Always Research is a Good thing

      While researching material for a paper I am writing for the film, Wall-E, my teacher my class an assignment to read and article, by Luis A. Vivanco called "Seeing Green: Knowing and Saving the Environment on Film," hoping that it could be useful in our papers. More evidence is always welcome when making a claim.

      When I started reading this article I was worried if this would actually benefit my paper. Vivanco is analyzing documentary films which are vastly different from my animated family movie, or so I 

thought. As an anthropologist, Vivanco, looks at how things effect a people group and their influences on a particular society. This ideology is very different from environmentalists who is critiquing the movie on it's truth to the cause it is depicting. Vivanco takes a look at how these documentaries influences the public by the techniques they might use and means of story telling that occurs in these films and those topics can transcend the borders of genre.

      One of the things said in this article stuck me in how well I felt it could relate to my paper despite the fact that the author was talking about animal nature films. "…kinship relationships, in which culturally preferred notions of monogamy, responsible parenting, industrious work ethic, deferred gratification, and the sexual division of labor are presented." I thought it was interesting how in a movie that might have been about lions in Africa was filmed and narrated in a way that the audience could recognize the family and society structures in their lives. Which is something I think the movie Wall-E does in depicting a very human-like life as well as behavior for machines.

      Another thing that struck me in this article was "…scientific validity of films relies on perceptions of the film maker's virtue and integrity." I thought this was interesting because it's true. In a movie like Wall-E the science is often over shadowed by the story that takes precedence over any bigger picture. The science shown to the viewers is often taken at face value because in a situation like where the environmental element is just a means to tell a story we have to believe that the science behind the story is correct.

     The last thing i thought could relate to my paper was "…audiences do not respond well to pessimistic 'doom and gloom' scenarios." Which I think is very relevant to a family movie where the audience is children and their parents. the environment message maybe toned down from the intense fear that waste product by humans can destroy a planet to properly tell a story about the love between two robots.

     After I read the Article by Vivanco I looked at his extensive list of sources and came across an article by William Cronon, "A Place Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative" which by skimming I think takes about how people write about nature and since Wall-E is a narrative story might be useful to my paper.