Guest Author - Kirsten Olsen-Keyser

It wasn’t that the robot wasn’t cute. It wasn’t that the “love” story wasn’t adorable enough to make me vomit up sugar into my popcorn bag. It wasn’t that there were not enough comedic moments in the film to make me chuckle. It wasn’t that if I saw that clip from “Hello Dolly” one more time I was going to throw my Coke Slushi at the screen. It wasn’t even that, once again, I was duped into seeing a film with a “broader message”, a la Happy Feet, believing I was going to see a sci-fi kids flick. The only thing that irked me about this movie was the question I kept asking myself during the bulk of the feature: “Where are all the people of color?” Where are the Indian-Americans? Where are the African-Americans? Where are the Asian-Americans? Where are the Spanish speaking peoples? Apparently, in the bleak future presented to us by Pixar, only white people escape into the void of space in the luxury cruise liner. Only white people are responsible for the world going to crap. Where is the melting pot of cultures that truly represents this country?

Let’s look at demographics for a moment. There are roughly 221.3 million people in this country that consider themselves White/White Hispanic. 12 percent of the population considers themselves Black/African American. There are 13.1 million people of Asian decent living in this country. There are also about 19 million people of the “Other” persuasion residing here as well. So for every ten Americans there are roughly seven White/White Hispanics, and one each African American, Asian and “Other”. Keep this in mind it will be important to know in a minute.

Wall-E, while cleverly advertised as a “children’s film”, is a political/ social commentary in a bumble gum wrapper. First and foremost is its message of recycling – if we don’t do something quickly to improve our situation, our planet may look like the future Earth created by Pixar Studios. A very noble sentiment, except that apparently only white people make trash. Only white people are to blame for the environmental mess the Earth (is in) got into. Well, I for one am not going to stand by and allow Pixar to blame my heritage for one more thing on this planet! No sir! Everyone in this country has an equal load to bear when it comes to causing environmental problems whether through too much interference of complete inaction. In a much broader sense, everyone on this Planet has an equal opportunity to fix the problems. But according to Pixar, white people cause all the problems and white people also have to fix all the problems. In reality, there should have been at least three minority characters for every ten white characters in the film; it should have been a melting pot of trash creators and a melting pot of world fixers. Alas, it was not. Guess it is not a small world after all?

Ultimately, there is nothing “wrong” with Wall-E as a coherent film from the script, to its important message and even down to the voice acting. Environmentalism is all the rage now with Holly-would “going green”, even a whole TV channel devoted to green, clean living. Once a catch word for only the crazy, leftist, liberal tree-huggers, the Environment is actually becoming important to everyone for a change. But with the first half-Black presidential candidate in our midst, it seems strange that Pixar chose to ignore other cultures in this film. It’s clear that America is finally accepting the fact that our nation was founded by multiculturalism. How long is it going to take Holly-would to recognize that fact too?