Comments on: Doing the analysis so I don’t have to

By: NY Expat

NY Expat — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:50:36 +0000

We just saw it last night, so sorry for being so late to the party, but I wanted to put something down for posterity’s sake:

My wife picked out the sexism right away (Wall-E: Dirty boy; Eve: Clean girl. There’s more below), and it was hard not to watch scenes with Eve that didn’t hew to a sexist paradigm.

I could very easily be seeing too much here, but from what I saw, Wall-E “fell in love” with Eve at first sight, determined that he was going to get her to hold his hand (that’s what he thinks love is from watching his Hello Dolly! tape), and does whatever he can to get her to do it. While Eve is in standby, he stays by her day and night in the hope that she’ll reactivate, which I saw as kind of creepy (he even holds her deactivated hand in some scenes). He and Eve do not share the same objective, even when he gets the plant from the escape pod, because he’s trying to please her so that she’ll hold his hand.

Doesn’t this all wreak of Nice Guy ™ syndrome? Not in the severely psychotic way like that Sears guy in Toronto, but in the banal quid pro quo “do nice things for a girl to show her you love her and she’ll love you back” way that gets taught by…movies like Wall-E!

Then there’s the “schlub gets the girl” angle, which the movie resisted for a little bit. Eve did come close to literally telling Wall-E to shove off, but that’s as far as it went. After that, the most we hear is Eve admonishing Wall-E in the way she says his name: “WALL-EEE!!!” (I will say that it’s good that the movie doesn’t judge Eve for reacting that way; they don’t portray her as a nag). The last straw, though, is that Eve eventually falls for Wall-E when she sees her security cam of Wall-E waiting for her to reactivate: The Nice Guy ™ syndrome works! How’s that for a lesson for impressionable kids?

To me, though, the most disturbing thing is the design and directive of Eve. Here we have the strongest, and most important female character in the movie, and she’s egg-shaped, with a directive to find a seed and carry it inside her. When she puts the seed inside her, she shuts down and waits for her superiors to pick her up, put her on a gurney, and remove the seed.

I mean, wasn’t anyone else disturbed at the image of Eve, looking angrily at Gopher holding the plant, and pointing expectedly at her empty womb? Perhaps I was reading something else into it, but Eve seemed to be saying “You idiot! Give me back that seed! That seed belongs inside me! I must fulfill my directive!“

By: Hayate no Gotoku

Hayate no Gotoku — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:09:29 +0000

I also agree with beth. I think a solution would be for Pixar to have some female writer/directors.

By: charlotte

charlotte — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:19:58 +0000

As to the “fat” issue in the movie: One scene actually showed the skeletal degeneration (shorter, thinner bones since they don’t have any bodyweight to support in the permanent reclining chairs) of the people on the Axiom. To me, this signalled first and foremost the consequences of the BnL corporation’s mega-capitalism on the biological “evolution” (which some of us might characterize as “devolution”) of the human body–evolution as in a subject’s body changing in response to the environment, without the moral overtones some of us might attribute to such changes; nobody in the film ever said that fat was necessarily bad (or perhaps I missed that line). I admit, though, the whole thing would have been even more convincing (and much creepier) if the capacity for independent thought had gone down the drain, as well, since all characters on the ship are constantly fed standardized programs from their handy little TV screens.

By: ripley

ripley — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:38:49 +0000

I quite liked it. It is funny that the robots are gendered, but many of the roles are quite reversed. Some things have already been mentioned, but also Wall-e chooses to sacrifice himself for Eve and her mission (the rest omitted for spoiler potential).. but anyway it’s something that is usually done the other way ’round gender-wise.

I was a bit uncomfortable with the portrayal of fat people in some ways.But I also think the person above is going at it backwards. –what would people look like if they sat in chairs all the time, never got out of them, just ate a lot and lay around and didn’t exercise and lived in low gravity? and this lifestyle lasted for 700 years? How would you portray them, physically? Maybe I’m short of imagination but I would imagine them to be quite large, lacking in muscle tone, with atrophied fingers etc..

I understand that looking at the folks in the movie could encourage people to generalize unhealthily towards people who look like that IRL who are active and healthy. that is a problem.

But actually I found the people in Wall-E to not look quite like actual fat folk (of varying levels of health), but quite specifically out of shape in a way that suggests muscle atrophy and bone loss. and then there’s the fact that by the end they are in their way heroic, and lovable, and their role vis-a-vis the future of humanity is definitely cast as a triumph..

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:13:36 +0000

Fat people are lazy – check.
Fat people over eat – check.
Fat people over consume our resources – check.
Fat people are fat precisely because they are lazy, over eat and over consume – check.
Fat people cause environmental crises – check.

It is not “fat” per se, but those are overconsumputive ways that causes many problems. But, yes, PART of this results in obesity being a problem in this country. Obesity and “fat” is simply not the same thing, but obesity IS a problem in overconsuming countries.

The fact many fat people are wrongly smeared in no way should lead us to ignore such things. Furthermore, the life on the ship is simply doing nothing, consuming, and vegating. One need not be “fat” to do that, but sorry, if you do that, there is a good chance you are going to be fat. It was also explained that space and gravity issues also affected body shape.

They could have had drugs or surgery to be skinny, but bottomline, besides that, the “look” was accurate.

btw since non-whites also have money in this country, and some show of color probably would be important for reputation reasons alone, money issues wouldn’t explain the white focus. But, talking stereotypes, white bread is pretty symbolic of the empty consumerism that the movie satires.

By: Mr. J

Mr. J — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:37:23 +0000

Jesurgislac, Will Smith is American, but he is not white.

denelian, Jeff Goldblum’s character is indeed Jewish. If there was any question about that, one only need see his character’s father, played by Judd Hirsch, who was quite proud of their heritage. However, both of those characters were also white.

beth, I agree. Though I think that white male-dominated movies are both a symptom and a cause, part of a vicious cycle. Movies that are successful (those about and for white heterosexual males) get repeated, and the people who make them (white heterosexual males) get more work.

I do understand that people write what they know. I wrote a whole book about me. However, I don’t run a company like Pixar that dominates the market for animated children’s movies, a company that chooses 1) to constantly present them with a white, heterosexual male universe, and 2) to make money off of these kids while doing so. That is irresponsible and bigoted. Their movies have a huge influence on American children, and on children around the world, and Disney and Pixar know that. That is their business model: dominating brand awareness in children. To consciously ignore most of our society, including the women who make up over 50% of the American and world population, is wrong. It’s 2008. “We didn’t realize we were doing that,” is no longer an acceptable excuse for Disney or Pixar.

By: beth

beth — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:43:58 +0000

Not that this is going to solve anything, but for what it’s worth: I’ve worked in the animated film industry for 12 years. When movies get made (especially at a company like Pixar) it’s because someone had a story they wanted to tell. The stories people want to tell are generally based on their own life experiences, and the directors and creative heads at Pixar are all men. They write from a male point of view because it’s *their* point of view. It isn’t like they come up with a story, and then decide if the characters will be male or female, and somehow magically always pick male protagonists. From the get-go, the stories are conceived with a male POV. There are notable exceptions (Lilo & Stitch, Disney – Chris Sanders) but they are exceptions to the rule. So to my mind, the string of male-dominated movies is only a symptom. The root cause is that there are few female directors or creative heads at Pixar and the other big animation houses (maybe none?)

By: Sophie

Sophie — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:42:55 +0000

It’s all about the flying scene for me. I don’t want to give away too much, but there’s a moment where Eve literally catches Wall-E in her arms, which was such a reversal of gender roles that I laughed out loud. I loved it.

By: denelian

denelian — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 07:09:10 +0000

as a total aside, and totally OT
Jeff Goldbloom’s character in ID4 is Jewish.

so in ID4 the two main heros were a black guy and a jewish guy :D

By: Lorelei

Lorelei — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:17:10 +0000

you know, i don’t think EVE seemed obviously male. and here is why.

because when i first saw the trailer, i got REALLY REALLY psyched about it because i actually thought it was TWO MALE ROBOTS falling in love. and i was like ‘OMG! ROVERS! WITH BIG EYES! AND GAY! AND IT’S A POPULAR KID’S MOVIE! OMG!’

i very strongly thought that EVE’s character was male (i’d never seen her character’s name mentioned during the preview somehow) because in ALL movies, pixar and otherwise, female characters are ‘signaled’ by their attributes (lipstick, hair, dress, etc) so i assumed that since that wasn’t happening, that the robot was male. which is the schema i grew up with, to naturally default to male, unfortunately. :(