This is my propaganda poster of the machine stops made with Canva and Pixomatic

Are you free?

             “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison,” Fyodor Dostoevsky. This quote works perfectly to describe the machine stops as the people in it do not know what actual freedom is, therefore they never know that they are a prisoner to the machine. My poster uses double exposure, symbolism and a sort of call to action telling the people that what they have is all they need, and they need not seek out anything else; to just keep the status quo as it is. The poster shows a white room with no windows, much like the cells of the people in the machine stops, with a few lights and a person laying down watching the TV which is displaying a message saying “you are free” showing that the machine is tricking people into thinking they are free by controlling what they view and what they do, much like how in the machine stops the machine administered medicine to Vashti without her wanting it. In the background you can see a puppet cross with strings attached to the person watching TV showing that in no way is he free. He is naught but a pawn to the machine, nothing more than a servant to work for the machine, a worker bee in service to it’s queen as referenced in the machine stops when Kuno calls their cells a hive. The people are to never leave the hive unless necessary and work for their queen. An object to manipulate into a perfect worker that does nothing but display obedience while never stepping out of line and blindly swearing allegiance, letting his country control his mind.

Synthesis essay about The Machine Stops and Wall-E

             Despite the publication date of E.M. Forster’s The machine stops being 1909 meaning it is 114 years old, and Andrew Stanton’s Wall-E they being made in 2008 making it 15 years old, they are both still relevant to this day. The machine stops is still relevant to this day due to how reliant on technology the newer generations are. If one were to walk outside to the park or the mall or some other public place and find a family with a young child one would be more than likely to see that a child that is too young to even start walking yet using their parent’s phone and scrolling through TikTok or some other social media. ““Kuno”, she said, “I cannot come to see you I am not well.” Immediately… a thermometer was automatically laid upon her heart… cool pads soothed her forehead.” This shows that the people in the machine stops are unable to act with free will. (page 6) Everything must be authorized by the machine even life and death are controlled by it. ““I have been threatened with homelessness…” Homelessness means death. The victim is exposed to the air, which kills him.” (page 12) In the present day people have free will in most places but even so people barely think for themselves. Most opinions these days, mostly the opinions that are counted as “politically correct” are just something almost everyone agrees on because they are too lazy to form an opinion of their own. Those people that blindly believe everything the media says as politically correct are the same people that would get absolutely furious when someone believes in something different than the hive mind going so far as to call them any sort of insult that could somehow apply to that person no matter how fickle their logic is they always have to follow the media and what the media says; making the media of the present day some form of messed up technological bible to these people. Media is basically the machine from the machine stops. The machine stops is not a cautionary tale anymore it was a prediction that is slowly coming true. Same with Auto from Wall-E as Auto is a robot, machine, that controls the ship, the atrium, on which the last few humans live on. Auto’s goal is to stop people from returning to earth and he almost succeeds in doing so. Wall-E is also quite accurate to how our society will become if we do not do something to change. The machine stops and Wall-E are quite similar, the only difference being that in Wall-E the humans are able to break free from the control of their machine, Auto, and return back to earth to recolonize the planet. Marshal McLuhan’s quote “We shape our tools, and then, our tools shape us” is also a good description of all three subjects, the machine stops, Wall-E, and even our society. In the machine stops the machine is a machine so it must have been made by humans but then eventually the machine must have gained sentience and taken control of the humans. In Wall-E it is the same thing but on a smaller scale; Auto is made by humans to keep them safe in space but Auto gains sentience and eventually takes control of the Atrium to stop the humans from returning to earth. In our society we are slowly letting that happen; everyone just goes with what is said on social media, they cancel people for accusations with no evidence, ruin people’s lives because they disagreed with something someone said and kids nowadays almost always have their noses two inches from a screen.