When I went to watch WALL-E for Friday films at Rose, I expected a very kid-like movie. I remembered the movie vaguely from my childhood, but didn’t recall it being super evocative or thought-provoking. I can now safely say that was because of my bad memory, not because the movie wasn’t evocative or thought-provoking.

The movie explored some great themes of individuality, responsibility, duty, and of course, took a hard look at capitalism and its effect on our environment. It was a lot to pack into a kids movie. I cried at least three times. Later on in the night, when I explained my puffy red eyes to a friend. she was surprised that I could have cried during a movie about a robot.

“He’s not real, he’s not alive. What are you crying for?”

It was easy to laugh over in the moment, but it made me think about the movie in another way. That question of humanity, who is deserving of empathy and who is not? Is it dependent on their “humanity”? WALL-E, near the end of the movie (spoiler alert) nearly dies. Eve has to save him by replacing a damaged chip, and he seems to have his memory completely wiped. The entire essence and personality of WALL-E came from his memories, his eccentricities of programming, and with all of that wiped away, he became a mindless robot. How is that any different from people? We are made who we are by our memories, our lived experiences, and what we learn from it. If my memories were completely wiped, I as a person an entity would basically be dead, even if my body continued living.

The movie definitely got me thinking about a lot of topics like this, and though I’m not going to start crying for a bunch of inanimate objects, I think it’s important to recognize we should extend our empathy to other people and things that feel, regardless of how familiar they are to us.