Day 2 of watching Wall-E and Tone (10/18/2018)

Jack Lenosky

Over the past few days of class we have been reviewing tone and how we can find it in both film and text. Collectively, we have been practicing application tones to the movie Wall-E and the book Ready Player One. Today, we watched more of the film Wall-E and were able to pick out lots of new tones. We took off from the scene where Wall-E and Eve are in his crate/home after escaping the dust storm. Wall-E shows Eve all around his home and is having a blast doing so, despite a few mishaps and almost getting a hole blown in the wall over a singing fish. At this point, we are finally getting a good idea of what kind of character Wall-E is, which is very silly and sweet. After he has showed Eve pretty much everything of value to him, Wall-E finally decides to show Eve a plant he had found while adventuring. Eve scanned the plant (as she does with pretty much everything she sees) and went directly into what seems to be a ‘lock down mode’. During the entirety her being in this state, Wall-E doesn’t leave her side for a single moment. I feel as if there is a very lighthearted tone during this section of the film. Not long after Wall-E became saddened at the idea that he might have been being ignored by his newfound love but still went on to do his daily errands because he pretty much had nothing else to do. Dopily, Wall-E went about his day until the spaceship we had previously seen in the film came back for Eve. Worried Eve might leave him Wall-E rushed to the ship and latched onto the side. Wall-E then traveled through space all the way until reaching the Axium. Once he had boarded the ship, Wall-E immediately resumed his mission to get to Eve, he also took no time to find his way into trouble with some cleaning robots while doing so. After a close call with the authorities on the Axium, Wall-E runs into a bunch of very overweight humans in red jumpsuits propped up in hover chairs. Wall-E happened to accidentally bump into one of the humans and knock him out of his chair. The human was so obese that he could not get back up into his chair without assistance. Seeing all of these people like this had a very nonplussed (totally puzzled, perplexed, or confused)  tone to me, solely because I wasn’t entirely sure why all the people were so obese or at least why they would let themselves reach that point of laziness. More specifically, this is a tone from the past that is also negative (perseus’ shield). This is because of the fact that though it is self evident for some people why these humans became so obese (laziness) their could be other reasoning which is what created the tone in my eyes. As for the films tone as a whole (so far), it is generally very dreary and honestly quite depressing. Civilization as a whole on Earth is non-existent and all of the people on the Axium are obviously not in great shape either. Although, Wall-E seems to serve as a light in all of this darkness with his curiosity and charm. Although, tone is obviously present in Wall-E and Ready Player One as well as many other titles, tone is also applicable to music. For example, the other day I was listening to the song “Brandy” by the group Looking Glass. The 70’s love song had a very jocund and loving tone. From start to finish the song is all about love and is very upbeat and groovy.

Homework:

-Be Reel Blog (Due 11:59 P.M. EST)

-Continue reading Level One of Ready Player One and consider past and future tones

-Finish summer reading if not yet completed and begin working on Synthesis Essay