Most people who see the movie "Wall-E" are charmed by the story of a lonely robot programmed to clean a future earth that is a worldwide garbage pile (left behind by irresponsible humans) and his search for his one true love.In the movie, the humans of Earth have all moved onto a ginormous spaceship where they plan to live until Earth is once again 'livable'. Everything they need is available on the ship (yes, lots of food) and the people get around by sitting in one-person padded-chair hovercraft vehicles. So, yes they are 'drawn' as being overweight as they never get out of these floating recliner chairs.
Apparently some people do not see the satire going on in "Wall-E", which very cleverly goofs on our consumer culture and laziness.
The FPT is going to refrain from singling out anyone here but there are self-proclaimed "Fat Pride" activists & authors who are blinded by their bias and taking this way too seriously.
Some individuals are upset about how 'fat' people are depicted in the film, believing that "Wall-E" is fostering anti-obesity hysteria that can be compared to the perfect human eugenics policy of Nazi Germany. Others also argue the film sigles out fat people as the catalyst for the demise of the earth and mankind.
The Fat Pride Times does not agree with any of this nonsense, and we love this future classic movie. It is a great love story with a very clever scenario that is about everyone in our culture and ponders the what-if questions about the future of Earth and its people.
Glad to see you coming out in support of the fantastic film. I'm fat and love WALL-E to death. Not only is the problem in WALL-E not depicted as the human's being fat (rather them being too cut off from humanity and absorbed in their own little worlds via their hover chairs and screens) but also it is explained quite clearly in the middle of the film that these aren't people who are just lazy and not exercising. While there would surely be fat people anyway because, well, we exist, the explanation in the film is quite simple: the humans are suffering from bone loss due to spending many generations in micro-gravity. This is illustrated *in pictures* on the screen as Shelby Forthright explains it and shows the humans losing bones and ballooning up. Yet people *still* seem to think the movie is about fat people and how terrible there are, even some of the fans are misguided enough to think this! It's a fairly idiotic assumption given the photographic and audio evidence we hear to discount it in the film, but it seems people will see a boogie man wherever they can find one these days.
ReplyDeletewow this sounds like one heck of film. I had no idea there was this controversy surrounding it! I have enjoyed reading these comments. I hope others who have seen the film will comment as well.
ReplyDeleteWow! You should hit Midgard Dragon's link at the top of her post - her blog has screen shots of Wall-E windows 'themes' that are very very cool.
ReplyDeletethe producers of WALL-E have just as much of a right to produce a film with a particular statement as all of you have to support fat pride. Perhaps you all should get together and put together a film that portrays the opposite. Besides, have you ever considered that the statement was more broad - pointing out the "laziness of mankind" verses directing it at fat people? sometimes we get so hung-up on identifying with a group that it clouds our common sense...
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