Secrecy Wall-e Essay

Austin Masuga

Cindy Bateman

English 101

15 November 2011

“Secrecy”

To the average person Wall-E would be defined as an animated kid’s movie. But Wall-e is much more than that when you start to break the movie down. When I say break it down I mean really start to analyze what the writers may or may not be trying to send you in signals throughout the movie. These signals can be anything as big as a giant billboard stating it in the movie, to as small as a flower standing for life and so on etc. Wall-e is full of these signals that the writers are trying to put out to the viewer. The signals I want to discuss further are those of secrecy. Whether it’s media or political aspects of secrecy. I believe Wall-e puts out these signals on secrecy to prove a point to the viewer. That not everything you here from the media is 100% accurate, or how some details may get left out. Also how government may not always keep its country in the loop or even some of its members on certain issues or details. They do this to gain a power or control over the public.

When I’m talking about secrecy I mean things that remain hidden from the public when it comes from the media. Whether or not it is small details that are not significant to the average person, or if it’s huge details such as leaving out a story on people dying halfway around the world. When I’m talking about the political side, I’m speaking in terms of what the public and some officials in office get hidden from them by other government officials.  There are many examples for each type of secrecy displayed in the motion picture movie Wall-e.

One of the most prime examples of secrecy in media and political/government in Wall-e would be how Buy N Large keeps almost everyone and everything in the dark on how the world isn’t sustainable anymore. They have everyone leave on this huge “cruise” ship believing they are leaving because of the trash issues on Earth. When in reality the situation is life isn’t sustainable on Earth any longer. Meaning the situation at hand is far worse than told to the public. So everyone can be away and relax while Wall-es clear up the heaping piles of trash. When in reality life isn’t able to grow anymore on earth such as plants. They do this to keep everyone calm while the issue at hand isn’t changing to keep them under their control or power.

The Axiom is a governmental distraction system to keep people away from the issue of what is actually going on at Earth. In the movie Wall-e the Axiom was used as a symbol of government distraction. They used various things on the Axiom to keep the members completely obviously to everything going on around them. Things such as their screens on their hovering chairs. People aboard the Axiom didn’t even know about various things on the ship such as a swimming pool. Almost every single person or thing on the ship also seemed to have no knowledge about Earth. The goal of the ship told to the public was for people to relax 5 years while they cleaned up the trash. But in reality the goal was to keep everyone distracted on the ship to avoid chaos of Earth considering it was no longer inhabitable.

Examples of how the Axiom works as a governmental distraction tool. Everyone on the ship is always so distracted that the captain turns back the time from afternoon to morning. All of the food/cups on the ship turn to breakfast food and the weather on the celling changes and etc. No one on the ship even noticed that it wasn’t morning afterword. Also at that same time he mentions how it’s the cruises 700 year anniversary of its five year cruise. That is an outrageous amount of years of distraction. No one even questions why they have been on the cruise that long in the first place. It is amazing how much one can be distracted by tools the government/media put out.

An example of the Axiom in real life would be the Twin Towers of 9/11. Some people would say government used this tragedy to enter Iraq based on them attacking the U.S.A. When in reality a lot of people think the U.S. used this to enter Iraq for the oil and gas benefits. There are some pretty great examples of benefits America gained from invading Iraq for more than just because they attacked the U.S. They could start to have an influence on the type of government they wanted to get, set toward more beneficial energy products for America. Also they could start getting better prices on the type of oil and energy products of the Middle East.

Another prime example of secrecy in Politics in Wall-e would be how the captain isn’t informed of how operation recolonize is cancelled. Considering it is an outrageous claim to cancel all hope when it comes to going back to Earth. When the captain finds out this hidden information, he finds it to be outrageous and later on to be false. The government trusted this information to an official (Auto) knowing it wouldn’t matter to that specific official whether or not they went back or not. Most captains always have the will to fight for life (Earth) even if there is little hope or orders standing in the way. If they would have given this information to the captains they would have then lost the power and control they longed for by keeping information hidden.

There is also a part in Wall-e that brings up questions of possible secrecy. When Auto is presented with the plant he sets out to immediately destroy it following his orders of canceling operation recolonize. While just before that the captain says, “But, no probe has ever come back positive before.” It is possible that a probe has come back positive and they destroyed it back then. Just as they set out to do now to this probe. Then after its disposal they kept the captain in confinement to force secrecy upon the public. If the secret of a probe coming back positive ever got out they would lose all the power and control that they had worked so hard to gain over all of the people on the Axiom. There is no way to know whether or not this secrecy ever occurred there is viable evidence to support that it is possible though.      

There are examples in real life of government destroying evidence; such as in wall-e with the plant. In the Nixon Watergate scandal White House counsel member John Dean was ordered to destroy evidence from a safe at E Howard Hunt’s house that contained wiretap evidence of the Democrat National Committee. He was ordered to do this by White house aide H.R. Haldeman. In the case of Wall-e you could say H.R. Haldeman was acting like Auto and John Dean was Go-4 Auto’s trusty robot henchmen. The Republicans used secrecy to try and gain control and power over the Democratic Party. They had secrecy in two ways, secretly they knew the other side’s secrets and, they hid the secrets of their illegal acts from everyone.

There is also secrecy when it comes to the issues on the ship involving trash. They just keep dumping all of the trash from the Axiom out into space without thinking twice about how that’s affecting the world. They keep the public from knowing about this with all those distractions still. While the public remains kept in the dark they remain in control and have all the power on the public. There are cases similar to this in real life as well such as the dumping of toxic waste into ponds and rivers that are off limits. Also while releasing hard toxins into the air over the legal limit that they paid for.

The government didn’t want to change its ways on the ship so in order to do this. They had to keep everyone in the dark on how they kept wasting and harming the environment with constant dumping of trash. Near the end of the movie when they finally come back to Earth it seems after they overthrew their government. The wasting had finally stopped since the issue was finally recognized by the public. When the government lost their secret they lost the power they had to control the people.

There are so many signals in Wall-e. I felt most strongly about the signals involving government and media secrecy. It is good to know that your government doesn’t keep you touch with some issues that may be going on underneath the curtains. To maybe do some research to see what is actually going on behind the scenes that the media isn’t telling you? This will take away the power and control the media can gain while keeping the public in the dark about certain issues.

Wall-e has very many extraordinary signals showing signs of secrecy. Whether or not it is media or governmental secrets. Examples of media secrecy such as how Buy N Large keeps the public in the dark about how the world isn’t sustainable, by telling the public the cruise is so they can relax while they fix the trash piles building up on Earth. Examples of governmental secrecy such as how the Axiom acts like a governmental distraction tool. So they have power over the people because they are so distracted from the issues going on in secrecy.

 Relating that to the real world would be how the U.S. used 9/11 to enter Iraq for oil and energy. While destroying the plant can relate to how the Republicans trashed evidence they needed to keep hidden for power. Finally lastly the other issue on secrecy can be seen with the dumping of trash piles into space. While after boarding the ship the government still went about its ways of secrecy involving some of the trash and environmental problems. These signals shown can easily relate to real life situations that give government or media power and control. After watching Wall-e these signals showed me how to end this power and control the media and government hold over the average public person. One must realize that not all you hear could be the entire truth and they should seek further knowledge from more than one source. Also to never fully believe what you hear from the government it may not be true. Wall-e is a prime example of what could happen when government and media sources are allowed the power of secrecy. The Earth was unsustainable and they ended up in a ship in space for thousands of years. I wouldn’t want to be stuck aboard the Axiom obviously to the world around me would you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

History Commons. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. <http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=nixon_and_watergate_tmln&gt;.

 “The Debate: Did oil influence America’s decision to invade Afghanistan? Were the true motives for war declared? Read our detailed report and sign the online petition for a public statement from the American government. TheDebate.org – Debating current affairs.” The Debate: Was Oil a Motive for the War on Iraq and Afghanistan? Did Oil Influence America’s Decision? Sign the Online Petition for a Public Statement from U.S. government. TheDebate.org – Debating Current Affairs. 28 Nov. 2011

WALL-E. Dir. Andrew Stanton. By Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, and Jeff Garlin. Prod. Jim Morris. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 2008.

Peer Review 2

I feel like I gained a lot more information about my paper during my second peer review. I learned different kinds of techniques I should be using to try and gain my readers attention, such as more appeals to emotion. She gave me a few eye openers on how I should write a more clear thesis, and set better claims to back my statement. Yet again I felt like I gained a lot of knowledge while reviewing her paper. She had many appeals to emotion that I could clearly see and start adding to my own papers. She also had a couple things in her paper that I noticed that were things I sometimes do, such as run on sentences. Overall I feel as the peer reviews are helping me come a better writer.

Peer Review

I feel like I’m going to use my editors review a lot. He gave me some great feed back on some ideas that I could change to enchance my overall thesis. He liked my overall theme I was going with towards analyzing Wall-e. With my essay he wanted me to exapand a little bit on some of the claims I bring to the table for support. More connections to the real world to add more support to my argument. But overall I feel like I got the most help with my essay while reading their essay. When I say this I started seeing things I should do with my paper to support my arguments, while at the same time seeing things I shouldn’t be doing with my essay. I feel like the peer review really open my eyes in every aspect both reviewing and getting reviewed overall great experience!

Matrice

This week I choose to write on Matrice’s blog. I wanted to toss out a possible claim for her to look into, and also answer a question about Wall-E that she didn’t know.

Wall-E Ideas

When it comes to Wall-E there is so many different ways you could take your analysis paper. For me I think I want to go down a road in analyzing Buy N Large. I could possibly analysis the fact that BNL controls everything, and that their money is the power. Or how it seems like every one in the world is just straight up brainwashed by consumerism. It seems like BNL just gained a huge monopoly of power and wealth, so much so, that they just took over everything and became almost government like.  When it comes to consumerism every single person has a desire to buy what’s on their monitor. Such as the example of how blue is the new red. Yet once Wall-E knocks them out of their chairs or you could say their “trance” they stop and look around and start to be human beings again.

Animal Cruelity

Yesterday I was walking around campus to get to my math class and a guy came up to me and handed me a pamphlet on animal cruelty in the meat distributing market. Even though we have been talking about this a lot in class the pamphlet really did strike my attention. There are just absolutely disturbing pictures in here on how we treat the animals we are going to eat. Also the pamphlet has a lot of interesting facts such as if I could cut my meat consumption I could save hundreds of animals from a lifetime of suffering. So even if a few people just started cutting consumption there could be a huge reduction in the suffering of these animals.

The pamphlet goes on into some detail about an undercover investigation on a pig breeding facility. The guy doing the investigation saw things happening to pigs such as ” Workers clipped the piglets’ tails with dull pliers; performed castrations, ripping out the piglets’ testes with their hands; and tattooed sows by repeatedly driving a spiked mallet into the pigs flesh-all without anesthesia” (Vegan Outreach pamphlet). Those are some disturbing facts that are going on in at least 1 facility imagine how much these animals actually get physically tortured before going into your stomach. I’m not saying we need to stop eating meat by any means, I enjoy eating meat as the rest of us, but to an extent if I could help end the pain of these animals I would have to take another look at how much I really consume.

Analysis

I found it somewhat hard to make good connections between the episode “Darkness Falls” and the environment. Sure there was a few obvious connections such as the cutting down of marked trees, and sustainability. But, I felt like I couldn’t make a good enough connection to catch my reader’s eye. I just had a bunch of tiny small connections nothing gigantic that I could go off of to really grasp the reader’s attention. I’m somewhat nervous for the upcoming Wall-E essay if I couldn’t make good enough connections in the X-files episode. I think the Wall-E paper is going to be a huge struggle for me if I cannot find a really strong connection to go off of. Hopefully over more time my analysis skills will increase so I have any chance of getting sleep while that essay is due.

We are going to find out here shortly what exactly awaits us with the Wall-E essay. I’m somewhat anxious to see all the details involved in writing this one. Considering all of the hype surrounding the essay in class, and the double showing of Wall-E. This essay will definitely be the hardest essay I have ever had to write. Because of how we need to pull out connections from a movie and real life issues while not sounding to crazy and having supporting arguments to back our stuff up. I also feel like there could be a little bit of research involved to try and support some claims some people could make with this movie. Overall I think the Wall-E paper is going to be an extremely challenging essay.

Darkness Falls

 

“Darkness Falls Analysis”

 

I think “Darkness Falls” was an episode that portrayed many messages about the environment. But the main message I got from Darkness Falls was how nature fights back. If you take the cutting down of the tree to then release these insects which kill any human around with no light. You can relate that to global warming. How if you affect nature, nature can come back with a punch. When I say this I’m talking about harsher weather and climate. Expanding on that I also think the show was trying to portray possibly that this could be nature’s way of trying to make things right with the environment.

 

If you think about it these bugs could have been a symbol of protecting the environment. Once you cross the line there must be action taken place to try and protect the forest. Somewhat like global warming in which the Earth changes, possibly as a defensive mechanism to try to get rid or affect what is causing the issues to protect itself. This is shown in the show, when the loggers cut down trees that are protected by state laws. They release the ancient bugs that go around killing the very thing that awakened them from sleep. The cutting down of the tree could also go more along the lines if you do something that isn’t right bad things can and sometimes do happen.

 

All of the loggers that cut down the marked trees ended up dying. Maybe the show was trying to send a little scare to loggers all over the world with this episode. That you are credible for your actions and who knows maybe one day one of those logs will release ancient bugs to come after you, and punish you for destroying pieces of nature. Another theme I picked up from the show was sustainability.

 

There were many parts of show that you could compare to sustainability. Such as the light that keeps everyone safe in the house. Once the light is gone they are gone. Just like when the gas in the generator is gone they are gone. Just like if and when the loggers take down to many trees we lose sustainability in our environment. Another interesting fact about the show was the color of the insects green.

 

It is not too often that you will see a bright green bug that almost glows. I believe that it is trying to send the message that the bug itself is nature. Green is almost always asserted with nature. This goes back to my statement on how the insect is nature’s way at protecting itself. Seeing the bugs as a symbol of nature with the green shows how nature can punch back.

 

Overall this episode has a lot of messages to the reader, but I take away from this episode how nature can fight back. There are many example of nature fighting back. Such as the insects protecting nature, the cutting down of trees or destroying nature getting people killed, Once resources are gone you are gone, Also bugs representing nature. This can come to light with events in the real world such as global warming. How the environment changes to almost protect itself in a way by creating affecting that which cause the issue. So in other words stop destroying the environment or you are going to get killed by glowing green insects!

 

Sarah

This week I choose to comment up Sarah’s blog. She shed light on some facts on the food industry that got me talking!

All About the Moolan Part 2

Yesterday I was sitting in my economy class and the teacher started discussing marginal costs. He gave our class an example of how a farmer took his marginal costs into consideration. The farmer had planted a lot of beans that year, but looked at the marginal costs and realized that it would cost him more in diesel fuel than he would make if he sold the beans, so naturally he just let the crops go to waste. I found this story to be simply outrageous. One third of the world is starving and we are letting food supplies go to waste because of the costs, even after having already planted and used the materials to make said product.

 

Imagine how many food products go to waste in the world. If everyone in the world could somehow get over this obsession with money I feel like we could actually start to get things done in the world. I know it is unbelievable to imagine a world in which money honestly didn’t make the world go round. I know once money is out of the equation many people would just stop working in general, and start thinking to themselves why am I doing all this work for no benefit. That is exactly what would happen if there wasn’t money. But if only we could get that idea of “I have to be working for a benefit more than helping others” out of our minds the world would be so much better off. I wish it were that simple to just extinguish such self interest in currency, but a boy can dream!