(Slight spoiler warning)
With no limits to their creative freedom, the animators of WALL‚Ä¢E let their imaginations run rampant in developing appropriately resonant forms for their primary characters. Next to the eclectic hodgepodge of spare parts and miscellaneous mechanical contraptions that give WALL‚Ä¢E his pastiche panache, EVE’s svelte silhouette appears deceptively simple. For me she sparks associations as diverse as the sensuous streamlined allure of an art deco perfume bottle or the efficient practicality of a compact florescent light bulb. But beyond these playful visual echoes lies the essence of EVE’s feminine figure as an archetypal shape ripe with subconscious associations ‚Äì the oval ellipse of an egg.¬† Need some rambling analytical evidence? Alrighty then:
Escorting EVE back to his bachelor pod, WALL‚Ä¢E does his best to impress EVE with his bag of courtship tricks. He rummages through his reclaimed treasures and inadvertently pulls out the prize she’s been searching for all along — a very special sprig of leaves he’s recently unearthed. Presenting the sprout to EVE like a suitor with a skimpy bouquet, she scans it for value and her biological alarm clock goes off. ZOMG! Zygote! She promptly deposits the vine-like shoot in the safe and cozy receptacle of her robotic womb. This fulfils EVE’s goal, the procreation destiny of her prime directive. She instantly goes into nurturing override drive, folds up and shuts down to dormancy mode. (Our orifices are now closed, please call again.) Artificial intelligence, meet artificial insemination. By accepting this fragile squiggling tendril of DNA, the incredibly egg-like EVE is now im-planted with the stem of WALL‚Ä¢E’s seedling.¬† (Nice goin’, WALL‚Ä¢E. First female you ever meet, and you accidentally knock her up on the first date.)
Suspended animation takes on a whole new meaning as EVE abruptly transforms from coquette to cocoon. Having got what she came for, she doesn’t even pause to say, “You complete me,” before logging off. (No whorticulture jokes, please.) With her arms retracted seamlessly, and head settled firmly on her shoulders, EVE’s ovoid contours now represent her egg-shaped origins more smoothly than ever. No longer the trigger-happy Annie Oakley Robocop ricocheting around like a multifunction iBullet designed by Apple, EVE morphs into the perfect serene embodiment of surrogate earth mother. Seemingly inert, her impenetrable shell protects the germinating life sealed inside a self-contained green zone. Hovering in power-saving hibernation, a gently pulsing leaf icon indicates she’s fully activated with a bud in the oven. This luminescent LED status light is EVE’s own pregnancy glow.
As a sleek featureless capsule, an airtight vase with opaque black visor, EVE evokes memories of some other famous sci-fi sarcophagi containing precious living cargo. Remember the white coffin-like canisters in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the latent crew of the Jupiter mission lay comatose in unsuspecting suspension?¬† That’s only one of dozens Kubrick references in a movie rich with layers of homage and rivulets of cinematic tributaries.
When WALL‚Ä¢E wraps EVE in a string of colored lights, she becomes a Christmas-Easter Egg, a joyful holiday-hybrid that cracks opens another fertile path of interpretation. The egg symbolizes new life in the Christian tradition, just as a chick breaking out of its shell represents life reborn and renewed from its tomb. My Catholic friends who saw WALL‚Ä¢E with our group helped me view the movie as a Savior Story of redemption, salvation, and resurrection. Who knew that the path to salvation might be through salvaging what’s worth saving from the ruins and detritus of God’s gifts that we’re wasting? Though now that I see it in writing, it makes perfect sense. Salvage: to rescue. To reclaim, restore, and recover. To redeem.
These visual cues don’t spring to life of their own accord; they’re the result of months of careful stylistic collaboration. For Andrew Stanton to be repeatedly denying that any of the underlying messages we’re reading into WALL‚Ä¢E are anything but “reverse engineering” happenstance, he’d have to be exceedingly obtuse to the inner-workings of his own fertile artistic imagination (or else he thinks we are). But it’s really not part of the artist’s job to decipher the meanings of his art for us, is it? And perhaps many artists express their feelings visually because they’re not always too good at articulating their message verbally.
Typically dismissive of all this navel-gazing, Andy Warhol said, “Why do people think artists are special? It’s just another job.” (Though it’s likely publicity-maestro Warhol was being a bit disingenuous.) On the other hand, Jackson Pollock nailed something significant about the artistic process: “When I’m painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It’s only after a get acquainted period that I see what I’ve been about.”
So if I want to think the line, “Blue is the new Red,” is a cleverly embedded political message, you’ll have a tough time dissuading me since nobody is coming forward to confirm or refute it. A genius like Andrew Stanton surely knows that if he remains tight-lipped about his intentions, then that leaves WALL‚Ä¢E wide-open to a world of fascinating interpretations
In America it’s always a safe bet to play dumb. Whether Stanton is hewing closely to the Disney corporate party-line when he dismisses the obvious environmental moral warnings implicit in the story, or if instead he just wants to allow us to puzzle out the intriguing intricacies for ourselves — either way, the depth and emotional impact of this extraordinary Pixar mythology he’s created is undeniable. (At last, some intelligent design I can buy into).
I stand by my egg theory. (And wanted to whip it up in print before anybody else steals the recipe for my Eggheaded Exegesis Omelet). Just like her namesake, ovum-shaped EVE is a heaven-sent fertility goddess perfectly paired with her down-to-earth counterpart — her devoted partner and custodian of the planet, WALL‚Ä¢E.
