Lost in the Screen… Can I Ever Return?
The Stomping Lamp Part 1 – WALL-E
J. K. Tang
HOW FAR CAN ONE ESCAPE INTO A FILM? One morning in the September break of 2022, I was woken by an alarming chime that echoed through the house. My 10am awakening was premature. I scurried wall to wall to find the source of this chime. Eventually, it was coupled with small, muffled screams from our front door… Am I expecting anyone? I pressed one of my eyebags against the peephole to see who it was, but no one was there. I sighed and opened the door to the blinding lights of a Sunday morning. AAAHHHHH!!!! Three little gremlins tackled me to the doormat. It was my little cousins, each bouncing on the walls as I welcomed them into the house. These gremlins were at a different tempo… I did not know what to do. I thought back to my 2010s childhood. What would keep me entertained on a quiet Sunday morning? With the cartoonish lightbulb hovering over my head, I rushed into the TV room and opened Disney+ —hoping they shared my love for Pixar films.
My sweaty palms gripped the remote as I searched for something meaningful, beautiful, and sophisticated for my cousins to appreciate now or when they are older. They gathered around, intrigued by fluffy blue monsters, orange fish and fast red cars. After frantically switching between these animated masterpieces, I was caught by the horrors of copious pollution and became eager to switch back to a less alarming narrative. As I was ready to exit the ruins of a capitalist dystopia, giggles crept into the silence of my Sunday morning. Amused by a rusted robot and his resilient cockroach, my cousins and I were trapped in this cautionary tale, one that became sweetened by love, hope and curiosity.
We often overlook these G-rated films and forget the spectacular storytelling on this ever-developing medium. Pixar’s Wall-E [2008] explores the excessive prominence of corporate power in our lives and its oppressive grasp on our existential journeys. “Way out there beyond this hick-town”, the starring expanse of empty space emphasises the illusion of humanity’s ‘second chance’ and the significance of ecological sustainability. To juxtapose the immense beauty of these celestial bodies, the blue pearl that we call home wears the burden of our waste and ignorance.
The monotonous bronze landscape, coupled with Crawford’s hopeful lyrics, suggests the excessiveness of human idealism—constantly striving for the American dream— and its repercussions on our consumerist mentality. Mirroring John Carpenter’s 1988 sci-fi flick, They Live, the apocalyptic remains of Western society address concerns of monopolistic corporate power and invites audiences to reflect on their individual responsibilities in facilitating hyper-consumerist culture. Like Google, Apple or Facebook (Meta), ‘Buy-In-Large’ allegorically represents the homogenising agenda of our modern corporations. Whilst gluing our eyes to our new iPhones, we mindlessly google and scroll through these lifeless websites and Facebook posts; buying into the profit-hungry ethos of these mega-corporations, are we living fulfilling lives?
As a voice for the contemporary middle class, WALL-E, a Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class unit, embodies the soullessness of employment and struggles to seek purpose and meaning beyond the ‘9-to-5’. In every minute of every hour of every day, he compacts rubbish into finely precise cubes and continues to do so, despite the odds against him. Through various extreme long shots of the desolate city, the robot’s relentlessness and determination seem to be spontaneous, perhaps, it is in his programming. Slowing, the camera shots are scaled down and begin to focus on Wall-E’s time of leisure.
By revealing his true motivation—what keeps his cogs turning—to be film itself, I realised love, hope, and curiosity are conceptually imprinted into us through this medium. To escape his cruel world, Wall-E enters Hello Dolly [1969], a tale of pursuing connection and meaning in the unknown. This intertextual link diverts from the initial nihilist depictions of Wall-E’s world and emphasises the importance of indulging in literature and art, for it is our ticket to dreaming and discovering the impossibilities of our lives.
Film is a pivotal art form, one that inspires individuals like Wall-E, to break the chains of corporate oppression and to explore the unbelievable, unconceivable possibilities of our human experience.
“It only takes a moment
To be loved a whole life long
And that is all
That love’s about
And we’ll recall when time runs out
That it only took a moment
To be loved a whole life long!”
- Michael Crawford, Hello Dolly