Preparing for the Bottleneck: Wall-E and the Management of Human Finitude

John Calvelli scosPaper-‐Final

For the Standing Conference in Organizational Symbolism 2013, Warsaw of 7

Preparing for the Bottleneck:

Wall-E and the Management of Human Finitude

John Calvelli

Welcome to the Anthropocene!

If you don’t already know, the Anthropocene refers to the claim that the species homo sapiens is now the largest geological force on the planet. Bruno Latour describes it thus:

[Author requests no quotation. Excerpt describes the effects of ‘anthropos’ on the Earth such as on the catchment areas, in the nitrogen and cycles, and its effects on the sixth global extinction.] (Latour 2013)

Geological time is now happening at the speed of human time. Humans are that geological force, and we now have the task of managing the conditions of our own future extinction.

The realization of this, if mostly repressed, is, I think, more profound than the one that accompanied the dropping of the first atom bomb. Then, we realized that we could wipe out all life on earth—if we chose to. The power of human agency had been spared. Now, in the Age of the Anthropocene, it is human agency itself which is the problem. Our very being-in-the-world puts us at risk, and so we are left staring into our own species’ finitude.

From the worshiping of crucifixion scenes to obsessive viewing of bloody media pulp, images have from the beginning provided us a way for managing our finitude. A relevant contemporary example of this is the Disney-Pixar animated film Wall-E, released in 2008 when the term Anthropocene first came to public attention. Its theme revolves around a ravaged and uninhabited Earth.

The movie Wall-E is a time-based image that exists as an “object” in the world: people view the film on physical screens at home or in a theatre. It is also a cognitive process or event. What we experience in our brain as the contents of consciousness are first formed from the images we experience of the world through visual perception. Most of this, however, remains unconscious.

Consider these first few seconds from the opening credits for Wall-E. [Fig. 1] Pressing “PLAY,” we first see a bucolic earthly landscape that pans out to reveal a flag; then revealing the entire Disney magic castle with exploding fireworks, followed by a graceful circling arc of fairy dust— traced by Tinkerbell, of course—and certified by the signing of the Walt Disney name and logo. What do we remember of this sequence of images, and what remains unconscious, still possibly affecting our outlook and behaviour? Here’s one possible translation of the clip. “We have authority to own (flag, castle) the environment (bucolic landscape); let’s forget about it and have fun (fireworks) in a world of fantasy (pixie dust). Walt Disney wouldn’t threaten anything anyway (Walt’s signature).”

These opening credits of Wall-E might put us in a receptive state of mind; this is because they were designed for the Walt Disney Corporation precisely for this purpose.



The optical excitation we just experienced was passed from the optic nerve connecting eye and brain and sent through the thalamo-amygdala and the cortical pathways for visual processing. The thalamo-amygdala pathway—the evolutionarily oldest part of the brain—quickly judged the visual data for possible threat and provided initial emotional colouring. This image object won’t threaten us. The data was also sent through the cortical pathway—at a much slower rate—which helped us colour it emotionally by reference to our prior experiences stored in memory. I loved Disney movies as a kid. Only a fraction of this became conscious. I wanted to become a rich prince. I am now only a poor scholar. As neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran explains, the processing of visual input in the older pathways can still be used, in his words, "for all kinds of behaviour, even though the person is completely unaware of what is going on" (Barry 2002)

This process is the fruit of an evolutionary process, which was made possible by three requirements being fulfilled. Darwin formulated them as two axioms—there must be variation and some of these variations must be selected over others—and a premise—there needs to be a mechanism for heredity. If you know anyone who has worked at Disney, you will know that designers are required to produce a great many sketches (variations) of an idea prior to the selection of the most successful one; at which point the design will be finalized and put before an audience of brains for hereditary transmission. The Disney credits thus fulfill the standard Darwinian requirements for evolution to take place.

There are also characteristics that facilitate a successful process of evolution. The elements of the scene have been designed so they may be quickly and easily perceived and understood—they have fidelity, one of the three indicators of successful hereditary transmission. Images of castles, fairies and flags contribute longevity (a second indicator of successful transmission) while the Disney Corporation’s resources allow for the widest possible distribution, assuring fecundity, the third indicator.

The process of evolution is much more fluid than we originally thought. Jablonka and Lamb, in their 2005 book Evolution in Four Dimensions, propose that evolution can take place through four different kinds of kinds of heredity: genetic, epigenetic, behavioural and symbolic. Genetic heredity, in their view, remains the background for three other methods of evolution. Epigenetic evolution takes place through the chemical marking of the gene that can transmit biological changes within one generation. Behavioural evolution can happen with some, but not all, animals through imitative behaviour, as when the young imitate adult behaviours of finding food, creating mating calls and the like. Symbolic evolution, according to Jablonka and Lam, is confined to humans, as it is dependent on the acquisition of language, b. (Jablonka and Lamb 2005)

The philosopher Bernard Stiegler would assert that prior to making the transition between behavioural and symbolic evolution, a process must first take place that he calls epiphylogenesis, which he states is “the pursuit of the evolution of the living by other means than life.” This process begins with the making of our first tools over 2-1/2 million years ago in what is termed the pebble culture of Africa. This process of co-evolution develops over hundreds of thousands of years or more—spurring the growth, on a slow genetic level, of the cerebral cortex.

It begins with the need to hit a particular type of rock at a ninety degree angle with another rock, in order to create a simple tool with a sharp edge. Precisely during the gap between the moment of intent to strike the rock and the moment of impact there develops the cognitive capability of anticipation, which creates a future. The resulting tool—what Stiegler terms the technical object—encodes and exteriorizes memory through the evidence of its making, and creates for us a past. Time has begun; and with time, finitude.

It is, in Stiegler’s words, by:



…freeing itself from genetic inscription that memory at once pursues the process of liberation and inscribes thereupon the mark of a rupture—on stones, walls, books, machines, madeleines, and all forms of supports… (Stiegler 1998)

…Including robots and movies, exemplary technical objects and the fruit of an eon of epiphylogenetic evolution. Here is our hero and protagonist of the film: the Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class, Wall-E. The illustration is by Jessica Armstrong, who created a visual study of the eyes as memes as part of my course in visual culture. I’m using an image from a scene in which he has been rebooted, so Wall-E is in his pure robotic state, programmed to collect trash, compact it and stack it up..

The two large circles in horizontal alignment—a meme for humanoid—were likely processed by our brain first. No immediate threat. The circles are encased in two larger mechanisms forming a flat top or brow, another humanoid meme. Perpendicular to the eye mechanisms is a narrow vertical bar: it doesn’t look like a neck, but we know it is. The strong “T” shape created by the brow and the neck, unlike a haphazard arrangement, indicate attention, a bright consciousness, no immediate action. We’re safe.

We meet Wall-E as he is doing the work he was programmed for, on an uninhabitable Earth filled with human detritus. At first he exhibits only short, programmed loops of robotic drive. As we move in closer we see him interacting with random discarded objects, exhibiting curiosity and consciousness. He collects these objects and plays with them: for instance, with a flip-open case for a diamond ring (the latter which he discards), a Rubik’s Cube, and with an apparently non-biodegradable Hostess Twinkie, which his cockroach friend uses for his home.

He also seems quite obsessed with an old movie, Hello Dolly!, which becomes a vital part of his education. Hello Dolly! provides a human biotic context for the animation of similar types of inert technical objects that, conceivably, we might find in his collection. Between this art-directed Hollywood movie and Wall-E’s random collection exists a gap that contains a multiplicity of combinatory possibilities that Wall-E can use to extend his short loops of robotic drive into what Stiegler would refer to as longer circuits of transindividuation.

We can see the changes Wall-E has undergone in this sketch. During this scene, a spaceship landed and released another, more modern and feminine sort of robot. Unlike the banged-up, somewhat rusty and cubic Wall-E, this one—the Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, or EVE—is pure white, ovoid and with electronic eyes. After a particularly brutal display of robotic prowess on EVE’s part, she scans Wall-E after which, Ms. Armstrong remarks:

…he sighs as if he is falling for her….His eyes sort of collapse when he sighs, followed by his apertures closing briefly, and then he looks down at the ground as if being struck by love at first sight. (Armstrong 2013)

The two large circles now envelop smaller circles—the irises—each of which are bisected, forming on the top shutters, or eyelids. We can understand this robot as smitten partly by the extent to which these eyelids are drooping. The tear-shaped eye mechanisms signify the potential for emotion as well as carry real emotion through the eyebrow motion. The “head” is cocked in a non-comprehending way, and even the wire visible behind carries an idiosyncratic quality.

EVE exhibits a range of behaviours. At first, like Wall-E, she is focused on her programmed directive, in her case to find evidence of biological life so that humans may know it is safe to return to Earth. Interestingly, once EVE’s factory managers are away—clearly indicated in the film by EVE looking up in the sky and noting the ship’s departure, [my student remarks] “she is free…and seemingly alone, [and]



she breaks from her directive to explore her freedom….” (Armstrong, 2013) This only increases when Wall-E takes EVE to his shelter to show her the objects in his collection. We can witness the evolution of a playful intersubjective space—longer “circuits of transindividuation”—that begin to emerge through the interactions between all of these technical objects.

Unfortunately, upon Wall-E’s presentation to EVE of a small plant, she abruptly returns to her directive, expropriates the plant, and shuts down. Wall-E, who has fallen in love, is crushed. He begins to care for EVE, through activities such as holding an umbrella for her during a storm and, more ethically suspect (but human), forcing EVE’s hand out of her inert ovoid body in order that he might finally hold it.

Once a ship lands on Earth to take EVE away, Wall-E’s robotic sense of time intensifies into a quickened form of existential dread. He must make a decision. Grabbing hold of a rail on the exterior of the ship. Wall-E is blasted away through the orbiting detritus of useless Earthly satellites and into infinite space toward the spaceship Axiom, following EVE.

An interesting name for a spaceship: the Axiom. The Oxford dictionary defines it as “a statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true.” {Oxford}. On Philosophy Forums, I found a caveat: “[Axioms are] true because they had better be!” {timw, 2009} Truth seems not to have worked out for the Buy-N-Large corporation on Earth, or its inhabitants. The consumerist mentality, known now only through its landfills has, in Stiegler’s words,

reached its limits because it has become systematically short-termist, because it has given rise to a systematic stupidity that structurally prevents the reconstitution of a long-term horizon. (Stiegler 2010)

The last hope for humanity, set in the middle of deep space, is the Buy-N-Large spaceship Axiom. The corporation has become the benefactor and manager of post-Earthly evolution.

Once the ship transporting EVE and Wall-E are docked in its hull, a massive robotic infrastructure disembarks its special cargo. We are introduced to the Axiom’s support staff: robots with directives, but as well with ethno-cultural personality loops. Upstairs on the deck, in addition to the robotic infrastructure, we find biotic material that has been on life support for the last 700 years following evacuation: morbidly obese humans, glued to their television screens, impervious to each other, and being whizzed around on hovercrafts on predetermined pathways through what looks to be a shopping mall on steroids. {Shaw, 2010}

Captain B. McCrea, (fig. 07) presumably the commanding agent of the Axiom, has a hard time waking up in the morning. Robots clean, feed and serve him coffee—the latter which barely gives him the necessary oomph to read the script for the morning announcements. Images of his predecessors line a wall in his quarters, each less fit for earthly existence than the last. The real agency on the Axiom is Auto, the Hal-eyed cyclops autopilot.

Countering the systematically short-termist stupidity that rules the Axiom (and what led to it) is our hero-Romeo-robot, Wall-E, bumbling but with infinite circuits of desire for EVE. In the course of his pursuit, he releases a gaggle of rogue robots, saves the plant specimen, triggers EVE out of her directive and motivates the Captain to action. In a reenactment of the original epiphylogenetic moment, and to the opening bars of Also Sprach Zarathustra, the Captain manages to take a few wobbly steps towards Auto, the autopilot, and after a struggle, disconnects it.



The ship and its inhabitants return safely home to planet Earth—though we are left wondering whether our wobbly, bone-challenged and media-programmed specimens of humanity will be there for the long term. They create a garden, hoping that a pizza plant will bloom. Wall-E, in a state of technical breakdown due to his heroic efforts, gets fixed and returns to his pure robotic state. EVE then nurses him to memetic health. Ergo, we have our happy ending; it’s a Disney film.

Where does that leave us, still on earth and exposed to species finitude? When has it been otherwise? In our first encounters with flint and stone, we brought forth both a finitude and a future that hadn’t existed prior and that is only enhanced today. The technical object—whether flint or film, object or image—is what Plato called a pharmakon, both poison and remedy. In so many ways, we have evolved not with, but as the technical object, relentlessly subsuming our biotic mass under the short circuits of technology.

We can see the programs running that will lead us to our finite destiny. Like Buy-N-Large, if Disney is part of it, this will only be in order to shorten our loops and make us more manageable.

But it is not only poison, this film, this technical object, it is also remedy. Technology will not save us from ourselves. Rather, we can let the technical object and the space it opens up—as language, image, thought and action—show us how to deprogram the short loops of drive and reconfigure the longer circuits of desire. It is not more or less, but rather the right kind of future or finitude that matters.

Works Cited

Armstrong, Jessica. “A Study of Eye Movement and Shape in Relation to Awakenings of Consciousness in the Film Wall-E.” Undergraduate paper. Alberta College of Art and Design, 2013.

Barry, Ann Marie. “Perception and Visual Communication Theory.” Journal of Visual Literacy Volume 22.1 (2002): 91–106. Print.

Jablonka, Eva, and Marion J. Lamb. Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. MIT Press, 2005. Print.

Latour, Bruno. “Facing Gaia.” Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion. University of Edinburgh: n. p., 2013. Web.

Leroi-Gourhan, André. Gesture and Speech. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993. Print.

Stanton, Andrew. Wall-E. The Walt Disney Company, 2008. DVD.

Stiegler, Bernard. For a new critique of political economy. Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity, 2010. Print.

---. Technics and Time. Vol. 1. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Print.

Preparing for the Bottleneck: Wall-E and the Management of Human Finitude

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