Personifications

James' post on WALL E as well as my recent turn on my other blog (though I'm learning about human characterizations of passions there) has made me think of personifications in movies, especially cartoons and animated movies. We are used to animals acting and speaking like, and thus personifying humans, and then toys doing so in Toy Story, and now it's WALL E, the robot acting like a human. Even more so than the people in Narnia, as James observes. My developing theory is that we have a very high expectation of how humans should act. "Should" being the key word. They should be intelligent, consistent, brave, virtuous, etc. We are very critical of ourselves and others. But we do not have such high expectations of animals. They are "lower" and are appreciated mostly for their cuteness and vulnerability. We relax around them. And relaxing actually makes us more true to ourselves. So if the creators and the audience are relaxed in the presence of a non-threatening bunny for instance, maybe they and we can be more ourselves through the bunny, if that makes sense. Any human activity, like talking, pestering, playing practical jokes is impressive if a bunny does it. More so in fact.

Back to WALL E, I'll speak of the first part so's not to give too much away. What if he'd been a lone human person similarly cleaning up the garbage left behind by the departed humans. One, he would have been more connected to the ones departed, in our minds, perhaps even sharing responsibility. And there would have been a complication with how he was bonded, or not so, with his parents. Having him be a robot programmed by humans for a specific task lets us blame short-sighted humans as a whole and not specific people/parents. He is different than other robots though in that he bonds to things emotionally. Therefore we as humans can relate to him. We can personify our instinctive bond with created things through him, but his is untainted by passions - greed, lust of power, laziness, impulsiveness, lack of planning, etc. that got the earth in that shape in the first place. The robot is innocent of these things as a child is. Somehow he is impervious to temptation, which is how we "should" become, and which is indeed our fundamental state. The passions are an anomaly that we have sadly gotten used to and have developed a habit, after the Fall, of being lead by them, which - I have learned through Orthodox teaching - is unnatural. We are naturally innocent and virtuous like the robots, toys, and animals in stories. Writing about them and reading/watching them is a way to get in touch with that buried humanity by letting our guards down. Somehow, because of passions either in us or in others, when we are dealing with humans, our guard gets up and we get stiff and rigid - more like a robot and less like a human - how's that for irony? Iron - get it? 

p.s. the other day I tried to post a couple of new home videos but they would not upload so that's why it said I posted when I didn't.