Wall-E: Being Affected By Consumer Culture

Wall-E is an ingenious film which subtly portrays the future being destroyed by consumer culture. We are living in time where we’re always thinking of our future and how our society can further progress our civilization. Through Wall-E, the movie creatively acknowledges the concerns of corporate control and how consumer culture is devastating our way of living in the present and ultimately the future. With the contrast between the past and the future throughout the film, there is an evident theme of old versus new, but even more, there is a clear representation of the current problems that will affect the future. The main culprit in earth’s demise is the corporation Buy-n-Large. BnL is portrayed as being a Walmart or other big corporate store …show more content…
Everyone in the Axiom is brainwashed by the BnL Company. BnL are the ones who made the spaceship, as well, as the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the many robots aboard the ship who are servants to the humans, and even the school system. Everyone in the future has become overly obese because it is the society they were born in to. Humans leave earth because of their consumer culture, yet the people of the future are still victims to their own consumerism, for example, they are seen riding in floating chairs everywhere they go. Consumer culture is heavily shown in the conflict between humans and technology. In the world of Wall-E, technology is the driving force for human life. Technology is what drove the future human race to overconsumption and technology is still prevalent in the dependent of human survival seven hundred years later. The people on the Axiom can’t get themselves food, changes clothes, or even go to their own room, without the help of robots or technology. When the captain learns of Earth and everything it once was, that’s when he breaks out of being controlled by technology. It shows that consumer culture has taken over and people are not fighting against it, but are accepting the fact that it exists. However, there is always going to be at least one person who wants to return to their normal …show more content…
The corporations first create a need for people by cleverly disguising various luxuries as necessities. Once they succeed in convincing the consumers of their ‘needs’, they then proceed to fulfill those needs of the consumers to lead a materialistically fulfilling life. The individual consumers continue to be fooled by the aggressive and cleverly manipulative marketing strategies of various products. This is clearly shown when the earthlings continue to stay away from the inhospitable earth, the corporate B&L promotes its products including its space ship that was supposed to be their temporary home for five years as their new home. It tells them in no uncertain terms that Axiom is now their home. Even when not on our own planet, you see BnL promoting their futuristic stores on the moon and use space as their frontier for future consumerism. The planet is utterly destroyed by overconsumption, which is aided by the web of consumer-industrial propaganda, where passivity is purchased by unnecessary goods which are pushed toward humanity. Too many goods for the people who don’t need it results in the consequences of destroying the ecosystem with pollution and garbage. In the end, the earth is killed by shopping. The changing relationships between humans and machines is another factor is seen to be ultimately lead the environmental apocalypse depicted in Wall-E. The