Journal Article

A Labor of Love: WALL-E's Redemption

Gammie, Rosamund M

2025

Overview

The film, with WALL-E as its central character, leaps from Old to New Testament, connecting the more obvious allusions to Genesis and the Garden of Eden to subtler nods at redemption and salvation, the nature of humanity, and our relationships with each other. [...]the relationship between love and labor will be viewed not through a capitalist, or environmentalist lens, but through a theological one. The trash-filled, garbage-ridden landscape, the lack of any plant life (other than the finding of the sapling that catapults the film's plot into action), and the dystopian narrative of an abandoned earth all resonate with a society conscious of its own environmental impact and destruction. \"13 She points to the hypocrisy of the film's marketing strategy, which included themed single-use plastics such as collectors cups and disposable plastic watches for its cinematic and later DVD releases, pointing to the parallel in the film itself of the literal rubbish WALL-E hoards in his home (his \"postmodern bricolage\") and the irony of what is considered \"collectible\" and what is considered \"garbage. \"16 Henry A. Giroux, in his second edition of 7he Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence describes Disney's power to obfuscate its own role in corporate and consumerist monopolies as \"perhaps the most disturbing of all the film's implications.

• Publisher: University of Nebraska at Omaha, Department of Philosophy and Religion
• Subject: Animated films / Anti-capitalism / Environmental impact / Environmentalism / Environmentalists / Motion pictures / Postmodernism / Robots / Science fiction & fantasy