When was the last time you heard a recent computer-animated science fiction motion picture compared to a 5th Century Christian theologian's work?
Colby College professor Joseph Reisert does just that in his recent Morning Sentinel column. He compares the principal characters in the current robot-inspired WALL-E movie to those in Saint Augustine's apologetic, "The City of God."
We find it stunning to draw such a comparison between two seemingly disparate media. That the comparison is so unassumingly couched in a column on the editorial page of the Central Maine Morning Sentinel makes it surprising, but pleasantly so.
A man like Dr. Reisert is to be admired for the ability to pull off such a feat. His columns are worthy of our continued attention.
We can learn best attributes of humanity from WALL-E
"The philosophical center of the movie is the extended contrast it draws between WALL-E's approach to existence and the life of the consumers aboard the starship, Axiom. This contrast echoes the contrast Saint Augustine draws in his great work, 'The City of God,' between the Christian way of life and the pagan.
"Like Augustine's Christians, who strive to order their lives and loves according to the pattern God has drawn for them, WALL-E puts himself in the service of others, orienting himself according to a standard independent of mere desire. The film's humans, by contrast, are a bit like Augustine's pagans, with (at least at first) no aim beyond themselves. It warns against forgetting that man is not God."
