CCM / WEEK 3: GOOD & BAD CLIMATE MEDIA
The 2008 Pixar film WALL-E, directed by Andrew Stanton, is undoubtedly one of the most memorable forms of climate media my generation had the pleasure of exposure to in childhood. 12 years ago I witnessed my first major form of climate media, and to this day it still has a lasting impact. The film follows WALL-E and EVE, two robots falling in love on the dystopian, destroyed and post-apocalyptic like planet Earth. Alongside the romantic storyline, audiences are given a glimpse into the not so distant future of society and the planet.
Above: Still from the film that feels almost too real.
The film illustrates the society we are slowly heading towards. Planet Earth has been inhabitable for 700 years, humans live in a spacecraft and one small robot has been left to clean up the mess we made. This mess is more than garbage, the mess is the destroyed landscape, lack of wildlife, flora, fauna and more. The purpose of this film is not to demonstrate how we got to such a dystopian place, but to demonstrate what will happen if we don’t take precautionary measures, if we don’t care for our planet how she cares for us. The film works well in showing these values in a subtle yet powerful way. Watching the film as a child, you feel a bit scared and confused as to how we could ever end up in such an apocalyptic like world, yet as an adult, you realise just how realistic a number of elements of the film are. The film quite heavily directs it’s blame on this dystopian society on ‘twenty-first-century-style corporations, individual consumers, and technology’ (Todd Anderson, 2012), which arguably, are the greatest causes of our planets deterioration.
Arguably one of the most powerful moments in this film is this particular scene, the urgency and panic of the President, and the quote ‘I don’t want to survive! I wanna live!’
This quote, perfectly captures how many of us feel now, and how many felt 12 years ago when the film was released. Day by day we become closer and closer to living the reality WALL-E depicts, and none of us want it. Each time I rewatch this film, I find myself more and more amazed at how powerful it was and still is. WALL-E is easily one of the most remembered and talked about Walt Disney and Pixar films. Countless times I’ve seen tweets, had conversations and been reminded of this films significance on popular culture and political media.
WALL-E is a film that gives hope, that guides viewers into realising they can make a change and make a difference. Being a film mostly targeted to children, the notions and values aren’t aggressively displayed, but intertwined with humans’ emotions, nostalgia and curiosity about the future. We don’t want to lose our planet, and WALL-E is a film that holds this dearly, drawing on our nostalgia (WALL-E: from environmental adaptation to sentimental nostalgia, 2009), of a planet we haven’t even lost yet.
As for a not so great form of climate media, the film 2012, released in 2009, is a Roland Emmerich film depicting the extremely dramatic and unrealistic future we had in store for us. December 21st 2012 was marked to be the end of the ancient Maya calendar. This end to a 5,125 year old calendar sparked a lot of speculation about the world as we knew it coming to an end. Roland Emmerich is known to have worked on a number of disaster films, including Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.
My first exposure to this film was when it came out, I watched it at home with my dad, and being 10 years old, I thought ‘surely not’, but at the same time felt a slight worry that maybe the movie wasn’t too inaccurate. 2012 depicts an end to life as we know it. The planet essentially falling apart, the San Andreas fault breaking, mass tsunami’s, tectonic plates shifting, essentially every imaginable disaster at once.
The film has never really been taken seriously, and that comes as a surprise to no one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3wjQHtLsQ0
The final scene of the the film shows the survivors fleeing to Africa, which somehow managed to survive everything. You could take almost any clip or scene from this movie to demonstrate how inaccurate and dramatic it is. Understandably, the likelihood of tsunami’s tornados and shifting and breaking tectonic plates will continue to happen as climate change worsens. However, the extent to which they occur in 2012 is not so realistic. 2012 depicts the end of the world as one big event on or around one day. Both the film itself and the theories of December 21st 2012 being our final day depict an untrue reality.
The end of life as we know it isn’t just going to happen overnight. It’s happening now. Films like 2012 depict an unrealistic reality, as though all of a sudden we’ll go from a normal planet to a completely destroyed one. The film also makes out that after all this disaster, we’ll survive, be fine and go live on another continent.
The film in no way encourages people to be more conscious of their actions, it is simply a disaster movie scaring people into what was to come in the years following its release. Understandably, I don’t think this film was made to be a piece of climate media, however when reflecting on climate media I’ve interacted with in my life, it came to mind as a not so great example.
Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 2009. WALL-E: from environmental adaptation to sentimental nostalgia. [online] Available at: <http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc51.2009/WallE/text.html> [Accessed 30 March 2020].
Todd Anderson, C., 2012. Post-Apocalyptic Nostalgia: WALL-E, Garbage, and American Ambivalence toward Manufactured Goods. Literature Interpretation Theory, [online] p.268. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10436928.2012.703598 [Accessed 30 March 2020].
WALL-E. 2008. [film] Directed by A. Stanton. Walt Disney Pictures Pixar Animation Studios.
2012. 2009. [film] Directed by R. Emmerich. Centropolis Entertainment.
Other links I found useful in gaining understanding:
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/12/111220-end-of-world-2012-maya-calendar-explained-ancient-science/
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-guest.html