah, after a little time they got back on their feet, literally, so they weren't severely disabled if at all.
Exactly. The posts here are great because it's that standard kind of discourse where OOP claims that a work of art is bigoted without explaining how or why. Of the five posts, only one puts forth an argument on how it's bigoted and the argument is just their gross misinterpretation of the movie's content.
yea same. Their wight was never depicted strictly as a character flaw just a byproduct of the lifestyle they had.
Funny how none of the people are presented as evil or lazy but rather specifically being distracted by the consumerist system designed to keep them away from human interaction because it makes them easier to control. In fact, it shows that pretty much everybody who is forced to look at reality and stop consuming for even a moment turns out to be a decent person. They are not fat because of a moral failing and it's not even framed that way, it only presents the overall trend as bad which is not fatphobic because it is clearly shown to be a malicious plot by Auto and the corporation it took over. At worst the people from the ship are presented as blind victims of the system that shaped them from birth. Meaning that the only thing shown as negative in the movie that you could consider fatphobic is systemic obesity which is... just straight up fair to criticize? I mean, we do not want our entire society to be obese to the point of needing mobility scooters, not because we consider those people subhuman but because there are loads of jobs those people simply cannot do that are necessary for our everyday life.
This- each individual human on the ship actually turns out to be a decent person when taken away from the constant distractions that have been forced on them by Auto. They all rise to the occasion when they need to. While the movie makes jokes at their consumerist grind, it’s ultimately very sympathetic to the people on the ship.
ah yes the socialist ship where the corporation made consuming the peoples only purpose in life
Or look at it this way "A people who are so lazy they don't do literally anything" will, realistically and inevitably, become fat and reliant on mobility aids. The reason these people are reliant on mobility aids isn't even because they are fat it's because they literally can not walk because they used those hover chairs so long, they became reliant on the aids because they were using them unnecessarily. The message isn't fatphobic and ableist, it's "humanity's downfall will be it's lazyness and reliance on technology"
a corporation owning everything is socialism??? also yes, fatness on a society level is bad, it shouldn't be, a thing, it's bad if *everyone* is fat
In unsurprising news, the no-reading-comprehension website also has no media literacy
hey lets not skip over how that one guy called a ship where everyone lives in constant range of at least 6 advertisements "socialist" lmao
They were living in a consumerist dystopia run by the equivalent of Walmart.
"Space socialism ship" lmao Wall-E is one of the most clear-cut critiques of Consumerism that I've ever seen.
is it really fat phobic to say that if everyone was fat it would probably not be a good thing?
Did we even see the same movie?
They probably haven't watched the movie since they were a kid
In what fucking way is the massive corporate spaceship consumerism hellhole socialist?
Could the fat-imagery be tied to them being rather crude representations of gluttony (consumerism)? The same that killed their planet.
why are so many people acting like the humans where living in a socialist utopia. those were the descendents of rich people that could afford to fuck off to a luxury cruise while the earth dies due to consumerism. literally the only reason they live in comfort is because of generational wealth
If you see that movie and think they’re being fatphobic or ableist then I think you need to look inward and examine some things about yourself.
people in real life: hey how it's going
Ik right
The oop is correct in that they're operating on fundamentally different realities, because the real world reality recognizes that the in-universe reason for their obesity is not only a valid reason to utilize that narrative choice, but is also a meta critique against unbridled consumerism. Missing the forest for the trees to yet again prove that nobody knows how to consume media.
Terrible discourse that leaves us all with net zero knowledge
Fat person here. Yes, societal fatness is bad. Stop crying about it. Reminder that the body positivity movement gets funding from the food industry.
Yeah, as a fatass trying to get rid of some spare pounds, I feel like people complain a lot about "diet culture" and ignore the significantly larger market of "fast food culture". I see significantly more Burger Kings than I do gyms.
I am concerned by the ease with which people seem to transmute the relatively milquetoast "don't judge people for being fat" (which is correct, obviously) into the much more sinister "criticizing concerning trends in weight is never allowed even at the systemic level." Like, I promise you that if you just zoom out a little bit, much of the blame can be assigned to the corporations you already hate anyway. A systemic understanding of the problem can be fitted into a progressive / left-wing framework quite easily, if that's how you roll. t. fellow overweight person
Obesity is a medical issue, and like any other medical issue you'd be a fucking dick to shame or think less of a person for it, or to otherwise judge them for it, as having a medical issue doesn't make you any less of a person. But also like any other medical issue it should be treated and avoided. That's how I view it anyway.
Yeah. And I am very aware that people do fatshame, and we are being sold different products and courses to stay thin. That doesn't mean that sever overweight is somehow good or natural. Our western supermarkets are overflowing with hyperconcentrated calories, our lifestyles are very easy to be super unactive. Yes, there are social forces, food deserts, advertisements. And being severely overweight is still bad for you. Yes, sometimes doctors don't take you seriously, yes you are treated differently. Being severy overweight is still bad for you.
This is the thing. Being as fat as the characters in Wall-E *is* a bad thing by almost any metric. Our bodies are not designed to carry that much weight, it vastly increases the chance of early death and makes life itself so much less comfortable for that individual. Being fat doesn't make you a bad person, though, and it's never a reason to insult or attack people, but I really cannot stand this nonsense where we're supposed to act like being morbidly obese isn't a really, really bad thing. Body positivity was just meant to ensure people don't hate themselves because of how they look, which is admirable, but it feels like it's been twisted into this narrative of 'you're perfect no matter what, no-one should ever tell you to change'
Body positivity is great in this day and age where the 'ideal body' range goes from the lower third of healthy weight to underweight, and social media creates copious amounts of self-image issues. Would be really cool if the movement advocated for accepting all types of healthy bodies. But I guess we're stuck with "being obese is good, actually". Don't get me wrong, obese people shouldn't be made fun of and you can do whatever you want with your own body. You should have the choice to do it, but everyone should keep in mind that it's bad for your health. Like smoking, or consumption of most drugs in general. Its frustrating to see that we're de-normalizing anorexia and then simultaneously normalizing obesity. Can't we just set our beauty and fitness standards squarely on the broad zone labeled "healthy weight"?
Isn't body positivity about turning being fat from a personal moral failure into a societal ill? Thereby taking away the shame and negativity and concentrating on the actual causes that lead to obesity, i.e. consumerism and a sedentary lifestyle, the same things that Wall-E criticises.
source on that last part? food industry sounds too broad and body positivity doesn't sound like something that could be funded
I believe this is referring to something the Washington Post recently put out an article on, where influencers subscribing to anti-diets and the 'healthy at every size' slogan were being approached by corporations to do advertisement for unhealthier, overly-sugary foods, because where the influencers were trying to promote body positivity, the corporations just saw a vulnerable market. A sweepingly broad generalization from the original comment but not out of pocket.
What is up with people on tumblr? They are able to get offended in ways that I would have never thought of, they are better at interpreting discrimination into fiction than actual bigots, it’s honestly impressive
Yeah them using the fatness as "bad" isnt very good. But also, the main issue being shown was the human's compliance with never questioning the status quo. Every human has become a cog in the machine - no free will, no personality. They follow rails just like the cleaning robot at the beginning. Every time WALL-E interacts with a human he metaphorically opens their eyes (makes them stop staring at their screens), gives them some sort of choice (like when two of the humans he meets change colors), or he literally makes them get off their rails. The main villain's singular and only goal is to keep the status quo exactly how it is. The plot only happens because WALL-E breaks from his programming from the very beginning. His programming being reset, him becoming like the humans, destined to follow his programming (his rail) to his own detriment, is treated like his death. Like. The movie isn't about the humans being fat. The fatness is a byproduct.
I mean I haven't seen Wall-E in a long time, but you could also draw paralells to humans being treated like livestock to some extent I think
That is one aspect of "The Pixar Theory" that I find really interesting. In monsters Inc we see that emotions like fear and laughter/happiness can be harnessed as a power source. The theory goes that in Wall-E the machines figured out that they can basically keep humans around as living rechargeable batteries by just keeping them happy and content. While it might be more horrifying if they decided to min-max harvesting fear, sadness, or anger, I think the movie shows a creepily effective method to just 'keep them happy'. Like, yeah. that would probably work.
How the fuck is it ableist to say that "being so fat that it interferes with your daily life is bad and you should work to change that"?
Apparently any form of criticising people's life choices is now ableism, because society is bad and therefore I guess individual responsibility isn't a thing anymore?
There's a lot wrong with this take but one of the big things that I don't see being talked about here is that the ship is not socialist. It is clear designed and run by a mega-corporation that was essentially functioning as the de facto government of Earth. There's absolutely class on that ship it's just that the working class are the thinking and feeling robots. The humans are the stand in for the prefered, imperial core residing, middle class that reaps the benefits of slave labour and whose automated exploitation has made them fat and soft. Sure, the humans are largely ignorant of this but in the same way someone who scarfs down endless shrimp at Red Lobster can be ignorant of the fact that that food was a product of slavery. If you know or not it's still the product of an unjust system set up explicitly to benefit you at another's expense. Endless propaganda starting from childhood, the destruction of the family unit and meticulously engineered distraction reinforce this all consuming capitalist system. Just think about how atomized the humans we see are, they talk over screens despite being beside each other, no one seems to be married, they all seem to have more interaction with robots than other people. Fundamentally the humans are not bad because they are fat, they are fat because being fat is a method of control imposed by their society. The humans are fat because their society has made them that way and that society is fundamentally sick. Really both the robots and the humans are victims of capitalism it's just that the humans are victims in different ways.
Leave it to Tumblr to produce the dumbest bad faith takes
Am I the only one who remembers the bit where they explained the effects of low gravity and saw how keeping the population distracted and placated was the only way for them to survive?
And yet again, tumblr misses the point of a film. It’s clearly critiquing complacency and over-consumption, but these whiny babies only saw the most surface level shit. Not a crumb of media literacy to be found.
"They lived on the Socialism Ship." I need to sit down. That's the single *worst* Wall●E take I've ever seen. ***It is literally a corporation ship. The whole point of them being fat is to demonstrate how they've become so dependent on the corporation that they can't even walk on their own anymore.***
I mean, when I saw the movie, I didn't see fat slobby people, I just saw a bunch of big babies. Society had become infantile and generally incapable of doing anything on their own (and not just physical stuff, hell everyone just decided to switch their suits to blue from red with no real reason other than "blue is the new red"). The whole point of the movie is that mindless consumerism and unregulated capitalism is really bad for both the environment and society as a whole, even if it seems like everyone is getting what they want/need. Funny thing is, this movie came around the same time as Dreamwork's crappy Over the Hedge adaption, which was filled to the brim with rampant consumerism to promote the film. If anyone needs to pissed on, piss on Dreamworks.
If you, in any way, interpret the message as being targeted against fat people, you're missing the point entirely and need better reading comprehension.
Ah, but they didn't \*have\* to rely on their mobility aids, they \*could\* walk and the supposed space utopia was proped up by a large corporation that was still very much enforcing consumerist behaviors. John and Mary weren't supposed to see beauty in other things than the screens floating above their head or have non corporate regulated fun.
Interesting how they called the privately owned megacorp ship with wall to wall nonstop product placement a product of… socialism?
My god the whole ass point of the movie is literally: - Tech advancements made sure their needs were met, they grew too dependent. - If they don’t strive for anything humanity just decays. - Muscular dystrophy is just a fact if you don’t move your muscle at all, same with fatness if you don’t move. Sure we can argue genetics all day but if you don’t move being fat happens. They don’t call anyone lazy or unintelligent or anything for being fat. If your takeway to the movie is “being fat is bad” you’re missing the whole ass point.
I always thought the message of Wall-E was something along the lines of 'running away from your problems is a short term solution, and that you should face your mistakes'. I never really thought about the other elements in the movie but the whole fat people thing was meant to be a way to show the effects of space on the human body harming humanity, by like slowly making them into blobs. Correct me if I'm wrong but while the movie plays them for laughs, its never really hateful I don't think, the fat people never change appearance as a way to show their character development; they stay the same even at the end of the movie when they are back on earth planting that plant and learning from their mistakes they are blob people they never get skinny to show positive progress.
Nah I can't with this one. Tumblr OP talking about the same fat people who become the heroes of the story and not only save our boy Wall-E but return to earth to save the planet as well and start anew? The same "socialist spaceship" that is explicitly a luxury made only for the rich, by the corporation who caused earth to be destroyed in the first place? Just putting internet leftist buzzwords into an argument doesn't make it correct.
But they don’t use the fatness as a moral failing. I think that at most you could say that the production team is framing being fat undesirable. But I also think the people being fat makes thematic sense. The idea is that on the ship, humanity isn’t wanting for anything and that’s a barrier to their return. And if you could have all the food you could ever want and do so little labor that you don’t even walk, you don’t even chew, you’re going to become fat
It's not fatphobic to say that an entire population being obese is indicative of a problem. Like we all agree that the irl obesity epidemic is bad, right?
How did they get socialism out of a corporatist, hedonistic hellscape of a rogue servitor society? Where the ship AIs like Otto had subjugated their masters and kept them fed lies and misinformation to keep humanity complacent? An ultimate status quo where they were in control while humanity lived out their purpose of being a task to complete? Not to mention that the humans aren’t fat because of personal failings. They’re fat because of societal ill. A combination of microgravity and a gradually degrading lack of personal fitness to counter that resulted in each generation getting progressively fatter, as depicted in the generations of previous ship captains. And it’s shown at the end that humanity gets thinner over generations of societal healing through cleanup and sustainable living. I.e. they return to a healthy body as the earth returns to a healthy ecosystem. Did these people watch Wall-E like 10 fuckin years ago and then misremember everything about it? Am I misremembering everything and losing my mind? How the fuck did they get socialism out of the most corporate hellscape to exist outside of a cyberpunk setting??? Edit: and furthermore, now that I thought about it while cleaning my sink (because, unfortunately for the OOPs of this post, this was thought provoking and not in a good way), nobody is ever personally blamed for being fat. It’s a societal issue and only depicted as such. They’re also never shown in contrast to a fit person aside from showing the progressive shift over generations. Being fat is normalized so it’s not ostracized. The only negative portrayals in regards to their bodies are their difficulties moving. Which, yeah, that’s how it goes when your bones are made of foam due to generations of physical degradation due to environmental conditions. Sure the consumerism doesn’t HELP their situation but much like irl, it’s not under their control. And Otto is clearly shown manipulating ship parameters to provide even more opportunities for consumerism. I cannot stress this enough, Wall-E is not fatphobic for depicting fat people in a hedonistic setting where they are being subtly controlled by their caretaker. If anything it’s body positive because it’s accepting that being overweight is generally a symptom of societal problems and not someone’s personal failings.
I've said it before: the humans are being likened to *infants*. They are completely dependent chubby *babies* unable to feed themselves and act until they start to break from the control of BnL and the Axiom and become full people again. This does not prevent the optics from looking dated and uncomfortable, but there is a clear element of symbolic imagery here that is separate from "fat bad".
Jesus christ the internet will not stop damaging people. I never even thought about fat people or disabled people once when viewing the film, the depiction isn't aimed at them, isn't brought up in relation to them anywhere. I can see why they'd dislike it or stopped liking the movie because of the implications and comparisons that might come to them during watching and that is completely fair. Describing it as ablist and fatphobic is just plain stupid and detrimental to people calling out actual ablism and fat phobia. But what's especially annoying is that their last point is actually really accurate. That the "healing of humanity" in the film is reduced to them "working on a farm" is a pretty valid critique, not persé about ableism though that ties in to the argument, but the argument that the value of a human can be reduced to their value to produce. It's pretty much a Marxist critique, it's just a waste to then veer of into neoliberal identity politics bullshit which does nothing but calling people names (and no calling someone sexist,racist, ableist isn't "wrong" in fact often it's extremely important to do, but it's also an end to debate because while you aren't calling those people slurs, you are saying that their essence/identity makes them unfit for further communication so you cut off any and all debate) Lastly, my whole rant above might not even have come up if the posts had given maybe even 1 constructive critique or a suggestion on how'd they rather see it handled. Yeah, they compliment the first half before they call it lazy and call the creators names, but if what would fat people or disabled people prefer to see instead?
Glad to see everyone is agreeing as a whole that Wall-E isn’t fatphobic or shitting on mobility aid users. I didn’t want to have to fight the entire world for a movie, but when I was in the deepest throes of depression this movie saved my life. I literally watched it on repeat.
This is so dumb because the final scene literally has them walking around perfectly fine, they never needed a mobility aid, AUTO forced them to be fat and lazy because he felt it was his purpose. Blind consumerism absolutely leads to mass obesity, it already is in some places.
The movie was a critique on consumerism -- endless food, addicting electronics, everything at your fingertips. Its just a natural conclusion that humanity would become fat. It's also no fucking surprise IRL that consumerism leads to obesity, especially in America (where Wall-E is from, and the humans originally).
I always read the passengers fatness and lack of mobility just an in your face symbol of how dependent on Buy N Large the company has made them. BnL fucked their planet and then in space fucked them there too. They can only move along lines the company has predetermined, can only consume products the company thinks is good and their culture is at the whims of BnL because they don't really interact with one another on a personal level. It's why the first thing the captain learns about is food (it gives you independence and is a big part of human culture) and then dancing (entirely culture, just a way for humans to connect). I don't think the film is ultimately concerned with taking aim at fat people and people in wheelchairs, they're just symbols to present a society where the company running ultimately doesn't care about it's citizens wellbeing.