Wall-E Quick Write - Johnston PDF

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Liz Crosby University Writing 1020 Prof. Johnston 9/6/16

Wall-E Freewrite The article I chose to read prior to watching the film walle was “Children’s Environmental Literature from Ecocriticism to Ecopedagogy” as I felt it could relate quite well. I felt this article significantly helped me understand the main goals the writer’s of wall-e were trying to accomplish. First off, through the article i was able to see that in order to really reach out to kids and make lasting impression, some sort of emotional connection to nature must be established, fostering a lasting love and further a genuine motivation. Although wall-e the robot isn’t really a “nature” aspect, his intentions are for the better of the environment. Right away wall-e is seen as this happy go lucky little robot who sings hello dolly songs and is clumsy in the cutest way possible. This establishes a foundation of trust among children and allows this emotional connection to grow into an intellectual one too. This made walle’s personality stand out to me and helped me understand there is a reason the writers made him so lovable. In addition, towards in the article it describes how there are three main questions that guide the purpose and successfulness of each piece of childrens literature based on ecopedagogy, environmental justice, and ecofeminism. The first question being how does the text address who am I? What is the relation of humans to nature? In Wall-e this relationship can be seen as mainly negative. The movie opens up displaying earth’s endless piles of trash indicating poor treatment by humans driven by an obsession of industrial capitalism. The article also pointed out that these narratives will provide some sort of antidote to the logic of domination. If the logic of domination in this film is human laziness and materialism, the antidote can be see as the human will to get back to earth and revive the land through farming. The second question posed was “how does the narrative define the ecojustice problem?” I believe the film wall-e both articulated the crisis and reasonable solution to children. The urgent crisis highlighted was the earth turning

Liz Crosby University Writing 1020 Prof. Johnston 9/6/16

into a trash pile not able to sustain life due to human laziness and carelessness. Even though it was a small scale solution, the film depicts humans finally going back to earth to plant life and rejuvenate the land. Wall-e provides some sort of collective action that can be taken by children when showing them that planting is a better alternative than being wasteful. The third question discusses was “What kind of agency does the text recognize in nature?” The nature aspect in Wall-e can be seen as an object to be saved by the humans of the world. That little green plant was a call to action for the oblivious newer generations of the humans aboard the ship. These three questions and the concepts within them gave me an outline of the goals trying to be accomplished by these pieces of childrens environmental literature and allowed me to see these same ideas within the film wall-e. Some other concepts provided in the article that caught my attention while watching was the basic idea of ecopedagogy, which was a term I had never heard before reading this article, and one I had to look up in order to fully understand it’s meaning. With this term in mind, I was able to watch this film with the intentions that ecopedagogy attempts to fufill. For instance, ecopedagogy “seeks to develop basic environmental literacy”. This highlighted in the film the ways in which humans treated their environment. Obviously the human’s of the older generations had little respect for their natural environemnt, but even the humans on the ship seemed to have no regard whatsoever for their environment on the spaceship. With little robots cleaning up their trash and doing everything for them including lifting them up when they fall out of their chairs… wall-e demonstrated this understanding that these ecologies were interacting for the worse....