I Am Not, In Fact, Going to Wreck It
Last week I went to see Wreck-it Ralph. It was a good movie, I liked it. It hit all of the right cameos, had a simple and fun story, and some great voice actors in John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jane Lynch, and Alan Tudyk.
The movie is basically about an 8-bit villain that wrecks shit and has to sleep every night on a giant pile of shit, while everyone else in his game parties their ass off. Despite the fact that the Ralph, the villain, is a large contributing factor in the success of the game every day, the other game characters treat him like they caught him eating Hitler’s favorite sauerkraut. Even Felix, the terminally nice hero of the game (voiced by Kenneth from 30 Rock), is a douchey fair-weather friend.
This struck an immediate note for me. I work in QA. My job, every day, is to break shit and tell people that they have somehow fucked up. It’s an important part of the software development process, and if there isn’t a QA process, you can immediately tell (usually with a graphic of a developer taking a digital shit that was “mistakenly” not removed before shipping). QA is often a difficult and exacting process. For my efforts, I have been yelled at, physically threatened, isolated, and called various names. This isn’t an always thing – most people recognize the value QA offers and are able to distinguish between me as a person and my job function. Other people are fuckholes that I would leave in a collapsing 8-bit apartment building.
Now, my main complaint about the movie is that it teaches a terrible moral and ethical lesson. The people that treat Ralph like shit are never given a real comeuppance in the film, and don’t learn any lessons. Despite the fact that he’s ALREADY providing a valuable service, Ralph is required to go on a big quest to prove to people that he has the capability of being a hero. So he sets out to earn a hero’s medal in the desperate hopes of showing people that he’s really not such a bad guy at all, and hopefully get invited to parties.
Along the way he becomes a sort of father figure to a young girl basically trying to do the same thing Ralph is doing – win something to gain acceptance. Stuff happens, there are difficulties to be overcome, races to be won, bugs to be killed, all of that shit. Felix comes along to chew Ralph out for leaving his game, even though he was basically forced out by the people living there.
In the climax of the movie, Ralph gives up his quest to save his pseudo-daughter, and in doing so, comes to accept himself for who he is, a villain. With this self-acceptance, he understands what’s truly important to him, and is willing to sacrifice himself to save someone. That’s great and all, people should learn about themselves and be confident in who they are. However, it still doesn’t really solve Ralph’s original dilemma, which was that everyone in his game MAKES HIM SLEEP ON A PILE OF FUCKING GARBAGE.
The power of self-realization has nothing whatsoever to do with Ralph’s fucking problems. He’s a nice guy at the start of the movie who’s reached the breaking point because other people are dicks to him. Accepting that it’s ok to be a villain solves nothing. He’s not the damn problem, everyone else is. That’s like Mitt Romney telling a homeless guy that everything will be ok as soon as the homeless guy accepts that its alright to be a lower class peon because that’s his place in the world. Fuck that noise.
This is a shitty lesson to teach kids. If you don’t like the place you’re at in the world, don’t just accept it. Work to change it. Sure, if you’re surrounded by complete dickholes don’t evaluate your self-worth based on their opinions. That’s a good lesson. But don’t fucking crawl back to them after you figure out that you’re not an asshole. They’re still dickholes! The movie paints it as wrong for Ralph to have left his game, wrong for him to pursue worth through achievement, and wrong to strive to be something that he’s not. It says absolutely nothing about the moral vacuousness of everyone else that lives in that fucking apartment building.
A better title for the movie would probably be “Class War: A Koch Brothers Jerk-off Fantasy”. Only one character in the movie changes her situation from the start of the movie: Venelope. She goes from rags to riches, literally becoming a queen of her game. And how does she do it? By cheating. So, there you have it kids. If you want to get ahead and become rich, cheat like a bitch. Everyone else, just shut the fuck up and sleep in your garbage. And that makes ME want to wreck it.
