This review is by my daughter, Emma Bailey, a student at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, IL, she is majoring in psychology and art.
A Short Review and Social Psychological Analysis of Tomorrowland
The recently released Disney movie, Tomorrowland, conveys a message to its viewers about the current behavioral attitude that people have towards the impending doom of our world. Casey Newton, our heroine, sits in her high school classes listening to her teachers babble on about the end of the world and how it is going to happen. It reminds me of my high school classes, although the movie depiction was maybe a tad more melodramatic. Throughout all this talk of destruction, Casey asks the most important question, “How do we fix it?”
This is why Casey is our heroine. She is the outlier in a sea of sponges. While everyone around her is simply absorbing and accepting his or her imminent demise, she rejects it and seeks a solution. Frank Walker thought that he had created that solution. He and David Nix believed that if they broadcasted the end of the world from an invention in Tomorrowland, people would be motivated to try to change the future. However this seemed to take on the opposite effect similar to when your mother tells you not to do something and you do it anyway.
Although it was long and drawn out, David Nix’s speech towards the end of the movie was very insightful. Instead of seeing their doom and doing something about it, people have simply accepted it. It is possible that although we are shown this dark possible future, we are unrealistically optimistic. We underestimate our chances of becoming victim to these awful events. We believe that our own actions don’t matter. Why do something today when we can do it tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, and so on. We think that we do not need to contribute because our small contribution will not change anything and somebody else is probably doing it, so we don’t have to. The issue with this way of thinking is that everybody thinks this way. If we all believe that someone else will do it, nobody will and nothing will change.
The idea that the future will be dark can send us all running for our safe suburban, white picket fence homes with our nuclear families and televisions that broadcast war and destruction that are happening miles and miles away. We are a selfish society and when it isn’t happening to us, we tend to not try to do anything about it until the problems are actually happening to us. We think, “What can I do now to be happy now,” when we should also think, “What can I do now for myself and others to be happy later.”
If we take anything away from this movie, it’s that if we do nothing, nothing will change. Lets all become the heroines of our stories and all ask, “How can we fix it?”
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