Response to Anderson

Recently, I have read a text named “Post-Apocalyptic Nostalgia: WALL-E, Garbage, and American Ambivalence toward Manufactured Goods,” by Christopher Todd Anderson. In this article, Anderson discusses the paradoxical views of consumerism that are presented throughout the movie. On one hand, consumerism is illustrated as the cause for the apocalyptic wasteland that Earth has become, mainly due to a company called “Buy N Large.” However, on the other hand, the pleasure that comes with consumerism is displayed through the nostalgia that accompanies many of the items that WALL-E finds and collects while he is turning trash into cubes. Overall, I thought that the Anderson did not always connect his ideas in the best order. Much of this article felt repetitive because Anderson would re-explain an idea later in his paper to expand on it, rather than just expanding on it when he was already discussing it. For example, his discussion of nostalgia and irony was brought up multiple times, with Anderson basically repeating information that was brought up earlier each time the topic arose.  

In addition, I felt like Anderson is unclear when he talks about the environmental message present in the film. In the beginning, Anderson states that “the message is clear: present-day patterns of consumption and wastefulness are suffocating the planet and making it uninhabitable.” However, throughout his paper he makes the argument that the nostalgia related to consumerism complicates the message about protecting the environment. The nostalgia in the film makes people realize how important material possessions are in their lives by recalling positive emotions associated with each of the objects that WALL-E collects. A large purpose in including these items is to make people realize that the goods that they cherish will eventually lose their value and be thrown away. This brings the environmental cost of consumption into consideration, because the audience becomes aware that all of the damage to the environment that is caused by manufacturing is only for short term happiness. So, while Anderson tries to display WALL-E’s message about the environment as both clear and complicated, I believe that the nostalgic objects only enhance the message. (That is, if there is an environmental message. Somehow the film’s director claims that the movie is only a love story with no environmental message at all).

I have suspicion about the claim that there is no intended message about protecting our environment from destruction as a result of consumerism. First of all, the message is just so potent throughout the entire movie to be unintentionally included. The apocalyptic state of Earth and the emotions that come with it is the primary focus of the first thirty-five minutes of the movie. Second, Pixar displayed a self-awareness in the movie when you could see different Pixar items in the piles of trash. Now, this could simply just be something that Pixar used to get a few laughs; however, Anderson notes that the planting of Pixar items in the trash piles means that Pixar has, to some degree, acknowledged the fact that they are a large part in the world of consumerism and are contributing to the degradation of Earth.

All in all, Anderson made some very strong arguments in this article by expanding on points that other authors did not dedicate as much time to.