Rubbish about Wall•E (actual and perceived)

I took my nephew Seven to see the new Pixar movie Wall•E, a funny, sweet and prescient animated reflection on personal responsibility, technology and the environment. The basic premise: Earthlings, having scuzzed up the planet to such a degree that it's uninhabitable, have lived for centuries on space-yachts, buzzing about on hover-chairs as their asses grow more and more monumental and robots like Wall•E are left on earth to clean up the mountains of trash to make the place suitable for human life again. Wall•E unwittingly sparks humanity's return to the planet where ingenuity, moreso than technology, gives cause for hope.

This message, it turns out, is too much for the political right to take. A sample of responses: "Liberal propaganda," "liberal nonsense," "Malthusian fear mongering," you get the idea. It's all, well, rubbish, as I see it.

But as the Slog points out, there's a bit of irony in Pixar/Disney's promotion of the film: at screenings, including ours in Minneapolis, every kid on opening weekend was given a disposable, made-in-China plastic Wall•E watch.