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.

Essay 2 Reflection

When I first heard we were going to be writing a persuasive argumentative paper based off of one of the essays we had read, I was nervous. I didn’t quite understand where to start in terms of which essay I could actually be argumentative about. It took me quite a while to fully understand how to get started writing the essay. I was having trouble trying to connect the author’s main ideas and my main ideas. While trying to be persuasive and argumentative. The writing of the paper came easy once I finally figured out a way I could connect the reader to me and the author I was supporting. I didn’t find this connection until I visited with Cindy in conferences.

 

If it wasn’t for the conference I don’t know if I would have had any chance of actually writing essay number two at all. I gained a lot of good ideas, and got rid of a lot of bad ideas that I had coming into the conference. It seems as though I always have too broad of examples or examples that are not personal, in which a reader could gain a connection to me. So it was good for me to get feedback in those conferences on better examples to use in my paper and better ways to use those examples to gain ethos, pathos, logos. I’m definitely glad that we had scheduled conferences before the turning in of our paper it helped me immensely.

 

I didn’t have a chance to go to the writing center. Luckily I had submitted my paper last week so it won’t affect my grade, but I wish I had gone to the writing center anyway. It is always a good idea to get extra help on any essay or type of writing you do. I’m disappointed that I didn’t seek further help in going to the writing center besides having conferences. It could have given my paper that edge it needed in rhetorical argumentative style. Plus a better grade never hurt anyone.

 

Overall though I feel like this essay has increased my overall ability to make connections from others to connections I make. When I say this I mean my ability to agree with someone else’s ideas and to use their idea to support a claim I had on my own. I believe my overall writing is increasing not only in ethos, pathos, logos, but in style, and flow. At first I was nervous about this essay, but after writing it I’m glad Cindy assigned it, it really helped my overall writing skills.

Essay 2!

Austin Masuga

Cindy Bateman

English 101

9 September 2011

“Outsiders”

            Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” may sound crazy to a vast amount of people when they read it. Upon taking a second look and starting to dissect his essay, one can start picking up on the main claim he is trying to prove to the reader. His message is simple. Humans created this thing called knowing/truth, they then put meaning behind these truths, and overtime they forgot they created these truths. Meaning in my opinion humans invented a system in which created these outsiders that will not possibly know these truths. Humans then exclude these people that don’t conform to the society’s truth; these are what I like to call “outsiders”

Nietzsche says, “Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins” (455). Humans have forgotten that they created truth. For example we give objects names but who is to say that a desk is truly defined by the word desk. “Just as certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “leaf” : the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model” (455). He wants/needs the reader to understand that we created these illusions that do not matter. These illusions that Nietzsche are talking about create outsiders.

Nietzsche says, “There was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute” (Nietzsche 451). This is how he states that Humans created this knowing, to give themselves something to be arrogant about, this then created outsiders. “He Misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him” (453). This quote is the definition in which outsiders are created or better known as those who are exclude.

There are many things that happen in society to create outsiders. A prime example is Christmas. When I was growing up we would always celebrate Christmas, by having huge parties before Christmas break. Every single year a fellow Jewish student at my school would be excluded or left out of our “society” because of this knowing we created separated him from the main group. He would be left out of our party because his truth was different from our truth. Imagine growing up in his shoes. Every year there was a huge celebration in class. Which, you could never be at because you were separated from the group. By a truth that wasn’t your truth. One can only think of how upset and frustrated that child must have been. What was going through his mind at the time? Do my fellow class mates hate me? Did I do something wrong? Why can’t I attend the party? He is someone who got excluded and therefore became an outsider. These truths that we create affect people severely some times.

Another prime example of the exclusion of others or the creating of an outsider is High School. There was a student in my high school that was considered to be a part of our society. One day he told his best friend that he was gay. After that point he was excluded from our society in high school. Based on the fact his truth or reality was different from everyone else. One day he went from being approved of in society to being an outsider just like that. This affected him greatly he started having problems with depression and suicide. All of this came from an individual relaying to the group he had a different truth than theirs. Having this truth hurt this person to the extreme.

Nietzsche said, “But in this conceptual crap game “truth” means using every die in the designated manner, counting its spots accurately, fashioning the right categories, and never violating the order of caste and class rank” (456). Truth is what we want it to be and it has to be exactly that and nothing else, and never out of order ever. In reality Nietzsche is using this essay to tell us how this truth is a lie and doesn’t matter at all. If truth doesn’t matter why do we use it to hurt others at times? And create this outsider class among society?

Another example of how we use this knowing or truth to create these outsiders is way of expressions. For example when and if you happen to walk down the street and see someone dressed in all black. Society’s truth could be that people who wear all black are somehow evil. Creating this outside class just on how a certain persons truth is they want to wear all black to express themselves. Also how if you see someone dressed in rags or torn up clothes. Society may exclude them based on them not conforming to what the average person may wear in clothes bought or sown in a store. Based off society’s truth if one doesn’t conform one becomes excluding or outsider.

My final example on how society creates outsiders based of truth or knowing is extreme but true knowledge and intellect itself. In middle school I went to school with my cousin who happened to be autistic. He was separated by society in multiple ways just because of his intellect. First way in which he was excluded from other students is the bus to class itself. He would always be forced to ride on a different bus regardless of if we were at the same stop or not. Secondly once at school he would then be put into separate classes from the rest of the students or “society”.

Nietzsche lets readers around the world in on this little thing called knowing and truth. And how humans then put meaning behind these truths, and overtime how humans forgot they created these truths. Meaning in my opinion humans invented a system in which created these outsiders that will not possibly know these truths. There are many cases in which I have personally experienced. Religion, sexual orientation, Expression, and mental illness. Most of these examples people can’t control. But if they could I’m sure they would have the desire to be in the “society”. Everyone has a desire to be in society’s truth no one wants to be an outsider. If this is the case why does society create truth to create outsiders?  “There was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history” (451)

Descriptive Narrative Essay

Austin Masuga

Cynthia Bateman

English 101

20 September 2011

 

 

 Petty Change and Other Things Not to Worry About.

 

           The smell and the weight of the air as I opened the door to my dorm made me feel vulnerable. It was like a shower of air, and instead of dirt and sweat, it washed away everything that I had ever known. For the first few moments I was empty. An entire books worth of life was behind me, and now all I had were empty pages. What should I write? The weight of each and every decision I made mattered more than it ever had before.  I realized how truly under prepared for life I was. I quite simply was not ready for the change, and that terrified me.

In high school all that I wanted was to be liked. It was critical for me to be liked. I was always thinking about the cause and effect of my actions in my “friends” minds. Now in college this hardly matters, no one gives a crap about who I hang out with. What matters now who do I really like, who do I get along with, and who do I want to be around. The change in the social structure collapsed all of my mental stigmas.

Moving from Tuscola to college imposed a lot of changes. At home I never really had to think about the basic necessities; toilet paper, toothpaste, tissues. I never had to think about food, all my favorites were at my beck and call. Making the change from home to college was rough. I had a hard time making even simple decisions about what to eat. The situations were so trivial. All I had to do was decide what to eat. However; every time I got hungry instead of my criteria being what and where to eat  my criteria: were who should I eat with, what time should I eat, will there be food there that I like, will I be judged if I eat alone? Basically everything that I was worried about had absolutely nothing to do with eating even though all that is what I was trying to do.

I cruised through high school, I really didn’t care all that much. I had the opportunities to be an advanced student but I chose to take the easy route. Now, however, I feel much more pressured about academics because if I do poorly it affects the rest of my life. Unfortunately, my high school academic career didn’t quite prepare me for the change to college.

Up to this point my main stressor has been change. Genuinely I think that in the environment that we live in change does not really matter because whether we want it to happen or not it does: there is actually nothing that we can do about it. In this however I am a hypocrite. I have a hard time getting over all the changes that life has thrown my way. Furthermore I can personally attest to the fact that I do not in any way shape or form embrace change. I resist it just like the rest of the world.

Change is a fact of life, it is there period. It cannot be tailored to what we want; it simply is what it is. Worrying about how, when, and were life goes is futile, it is pointless. I suppose that somewhere in my psyche I know this but it is definitely not developed enough for me to act on in on a day to day basis. However, when I do take the time to think about it I do realize the fallacy of this style of thinking and privately realize the importance of accepting change.