WALL-E Gender Binary

http://goodmenproject.com/arts/binary-creatures-against-the-gender-binary/

Wall-e is a Pixar children’s animated film where they flash forward to what they think will become in our future. This film displays an earth that is completely covered from products from large corporations all over the world.  WALL-E is a metaphor used for WALMART which is one of the leading corporations for consumption and the leading cause of mess that leaves the robot character WALL-E to clean up. Although this film depicts the shots at this large corporation it is also a very educational film with allot of hidden meanings.

In this film it displays a gender binary where the films two main characters are genderless. Although they do not identify their gender in the film, there are allot of traits that the two main characters posses that help people follow gender stereotypes in order to attempt to guess there gender. The two main characters in this film are WALL-E and EVE. Though, Eve is more feminized this film than Wall-e the traits possessed from each character leave you continually wondering if they are male or female. What made this film so amazing is that though Eve is more feminized by staying clean and groomed the traits each of these characters possess are reversed to those of the gendered stereotype. Wall-e is gentle and caring in this film and is never angry towards anyone. While Eve gets angry quickly, and is most often very unkind. This is an example of how these gender stereotypes are reversed because the norm would be that women are the nice caring ones, and men are more strong and aggressive. Wall-e in this film posse’s qualities one would normally assume to be female such as what people assume that women aren’t as skilled as a man which creates controversy because of our male dominant society. Eve in this film plays the dominant role and is seen as very smart and has many talents unlike Wall-e. This film highlights many important aspects in our society that we face every day. This film shows that we need both genders to survive in society and it also highlights that no gender is better than the other.

This film is also based on romance, and in it is so hard to tell who is male and who is female. This is so difficult because the gender binary is constantly changing once you think you uncovered Eve as female, she switches and possesses masculine traits of a stereotypical male. Moreover, the same thing occurs with Wall-e the whole movie you are trying to uncover their gender identity but struggle because of the constant changes in their behaviours.

Wall-e is a great film that displays the various hidden meanings and issues we are dealing with in our society today. Wall-e uncovers the over usage of consumption in our society while also letting us see gender issues. These issues are both core issues in our society and this movie allows us to look at things in a different light. Who would have thought that two robots would allow us to understand what gender is. The way these two robots present themselves helps us understand just how genderdized our society is. Moreover, we are living in a society full of stereotypes that need to be let go in order to fully live in society with equality. 

WALL-E meets Eve