By: Areeba Tahreem
One of the other films I had chosen but did not nominate for the Film Festival was Walle-E. I remember watching Walle-E when I was younger and enjoying it, although I did not observe nor understand the environmental messages depicted throughout it. But, now after rewatching it I was able to observe the underlying environmental themes and understand its message as well. The movie follows a toy robot named WALL-E, which is short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class. He is the last robot left on Earth and spends his days tidying up the planet, one piece of garbage at a time. This dystopian world portrays a future where humans have ruined Earth’s environment with trash. They live in space, captives to screens, self-driving chairs, liquefied food and robot servants. A major theme prevalent in the movie is the idea that humans make and use too much stuff and if they continue down this path, eventually our planet will be overwhelmed with toxicity and threaten every life form to extinction.
The movie Wall-E relates to applied plant ecology because it depicts the impacts of Habitat fragmentation and loss (landscape ecology). Because of how poorly humans treated the planet, by polluting it to an unlivable state forcing them to flee the planet in giant resort spaceships. The entirety of the planet transforms into a trash planet. The fleeing away on big spaceships portrays the attitude of humans that choose to run away from the problem, or better yet not even acknowledge the existence of an issue, rather than solving the problem to make the planet better, and duse in sustainable manners.
Next, the loss of biodiversity – the extinction crisis – for plants is also depicted in the movie. Throughout the movie, there are no trees, plants, or animals in any of the scenes shown there is simply no nature. This is because one of the direct impacts of humans polluting the planet, whether it be by burning fossil fuels, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, or unsustainable deforestation and agriculture practices, all impact biodiversity. Biodiversity decreases since changes in the environment impact them, and humans polluting the planet negatively impacts them which is why they are no longer present and roaming the planet in the movie, there is just junk.
But despite the degraded conditions, WALL-E found himself in, the movie still showed viewers there was potential for reform. There is a scene in the movie where There’s still one little sprig of a plant that WALL-E finds and realizes is different from the junk around him. So there’s the possibility of regeneration and restoration that where there’s life, there’s hope. And although humans destroy the planet in varying manners they can also bring reformation if they try to do so, and fix the root of the problems.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 