Guest Post by Remy Wilkins
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have been driven from the earth by a flood of garbage, leaving in an ark designed not to keep them safe, but to keep them away. Only Wall-E remains the last Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth Class.
As he navigates past derelict robots we realize that what separates him from the rest is his ingenuity and love of the earth. He has made a home, adopting the practices of humanity, he takes off his shoes, collects parts so that he may service himself and, most importantly, he rests. His rests are not the pragmatic powering-down kind, though he does that as well, his rest is in play. He collects doodads and thingamabobs and practices his dance moves, but he also takes time to study the numinous.
I was introduced to the numinous secondhand by the intellectual spendthrift C.S. Lewis, but the word was popularized by the German theologian Rudolf Otto. He defined the numinous experience as having in addition to the tremendum, the tendency to invoke fear and trembling, a quality of fascinans, the tendency to fascinate and compel. This numinous experience, however, is not impersonal, but there is a feeling of communion with a wholly other.
Wall-E demonstrates this yearning for the numinous in his nightly examination of Hello, Dolly, particularly that most visually ephemeral emotion of Love. He sees hand-holding, he fiddles with his own clunky hands, he records Cornelius and Mrs. Molloy singing:
It only takes a moment
To be loved a whole life long.
Later he plays a snippet of the song as he stares into the night sky. Clearly, he is looking for someone. He has friendship in the form of Hal the roach, but he has yet to discover that divine spark of love. (more…)
