Representing Ecological Crises in Children’s Media: An Analysis of <i>The Lorax</i> and <i>Wall-E</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article examines representation of ecological crises in children’s media. Children’s media constitutes an important area of ecocinema critique due to the particular vulnerability of children to persuasive messaging. Using themes from ecocinema studies, we conduct a textual analysis of two animated motion pictures: Universal Pictures’ The Lorax [(2012). The Lorax. Directed by Chris Renaud. Universal City, CA: Author)] and Pixar’s Wall-E [(2008). Wall-E. Directed by Andrew Stanton. 2008. Emeryville, CA: Author]. We analyze these films in terms of: (1) anthropomorphic representations; (2) displacement of collective aspects of ecological crisis to the level of interpersonal conflict; (3) greenwashing; and (4) narratives of pastoralism and replenishment. We consider how these films discursively constitute ecological conditions, processes, and crises. We examine these representations as indicators of an underlying crisis in capitalism, of a struggle to come to terms with ecological destabilization. Ultimately, we conclude that a more speculative reimagining of the relationship between humans and the natural world is required to stave off the worst effects of global ecological destabilization.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".