Turns Out Pixar's Animated "The Fountainhead" Is Off The Table

Some of you have probably heard of the right wing's grand battle against WALL·E and that it has fallen flat. It opened at a very strong #1 thus ending their dream of repeating the success they had at blunting the box office take of The Golden Compass (you may remember how right wingers believed that this movie about a talking bear who beats the crap out of another talking bear threatened a 2000 year old religion). One thing this has taught me is that I would quickly lose my love of movies if viewing them was a quest for ideological purity and worldview validation. Sure, I jokingly told everyone to boycott the movie but these folks were actually trying to kill it. If I was a conservative, how could I ever enjoy going to the cinema when I knew that my entire time would be spent parsing every second to see if I could find signs of treason? How could I watch The Hulk and not see it as a diatribe against nuclear power or see Kung Fu Panda and try to figure out whether the film's liberal filmmakers are trying to get us to turn over all power to communist China or that we should all just have sex with animals so that they can talk like they do in the movie? An how, oh now, would I get over the fact that I have now "lost" something I never truly had?

I am talking about how conservatives felt that the folks at Pixar were, "one of them." Looking past the idea that they see a company with many employees as one person, how did they come to this conclusion? It turns out that they saw The Incredibles as being such an affirmation of conservative ideals that it was very difficult for them to keep from ejaculating* when they saw it. I knew about the conservative obsession with 300 and Transformers but I was in the dark about The Incredibles until I read this post by Jason Apuzzo from the newly-Dirty Harry-free Libertas telling us why:

Ever since Pixar’s The Incredibles came out several years ago, I’ve seen it hyped in conservative-libertarian circles to no end, to the point that people began to believe that there was actually some kind of pseudo-libertarian cabal of people who ran Pixar.

It turns out that The Incredibles, a movie seen by most people as an intelligent and entertaining film that served as both a fun superhero adventure and a funny parody of superhero adventures was seen by the right as Atlas Shrugged For Kids. For those of you who were never forced to read Atlas Shrugged, it's a novel by Ayn Rand written on a 4th grade reading level about some goob named John Galt who gets the world's smart people to go on strike. The message is that those who are Extraordinary should be a wealthy, ruling Elite. It says that we couldn't get by without them but rejects the idea that they couldn't get along without us. And that's what people like Jason Apuzzo saw when they watched The Incredibles.

Now their hearts are all broken. Their fantasies about partying with Pixar employees and getting drunk with them so they could all circle jerk each other and claim the next day that the alcohol was to blame has died because their accidentally-gay boyfriends have now made a movie where the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by pollution. They even had the temerity to include what they saw as a clear slap in their faces by having one of their characters make a joke about staying the course. It's like Apuzzo and Company are Jennifer Aniston and Pixar is Brad Pitt who has just left them for the hot, sexy liberal ideology that looks a lot like Angelina Jolie and, to add insult to injury, Brad and Angie had a child named WALL·E.

Seriously, why the hell do you people even go to the movies? Wouldn't you be much happier if you just stayed home watching Fox News in between DVD collections of 24? Oh well, I'm off to see Hancock, a movie that will doubtlessly be described on right wing sites tomorrow as an anti-Randian screed that's trying to indoctrinate our children into the idea that Extraordinary People are out-of-control alcoholics who must be controlled by the lesser elements of society and have their spirits broken so they can be molded to our view of what they should be.

*This, of course, applies only to the men and Ann Coulter.

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Boycott WALL·E Part 2: Apples And Oranges

In my previous post, I made an attempt to warn the world about the upcoming Disney/Pixar film WALL·E. At the time, I seemed to be alone in the view that WALL·E, seen by most as a simplistic and entertaining film about a cute little robot, was actually the harbinger of humanity's doom at the hands of bloodthirsty machines whose main imperative is to destroy mankind*. Here was my vision of the future:

1. Everyone goes to see WALL·E.
2. It becomes a mega-hit and all the little kids want their own robot.
3. The robots become self-aware and our only choice after that is whether we get conquered by Skynet or the Matrix.

I realize now that I was, in fact, wrong about part of that. We could also be conquered by the Borg. Anyway, I did what I could to get the message out and, from what I can tell, had at least a small amount of progress toward preventing the end of the human race. At least that's what I thought until I read this comment from someone called Nekura20x6 over on Digg:

If Johnny 5 didn't manage to destroy our generation, I think our future is secure. (Can Wall*E reprogram three robots to do the Three Stooges? I think not...)

WRONG WRONG WRONG! This is exactly the kind of thinking that will lead us into machine-run death camps. Listen up Nekura20x6, if in fact that is your real name. As soon as Johnny 5 became self-aware, he did 2 things. One was to gain and constantly repeat the philosophy of "No Disassemble". The other one was to constantly put himself into inappropriate situations with Ally Sheedy. You just know he'd have nailed her if he could have, but that's not the same as wanting to exterminate her along with her fellow humans.

So, to Nekura and everyone else, I must warn you not to let Short Circuit lead you into a false sense of security. Comparing Johnny 5 and WALL·E is like comparing apples and oranges only in this case the apples are as friendly as they are tasty and the oranges are an evil demon fruit whose intention is to either kill you, enslave you or assimilate you into its collective. Am I being ridiculous? Perhaps. BUT DO YOU DARE TAKE THE CHANCE? I think not. I'm the last guy in the world to want to sound overly dramatic, but for the love of all that is good and holy, you must boycott WALL·E lest thousand of years of human experience and memories will be lost like...tears...in...rain. Time to die.


*I've always wondered what the hell machines who Must Destroy Mankind would do if they actually managed the feat of destroying mankind. It's like last week when I decided to spend my weekend organizing my comic books but finished up with that after only a few hours and sat around bored till Monday. I'm thinking it'd be the exact same thing with the robots and their Destroy Mankind deal and is probably why they never manage to finish the task. They know that they'll have squat to do.

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Boycott WALL·E

Yeah, I said it, boycott the little bastard. Sure, it's a Pixar film which means it'll probably be good, possibly an instant classic. The film's quality has nothing to do with it. What I am trying to avoid is its blatant pro-robot agenda. Here's how I see the future:

1. Everyone goes to see WALL·E.
2. It becomes a mega-hit and all the little kids want their own robot.
3. The robots become self-aware and our only choice after that is whether we get conquered by Skynet or the Matrix.

This would be the point where some killjoy skeptic comes along to tell me that toy robots wouldn't have that kind of brain power and where I would invite that skeptic to please kiss a generous portion of my ass while I put the finishing touches on the underground shelter in which I will ride out the rise of the machines.

Anyway, if my call to boycott WALL·E is successful, please knock on my shelter door and let me know.

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