Month: November 2024

The Wild Robot (2024)

a reel of film

A helpful robot needs to have a purpose. Roz wakes up on the shore of an island with no one to ask for her help.

The beautiful graphics of The Wild Robot are appealing. Even in the trailers, the art design elements of the film are evident. The story shows Roz developing in her relationship with the island’s wildlife. Her initial attempts to be useful end up catastrophically and cause all of the animals to fear her. Eventually Roz learns how to communicate with the animals and they interact with less conflict.

The corporation which sent the robot presents a utopian vision of life in the future. They have shiny mockups of robots and corporate cities in their marketing materials. They resemble futuristic designs by Disney from the 60s. They offer perfect robots to do everyone’s work and liberate citizens. It was interesting the how the Universal Dynamics marketing videos in The Wild Robot have a similar cadence and tone to the corporate messages from Buy n Large in the animated film Wall-E.

When the city was disrupted by “contamination” by wildlife, the robots react violently. They override their purpose of enhancing the city and start damaging it to defend their (presented as) idyllic synthetic environment.

There are some pointed moments in the film such as the scenes that show the Golden Gate Bridge. The explanation for an extreme winter is also left unstated. The wildlife on the island seems to be healthy and Roz helps them thrive. The baby opossums are pretty funny when they meet Roz.

The movie is unusual in that the title screen occurred at the end of the film. The openings of DreamWorks films show the studio’s logo of a boy fishing off the crescent moon. Here, the animation leading up to that logo included vignettes alluding to other DreamWorks films before resolving to the logo.

The Wild Robot is very violent. When it is amongst anthropomorphized animals, it doesn’t seem to hit as hard. However, the interactions with Universal Dynamics always devolve to extreme violence, causing explosions and fires, firing guns at the animals with one animal’s death all but shown in an especially intense moment of conflict. Roz is defiant in her relationship to Universal Dynamics and titles herself a Wild Robot when they try to retrieve her. It’s always a source of tension when she uses the module to help them retrieve her.

The Wild Robot is definitely a movie worth watching.

The Green Pentagon: No Loaded Firearms

a green regular pentagon

Can the 2nd amendment distinguish between unloaded firearms and loaded firearms?

In the past, firearms were only loaded immediately before being used; the technology for firearms in the 18th century had few pre-loaded firearms in public. Having a policy affecting loaded firearms differently than loaded firearms just might pass muster as consistent with past firearm practices.

Displaying this green pentagonal sign would alert people that a building or event does not allow loaded firearms. Regular pentagons are not symbols for any other purpose and the green color symbolizes a focus on life.

To use these signs would not need any new legislation. Going to a place displaying the green pent with a loaded gun would be a form trespass (and in many places, felony trespass). Trespass laws are pretty straightforward. Bringing something to a place where you are not permitted to have it is trespass. However, legislation could codify the sign’s meaning.

These signs could be self-enforcing. A person carrying a loaded firearm generally won’t want to have an unpleasant interaction about it. If the signs were widespread, there shouldn’t be a paradoxical response where it would promote the opposite behavior. Firing a gun at the sign would quickly lose novelty. Open carry would be deprecated by people without guns.

This seems like a way of hacking the 2nd amendment to reduce the presence of dangerous loaded guns in public spaces. It would be a way of offering a new policy and starting a new conversation about the meaning of American gun violence.

Wearing a green pentagon is a way of taking a stand.