Applied plant ecology focuses around the main topic of promoting and learning how to conserve the environment. In 2008, Disney Pixar studios released a film named, Wall-E,which in my opinion has been one of the most underrated movies targeted towards younger audiences – importantly their families. It is important for films to target younger audiences as it is hoped that they can bring changes into this world by learning more, seeing more, and doing more. In a way this also in turn allows for families of these younger audiences to also receive the underlying messages to encourage everyone in how to conserve the environment, and what small steps can be established in starting to do so.
Wall-E is an animated fictional film set 700 years into the future, where planet Earth has been reduced to a deserted ghost town filled with an overflow piling of just garbage. Wall-E is a robot that is the last living entity on Earth as humans have fled the Earth to live in gigantic space crafts that hover above the Earth. However, one day one of those spaceships arrives back on earth bringing along another robot, Eve, allowing Wall-E to travel back to space with her to eventually convince the humans to return back to Earth. The way the earth is set up physically in the movie urges viewers to take caution of how their impacts are affecting the environment and foreshadows what will happen if actions are not taken appropriately.
In the film, Wall-E spends his time on Earth tidying up the garbage as much as he can all alone. However, Wall-E is able to find a lonely plant in which he puts it into a dirt-filled old shoe in order to conserve the plant. Eve is sent by humans to track vegetation on Earth – but is unable to do so.
Wall-E introduces the plant to Eve and together they teach humans how to nurture the plant and by doing so how they can further heal the planet they once left damaged and impaired. Humans are brought back to their senses somewhat when vegetation begins to re-grow and humans are able to care for them.
Wall-E actually stands for “Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth”class, and Eve stands for “Extra-terrestrial vegetation evaluator”
In summation, the film displays two main themes including the portrayal of human ecology that encourages conservation and organismic ecology which demonstrates the need for mutual dependence.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 