The Role Of Consumerism In Andrew Stanton's Wall-E

Andrew Stanton’s science fiction animation Wall-E (2008) tells the story of a robotic creature named Wall-E, who, along with other robots had been charged with cleaning up Earth after the human’s consumerism and greed destroyed the natural balance of the planet, turning it into an uninhabitable mess of garbage and waste. In this dystopian future humans have abandoned earth to live on a spaceship (The Axiom). The fact that the humans have abandoned Earth is very apparent in the setting of it, which is very dystopian and barren, with only piles of rubbish and ruins of previous buildings remaining on the planet. This is a direct contrast to the spaceship, which is very clean, tidy and futuristic. Stanton uses many techniques like costume, setting, music, and cinematography to establish the main themes of the consequences of consumerism and greed, romance, more specifically the importance of love, and nostalgia.

In Wall-E, the consequences of the human’s consumerism
It is used in the film through stylistic conventions such as contrast and setting, and first appears in the second half of the film. The main technique used by Stanton to present this theme to the audience was setting, which was used to show the contrast between the Earth before and after the waste pollution that the mass consumption caused. This technique showed when the captain of the Axiom was looking at pictures of Earth pre-pollution, and then looked at Earth pictures post pollution. Contrast is also used in other places of the film to show how different things from the past are compared to current things (for example the contrast between Wall-E and EVE), and it all helps to express the nostalgic theme to the audience, which makes it more memorable to the audience as stark contrasts often are remembered by the