I've been preaching for a while now against art that has a political agenda. I think I will eventually write a full article on the subject, but my main point is this: Art is by definition allegorical, personal and immortal. Politics are by definition literal, generalized to the lowest common denominator and hopelessly current. The only immortal aspect of politics is their never changing repetitive dead-endesness in which the corrupt thrive, the idealists are used and betrayed, and the honest despair.
At the moment I tend to categorize the environmental issue as a political one, beause - well, you've been paying attention in the past ten years or so, right? And so I've been very judgmental towards films like Pixar's "Wall-E" for tackling the most fashionable political issue, and for doing it in such a shallow and literal way.
To demonstrate the right way to do what Pixar couldn't, I've discovered (on my friend Isaac Jacobs' trailer blog) the short film "Plastic Bag". It's a film about the environment, there's no doubt about that. But it's also about a search for purpose, about divinity, about the responsibility of a creator towards his children, about loneliness, friendship, abandonment, the search for identity, the beauty of nature and so on - subjects that belong to the domain of the arts.
Look and listen:
My point is this: two hundred years from now, people will watch this film and be moved. Even if they've cleaned up all the oceans and fixed all the problems, they'll still be moved. Even if a month from now it turns out that the pacific vortex never existed and global warming is a lie, "Plastic Bag" won't lose any of its power. And "Wall-E"? "Wall-E" will be a joke.
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2 comments:
I tend to disagree - I think the same thing can be said for Wall-E.
Wall-E is a film about the environment, there's no doubt about that. But it's also about a search for purpose, about the responsibility of a creator towards his (robots) children, about loneliness, friendship, abandonment, the search for identity, the beauty of nature and so on.
I don't think you can argue about any of those issues appearing in the film. I think the difference in our viewpoints is about the importance of the environmental issue.
For me, the environmental issue is just a starting point in Wall-E - just a "what if" settings for the story to unfold in, much like "what if superheroes were real" in "The Incredibles".
More than that, the settings the story takes place in is a rather exaggerated caricature of the environmental issue, so much that it takes a tongue-in-cheek approach which (to me at least) doesn't come off as a warning but more like a joke on the expense of everybody who takes it too seriously.
Really, you saw all that in "Wall-E"? Wonder if I can be tricked into watching it again...
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