New Screenshots

My screenshots page has been updated to show my latest computer eye candy.  Here's a preview:

Yes, that's Wall-E and his girlfriend EVE, Van Gogh-style.  From the closing credits of the movie.  If you watch them again, you'll notice that the closing credits show the rebuilding of human civilization, and the style of painting evolves as society evolves, starting with cave paintings, moving through Ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, and culminating with the Impressionists.  Another blog has pointed out that that's an interesting place to stop.  In my opinion, art really did stop with the Impressionists.  But there's a larger message here.  Impressionism was the last stage of art that celebrated the real world with happiness and optimism.  Art since then has been jarring (Picasso), mindless (Mondrian), or simply jaded and derivative (Warhol).  Sure there's creativity, but none of the celebration of life expressed by Renoir or even Van Gogh.

This ending in Impressionism, and refusal to take a step into a darker post-future, is part of the whole point of Wall-E.  Modern science fiction has to fit into one of two stereotypes: utopion (Star Trek) or dystopian (Blade Runner).  Wall-E offers a future in which the Earth was destroyed by consumerism, capitalism, and laziness, but offers a chance for redemption.  And as the credits roll and human society is rebuilt, there is no suggestion that humans are simply doomed to get it wrong again.  Rather, the film offers in its final frames the possibility of staying on the bright plateau and not jumping once again into the dark abyss.