WALL-E

In a recent seminar, we saw a picture of a floating city designed to house survivors of a natural disaster. Someone compared it to the spaceships in the movie WALL-E (excellent--definitely watch it). That comment was perfectly timed, because I had been writing a blog post about this little nugget, a clip from a 20-minute short documentary that's included in the DVD's special features:



The movie has a few different messages, some fraught with tension. The fact that a film which is highly critical of North American big-box consumer culture has firm ties to the Disney corporation is one of the most obvious. But what I found so lovely about WALL-E, much like what I found endearing about the idea of pet architecture, was its appeal to affect and irrational feeling.

The spaceship on which the movie's exiled earthlings have been circulating for 700 years is the epitome of a rational, cold, hegemonic vision--Lefebvre's representations of space taken to the nth degree. Talk about city design--every part of its operation, from the jumpsuit uniforms of its residents to its robotic staff, is planned, leaving little room for spontaneity and effacing the sense of difference and diversity that's understood to be characteristic of cities. Its inhabitants circulate in chairs outfitted with in-your-face screens that move along seemingly predetermined routes, and we quickly discover that the real brains behind the operation isn't the well-meaning, bumbling human captain--it's a robot named Auto. Back on Earth, WALL-E putters around in the midst of a technological wasteland, the shining promise of futuristic visions covered in layers of dust and rust. Yet in the midst of the movie's technologically determined, robotic world, the simple, timeless act of holding someone's hand is still the ultimate goal.

The documentary clip above is, I think, analogous to this idea. Here is one of the most respected film sound designers in Hollywood, with techno-beeps and computer-generated boops at his fingertips—and yet (to my memory) a good one-third to one-half of the long-version documentary focuses on his delight at finding the amazing analog sound contraptions Disney had kept around since the days of ye olde Mickey Mouse. These sounds are tangible and concrete in a way computer-generated sounds may not be. They represent a playful ingenuity and resourcefulness that hasn’t lost its charm.

I found Ben Burtt's comment about creating a world of sound very interesting as well. I'll likely be writing about that one again.