Wall-E revisited

11th July 2008

My two posts — here and here – on Pixar’s Wall-E last fall drew strong reactions across the spectrum. At the time, the film was still in its developmental stage. I based my conclusions on the reviews of those who Pixar permitted to view the then-unfinished version. Those reviews overwhelmingly commented not on the film’s much-needed environmental cautionary messages, but on the ways in which fat people were portrayed to be the cause of the earth’s demise. I haven’t seen Wall-E yet, but from what I read, Pixar reworked the film to tone down its negative and discriminatory portrayals of fat people.

WALL-E Pixar Film exploits obese people Since the release of Wall-E a few weekends ago, the linkbacks and comments to my earlier posts began to increase yet again both from people who saw the film and were still irked by the characterizations of fat people and from others who presented dissenting opinions with various degrees of outrage and taste. I’ve received two media inquiries this week from newspapers who plan to address the issue and want my input, and my blog was featured (and quoted out of context) today on The Onion. I declined both media requests because I don’t feel comfortable commenting until after I’ve seen the film. I’ve been spending every spare minute lately on my massive landscaping project, but the husband and I might take a break this weekend and shell out the $18 bucks to see a matinee showing of Wall-E. I’ll offer my own review then.

I heard part of an interview with Wall-E writer and director Andrew Stanton yesterday on NPR’s Fresh Air — listen to it here. One criticism hurled at the film is that it’s more like a “90 minute lecture on overconsumption” than entertainment. I’m glad that Wall-E addresses this and other environmental issues, because sustainable living is something that my husband and I also believe in and try to practice. Still, I remain disappointed in that while Pixar seems to have toned down its discriminatory characterization of fat people, stereotypes still abound. According to Daniel Engber’s column today on Slate.com:

Wall-E is an innovative and visually stunning film, but the “satire” it draws is simple-minded. It plays off the easy analogy between obesity and ecological catastrophe, pushing the notion that Western culture has sickened both our bodies and our planet with the same disease of affluence. According to this lazy logic, a fat body stands in for a distended culture: We gain weight and the Earth suffers. If only society could get off its big, fat ass and go on a diet!

But the metaphor only works if you believe familiar myths about the overweight: They’re weak-willed, indolent, and stupid. Sure enough, that’s how Pixar depicts the future of humanity. The people in Wall-E drink “cupcakes-in-a-cup,” they never exercise, and if they happen to fall off their hovering chairs, they thrash around like babies until a robot helps them up. They watch TV all day long and can barely read.

We all know the stereotypes: fat people eat too much; fat people are lazy and don’t exercise; fatness is completely a lifestyle choice and ad nauseum. Engber goes on to briefly discount and invalidate these stereotypes and points out the obvious biasness of a media and culture steeped in sizeism:

Despite all this, there’s an endless appetite for stories linking obesity and environmental collapse. Pounds of fat and pounds of carbon are routinely made to seem interchangeable. …These calculations show the obesity-ecology metaphor run amok. Like other spurious estimates of the “cost of obesity,” they leave out important, mitigating variables. …The desire to link obesity and environmental collapse seems to have more to do with politics than science.

Some bloggers have taken my comments on Wall-E out of context and characterized me as some kind of mean-spirited ogre who has issued a hit on the company’s innocent little spotlight. People have written that I’ve called for a boycott of Wall-E and Pixar when I have asked no such thing. And, of course, if you write about the injustices of weight-based discrimination, you must be fat yourself, because only fat people care about such things. I like Pixar, I really do. My friends and I saw Toy Story three times in the theater, and I’ve since watched most of the movies the company has released. My concern now is on the kind of light that same charming spotlight shines on fat people. As Engber concludes:

All this may be enough to leave some overweight viewers of Wall-E in tears. It’s easy to imagine how they might respond to Pixar’s dystopic vision of our fat future, in which puffed-up bodies are played for cheap laughs. What happens when the movie ends and the lights come up? Does the rest of the audience stare at the lone fatty as she waddles her way toward the theater doors? Do they see in her body a validation of the film’s “darker implications”—a signpost for what we might become if we don’t change our ways? Or do they just scowl at her, convinced that she’s part of the problem?

Have you seen Wall-E? How did you perceive its characterizations of fat people?

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Arts and Music, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On July 11th, 2008, MrsDrC

said:

I’m one of the people who likes Wall-E.

The live action char. is the president of the country/world? And CEO of the corporation running the country/world? He is “normal” in size, yet he also flee’s the failing earth to live a life of pampered luxury on one of the space liners. So how is it that people are drawing lines of fat people caused the environment to implode? I personally dont follow that line of thought.

This same live action president/CEO gives the warning that you may expierence bone loss due to the artificial gravity. Now keep in mind they were only supposed to be gone 5 years, NOT 700. My mind followed that after years of bone loss the humans used the hover chairs as any person with a crippling problem would. Then with the manipulation of the robots to make sure they “survive” not “live” people were pampered into perpetual baby-ness.

The fatties didnt shun the chance for change, even when it meant leaving their hover chairs. They stepped up to the plate with excitement and awe at a chance “to do” something. They marveled at a world they had not noticed before. Like a child, which is how the computer kept them. I didnt read it as “the fat people are stupid” I took it as “the computer kept them dumbed down so they would not resist”.

The message of over consumption was like a load of bricks to the head, but one I agree with. It wasnt just about food, it was about everything. It was about giving the power up, and never asking even who took it. That is how I took it. I was happy to see that when given a change the fatties took the power back and didnt hesitate to leave their hover chairs and armies of pampering robots. That is what you would hope would happen.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

2 On July 11th, 2008, MrsDrC

And one last note. It’s hard in mind to make the fat people the villians of anything when EVERYONE was fat. The only human that was not, was the dead at least 650 years president/CEO that was seen in old video recordings.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

3 On July 11th, 2008, Panth

I agree with MrsDrc’s assessment. Personally, I thought the movie was beautiful because it showed fat people as people, exquisitely and tenderly human when given the chance, and both willing to save the day - even, yes, heroic. Another thing I liked was that, while body shapes changed in the credit montage, they didn’t all become thin; many of the children, even, looked ‘thick’ (if not fat).

I would suggest that the people who protest about this film are people who are having a knee-jerk reaction to the message of anti-overconsumption. Really, it’s just common sense though: we can’t continuously use up the Earth’s resources - and this IS a finite system - and not expect to pay some price (even if it isn’t necessarily the one portrayed in the film). *shrugs* I think these people are just being stupid, honestly.

I would recommend you go to the movies, and load up on popcorn. (Mmm… popcorn…)

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

4 On July 11th, 2008, AL

(This includes spoilers in case you plan on seeing the movie)

Wall-E’s portrayal of fat people was a lot different than I thought it would be. The most important thing is that, to me anyway, the connection between overconsumption and obesity was not the focus. It’s the thin/average/varied people of 700 years before who overconsumed until the world was a trash heap.

The fat people you see in Wall-E are descendents of the original generation of folks who went on a “temporary space cruise” while the robots cleaned the Earth. When the original mission failed, the CEO decided to make the cruise permanent, and the corporation programmed the robots to look after the human race.

The current generation can’t really be described as lazy, because they have never known a world without hover chairs, computers, and eating through a straw. They don’t even know about Earth (other than it exists) - not even the captain. There’s a memorable scene where he asks his computer to define things like “farming” and “dancing” to him, and the more he learns the more excited he gets - until he realizes that the present Earth is a wasteland (none of the humans seem to remember this). It doesn’t take him long to decide that he would rather fix Earth than stay on the cruise, but his own robots hold him hostage because it is fixed in their programming not to go back.

What I found relieving is that even while the humans are leading the pampered lives they do, they are not presented as slugs (which was a serious worry of mine) but as rather lively human beings. That said, I was still annoyed that EVERYONE had to be fat, and hovering around the same size and shape no less. I suppose it did not occur to Pixar that people with the same diets and levels of activity will gain different amounts of weight, and distribute it differently. Not to mention inactivity =/= fat. Like many have said, Pixar could have just as easily shown thin, frail people in the hoverchairs and it would have been believable. So unfortunately yes, they do enforce some of the old stereotypes.

But, going back, the CEO does briefly mention that gravity has caused a change in their bone mass and thus in their total physique, and he illustrates this with pictures (so that kids will get it?).

I really liked Wall-E overrall. Honestly, the evils of overconsumption seemed to be overshadowed by Wall-E himself. The film was more about machines evolving human-like traits, including the capacity to love, and how this evolution ultimately saves humanity. For all the criticism it offers it’s incredibly optimistic.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 2:58 pm

5 On July 11th, 2008, ecogirl73

I have mixed feelings about Wall-E. I went to see it this weekend with my husband, both of us are considered obese by BMI standards, and we both had slightly different reactions. I should preface this by saying that I have a doctorate in ecology and have put my entire life and career into working on behalf of the environment. So, I’m already bothered by the idea that only thin people care about the environment, considering that I’ve been doing this work since way before it was fashionable, and I’ve always been fat (and active and healthy and focused on living sustainably both internally and externally).

While my husband loves Pixar and was more like slightly annoyed by the portrayal of fat people, I was actually physically uncomfortable sitting in a theater full of people laughing at fat jokes — it was not much of a mental leap to feel like they mayaswell be laughing at me. While I agree that the message of the movie is more complex than “fat people are killing the planet” — it’s not THAT much more complex to make it okay. I feel similar to others who felt that Pixar was taking the easy way out in substituting fatness for overconsumption — like it’s this cultural shorthand that everybody gets that fat people are THE symbol of overconsumption so we’ll just use that. I really think from an intellectual and creative perspective, a group that talented could have come up with something better than that.

While there certainly are many references to our consumer driven culture (e.g., the Buy n Large), the overwhelming feeling I got sitting in the movie was that the cautionary tale was more about not getting fat, and, by default of course, lazy, not so much about the dangers of consumer culture. While I too was a bit appeased by the explanation our bones and muscles had shrunk due to the absence of gravity, I really don’t think the five year olds sitting in the audience were getting that 10 second message as much as the overwhelming idea that fat is bad — as if they don’t get that already. And, on top of that, everybody’s body looked exactly the same — all fat — which also makes no sense.

So, all in all, I was uncomfortable watching the movie, and felt like leaving a couple of times. While the message of the movie should probably have resonated with somebody like me, it didn’t. I instead just walked away feeling bummed that such a creative group came up with such an uncreative approach to dealing with such important issues.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 3:03 pm

6 On July 11th, 2008, AL

Just as an afterthought, I realize that even if fat people are not blamed for overconsumption they may represent the ultimate result. That is,” OMG if we overconsume well be conquered by our own robotz and GET FATT!!!1″

But then again, being fat is not presented as the lowliest of fates since it IS the fat people who save the day (w/help from good robots, of course). As much as the stereotypes irk me, I think the kids will (hopefully) notice that the fatties can kick ass, therefore they won’t walk away thinking how horrible it is to be fat. That’s what I hope anyway.

It really is mixed up. -_-

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

7 On July 11th, 2008, MrsDrC

I’m getting the idea that many people see the humans getting fat as punishment for overconsumption. I saw the “punishment” as not having any control over your life. I didnt think Pixar was saying “overconsume and you’ll get fat” I took away more of a “overconsume and you’ll lose it ALL” message.

P.S. I thought Mary the female human lead in the story was pretty. I think they did a good job on her. It didnt take more then a second to feel her human-ness and care about her.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

8 On July 11th, 2008, Anonymous

I work for Disney, and I believe the original concept of the people was not that they were supposed to be fat per se, but rather infantilized from the lack of bone density and the fact that all their needs were taken care of for them. They were supposed to look like babies, which they kind of do.

That said.

I really didn’t like WALL-E, both for how the images of people who, whatever they were SUPPOSED to look like, looked fat were presented, and for the heavy-handedness of the environmental message. I felt a little like a 1st-grader sitting in class, getting a scolding from my teacher about how I wasn’t doing my part to save the planet. And not only that, but the “dire consequences” I was being threatened with were that I would OMG GET FAT! Which hey, isn’t so far from the way my life is NOW. So then I felt condescended to AND mad. (The funny thing is, I’m their target audience for that: a rabid environmentalist.)

And no matter how much I tried to ignore those feelings, I couldn’t. I left the theatre feeling both sad and angry, and oddly betrayed by a place that I love so much: both working for them, and the material they put out.

So, yeah. Put me down in the anti-WALL-E camp.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

9 On July 11th, 2008, susan

I don’t think fat people were the cause of the earth’s demise in the movie. I think they became fat after causing the earth’s demise due to affluenza. I wasn’t thrilled with the fact that everyone was fat, but I don’t think the movie was saying that fat people ruined the earth.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

10 On July 11th, 2008, Susan

I went into the movie knowing only its name, that it was made by Pixar, and that it starred a cute robot.

I didn’t notice any sort of disparaging message toward fat people, other than the conflation of overconsumption + lack of activity with fatness. The humans overall were not given much screentime, and there was a variety of portrayals of human types, so I don’t think there was much to make it seem like fat = bad.

There could, of course, be portrayals that, while neutral on their own, attach to discriminatory or insulting stereotypes within our culture.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

11 On July 11th, 2008, Lola

I was wondering why the fatoshpere has been so quiet about Wall-E. And, frankly, not only about Wall-E. Get Smart is totally fatophobic, and Wanted is as mysogynistic as they come.
I agree with many of the messages in Wall-E. Yes, overconsumption is dangerous and it may ruin the Earth. Yes, there are some things that make us human, such as dancing and singing. Yes, musicals are great, even Hello Dolly. Yes, people should stop looking at a flat screen or talking on their cellphones and start paying attention to the beauty that surrounds them. However, the film reinforces stereotypes of fat people as lazy and not too clever. They can’t even walk. Unfortunately, children who watch this film might capture this message (which is something they already believe in anyway) much more than any environmental discourse.
There are a few things that, from what I’ve read so far, nobody has noticed. It’s not exactly that the human race survives. It’s only Americans who survive, according to the movie. There are only black and white Americans (and still no sign of interracial marriages in the year 2700!) - no Asians, no hispanics, no one who doesn’t speak American English without any hint of an accent. I’m from Brazil, and I find it very strange that Brazilian film critics other than myself haven’t noticed this.
Also, it’s very interesting that, even if the whole human/American population depicted in the movie is obese, the commercials still show thin people. I see this as valid criticism to our culture nowadays.
I wrote much more about Wall-E here. It’s in Portuguese, but you can try the automatic translator. The title, translated, is “Robot makes Americans more humane, but doesn’t make a roach less of a roach”. Yeah, because I don’t hear anybody complaining about the cockroach which, to me, was disgusting! Tell me where the poetry is in a flying roach walking all over your body!
http://www.escrevalolaescreva.blospot.com

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 5:41 pm

12 On July 11th, 2008, Lola

I also read in a movie forum a father describing how his 12-year-old fat son reacted when he saw how obese people are depicted in Wall-E. His son whispered to him, “This is so wrong”. And he knew he would be mocked in school…

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 5:45 pm

13 On July 11th, 2008, Katie

I would suggest that the people who protest about this film are people who are having a knee-jerk reaction to the message of anti-overconsumption. Really, it’s just common sense though: we can’t continuously use up the Earth’s resources - and this IS a finite system - and not expect to pay some price (even if it isn’t necessarily the one portrayed in the film). *shrugs* I think these people are just being stupid, honestly.

I really don’t think this is fair, whatever you think about the movie I haven’t seen it yet (although I intend to) partly because I’ve been worried about how seeing a movie equate fat with overconsumption would affect me, not because I don’t want to see my overconsumption criticized. Or do we need to list our environmentalist bonafides before we can voice any criticisms of the movie?

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 7:29 pm

14 On July 11th, 2008, seannotsheen

I enjoyed the movie. I thought the relationship between Wall-E and E.V.E was quirky and beautiful, and I thought the film instilled an appreciation for our planet and our cosmos.

That said, I was very uncomfortable as the audience laughed while the fat man struggled to get back into his hover seat, or the people rolled around like marbles at the pool. And when the final credits rolled, I was nervous to get up out of my seat and walk out, because I wondered if the other people in the theater would laugh at me and look at me as a walking fat joke. Would they think I was some sort of over-consuming man-baby? They wouldn’t know that I am a vegetarian. They wouldn’t know that I do whatever I can to reduce my carbon footprint.

But they would know I am fat.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 7:38 pm

15 On July 11th, 2008, Jen

I’m in total agreement with MrsDrC and others who saw how the humans of the future are infantilized by the machines and it’s thier lack of control of their lives in the future, combined with 700 years of low gravity, that makes them look the way they do. I didn’t see a single obvious fat joke and it seemed to me that the adults all were just so baby-ish, not lazy or slothful. I was looking really hard for fat prejudice in the movie as soon as I read in the Fatosphere there might be some in the film. I was veyr pleased by how WallE turned out.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 10:48 pm

16 On July 11th, 2008, Jackie

I didn’t see it. My sister did see it, and told my mom that it was basically fat stereotype after fat stereotype. So I decided against seeing it, despite thinking the pilot is cute, and liking how the robots say “Whoa!” like in the TV ads. It says alot when I resist teh cute to make a point.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 11:25 pm

17 On July 11th, 2008, Melissa

Possible Walle Spoilers ahead!!!!

I got the chance to see Walle and generally I liked it. I had heard about the fat stereo types displayed and I saw that there are some there. However, I noticed that the movie only shows a glimpse of the over consuming on earth in the begining, and makes no reference to weight, but rather to A mega company trying to sell people BIG everything.

It isn’t until we get to 700 years in the future- humans have been living on this space station type thing. It shows that when they first got there they were thin (at least the captain was), but it was as if they did this “space station” venture as a vacation, waiting for the toxins on earth to clear up, by way of Walles.
So basically generation after generation goes on vacation and forgets that they’re from earth (700 years will do that)
It was almost as if being disconnected from their planet made them disconnect from their bodies, and their reality was a sort of virtual world of advertisement and an auto pilot telling them what to think and eat(have to watch it I guess to fully understand). They’re so consumed with it they have no idea what really is around them.

I found a few of the characters were displayed as being intelligent- ONCE they were able to break from the auto advertising screen belaying all the messages to them. They began to partake in life right away, even while being fat.
Even the captain who is grossly overweight, takes a stand at the end, not for food, but because he wants to go back to earth and live a real life.

There is no mention of diets, and no one is magically made thin. They’re just enjoying the earth at the end, and they are still fat.

There was some comical elements with stereo types in some scenes, but all in all I liked it.
Initially I was prepared to be offended from all the news I had heard, but I wasn’t.
Perhaps I just decided to change my view point of the movie, I don’t know. But it did give a hopeful slant.

posted on July 11th, 2008 at 11:28 pm

18 On July 12th, 2008, attrice

Because it’s easier for me to think in list form:

1) I really liked the film. I think it was brave to actually talk about consumption as the biggest threat to the earth ( rather than the boring films I watched as a kid about not cutting down trees or how important recycling is that always managed to sidestep the reasons people kept clearing land and throwing plastic crap away in the first place.)

2) I’ll add my voice to others who pointed out that the fat people were in no way ever ever ever shown as the cause of the Earth’s problems. In fact, I suspected the director made sure all the ‘old’ Earth footage was almost entirely thin people to reinforce that.

3) My one big problem is that the humans’ fatness definitely seemed linked to their lifestyle. It was lazy, imo, and the film makers were relying on the automatic conflation of fat and inactivity. Now I do think that complete inactivity combined with a steady stream of calorie-dense food would increase the number of fat people in a population - perhaps even make them an overwhelming majority - but it wouldn’t make everyone look like a big fat baby. I thought if the director wanted to go with the idea of low gravity and inactivity changing people’s bodies, it would make sense to have some almost deflated looking thin people as well. They didn’t. It bothered me a little, but overall not so much.

4) Maybe I’m just sensitive about bizarre things, but the fat jokes in “Get Smart” were a helluva lot meaner and in your face to me. I understand that, in terms of its message, why “Wall-E” is under more scrutiny, but I kind of feel like a movie that at least tried is getting a lot of criticism when a movie that makes quite a few blatant fat jokes is being ignored and I don’t quite get it. That isn’t a criticism of you, Rachel, or anyone talking about “Wall-E” -just a general observation.

posted on July 12th, 2008 at 12:08 am

19 On July 12th, 2008, Alix

I saw Wall-E tonight. I loved it. And I was bothered by it. Spoilers ahead.

No matter how fat activists (myself included) see the characters in the film, every thing that could be taken remotely as a fat joke (every time someone fell out of a chair, the stuff about “small bones”, the wall of pictures where the captains get bigger, just to name a few) got uproarious laughter from the audience around me (not all, but I’d have to guess about 3/4 of the theater).

So, IME, the general population is not putting as much critical thought into it as we are. They are seeing fat, lazy, stupid people — and taking the opportunity to laugh.

Also, the idea that planting some seeds is going to bring back destroyed animal species (in the credits) really upset me. That is a dangerous message to send to kids (hopefully adults are smart enough to catch the BS).

Still, the film itself, setting aside deeper issues and looking from an entertainment aspect — is a very amusing, engaging, sweet love story, and I enjoyed it (I adored the obsessively cleaning robot — seriously me in mechanical form!). For the most part, on the fat aspect, I see the failing less with the film itself and more with society.

posted on July 12th, 2008 at 1:17 am

20 On July 12th, 2008, maggie

lola and attrice,

i thought that Get Smart was surprisingly fat-friendly overall. yes, the two jackass agents made jokes, but overall, it was good. the following is copied from my blog (with spoilers for anyone who wanted to see it)

1. so max smart had tried yearly for eight years to become a field agent. we learn that his fatness held him back (yes, there’s a cut scene of him in a fat suit. it’s only a minute or two, and of all the fat suit scenes i’ve been subjected to over the years, this is most innocuous.). but now he’s thin and he’s ready.

but the Thin Ideal fails him! while he passes the test, his boss doesn’t want to lose him as an analyst. losing weight did NOT give him what he wanted most. for real, this is a Big Step. life does not start once you lose weight.

2. the dancing fat chick. max has infiltrated a fancy party to find a russian mobster. his partner (ann hathaway) finds the target immediately, and is dancing with him in an attempt to discover information. max is jealous, and asks a woman to dance. he walks up to a pack of “skinny bitches” and says, “may i have this dance?” one woman says something akin to “yeah right.”

“i wasn’t asking you.”

the fat chick looks up and says no, and he asks until she relents. they dance and kick ass and earn a round of applause from everyone in attendance. as the fat chick walks away, she flips off the clique of skinny bitches. huzzah!

3. the antagonist’s #2 man is a big dude, close to 7 feet and tall and insanely muscular. max connects with him, as he recognizes his voice from listening to hours of conversation for analysis. he reminds his partner that bad guys aren’t just bad guys, “that’s what they do, it’s not who they are.” and he is able to show he is right because in a pinch, this guy lets them go. she asks how he did it. max said, “big people feel pain, too.”

holy shit. this is the first time that it has been SAID in a mainstream movie, at least that i have seen. i was very happy with this movie. hell, that line right there made me tear up. seriously.

—

i came away from that movie very happy. but The Love Guru? ugh. don’t waste your time or money.

posted on July 12th, 2008 at 1:18 am

21 On July 12th, 2008, Elizabeth

I took my seven year old to see the film. I wish I hadn’t. While as adults we say “The fat people weren’t the ones who made the earth the way it is. And the people are only fat because their in space for 700 hundred years.”

What my 7 year old saw was some really stupid fat people. The best part of the movie for him was that a fat guy rolled around on the floor.

I understand all the arguments from the above comments. I do and I even agree with a lot of them, but for me it’s not about what adults think of the movie it is what the children are taking away from the movie. For me I don’t like what my son took away from the movie. Laughing at a fat person just because their fat is not funny nor is it kind. We will not be seeing that movie again.

posted on July 12th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

22 On July 12th, 2008, Tangerina

I just saw it and apart from any concern over fat issues, I loved it. It was so adorable and fun and there was lots of gratuitous hand holding.

As for fat, I agree with the people who pointed out that the problems weren’t really so much with the way fat the fat people were portrayed but more with all of the cultural baggage about fat that viewers would bring to the movie. So yeah, some of it was definitely insensitive, but it didn’t really set of any blaring sirens for me. Given that you would be impossibly hard pressed to find a movie that doesn’t use any of the -isms to make some sort of plot point, I don’t feel that this crossed the line into territory where the insensitivity takes away from my enjoyment of the movie.

posted on July 12th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

23 On July 12th, 2008, Katie

But Tangerina, the movie wasn’t being made in a vacuum. The movie was made in a fatphobic society and the filmmakers were operating in a world in which it was an absolute certainty that people would bring their assumptions and, yes, baggage about fat into it. So why do they get a free pass just because there wouldn’t have been anything negative about the portrayal in a completely different society with completely different viewpoints about fat?

posted on July 12th, 2008 at 6:15 pm

24 On July 12th, 2008, Eve-a

(Possible Spoilers, obviously)

I would argue that Wall-E is not a movie about over-consumption really. The barren Earth and “blobby” humans seem to be just means to an end of making a statement about our ever present need for connection, and how we can achieve that connection through the past. The humans want to go home when something can grow. The joy on the human couple’s face who were brought together through Wall-E is truly touching, as is the formerly isolated humans sudden initiative to break out of their bubbles and help the robots.

I was under the impression that the humans looked like big babies for a few reasons. 1) Muscular atrophy as a result of extended space travel 2) Lack of activity and 3) Because connections is all babies want. Stanton makes this point in the aforementioned NPR interview. The humans begin like infants set in front of a TV program. They’ll watch it, but miss out on important development, and they’ll feel that they’re missing something.

I don’t see where the “insensitivity” was. I’m fat positive and fat myself and I was really pleased that the humor that came from the hover chair chaos felt more like a comment on technology. After all, you see these supposedly useless humans kick the evil Hal-like first mate’s butt physically and heroically protect infants.

Agreed, Wall-E is not as cut and dry fat positive as Kung-Fu Panda, but I think some people are seeing their own prejudices, and its a shame to attack a movie that is quite possibly the most ambitious piece of animation ever produced because of perceived weight-ism. There are more important battles to fight.

posted on July 12th, 2008 at 11:42 pm

25 On July 13th, 2008, Sherie S

I didn’t see it and I won’t because I eschew most MSM of all kind. But I will say this about Disney. There is a PBS video called “Afluenza” which shows the then CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner, giving a speech to a marketing conference. He says something to the effect that encouraging aggression in children in o.k. in the pursuit of profit. I think it is very sad that people are taken in by Disney. However pure and noble Walt Disney was, it is now just a corporation like any other. Out to make a buck before anything else. Like so many others, the professional image they seek to cultivate is often the exact opposite of their actions. And as other people have pointed out, the whole message behind WallE is non consumption, but there are WallE everythings for sale that will end up in landfills a few years from now. Ironic!

posted on July 13th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

26 On July 13th, 2008, hlynn

I liked Walle, but I really could not stomach the cheap fat jokes. What really bothered me was that the little kids sitting around me were laughing at all the fat jokes because those were suppoed to be the ‘lighter’ and ‘funnier’ aspects to the movie. I also don’t agree that fat people would destroy the world. My fat friends and I eat the same amount of food. Fat has nothing to do with life style (unless your lifestyle is extreme in some fashion.)

posted on July 13th, 2008 at 6:42 pm

27 On July 13th, 2008, Quotationally Incorrect » The-F-Word.org said:

[...] to the public. Matyszczyk ignored this caveat, however, despite the fact that I reiterate this in a blog post I made on Friday about Wall-E which he also linked [...]

posted on July 13th, 2008 at 10:37 pm

28 On July 19th, 2008, Dianna

Amusing how some people are so worried about being laughed @ after the movie for being overweight. After I watched this, I didn’t even think of the “fat” people. I thought of Wall-E & EVE and how their relationship was so different but still adorable. I really enjoyed this movie and it’s not saying that fat people are the reason for our Earth going down the drain or even, that they’re bad. They can’t help being fat because of the lack of gravity and besides, this is 700 years later… The generations before that are just so used to living this way so, the present generation sees nothing wrong with it. They’ve been so accustomed to having robots there to help them and serve them in a sense.

posted on July 19th, 2008 at 1:33 am

29 On July 20th, 2008, Ashley

I really enjoyed Wall-E. I was cautious about seeing it after reading your first blog post on it, but I decided to go see it anyway because…

Alright. I really thought that he was adorable. Those big eyes! Er, anyway…

But I kept my skeptical senses in mind as I viewed the movie and I found myself pleasantly surprised. The movie, at least to me, doesn’t make fat people out to be the ones who destroyed the earth to the point of evacuation. As a matter of fact, as Wall-e goes about his business cleaning up garbage, you see an advertisement for the Axiom (the big spaceship that took in all the humans after earth became unlivable) and all the people are average sized. Not fat at all.

It was only until 700 years later of sitting around in hover chairs that they are seen as obese. To me this relayed a message of “sitting around doing nothing will make you gain weight” rather than “these fat people destroyed the earth and do nothing all day”. As a matter of fact most of them know no other way of life, after all things had been the same for seven hundred years.

But that’s just my opinion. I can see other points of view.

posted on July 20th, 2008 at 5:45 pm