Not a true picture of Reb Arie on his computer... but very, very close
WALL*E & The (Re)Creation of the Earth
[Not a true picture of Reb Arie on his computer... but very,very close]
WALL*E is an abbreviation for Waste Allocation Load Lifter (Earth-Class), a robot designed only to collect, crush, and bale garbage.
WE meet WALL*E in the animated film named for him. He is the last of his kind and has been operating for 700 years.
Earth has been evacuated: mass consumerism, promoted by the megacorporation Big n Large (BnL), has generated so much garbage that the planet is no longer habitable.
The plot of WALL*E seems to come from Breshit – Genesis 6, the chapter in which Noah is introduced. “G!d Saw the massive evils of humanity on earth” (6:5); “G!d Repented the act that put humanity on earth and made a firm decision on the matter” (6:6); “The earth was spoiled in G!d’s Presence and the earth was filled with violence” (6:10), which describes the opening scene of WALL*E perfectly.
WALL*E brings to the continent behind my eyes two Biblical quotations: >Ain hadash takhat ha’shemesh< “There is nothing new beneath the sun” (Qohelet – Ecclesiastes 1:9) and >Noah ish tzadiq tamim hyah be’dorotav v’et-elohim hit’holekh Noah< “Noah was a simple, righteous man for his time who walked with G!d” (Breshit – Genesis 6:9).
WALL*E is a simple and sympathetic character. He enters his ark, the spaceship Axiom, for the love of another robot, the Earth Vegetation Evaluator (EVE). What we have in this animated movie is a midrash, a narrative explanation, of the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis 1.
If you want to be picky I can say Genesis 2, snce Hava (Eve) doesn’t appear in Genesis 1. Either way, the entire sedra (the portion of the Torah lectionary we read in weekly sections over the Jewish year) “Breshit”, which includes the Creation Story, tells the story of an empty environment waiting to be filled by life.
WALL*E tells the same story.
The destruction of creation is not a modern problem. Ronald Wright, in A Short History of Progress, argues that the predicament of mass consumption followed by mass destruction is a problem as old as civilisation itself.
Exponential human population growth, consequent consumption, and the promotion of technology puts unsustainable burdens on other aspects of nature. The 21st century, suggests Wright, is our last opportunity to succeed: previous civilisations rose and fell locally but in our time the global interdependence of humanity means that all of civilisation may perish.
We see a perfect example of an entire civilisation perishing in the Genesis 2 Creation Story, when Eve meets the Serpent. The Serpent was of a previous order of Creation. Humanity (created on Day 6) was the New Order, and the Serpent (created on Day 5) was desperate to hold on.
By tempting Eve, the Serpent decided, it would become evident to G!d that humanity was not yet ready. We now need to confront the startling reality that another order of creation is waiting. We need to do something or else we become the Serpent, desparate to hold on.
WALL*E is an abbreviation for Waste Allocation Load Lifter (Earth-Class), a robot designed only to collect, crush, and bale garbage.
WE meet WALL*E in the animated film named for him. He is the last of his kind and has been operating for 700 years.
