Futurama Gives E-waste Its Due

Art often mimics reality, especially in an age when animated television programs such as The Simpsons and South Park often poke fun at what’s happening in the world around us. Futurama, now seen on Comedy Central, has ventured where no modern animated series has gone before by poignantly illustrating the global e-waste crisis in a recent episode.

During the past several years, Futurama has covered a lot of intergalactic territory relating the adventures of a planetary delivery service set about 1,000 years in the future. The show is the brainchild of Matt Groening, the mastermind behind The Simpsons, and follows the adventures of Fry, a 20th century pizza delivery boy who was cryogenically frozen and emerged in a ‘future’ filled with zany aliens and flying cars; Leela, captain of a big green spaceship that delivers packages across various quadrants of the galaxy, and, of course, Bender, a sarcastic, chain-smoking robot.

I was alerted to the recent e-waste episode by a Redemtech associate who emailed me about the topical message and how the characters reacted to a world cluttered with end-of-lifecycle electronics. “The opening vignette of the show was dedicated to the dark side of e-waste recycling,” the associate wrote. “The segue into the main storyline comes in a pang of conscience brought on by the cast experiencing the Third World conditions.” Glad he notified me, I later viewed the episode so I could see what he was talking about.

The episode reveals how attuned the show’s writers are to the e-waste crisis, which only occasionally grabs headlines in the mainstream news media. As a drum-beater for the cause to rein in e-waste and the unethical dumping of scrap electronics in Third World countries, I was elated and gratified to see a major television series devote careful thought to the issue. Using practiced parody, this episode of Futurama is perhaps the most creative message I’ve seen to convey the serious nature of the e-waste crisis.

To describe a little about the episode, the ship flies to a planet identified clearly as the “Third World” of the Antares system, more than a hint at the Third World destination of most of the Western world’s e-waste in current times. It is a planet with rings much like Saturn in our solar system, only these rings are made of discarded computer monitors and cell phones through which the ship must grind an opening to reach the surface below. The planet itself is shown through images of industrial smokestacks pumping toxic fumes into the air; fumes so lethal that when a bird flies through the vapor, it is reduced to a flying skeleton.

The planet’s residents greet the crew, temporarily removing the spacesuit helmets they obviously need to breathe. Leela says they are on a mission to deliver e-waste, so the blue alien in charge directs them to gently unload an overflowing dumpster, which collapses into a pile of scrap.

“Ready for processing!” the alien excitedly announces, dousing the pile with industrial lighter fluid and setting it aflame. “We burn your e-waste down to the usable metals, safely releasing the toxics into our air and drinking water.”

“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” Leela replies after witnessing a green alien dog sample the runoff, right before its tail falls off.

“Really?” says the alien. “Then don’t look over there.” He points to a huge pile of e-scrap where four alien children are gleefully digging through the toxic waste for useable metals, hacking like pack-a-day smokers as they play. The cartoon image echoes photographs we’ve seen of Asian children similarly pawing through piles of toxic scrap dumped in their countries by Western nations.

As I watched how vivid colors and sharply-barbed humor could be combined to share with the world the dangers of the e-waste situation, I was reminded of a comment made by comedian Bill Cosby. “Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.”

I’ve found a lot of solace in that quotation through the years, especially lately, and it continues to ring true when you see an issue like e-waste fitfully depicted in a colorful medium. If more people learn about e-waste and join the fight, the “future” painfully displayed on Futurama might be very different from our current reality.

 

Comments

[Gene Aufderhaar]

Colorful column; important point. We, the hapless e-waste public, need direction as to how to safely get rid of our retired electronics. (My basement skel-e-tons: one Acer computer with 5 and 1/4-inch floppy, two computer printers, numerous remotes.)