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Anna Lai
Ana Baginsk
18 April 2015
Writing 39C
Apocalyptic Consumerism
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. These are Three Rs that have appeared on bottles, bags, and
other products that remind consumers daily that there is a problem with pollution. Recycle bins
are put out now along with garbage that is thrown into landfills. Bright and cheery commercials
play on television telling kids to help save the planet by using the Three Rs. Over the last two
decades, there has been more a push for consumers to help save planet Earth, but are constant
reminders enough? (Great setup of a good question. Youll probably get to it, but my
additional question at this point would be something like if no, then why not?)
It is estimated that the average person produces 4.3 pounds of waste everyday. This
waste, ends up in landfills, which causes methane levels to rise and adds to the growing problem
of climate change(Center for Sustainability & Commerce). Although the Three Rs are pushed,
there is a still a problem of overconsumption in the world. (Could be a better transition between
these few thoughts. What would be the ideal scenario in which the three Rs would solve, or at
least help to solve, problems of climate change and environmental destruction?)Because of
consumerism and the ideologies behind neoliberalism and the interactions we have with each
other and the environment, our world is endangered of becoming a wasteland.
Today, we are trying to keep climate change to a minimum, but continue to create more
waste because of our constant over consumption. As we have become more modernized,
shopping is how we form our identities, find community, and express ourselves(Klein). It is

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the drive behind capitalism and a neoliberal approach to the economy that make us want to
consume more. With neoliberal ideas, we ask for a free-market, where corporations have less
regulations and where state services become privatized. With this push for a free market
economy comes more spending as well as a strong economy (and this is pro side of the equation
is not always guaranteed. With neoliberal capitalism come booms and bubbles, and with those
come busts and recessions), but at the cost of having more pollution. Although we know that in
order to have a more sustainable future we must consume less, many would rather look in the
present and at our strong economy than to help the planet and risk having an unstable economy.
With this thought, pollution could rise, which could cause an evacuation from Earth, like in the
movie Wall-E. (good transition)
In the movie Wall-E, a robot named Wall-E is left on a desolate earth with only one
plant left. The human population now lives in space because Earth is too polluted to sustain
human life. Eve, a robot that was built in space, comes down to Earth to find any signs that
human life can be sustainable on the planet since it has been 700 years since humans have
populated Earth.

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In Wall-E, there is a big emphasis on spending with the large advertisements that are
broadcasted onto billboards that are in the spaceship as well as onto the projected screens that

Screencap from the movie WALL-E, depicting a desolate Earth

Screencap from WALL-E; Aboard the ship where humans live in false paradise surrounded by advertisements

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each person has in from of their face. Although the products are unnecessary, the people on the
spaceship still buy them because they feel like they are necessary. In our society today, we are
also constantly bombarded with advertisements that show us why we should buy the products put
on display. By doing this, these advertisements manipulate our emotions as well as our desires to
feel accepted in society and the thoughts we have of ourselves to dupe us into buying things that
we dont really want. With the ads that we see everyday, we start to question (question in what
sense?) our own sense of identity and seek validation from those around us and from the greater
population through the new technology that we have today.
As a result of buying all the things that were advertised by Buy N Large, the humans in
Wall-E are clueless as to how to survive on their own. They have machines that help them do the
most basic necessities such as brushing their teeth, doing their makeup and walking. Instead of
walking, the people are put onto levitating chairs that give them access to buttons that gives them
services to anything they want to do, including using video to interact with one another. In our
society today, we have smartphones, tablets and laptops that we can use to help us with the
activities in our daily lives. We now have apps at our fingertips that help us shop online, keep
track of our schedules and social media platforms that help us keep in contact with our friends
and the rest of the world. With this new technology, we have become more narcissistic and have
a stronger need to feel accepted with society, which in return causes us to spend money on things
that we dont need, which feeds into our over consumption problem.
With the technology at hand along with the advertisements that we see everyday, our
society has come to value popularity and material goods more than personal connections and
saving the planet. Many consumers believe that by having more material goods as well as more
expensive products,it will make them more popular. As a result, consumers do not realize that

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most of the luxuries they have are unnecessary (why, specifically? Because a desire to present
oneself a certain way outweighs any kind of cost, to oneself or to the environment? What kind of
priorities are in play here?) and only add to the problem of overconsumption. Because our
society is so caught up in having the most, we view the products we have as disposable. We no
longer have the sentimental value that comes with buying things. Before there was a large wave
of consumerism, people bought only what they needed and passed down things for generations,
which had lots of sentimental value. With new products on the market, we not see these old
treasures as junk and toss them away, not realizing the sentiment behind them (This wasnt the
case across the board though. People definitely still used to produce trash, and created and used
unnecessary things. It might be that the problem is not so much that we used to do this, and now
have forgotten, as much as it might be an intensification of certain kinds of behavior (because
those kinds of behavior are, in some ways, rewarded). Because we no longer treasure the things
we by, we end up disposing them and buying new things. Our over consumption is not only
causing our planet to decay, it blinds us from human nature as well as the beauty of our planet.
At the end of Wall-E, the humans are able to work together to bring the plant in a box
that would send them back to earth. When the captain first knows about the plant, he is curious
as to what it is, but doesnt really care when the plant turns missing. Once he accesses a database
that shows information about Earth, he becomes mystified and wants to learn more about it. He
realizes how beautiful and amazing Earth once was and wants to return and realizes how
important it is to have a community. As he tries to excitedly share his findings, the main control
of the ship, a robot named Auto, takes control and tries to keep him from getting the plant. In this
situation, Auto is the embodiment of the larger corporation Buy N Large. Although it may seem
like the captain is in charge, in reality it is Auto that tells him what to say to the passengers. It is

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not until the captain turns Auto off that the humans are able to successfully join together to go
back to Earth. (What does this say about the way we think of human agency, especially in
relation to interactions with technology?)

The people in Wall-E who learned to join together also learned how to create a better
future for themselves. With the newfound community that they built, they were able to relearn
how to farm and clean up the mess that their ancestors had left behind (Is this a realistic
situation? Given the extremity of the destruction, and the fact that the same kinds of wasteful
behaviors were in existence on the floating cruise-ship thing, do you think theres enough
evidence that these people will succeed in building a society that will avoid the problems of the
old one? If so, what gives you that confidence?). At the end of the credits, we see that animals
and nature has flourished, humans doing outdoor activities, and Wall-E and Eve in a field of
grass with no pollution in sight. With these last scenes, I believe that they have learned to work
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Compiled Screencap from WALL-E: The end of the movie shows the restoration that the captain and the rest of
the humans aboard accomplished on Earth.

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together to create a sustainable world. They have learned that human interaction is more
important than the material goods that once possessed. They worked together to create a better
future and learned from their mistakes that had caused them to abandon the planet.
In order to stop the apocalyptic Earth from happening, we must learn how to break away
from our identities as consumers and actually work together to create a sustainable future.
Recycling is not enough for us to have a sustainable Earth. Instead, we must cut back on how
much we produce although it may cause a fall in the economy. Just like Auto and Buy N Large,
the large corporations tell us what we should and should not buy. In order to help restore the
planet. we have to be like the people in Wall-E and join together to tell these corporations to stop
polluting the Earth. Although it may seem that a capitalistic economy is tied to a greater
standard of living, it does not equal happiness (Its hard to convince people of this, or even make
the argument.). Before there was the internet and all this new technology, people were happy
with what they had, community played a bigger role in their lives and the planet did not have as
much pollution (This wasnt necessarily unilaterally true either. Back before cars were invented,
for instance, and people used horses and carriages, city streets filled up with horse poop. In fact,
this was one of the problems that resulted in the invention of the car in the first place. And there
are other examples. What Im trying to say is that its not such a good argument to say that in the
past things were better, because similar structures of wastefulness were in play, just on smaller,
less globally destructive scales. But how might we think about the world differently in order to
prevent both small, and large scale, patterns of wastefulness like the ones youve noticed in
consumerist culture and, taken to its limit, in the hypothetical world of Wall-E?). We must
realize that material goods do not make us happier, but rather give us an illusion of happiness.
As Naomi Klein states in her article, we werent born having to shop this much., and we have,

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in our recent past, been just as happy ( in many cases happier) consuming far less. We must
realize that the interaction that we have with one another and the planet are more important than
the material goods that we have. By learning to consume less and restoring the personal
connections we have with one another, (Why might this be difficult?) we can help slow down
climate change by actually caring about our future rather than about the things we own today.
Like the ending in Wall-E, we can restore our beautiful planet and our humanity.

Comments: This paper does a great job of using the film, and working carefully with a few
choice sources. The intro and beginning are great, especially in terms of the way you set up
your problematic. Theres a sense, though, in which you dont really answer or address the
question with which you end the first paragraph. Are constant reminders of the destructiveness
of our behavior enough? And if not, why not? Theres something more fundamental at stake in
even asking that question than the question of consumer culture. Its something more like why
can we look at something that is obviously bad, and that obviously threatens not only our future
but the future of the things that surround us, and not care? There are ways in which you could
have taken some of your thoughts and examples to their limits in order to get at addressing
something like this more fundamental question. In the next paper Id like to see you use a wider
variety of sources and resist the tendency you have at the end of this paper to wrap things up
into a nice recommendation. Obviously the problem you set up in the first part of the paper is
difficult, if not impossible, to solve given our current political and economic attachments, but how
can we think about what allows those attachments to be so important to us and irreversible in
the first place?

Grade: B+

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Citations
"Center for Sustainability & Commerce." How Much Do We Waste Daily? Web. 20 Apr.
2015. <http://center.sustainability.duke.edu/resources/green-facts-consumers/how-much-do-wewaste-daily>.
Klein, Naomi. "Climate Change Is the Fight of Our Lives - Yet We Can Hardly Bear to
Look at It." The Guardian. Guardian News, 23 Apr. 2014. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/23/climate-change-fight-of-our-livesnaomi-klein>.
WALL-E. Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 2008. Film.