The class of 2022 had their freshly minted @princeton.edu accounts greeted Monday morning by a video featuring the grand-uncley face of President Eisgruber. In the video, he is seated in a red satin chair and wearing an approachably summery long-sleeve tee, addressing the camera. The transcript of that video is as follows.
“In today’s political environment, it’s important that we emphasize the values of our university, our country, and our world as a melting pot, with individuality and differences not just accepted, but cherished. It is for this reason that I have decided that the class of 2022’s summer pre-read will be the 2005 animated film Robots.
“Robots is the stirring story of young inventor Rodney Copperbottom, who, upon moving to Robot City, finds himself in conflict with Ratchet, chairman of the Bigweld Corporation. Ratchet’s plan to destroy all the city’s colorful robots who don’t agree to buy his company’s monochrome body plating make him a clear analogue for growing white supremacist movements, and though he appears in control for much of the film’s 91 harrowing minutes, in the end he is defeated, and the town comes together to sing James Brown’s “Get Up Offa That Thang.” Let us hope we as Americans can soon do the same.
“The film is elsewhere lined with similarly powerful progressive messages. The character Fender, embodied soulfully by Robin Williams, at one point has his robot legs replaced with a robot dress, a pro-LGBT move incredibly ahead of its time in 2005. The scene in which Bigweld surfs on waves of dominoes that resemble his face is an eerie predictor of the 2008 financial crisis with its deft assault on trickle-down economics. Fender’s sister Piper, in a performance by Amanda Bynes that consistently brings tears to my eyes, is a feminist hero when she beats the boy robots in an armpit fart competition. Rodney’s catchphrase, “See a need, fill a need,” is an immediate parallel to Karl Marx’s “from each according to his ability to each according to his need,” making more apparent than ever the strong Leninist literary tradition of which Robots is a worthy part.
“I hope the class of 2022 finds the same joy and solemnity in Robots as I do. God bless the class of 2022, and god bless that character in Robots who is a talking mailbox played by Jay Leno. I printed up T-shirts featuring his iconic line, “mail call!” and I expect you all to wear them at the P-Rade. The festivities will conclude at my address, which will consist of my impression of Scrat from Ice Age, to honor the Robots animation company’s other monumental work.”
– NP ’21
