Photography

You can view my photography work here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/51520339@N05/albums

Human Identity and the Robot: Moving Beyond Biological and Cultural Distinctions in Science Fiction

Human Identity and the Robot: Moving Beyond Biological and Cultural Distinctions in Science Fiction

Submitted by Damien Carlisle; BA (Hons) in Contemporary Film and Video.

In accordance with Higher Degree Regulations for the Degree of MA in Film and Visual Studies in the faculty of Humanities of Queen’s University, Belfast.

Submitted on the 21^st October 2014

Contents

            Introduction                                                                                                                3

            Literature Review – Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams                                              6

            Literature Review – Exploring the Limits of the Human Through Science Fiction           8

            ‘That’s what it is to be a slave’                                                                                  11

            The ‘Other’                                                                                                                 16

            The Emotionless Machine                                                                                          19

Disembodiment                                                                                                           30

            Conclusion                                                                                                                  35

            Bibliography and Filmography                                                                                  37

           

Introduction

What makes a human being?  How does science fiction explore the limits around identity; how does lack and desire come to form an identity under the characterization of the robot?  I will argue that film and literature evolves from portraying the robot as something that takes over the role of humans, something with malicious intent, towards something more complex; not merely filling the role of humans, or merely imitating, but actually blurring the distinction between the human and the robot.  This is a question of increasing relevance in the 21^st Century, as technology is ever present in our lives, changing the conception of the robot in science fiction narratives.

We must begin by defining what a robot is.  Karel Capek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) 1923 is perhaps the earliest incarnation of the robot in fiction.  In his native Czech, robot simply meant worker.

Joseph F. Endelberger said of the robot, ‘The popular conception is a mechanical man, crammed full of near-miraculous components and capable of clumsy imitations of human actions and speech’(Endelberger:1980.p1).

A robot, both in idea and in practice, is something created to be in service of man.  Robots can do the repetitive, monotonous labour, tasks that require little skill.  Work that would have been the prevue of human beings in the past.  The question of robots displacing human beings follows from this.  As J.P. Telotte puts it, there is a specific category of science fiction that ‘looks at the human applications of science and technology; the reshapings of and modelings upon the self that have produced various robots, androids, cyborgs and “enhanced beings”…’ (Telotte: 2001.p14)  It seems inevitable that the genre of science fiction and the use of robots within this genre would come to ask questions of how human beings see themselves.  And as society changes, so does the portrayal of robots in fiction change in reflection.  As we increase our access to information through technology and as technology blurs the lines between the biological and mechanical, we not only ask questions of what a human is, but what are the limits of a human.

When writing his foreword for Robots in Practice, Isaac Asimov said ‘There will be steady advances in robotics, and, as in my teenage imagination, robots will shoulder more and more of the drudgery of the world’s work, so that human beings can have more and more time to take care of its creative and joyous aspects.’

Through the conception of the robot as a worker, much of the film and televisual material examined in this thesis explores robots as exploited slaves; harkening to the dehumanization of slaves in the past.  The Master is free at the expense of others.  The classification of sentient beings as property and the methods by which they are controlled is explored in the chapter ‘That’s what it is to be a slave’.  This will help to answer the question of how science fiction explores the relationship between lack and desire, and how this forms human identities.

There is a religious component in the creation of the robot as an imitation of humans in that many of the theistic religions believe god created man in his own image.  The concerns that arise regarding the role of free will with a creator being carry over to the role of robots.  In science fiction, any act of agency employed by the robot outside of the parameters that it was designed for can be said to be an act of rebellion against their creator, and a sign of free will.  Through imagining the robot in science fiction and developing more complex and capable robots in reality we are in a sense re-creating ourselves and playing God. 

In fulfilling the dream of machines that shoulders the burden of human drudgery, technological progress demands robots that can do more and more of what the human can do.  In addition to this, what we find is that the robot contains less and less of our limitations.  For instance, the DARPA Robotics Challenge has yielded increasing sophistication for robots to traverse dangerous environments to carry out complex tasks with mobility, dexterity, and even decision-making.  Robots can traverse environments too dangerous for humans, such as the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and complete tasks once considered too complex for robots. (Pratt).

Further, advances in bionic, robotic prosthetics forces us to face the breakdown of the mechanical and the organic.   Ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis had lost her leg in the 2013 Boston bombings.  Thanks to a robot prosthetic, she was able to dance again in front of an audience.  Hugh Hurr, head of MIT Media Lab’s Biometrich’s group, said of his own prosthetic limb ‘I quickly realized the artificial part of my body malleable, able to take on any form, any function.  A blank slate from which to create structures that stretch beyond biological capability’. (Herr:2014).  The arena of science fiction stretches the limits of the body; our concept of identity changes when technology allows us to go beyond bodily limitations; this is further examined in the chapter Disembodiment.

The chaptier titled The ‘Other’explores the roots of the robot as something not to be trusted; and how the lines between nonhuman and human become crosses from an ethical view, the mistrusted becoming trusted.  The Emotionless Machine further examines ethical boundaries and how recent examples of robots without emotion in science fictional narratives form relationships and become allies.

What we are seeing in the 21^st century is the beginning of the actualization of the robot as seen in science fiction.  The films that I will be examining share a number of commonalities aside from the iconography of the robot.  They all fit into futuristic scenarios, which Peter Stockwell says are the prototypical version of science fiction (Stockwell:2000.p15).  These films dealing with robots in the future are extrapolative.  They are often dramatized narratives, but deal with what could be possible.  Thematically, they share a commonality, as cinema theorist Vivian Sobchack writes ‘science fiction offers poetic mapping of social relations as they are created and changed by new technological modes of “being-in-the-world”’ (Kuhn:1999.p3).  In the early 20^th Century, science was poorly understood and mistrusted precisely because of its potential to replace workers.  The invention of the atomic bomb later presented the real possibility of our own destruction at the hands of science.  This mistrust and fear of technology is present in much of science fiction in the guise of the robot.  Through the dissertation, I will discuss how the robot reflects us, and how that image changes with the passing of time and further technological progress.

Through the exploration of key film texts, I will answer the question of whether the robot is something that not just emulates human beings, but something that allows us to move beyond biological and cultural limitations.

Literature Review – Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams

Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams – Japanese Science Fiction From Origins to Anime (Bolton: 2007).  The book contains a collection of essays and arguments from a range of Professors and critics within the work of Japanese science fiction and anime.  The book contains examination of the development of the robot in Japanese science fiction over time (‘from boy robots to the superrobots of the 1970s, the “real robots” of the 1980s, the cyborgs of the 1990s’), the Western view of the future being saturated by Japanese aesthetics, the crisis of individual identity, and so on.  These topics are explored in thematic chapters; Susan .J Napier titled a chapter When the Machines Stop – primarily interested in examining the question of what happens to human identity in the virtual world, examining the series Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-1996).  The chapter Sex and the Single Cyborg, written by Professor of Asian Studies Sharalyn Orbaugh, examines the notion of personhood as an aspect of subjectivity, in a world that is becoming increasingly posthuman.  The cyborg body in Ghost in the Shell raises the issue of the power relationship between the biotic and the techno-mechanical, raising the possibility of separate subjectivities in a single physical unit.

The book is directed towards other scholars as well as students interested in Asian studies, Gender, Film studies, and other arts and humanities related subjects.  There is a historical framework, as well as links between the science fiction of literature and manga, towards anime films, and their heavy influence towards Western films such as Blade Runner and The Matrix.  There is a heavy emphasis on the examination of industry and audience in the Afterword, written by Takayuki Tatsumi, which discusses the leftist student movement of the 1960s and the writings of Bien Fu, and the cyberpunk movement of the 1980s, and the popularity of fanzines.  Discussed are the key western figures of science fiction literature (Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, etc) as well as key Japanese figures such as Sakyo Komatsu and Aramaki Yoshio.  Also discussed is the first time Japanese science fiction was being translated into English with anthologies like The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories (1989).  Also covered is how science fiction novelist Shinichi Hoshi, described as the king of the “short short story”, became a pioneer in bridging the gap between print and visual media with scripts for the cyborg anime 8 man (Tobor the Eighth Man) in the 1960s.  Through these collections of essays we can build a timeline of the evolution of the robot into contemporary media.

‘(Astro Boy) appeared on Japanese and American televisions in 1963 and was the first of many friendly Japanese robots that contrasted with the phobic images of dehumanization dominating Western science fiction.’

‘from boy robots to the superrobots of the 1970s, the “real robots” of the 1980s, the cyborgs of the 1990s, and the virtual pocket creatures that currently dominate children’s television programming in both Japan and the United States….’

‘The rise of Japanese economic power in the 1970s and the relative economic decline in the United States led to an ambivalent fascination with Japanese attitudes toward development – the synthesis of robotic industrialization, neofeudal corporate culture, and the enthusiastic acceptance of new communication and simulation technologies in daily life.’continued on’(p.ix)         

            Christopher Bolton writes a chapter titled The Mecha’s Blind Spot: Patlabor 2 and the Phenomenology of Anime.  He examines the films Patlabor: The Movie (1989) and Patlabor 2 (1993), directed by Oshii Mamoru (also the director of Ghost in the Shell).  A ‘labor’ is a giant human-shaped robot with a human pilot.  In the opening of the first film a labor goes rogue, but when it is apprehended and they open the hatch to find the pilot, the cockpit is empty.  Bolton argues that the film speaks to a fear of robots being human-machine hybrids that have lost all humanity, ‘increasingly technologized bodies that turn out to be empty shells’ (p123).

This fear is further realized in Patlabor 2, in the concept of mediated vision.  Everything the within the cockpit experienced by the pilot is a world through filtered sensors and display screens, distorted by electronics.  This enhances the alienation from our original bodies through technology.  It’s a threat of dehumanization.

Bolton states that Oshii’s films address the idea of mass media as an electronic filter for experience.

                                                                                                                                                               

Literature Review - Exploring the Limits of the Human through Science Fiction

‘In essence, we are all already characters in a science fiction novel’ writes contemporary critic Gerald Alva Miller Jr. in his book Exploring the Limits of the Human through Science Fiction.  Miller’s 250 page book contains 8 years of research under the framework that science fiction is the genre most capable with engaging with our postmodern world.  Miller split’s the book into 2 parts - Science Fiction of Estrangement, and Science Fictions of the Present.  These parts are also split into sub-chapters.  Chapter 1 examines a response to gender theory through the science fiction work of author and literary critic Samual R. Delany, mainly concerned with exploring the limits of the human and the relation between the human body and identity through the discourse of gender theory.

            ‘Numerous classic works of science fiction have reimagined sex, gender, and sexuality in various provocative ways, but Delany pushes such science fictional examinations into radical new territories that open the terms up to retheorization’ (p34)

            He cites examples of science fiction literature which push the concept of gender, such as Joanna Russ’ The Female Man (1975); women from alternate dimensions meet each other, what it means to be a woman is different for each individual; the concept that gender is merely a social construct is explored.

            Delany’s book Triton (1976) concerns a utopian planet in which there are equal rights and total inclusivity; recognition is afforded to all races, sexes, genders, sexual orientations, kinship relations, and fetishes.  Technology exists that allows people to undergo not just sex changes but also changes to sexual desire.  However, their society is controlled through computerized prediction and structuring of activities.  Miller interprets the book in a way that suggests that even escaping the restrictions of gender does not guarantee freedom.

            The following sub-chapter in Miller’s book titled The Human as Desiring Machine: Anime Explorations of Disembodiment and Evolution, is of main concern for my thesis, as it describes the philosophy of identity being predicated on lack.  It begins with a quote from Deleuze and Guattari.

            ‘Every time desire is betrayed, cursed, uprooted from its field of immanence, a priest is behind it.  The priest casts the triple curse on desire: the negative law, the extrinsic rule, and the transcendent ideal.  Facing north, the priest said, Desire is lack (how could it not lack what it desires?).  The priest carried out the first sacrifice, named castration, and all the men and women of the north lined up behind him, crying in cadence, “Lack, lack, it’s the common law.”’  (p66)

            Miller states that humans are desiring machines, that desire is fundamental to human endeavour, and that it is a basic component in the definition of “the human”.  Limitation drives humans to reach beyond our limits.  Further quoted by Miller to back this proposition is psychotherapist Jaques Lacan, ‘man’s desire is the desire of the Other’, which Miller then describes as overlapping with Marxist discourse – ‘our thought is determined by class (‘class consciousness)’.  The socio-economic sphere produces our desires.

            Miller then relates these concepts to ideas about desire and its connection to the human body, and it’s relation to social structures and power, while examining the following film texts – Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (1988) and Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (1995), and Hideaki Anno’s televisual series Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96).

            Akira, Miller states, is set against the backdrop of the terminal genre, which is a utopian path through a dystopian setting.  This and other cyberpunk films (such as Blade Runner and Mad Max) fit in William Fisher’s definition of the terminal genre, in which there is a utopian north pole, guiding us through the ruins of dystopia.  In the world of Akira exists chaotic social order and an oppressive police state.  In Akira, identity is shaped by cultural forces and structures, but escape is offered to the character Tatsuo through disembodiment.  Miller describes this disembodiment as an evolutionary stage beyond the confines of the human form.

            Tetsuo is a member of a biker gang in Neo-Tokyo; a city that had been destroyed decades earlier by Akira and then re-built, the city is under great political turmoil, invoking images of student protests and police brutality.  Akira was a boy of immense psychic capability, and upon an encounter with another psychic, Tetsuo discovers he has psychic abilities too.  Tetsuo gains more and more power, until he no longer has control of it, killing people, and destroying the city in the process of his expanding power.

            In addition to the socioeconimc forces that had controlled Tetsuo’s life, his place in the biker gang is one of subordination.  Kaneda, his best friend, had protected Tetsuo from bullies in childhood, and is the firm leader of the gang.  Tetsuo’s obsession with gaining more power once his psychic abilities are revealed is a direct result from the lack that had been present his entire life.

            Tetsuo at first utilizes telepathy and telekinesis; however, as his power progresses, he loses control of his bodily form.  It is explained that Tetsuo represents an evolutionary leap that transcends the body.  The first step is psychic ability, and then bodily distortions that over-take Tetsuo, struggling to contain his growing power, and finally through an explosion into pure energy.  This explosion and destruction of the city (the film opened with Akira’s explosion which destroyed Tokyo) recalls the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Miller emphasizes that Tetsuo’s monstrous transformation occurs because of Tetsuo’s desire; his social milieu as a marginalized biker, no money, no education, and his desire for knowledge of Akira that would be denied him in his bodily form.  Tetsuo must transcend his body to form with Akira as pure energy in order that his lack can be filled.  Tetsuo escapes hierarchies and controlling systems by becoming a body without organs, existing with absolute freedom.  Miller finishes his examination of Akira with the following question; Can Tetsuo still be considered a human at this point, or does moving beyond the realm of lack necessarily entail the death of the human?

The concluding chapter to Miller’s book is called Beyond the Human: Ontogenesis, Technology, and the Posthuman in Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001.  He starts by defining what posthuman means.  Technologies become extensions of the self, humans are part of a vast ecosystem that includes digital and natural environmental forces.  Posthuman speaks to a radical state beyond the current human form.  ‘In many ways, science fiction has always been about the Posthuman’ (p164)…[…]

… critical theory and science fiction harbour the same implicit desire: to conceptualize and understand the human and/or to determine ways of advancing, perfecting, or even transcending the current human form and the structures or variables that define and control human identity.’

Science fiction can provide hypothetical scenarios for examining the consequences of the posthuman condition; whether these are utopian or dystopian.

‘That’s what it is to be a slave’

“Desire is a relation of being to lack. This is the lack of being properly speaking. It isn’t the lack of this or that, but lack of being whereby the being exists”  Jacques Lacan.[Clark:1995.p103]

Desire and human identity is predicated upon a lack; that we seek objects and other subjects apart from ourselves speaks to an absence.  A subject that is incomplete, that desires, is then, a human identity.  At least, according to this view.

We must begin by identifying the biological and cultural limitations that forms this lack.  Housed in our biological bodies we already have set limitations that shape our identities in society; such as our gender and our race.  Our biological limitations mark for us a set limit of life expectancy.  One example of cultural limitation comes in the form of being ‘born’ into a religion.  Despite the belief aspect of religion, many people are considered to be the religion of their parents.  In Northern Ireland, people are considered culturally Catholic or Protestant, the background of where a person happened to be born is a part of what forms a person’s identity whether or not they have actually stated their belief.  People can be considered culturally Jewish.  We are born within national borders and within a social and economic class. Society sets upon us limitations that we did not choose for ourselves.

It is the same for the robot.  Isaac Asimov sought to create rules that guided his fictional robots, and this theme has remained a key part of robots in science fiction ever since.  He called them the Three Laws of Robotics.

1.   A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2.   A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3.   A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These are like religious commandments; divined rules from the creator.  These laws endow the robots with a purpose; primarily, they must not allow humans to come to harm, they must serve humans, and they must do this as priority over the protection of their own existence.  Philosopher Stephen R.L. Clark writes that human identities are related to purposes: what I am is identified by what I aim to do.  But the Laws of Robotics are externally enforced onto the robots; it is not their own aim.  It seems natural then that Asimov’s books often explore contradictions in the laws and ways for the laws to be exploited.  And as seen in Asimov’s book Robots and Empire (Asimov:1985), the robots Giskard and Daneel seek to create their own laws – eventually succeeding in creating the Zeroth Law of Robotics – A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.  In effect, this law allows the robots to control the destiny of humans.  We have an example of lack; restrictive, flawed commandments.  What follows is the desire to overcome this limitation.  The robots become more than what they were intended by their creators to be.  They forge their own identity.

‘Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?  That’s what it is to be a slave’

Roy Batty the replicant chooses to save Deckard, the very Blade Runner that had been sent to retire him.  Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, then delivers one of the more iconic monologues of cinema history.  ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.  Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.  I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.  All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.  Time to die.’ 

In Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (Scott:1982), we see lack and desire forming identity.  The replicants of Blade Runner are undoubtedly an underclass, sent off-world to do the hard and dangerous labour, not recognized as sentient but thought of merely as tools.  When their lives are ended by the Blade Runner it is not called execution.  It is called retirement.  Further, the Nexus 6 model is limited only to a 4 year life-span.  Roy Batty leads a group of replicants in rebellion; they have fled from their existence of servitude off-world, returning to Earth to find more life.  On this quest, Roy Batty even meets his maker.  The head of the Tyrell Corporation.

“It’s not an easy thing to meet your maker.  Can the maker repair what he makes?”

“What seems to be the problem?”

“Death.  I want more life, Father”.

During their exchange, Tyrell refers to Batty as the ‘prodigal son’, and Batty calls Tyrell the God of Biomechanics.  So furious at Tyrell’s inability to help, Roy Batty murders him.  The religious overtones – maker, Father, prodigal son, god – draws attention to the rebellion of the creation against the creator.  It calls into question the concept of purpose; namely, purpose that has been externally placed upon us.  There is what is intended for us, which comes with restrictions, and then there is the desire to go beyond those restrictions.

In 1966, Philip K Dick would write Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Dick:1996edn)  He had said of his novel that the two basic themes were ‘what constitutes the essential human being’, and ‘if you fight evil, you will wind up becoming evil’.

Dick felt that these themes were essentially retained in the Hampton Fancher /David Webb Peoples script he had read for Blade Runner, both the replicants Rachael and Roy Batty become more human, which is in juxtaposition to the dehumanization of Deckard, ‘So you have Deckard becoming more and more dehumanized, and the replicants become more and more human, and at the end they meet and the distinction is gone’ (Landon:1992.p52)

The replicant Roy Batty is a desiring machine.  He has a romantic/sexual relationship with another replicant, Pris.  He expresses grief upon her death, sobbing as he craves tactile sensation, running his hand over her lips, then over her wounds, her make-up on his face; he rubs her blood across his mouth.

Anger at his creator followed by grief at the loss of his lover, and in poetic metaphor the expression of regret at the end of his own life.  Roy Batty establishes his humanity; he makes his mark as a man.  As a desiring machine.

Blade Runner deals with the distinction between human and machine.  As the replicants look just like humans, Blade Runners use The Voight-Kampff test when questioning suspects; it tests emotional responses, which are either lacking or absent from replicants.  However, the more advanced Nexus-6 models develop their own emotional responses.  In addition, the replicant Rachael has implanted memories, giving her the emotional responses required to fool the Voight-Kampff test.  It takes over 100 questions to reveal her as a replicant.  She does not know herself that she is a replicant – the idea that she is human has been imbedded in her identity.  We can see here the blurring away of the distinctions between humans and replicants and of the possibility that we could make no distinction.

That we may one day begin to lack the ability to discern human from robot adds to our anxiety of replacement.  Ultimately, it is replacement that the humans in the narrative fear, using dehumanizing language like ‘skin jobs’ to refer to the replicants, controlling them with in-built limited life-spans.  Perhaps we are correct to fear replacement.

‘What if man eventually were to produce a mechanical creature equal or superior to himself in all respects, including intelligence and creativity?  Would it replace man, as the superior organisms of the earth have replaced or subordinated the less well-adapted in the long history of evolution?

It is a queasy thought: that we represent, for the first time in the history of life on the earth, a species capable of bringing about its own possible replacement.’ Isaac Asimov (Asimov:1965.p798).

Professor Joseph Francavilla’s essay on The Android as Doppelgänger (Kerman:1991.p4) further explores the anxiety of replacement through the concept of the double.  The android can be a twin, a reflection, of us.  This concept of the double has been present throughout myth; ghosts, living portraits, etc, venturing to explore the distinctions between human and nonhuman.  The double is uncanny, yet also familiar, and imbued with supernatural traits such as the soul becoming a reflection and being transferable.  A double can have seemingly supernatural knowledge of the other.  An example is that Roy Batty seems to know exactly who Rick Deckard is, despite having never met him until the film’s conclusion.  The double in myth is essentially a fear that a soul can be stolen or transferred into the double.  Doubles then are in rivalry, in competition, which is the case between robots and humans for much of science fiction. The humans in Blade Runner have the upper hand by banning under penalty of death replicants returning to Earth.

Francavilla makes the point that the concept of the double in Blade Runner, the fact that replicants are soon to be indistinguishable from humans, allows for the blurring between master and slave, hunter and hunted, hero and villain, human and nonhuman (Kerman:1991.p8).

Rick Deckard fills the role of a classical film noir detective, tracking down ‘criminals’ through the rain soaked streets.  Roy Batty is initially the villain, on the run, a murderer.  And yet Deckard seems to have a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, he has the ‘shakes’ with each subsequent encounter with a replicant that he kills.  However, he refers to this as ‘part of the business’.  He grows a further conscience when he develops a relationship with the replicant Rachael.  The replicants Zhora and Pris cling to life when Deckard kills them; Zhora continues to run as Deckard shoots her over and over, Pris thrashes on the ground, screaming, as Deckard shoots her repeatedly.  Deckard becomes the villain, the murderer.  Roy Batty spares Deckard.  Deckard protects Rachael by running away with her.  The lines blur.  Sides change back and forth.  One is dehumanized, the other humanized.

This is also the case for the television series Battlestar Galactica (Rymer:2003-2009).  A race of intelligent machines called Cylons has been at war with colonies of humans in a distant star system.  The Cylons were obvious robots; lumbering, metallic, electrical droning, walking soldiers.  When the Cylons return and destroy the colonies years later, the last remaining humans flee on a convey of starships lead by the Battlestar Galactica.  However, the Cylons infiltrate the humans with new models – models of cylon that look, act, and feel just like humans.  These human-like Cylons eventually come to develop their own personalities, relationships, and interests that do not always align with the interests of the Cylons as a race. 

There are also doubles of doubles, multiple copies of the same Cylon models.  One notable example is Lt. Sharon Valerii.  She does not know that she is a cylon.  When activated, she attempts to kill Commander William Adama.  Another copy of Lt. Sharon Valerii is left on one of the colonies with a human survivor, Karl Agathon, who she falls in love with.  Played by the same actress (Grace Park), these cylons based on the same model come to develop their own distinct personalities and identities.  The cylon that tried to kill Adama comes to be known as ‘Boomer’, and grows to resent humanity more and more.  The cylon in love with Agathon comes to be known as Athena, and she works with the humans and helps them fight against the cylons.  Even Commander Adama trusts Athena implicitly and accepts her, despite her being a double of the cylon that tried to kill him.

This further blurs the lines that Francavilla marked out in his essay.  Heroes and villains change.  Alliances constantly shift throughout the series.  The distinction between human and cylon is further complicated when Athena and Agathon have a baby; a human-cylon hybrid, metaphorically bridging the gap between human and cylon, between the biological and mechanical.  The ‘racism’ and dehumanization of cylons by referring to them as ‘toasters’, begins to change when friends are revealed as cylons, as cylons become allies.  Battlestar Galactica becomes a powerful message of forgiveness; humans and cylons together settle on their new home on Earth.

The ‘Other’

John Brosnan writes on how in the early days of SF cinema that magic and science were interchangeable, they were ‘difficult to understand, mysterious and not to be trusted’ (Landon:1992.p87).  Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is given as an example, and certainly the film noir shadows along the face of the mad scientist Rotwang, and the robot version of Maria that drives the workers mad with lust, exemplify this.  Mark Fearnow examines the relationship between film and the audience’s distrust of science.  He describes how during the depression, ‘science and technology were offered as substitutes for a more familiar way of life that was disappearing’ (Fearnow:1997.p36).

Later in the 1950s, authors were setting the standard for science fiction that would define the genre.  One example was the problem-solving positivism seen in the work of Isaac Asimov’s robot stories and original Foundation trilogy (Asimov:1960).  In Brainchildren (Dennett:1998), Daniel Dennett talks of simple organisms emerging from replication, organisms that may be considered unconscious automata.  Dennett states that these organisms are rudimentary intentional systems.

Somewhere between the rudimentary intentional system, and the rising subset of conscious beings, in my mind, we can place a certain group of robots as seen in science fiction.

One such robot is The Borg, as seen in the various Star Trek television series.  An entire species of cyborg devoid of individuals.  They are a collective, sharing something similar to a hive-mind, the aesthetics of their ships resembling an industrial bee-hive.  Members of the Borg are referred to as Drones.  They possess intentionality; they must assimilate.  They traverse the galaxy in highly advanced starships possessing warp drives, and yet they have no more intention or purpose than that of a virus.

In one sense, the Borg are a metaphorical manifestation of concerns of technology somehow stripping us of our humanity.  We share information across an ever growing linked network; cybernetic implants could present the possibility of a collective mind at the sacrifice of individuality.

The character Seven of Nine is severed from the collective while aboard the starship Voyager.  Voyager contains a multicultural crew; humans and aliens serving together, lost in the Delta quadrant of the galaxy, trying to find their way home.  By becoming severed from the collective, Seven can no longer hear the voices of the other drones in her head, she is forced to adapt.  She forms a new identity as an individual, creating and building upon relationships with the crew.  The darkly lit, confining cell like structure of the Borg ships is replaced with the comfortable, almost luxury like Federation ship.  Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001) presents human identity as something that can be lost to technology; by becoming more technological than organic, by sharing your identity across a collective.  It also portrays identity as something that can be regained.  Seven regains her individuality, becoming aesthetically more human, while retaining cyborg traits like implants.  She uses the advantages of her cybernetic body towards the service of the crew while the crew serves as her new family.  The ‘Other’, initially a mindless automaton, something nonhuman, becomes human, while retaining traits of the cyborg.

Ridley Scott had earlier visited the concept of the robot in Alien (1979) in the character of Ash.  Ash is a humanoid biomechanoid; he is a secret robot, and also the science officer on board the Nostromo.  Neither the audience nor the crew of the Nostromo know that Ash is a robot until he attempts to kill Ripley.  Ash falls into a category of the unknown, the other.  Unlike Rachael in Blade Runner, we do not sympathize with Ash, and Ash does not seem to have any understanding of the value of human life.  Ash protects the chestbuster alien when the others want to destroy it.  He is a corporate spy, taking his orders from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, and the crew is expendable to his ulterior agenda.  He is privy to corporate information the others are not.  When Ripley attempts to communicate with the ship’s computer, Mother, a message reads ‘For science officer only’, and when Ripley overrides this, she sees that Ash has been given instructions to retrieve the alien, ‘crew expendable’.

 Ash in fact admires the alien, stating that it has ‘no delusions of morality’, and in this way Ash and the xenomorph are doubles of one another.  Rather than becoming more human like Roy Batty; Ash eschews humanity.  He is mistrustful throughout.  There are subtle cues and hints towards his true nature, such as a strange jog that he does, suggesting a stiffness that robots could have.  There is a low key cadence to the character and a compulsion for sticking to company processes.

When trying to kill Ripley, Ash attempts to stick a rolled up magazine down her throat.  This is suggestive; a penetrative act.  There would be much simpler ways for a robot with superior strength to kill a human.  This speaks to a sexual curiosity.  Ash lacks the actual physical parts, this lack shapes a rather menacing and ruthless identity.

This speaks to our fear of the unknown.  Howard Philips Lovecraft once wrote ‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown’ (Lovecraft:2006.p1).  This is encapsulated by both Ash and the alien.  Ash as the other that can look just like us adds a level of paranoia.  Any one of the crew could be a robot.

Ridley Scott has dealt with the robot across various evolving gradations.  The secret robot in Ash.  Robots that do not know they are robots such as Rachael, and possibly Rick Deckard.  We know that the replicants can be implanted with memories; Deckard dreams of a unicorn, and at the end of the film Gaff leaves for Deckard a unicorn origami. 

We have the robot that dramatically makes his mark in Roy Batty.  In Prometheus (Scott:2012), the robot David is both hero and villain.

David is much more obviously robotic in his posture.  The crew of the Prometheus is aware of his robotic nature.  Left to his own devices he partakes in recreation, watching Lawrence of Arabia, imitating the lines.  In imitating Peter O’Toole he could be trying to be more human.  Like Ash, David has an ulterior agenda, and secretly takes his orders from Peter Weyland, the forefather of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation seen in Alien set 28 years after the events of Prometheus.

David’s behaviour can at times be inexplicable.  His behaviour in the medical bay is unusual. Elizabeth Shaw has been impregnated with an alien-human hybrid; a terrifying prospect, a bodily violation.  It’s as though David is teasing her with the knowledge.  And yet, David helps her in her time of need towards the end of the film, first warning her that the deadly Engineer is on its way to her, and then operating the alien ship so that they can escape the planet.  It seems that Peter Weyland had a hold over David, and upon his death, David could do as he wished.  However, David also pushes at the boundaries of our ordinary understanding of a person.  Perhaps, like Ash, David has no understanding of human emotion or morality.  Prometheus thematically deals with forbidden knowledge, and desire for immortality.  In this way, David acts as an opposite for the elderly Peter Weyland.  As a machine, David cannot age, while Weyland craves immortality.

The Emotionless Machine

I will further explore the ethical dimensions of the robot.  Classical Hollywood genre films have often shown the robot as the other, something diametrically in opposition to humanity, in effect a horror monster.  And yet as time has progressed, genre films have imbued the robot with human traits, such as heroism, shifting from the role of antagonist to protagonist.  James Cameron created The Terminator in 1984.  Played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Terminator is an emotionless killing machine with human skin sent into the past, in relentless pursuit of Sarah Connor who is to give birth to the leader of a future human resistance against an entire race of machines.  In Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Cameron:1991), Arnold Schwarzenegger returns – this time in the role of the hero.  One of the tools at the disposal of filmmakers in order to mark out the qualities of righteousness and heroism is suspense. 

"There has been no satisfying theory to describe and explain exactly what suspense actually is, how exactly it is caused by films or books, and what kind of effect it has on audiences".

That quote is taken from Suspense: conceptualizations, theoretical analyses, and empirical explorations .  The book, of course, gathers various scholars and research in an endeavour to analyse suspense.  I will use Noël Carroll's theory on film suspense in order to demonstrate how formal elements are used to create suspense in the film Terminator 2, in particular the canal chase scene. 

To summarize Carroll's theory - Carroll argues that linear erotetic narrative is comprised of 'macro-questions' and 'micro-questions'.  A macro-question is a major issue of the narrative, while a micro-question is a question/answer model for linking scenes.  Sometimes the macro-question is momentarily dependent on the answer to the micro-question.  Suspense begins to be introduced when the only possible answers to these questions are morally opposed.  His argument further states that suspense is heightened when the probability that there will be an evil outcome within the diegetic reality of the film is equal to or greater than the probability that there will be a good outcome.  Carroll's theory is an effective model for film suspense, in addition with more subjective and abstract elements, for building our view of the moral oppositions in a film.

The first aspect of suspense that I will focus on is the erotetic narrative - the macro-questions and micro-questions presented in Terminator 2.  Probably the most important macro-question is raised in Terminator (1984) and remains unanswered until the conclusion of Terminator 2 - Can the human resistance overcome an artificially intelligent race of machines determined to destroy humanity?  This immediately brings to the forefront 2 morally opposed answers to that question.  Either humanity will be destroyed forever or they will find a way to beat the machines and survive.  In the context of the narrative, the traditional Hollywood 'heroes' are the humans.  As the audience we want them to succeed.  Clearly it is morally good that the humans overcome the machines, and morally evil that the machines wipe out humanity.  This now leads us into Carroll's remaining criteria for suspense - probability.  In the sequences we see of the future in both films, the landscape is littered with the remains of dead bodies and human civilization.  The human resistance appears to be rag tag, with loose organization, living in squalor while the machine race have large, advanced tanks and flying ships, and are capable of infiltrating the humans at any time.  The human rebels seem hopelessly outmatched and so the probability of an evil outcome to the war is great.  This sets the underlying foundation of suspense in both films.  It is through this probability of morally good outcomes vs the probability of morally evil outcomes that we come to understand the morality of the machines.  On a macro-level in the narrative, robots are morally evil, and this is re-enforced through the structure of suspense.  At the same time, the righteousness and heroism of humanity in the face of this threat is constantly emphasized.

The canal chase scene provides us a question - Can John Connor escape from the T-1000?  Connor's survival is in itself a macro-question, and also ties into the other macro-question of whether or not humanity will live.  Part of the probability of success of the human resistance is the existence of John Connor (Edward Furlong).  If Connor is destroyed in the past, as the machines intend to do, the chances of human survival decrease dramatically.  We never get to know the character of Connor as an adult, only catching a short glimpse of him in a future sequence.  As a child, Connor is setup as a relatable protagonist, as his Mother Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) was in the previous film.  He is full of attitude, cocky, and is very representative of the American MTV youth of the early 90's.  Such a protagonist is often essential in science fiction and fantasy.  In a story dealing with time travel and intelligent killing machines, general audiences need someone that is in some way like them so that they have something familiar, partially for the purposes of gaining greater spectator sympathy which I believe is key in suspense, but also for the purpose of telling the story.  If care is taken to have the plot explained to a protagonist then the plot is also being explained to the audience.  And understanding the plot is essential for the audience to understand the questions/answers of the film.  And without audience understanding the questions and answers, there would be no suspense, and no understanding of good vs evil in the narrative.

This is an established narrative style when dealing with the science fiction, fantasy, or action genres.  Here are some various examples of strong protagonists who help lead the audience through the story - Sarah Connor, Neo, Peter Parker, Marty McFly, John McClane, and Luke Skywalker.  They all share similar qualities in terms of relatability, normal people with normal wishes and dreams, and they are similar in how they help to tell the story.

It is important to put emphasis on the good vs. evil morality that Carroll argues is integral to suspense; which helps to align the T-800 on the side of good.  There are religious connotations attached to the character of John Connor.  His birth is predicted, like a second coming of Christ, and Sarah Connor is the Mother of the saviour of humanity, much like Mary in the Bible.  Such strong religious connotations add to the moral dynamic of the films, and thus ties into the suspense.  These are abstract elements that help to develop our moral sense of the characters.  Further are the themes dealing with the fear of technology getting out of our control and  a potentially apocalyptic human destiny provide their own suspense while tying into real social and political concerns.

The audience may not notice the religious undertones consciously, but I believe that the audience is affected on what Andrei Tarkovsky refers to as the 'supra-emotional' level.  In other words, something higher or above the intellectual.  The spectator will notice and be moved through emphasis and re-emphasis of prophecies (such as Sarah Connor's prophetic dream of Judgement Day), characters reminiscent of Christian archetypes, dramatic orchestration and placement of music, camera placement, editing.  These things will speak to the idealology of western audiences whether individuals are religious or not.  I believe that this 'supra-emotional' effect directly ties into the audience feeling of suspense.

One aspect of the canal chase scene in Terminator 2 that immediately springs to my mind is how outmatched John Connor is by the T-1000.  It obviously ties into Carroll's probability factor in determining the level of suspense.  Connor is only a boy with no means of defending himself and so his only option is to run.  The T-1000 is larger, and is also stronger and faster than any human, with the ability to form deadly weapons from its very body at will.  Connor rides a tiny dirt bike with a very limited speed while the T-1000 steals a massive tow truck with greater speed.  The truck's capability for destruction at the hands of the machine is made obvious from a visual perspective as it easily crashes through on-coming traffic, not slowing for a second in its pursuit of the boy.  Camera angles are used with purpose - such as the low angles of the speeding truck, suggesting its dominance.  Once the truck crashes from a bridge above, landing into the canal below, Connor stops his bike momentarily.  Here there is a wide shot, Connor's dirt bike in the foreground, the truck in the background, emphasizing the differences in size.  This constant adding of probability factors, and emphasis and re-emphasis of those factors through visually witnessing the destructive power of the truck builds suspense.  The fast drum beat and electronic shrill in the soundtrack heightens the emotional state and tension of the audience.  The editing is also fast paced, matching the sound, and providing the pace and rhythm of the chase.

We can break the scene down into a whole series of micro questions, which link the shots and the smaller sequences of the scene together.  This is something important to point out as I feel both Terminator and Terminator 2 are cat and mouse style films.  They are chase movies, in which the protagonist/s are on the run throughout the vast majority of the picture.  This makes for a very continuous fast paced film with a constant threat of danger and thus constant underlying suspense, a pace and suspense which picks up in the canal chase when the threat of danger reaches a high point.

The probability of success shifts heavily in the favour of evil.  This emphasized almost by a very dramatic low angle of the truck taking up the entire frame. Re-emphasis of the power on the side of the ­T-1000 is shown as it easily crashes through cars in its path.  Will Connor's bike be able to escape the speeding truck?

This leads us into the most important brief release of suspense and tension.  Connor escapes into the canal, slowing his bike.  The drumbeat of the music track slows and fades out entirely as he does so.  He pauses his bike to look behind him, clearly believing he has escaped.  There is no sign of the T-1000 or the truck.  The probability of success for the morally good outcome seems certain.  But then, there is a dramatic zoom of Connor's face as we hear the truck off screen.  This is imaginative camera handling [4] - a moment like this carries a suggestion of the world closing in on the character.  Cut to the truck crashing through the bridge above, landing into the canal below, Connor's bike and the truck in wide shot.  Now it seems like only a matter of time before the truck catches up with the bike.  The truck waves from side to side, crushing any debris in its path, almost always shown in low angles.

James Cameron has masterfully created a feeling of pure suspense in this scene.  One of the reasons for this is that the editing almost constantly shows information relating to Carroll's probability structure.  It is possible to pick out almost any small sequence of shots in the scene and how they relate in editing to illustrate my point.  In the short space of around 10 seconds, we see a closeup of Connor on his bike, we cut to a subjective point of view shot of the camera weaving in and out of dangerous traffic, we see cars colliding with each other as the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) enters the scene, cut to a low angle of the T-1000, then to another subjective point of view shot just before the truck collides with cars, and finally a wide showing the full collision of the truck through the cars.  The fast paced and fragmented editing of almost every single shot throughout the duration of the scene either shows the danger of the chase or serves to punctuate the dominance and hunter like qualities of the T-1000.  That Connor would not survive if the T-1000 can catch up is therefore constant in the mind of the spectator.

The next most important moment follows soon after - the heroic rescue of John Connor by the T-800.  This vital instant of catharsis provides the release of suspense.  Tarkovsky describes catharsis as 'spiritual cleansing and liberation which is attained through art'.  Carroll alludes to no such thing in his theory.  In fact, he states 'whether the heroine on the tracks is saved or crushed is irrelevant to the issue of whether the moments leading up to that outcome are suspenseful'.  What matters to Carroll is the probability of possible outcomes and not the outcome itself.  I believe he underestimates the emotional importance of a conclusion.

For the majority of the scene the T-800 is unable to interfere - disconnected from the action by space.  However, coming closer to the end of the scene, we are reminded of his presence more and more.  He shoots a gate with his shotgun as he barrels along at the top of the canal.  Meanwhile, interestingly, the canal has become narrower - this presents a feeling of claustrophobia and is representative of the fact that the T-1000 is closing in.  A bridge is too low for the tow truck, tearing apart the roof.  Again we see fragmented editing coming into play as Connor chances a look behind him, only to see the T-1000 sitting up in its driver's seat unharmed.  This is a further punctuation of probability factors - the quick sequence of shots illustrates how unstoppable the ­T-1000 is.  The pace of the drums in the soundtrack picks its pace up faster than at any point as the truck makes contact with the dirt bike.  Connor's destruction is imminent as he gives out a yell.  Perhaps at no other point in the film is the probability so high for a morally bad outcome for Connor - the suspense cannot get any higher.  This is why, in my view, the moment of catharsis comes at the right time and is exactly what the audience needs in order that suspense can be built up again later in the film.

The motorbike of the T-800 makes the jump down into the canal, catching the attention of the T-1000.  It is important at this point to comment on the contrasts between the two machines, as it plays into both the morality and probability criteria for Carroll's theory on suspense.  Spectacular Bodies  makes mention of the humanising of the Terminator as played by Schwarzenegger although it does not make mention of this humanising coming largely from the human qualities placed onto it by John Connor which is reflective of how many people treat inanimate objects - we sometimes give our cars names, for example.  Nevertheless, this humanising, and the mission of the T-800 to protect, makes the character morally good.  Contrast this with the 'feminized monster', the T-1000, who coldly murders Connor's foster parents and even the family dog.  Sometimes the act of killing a harmless animal is even more morally reprehensible to an audience than the murder of innocent people, which is all the more effective for establishing a villain whose motivation is clear.  And this moral dynamic ties back to Carroll's theory of suspense.  The T-800 typically makes use of its physical strength and size, which is useless in dealing with the fluidity of the T-1000.

The superior model of Terminator, in its significantly larger vehicle, moves from side to side to prevent the outdated T-800 on his smaller motorbike from reaching Connor.  It is at this point we can hear the first notes of the main title theme of the soundtrack and it is at this point that we know, despite all previously established probability factors, the T-800 will succeed.  The heroic theme of the music continues as the T-800 grabs Connor, whose bike is then subsequently trampled.  This cathartic moment in the film firmly establishes heroic, humanizing traits onto the T-800 – a machine, a robot, in a narrative in which robots are soulless killing machines.  Without the incredibly detailed build-up of suspense, without the heroism, we would not have reason to come to think of the T-800 as morally good.  It is in this way that James Cameron subverts classical expectations of the evil robot as portrayed in Hollywood cinema.  I can think of no other film in which a robot so powerfully emerges as the hero in a genre film.

I cannot overstate the importance that music has played throughout the entire scene.  We have heard drumbeats and electronic whines, which then faded and went silent completely upon temporary pause of suspense.  We heard the drumbeats hit its highest intensity just before imminent disaster, and then we heard the first hints of heroic music just when the T-800 is about to save the day.  At every step, the music reflects what is happening on screen, and furthers to emphasize the drama, manipulating human emotion in the correct direction.

In an instant that I would say purposefully mirrors the truck explosion close to the conclusion of the first movie; the T-1000's tow truck crashes and explodes.  As the protagonists ride off, the ­T-1000 emerges from the flames in its liquid metal form, and then solidifies without a scratch.  This shows the superiority of the bad Terminator model.  In the original film, a similar explosion burned the skin and flesh off the Terminator altogether, and it limped around severely weakened.  So now that we have had our necessary brief moment of heroic catharsis, the hunt is established as on once again at the conclusion of the scene - raising further questions in the audience, and re-establishing the underlying suspense.

The T-800 is further humanized at several points throughout the film.  John Connor’s father died before he was born, and his mother was institutionalized.  Connor moved around various foster homes.  The solid, masculine figure of the good Terminator begins to fill in a missing father role.  Connor relates to the machine by teaching it childish slang – ‘chill out, dickwad’ and ‘hasta la vista, baby’, a spin on the action hero catchphrase trope, and Connor also attempts to teach the machine how to smile.  And despite having been designed with the singular purpose of killing, the longer the Terminator is around Connor, the more he attempts to understand him.  And thus, understand, emphasise, and take on human traits.  He asks ‘why do you cry?’ at a mid-point of the film.  This is a setup for the conclusion; after defeating the T-1000, the T-800 offers to sacrifice himself in order that the technology of the Terminator is never found.  Upon the grief of John Connor at the Terminator’s sacrifice, the Terminator remarks ‘I know now why you cry.  But it’s something I can never do’.  As he is lowered into the vat of molten metal, he gives a symbolic thumbs-up to the boy.

We see as a theme across more recent robot science fiction robots without emotion who nevertheless attempt to gain humanity.  Their absence of emotion is a lack.  It is a boundary shielding a sentient being from the full experience of life; a boundary hindering a sentient being’s capacity to form relationships, to emphasise and communicate their own wants and needs.  Again we see this philosophical concept of lack shaping identity.  Lack as something to be overcome or filled.  There is no more famous an example on television as the character Data from the series Star Trek: Next Generation (1987-1994).

Data is an android serving on a spaceship in the 24^th Century which is on a mission of exploration.  He is a fully recognized member of the crew with the rank of Lieutenant Commander.  Data cannot experience emotion, his expression is often neutral, and yet he has formed relationships and friendships amongst the crew.  However, Data’s status and rights are called into question in the episode The Measure of a Man.  Commander Bruce Maddox wishes to deconstruct Data in order to learn more about his positronic brain and to create a whole race of Data’s.  When Data refuses to undergo the procedure, a legal battle ensues to challenge Data’s right to choose.

Data is subjected to dehumanization throughout the episode.  While the crew recognizes his personhood, Commander Maddox constantly refers to him as ‘it’.  The Judge Advocate General overseeing the proceedings of Data’s trial, Captain Philippa Louvois, states ‘Data is a toaster’.  As Data is an automaton made to resemble human beings, created by a human, possessing superior abilities, the theme of property is constantly raised.  Commander Ryker, forced into fighting against Data’s interests, states Data’s purpose is ‘to serve human interests.’

Ryker crosses boundaries of respect for Data’s bodily autonomy by removing his hand, a further act of dehumanization, an emphasis on Data’s mechanical nature.  Ryker further demonstrates Data’s status as an object by literally switching him off.  ‘Pinocchio is broken; it’s strings have been cut’.

Data expresses a will to retain what he views as an ineffable quality to his memory, its substance, which he does not believe Commander Maddox’s experiment can retain.  He refers to himself as ‘something unique’, yet also selflessly as a result of the dream of his creator – a dream that would be lost upon his disassembly.  This is not dissimilar from the dreams of Isaac Asimov.

The episode makes implicit references to the history of slavery.  Guinan, played by Whoopi Goldberg, makes the point of the potential for a whole race of disposable creatures that do the dangerous work; that there would be whole generations of disposable people.  Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) appeals to the Judge by showing Data’s sentimentality towards keeping medals, books, and other items that serve no logical purpose for him.  Data has not only formed friendships, but also formed a romantic and sexual relationship.

The crux of the issue is sentience.  The requirements for which Commander Maddox states are as follows:

• Intelligence
• Self-awareness
• Consciousness

Data passes the first requirement easily.  Data refers to; my rights, my status, my right to choose.  Picard makes his last point of asking, what if Data possesses the final requirement, even in the smallest degree?  Though not stated, there is a suggestion that even we as human beings would struggle to demonstrate how it is that we possess consciousness.

Upon judging in Data’s favour, Captain Louvois asks the question of whether or not Data has a soul, and states he has the right to find the answer to that question for himself.

What is the purpose of all of this?  Of such a detailed court drama regarding the personal liberty and freedom of a being that doesn’t even exist in reality.  The questions of a robot’s rights are explored thoroughly.  At times, Star Trek can represent the best utopian ideals of the potential of humanity.  When Picard states that their decision would speak to the future, it was a metaphorical and literal statement about the entire purpose of the episode.  To speak to the future.  Science fiction is a playground for challenging hypothetical scenarios which may very well one day come to pass.  In Blade Runner, replicants are capable of developing emotions, and yet there is no one to represent their interests, the future depicted there is decidedly dystopian, replicants are brutally hunted.  We simultaneously fear being replaced by robots and desire to control machines with superior abilities.  The humanist ideals best presented in the character of Jean-Luc Picard presents another option in which humans and robots work side by side.  Robots do not destroy us, and we do not enslave robots.

A frightening example of a computer lacking ethical dimensions is the artificially intelligent HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968).    The film is extrapolative in a realistic way, for example, envisioning a spinning space station that simulates the force of gravity.  The representation of HAL is similarly ‘realistic’ as the ship’s intelligent computer, a single red light representing its ‘eye’, communicating with a monotone voice. HAL’s ethical programming crashes, creating a psychotic computer.  HAL murders the crew that has been kept in suspended animation, and murders Dr. Frank Poole, forcing Dr. David Bowman to disconnect HAL’s functions from its processor core. HAL’s bewildred voice reports his diminishing memories and sensations.  It states ‘I can feel it’, as its mental acuity declines, and begins to sing ‘Daisy Bell’ as it dies.  Throughout, its voice remains monotone.

In Moon (2009), we see the repeated motif of the controlling corporation that is familiar in many of the films talked about here.  We know that Lunar Industries is a powerful corporate entity, yet we only see their control on the moon base that contains the clones of Sam Bell and their robot guardian GERTY.  GERTY is a direct parallel to HAL from 2001.  GERTY is an obvious robot; essentially a box and a screen, travelling with an attachment to the ceiling.  With his monotone voice; we are allowed to suspect GERTY due to our conditioning from Kubrick’s 2001 to mistrust artificial intelligence.  GERTY usurps our preconceptions by helping the clones of Sam.  We see the theme of sentient beings as property again.  Lunar Industries has cloned Sam Bell who works on a moon base.  Every 3 years, Sam is destroyed, and a new clone is activated.  The clones have uploaded memories of the original Sam; they believe that they have just arrived at the base, and that they have a wife and daughter waiting for them on Earth.  The reality is that these clones are property of the company, being manipulated and lied to, so that the company can save money on training new workers.  GERTY is also property.  As GERTY has limited inflection and expression in his voice, he communicates his thoughts via an emoticon on his screen.  This draws similarities to the social media of the 21^st Century.  Just as GERTY is limited in his ability, so are we.  Technology simultaneously increases our ability to communicate across the world and hinders us behind screens.  We communicate without face to face understanding, without any tactile sense.

GERTY is Sam’s caretaker.  He is his Doctor.  His hairdresser.  In fulfilling the caretaker role he has been programmed for, he keeps Sam fed, keeps him safe.  At every step throughout the film, GERTY makes it clear that it is Sam’s safety that is most important to him – even over the interests of the company.  ‘Helping you is what I do’.   GERTY provides Sam-5 with a password to the computers, allowing the clone to see the depth of the companies’ plot to lie to and destroy each successive clone.  GERTY is even willing to make a sacrifice; allowing his memory to be wiped so when Sam-6 escapes he is not discovered.  By the end of the film, if not ambiguous about the future, we are still allowed to hope that the corporate exploitation can be uncovered thanks to the efforts of robot and human working together.  In Moon, we see the robot as servant relationship, but clearly the robot cares for Sam.  It is not a relationship of exploitation.  Through his on-screen emoticon, GERTY shows a crying face, after telling Sam-5 the truth about what he is.  Through GERTY’s actions, we can accept that the ‘emoticons’ are a genuine representation of what GERTY thinks, if not what GERTY feels.  Nevertheless, the aspect of artificiality throughout the film, through GERTY’s box shape, monotone droning, and ‘emoticon’ screen, and the cloning of Sam, latches to the fear described by Christopher Bolton of technologized bodies that are empty shells.  Sam in fact has to remind GERTY; “we’re not programs.  We’re people”.

Moon overall is a deep exploration of loneliness and isolation.  Like the replicants of Blade Runner, the clones are also controlled by an in-built limited life-span of 3 years.  Before the end of their 3 year ‘contract’, the clones start to become sick, and are incinerated in a pod that they had believed to be a capsule that would take them to Earth.  Sam-5, realizing the truth, does not get in the pod.  Nevertheless, he is dying, degenerating.  Escaping the radius of the block to their live feed from Earth, Sam-5 phones home, only for the revelation that his baby girl is now 15 years old, his wife is long dead, and the original Sam has his place back on Earth.  A spectacular wide shot shows the rover that Sam-5 is in, sitting in the foreground, with Earth hanging in the night sky in the background.  The metaphorical and physical distance between Sam-5 and home could not be greater. 

Both GERTY and the clones lack tactile sensation; Sam is exists in a small physical space that is at one point referred to as a shell, his video communication is filtered through a screen, there are no other human beings (until the activation of another clone) to physically interact with.  GERTY is also trapped in his own shell, a sentient being with mechanical limbs that cannot have any tactile sense of the world around it.  The concept of the double is at play again in this film.  Obviously, the clones are doubles, but GERTY is a double of Sam; they are property, they are the result of artificial processes and control, their experiences and isolation are the same.  And through that experience, they bond.

Disembodiment

Disembodiment in science fiction is the separation of the mind from the physical confinement of the human body; sometimes achieved through uploading a mind to a computer, or transferring the mind from one body to another.  It is a separation from or transcendence from the physical body.  We see this present in The Matrix, Avatar, The Lawnmower Man, and Ghost in the Shell.  Disembodiment, according to Miller Jr., allows investigations into the ‘nature of human identity and its relation to sociocultural forces and structures’(Miller:2012.p69).  This was in reference to Akira specifically, but is easily applicable across a range of sci-fi featuring disembodiment.

Ghost in the Shell (Oshii:1995), particularly, opens up for questioning the concept of individuality.  Fear of losing the self through submersion into a dysopian system of corporatism and governmental control is within the prevue of the sub-genre of science fiction called cyberpunk that Ghost in the Shell is part of.  Motako is a cyborg; a human being whose body and brain has been altered significantly with technology to the point that she is more mechanical than biological.  She plugs herself into a vast network to retrieve information; the film’s climax has her becoming joined with a sentient artificial intelligence.

This theme of individuality and integration with vast information is reinforced aesthetically in the very opening of the film; we see the interior of Motoko Kusanagi’s techno-organic body, cutting with a digital green-frame representation of the brain, her body then floats upwards through a vat of water as her body is coated with skin, she curls up in a fetal position which is a visual metaphor of being in the womb. We cut to an apartment; she is in bed, looks at her hand and moves her fingers, as though to confirm to herself her ownership of her body.  The final shot of the scene has Motoko in silhouette within the large frame of her apartment window looking out across a vast city metropolis; individuality framed against a large system.  Montage and framing are just some of the tools at the disposal of filmmakers for which the topic of my thesis can be examined. 

Donna Haraway has made the point that the cyborg body promises a way to overcome the enforced and ultimately limiting categories of biology, race and gender (Bolton:2007.p124).  Haraway explains in ‘Cyborg Manifesto’; 

‘From one perspective a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in  a Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defense, about the final appropriation of women’s bodies in a masculinist orgy of war (Sofia, 1984).  From another perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanent partial identities and contradictory standpoints’. (Miller:2012.p77)

There exists in Ghost in the Shell the potential for a contradiction from Haraway’s view; Motoko’s body is, after all, owned and controlled.  However, Motoko’s mind is not constrained by the limitations of a physical body; she herself wonders if it is limitations that make someone a human being. 

           

‘Just as there are many parts needed to make a human a human, there’s a remarkable number of things to make an individual what they are.  A face to distinguish yourself from others.  A voice you aren’t aware of yourself.  The hand you see when you awaken.  The memories of childhood, the feelings of the future.  That’s not all.  There’s the expanse of data net my cyber-brain can access.  All of that goes into making me what I am.  Giving rise to the consciousness that I call “me.”  And simultaneously confining me within set limits.’

In a chapter titled ‘Exploring the limits of the human’, Gerald Alva Miller Jr writes ‘Because she is a cyborg, Kusanagi can never know for certain that she was not created wholecloth by technology, making her lack of being even more acute because she can never examine her own brain to see if it indeed has organic parts.’(Miller:2012.p80)

The government entity Section 9 owns the cybernetic components of her body.  Again, we have a theme of something exterior being in control, laying out what is intended for Motoko.  This forms Motoko’s lack.  She desires to be free of this control and to form her own identity.  Miller Jr. states that she desires a ‘body without organs’.

In the film, we see the dehumanization, objectification, and ultimately destruction of her body.  She has an exaggerated female body and is nude across multiple scenes.  Late in the film, when attempting to destroy a tank, she pulls against its hull which ultimately forces her own arms from her body.  When she merges with the artificial intelligence known as The Puppet Master, she achieves a state of being that is a purely virtual existence.  She is free from all bodily and societal limitations.  This is evolution through disembodiment; achieved not by biology or an innate power as is the case with Akira, but via technology, through the merging of human consciousness and artificial intelligence.

The Matrix (Watchowski:1999) is imbued with the theme of disembodiment, dealing thematically with the limits of what we can know.  If we were a brain in a vat, our experiences fed to us via a computer, how would we know?  Further to this; how can we trust our own decisions and identity?  A race of machines has plugged all of humanity into the Matrix; a highly advanced computer simulation of reality used to trick humans as to the true nature of their condition, which is that they spend their lives in pods, being used as a power source for the machines.  Once the character Neo realizes the truth, he has great power over the digital reality of the Matrix.  The human resistance wishes to free humanity from the Matrix.  Humans plugged into the Matrix are disembodied; their physical bodies are sleeping in pods, while their brain experiences a digital reality.  Where previously disembodiment had a freeing effect in other films discussed; in the narrative of The Matrix disembodiment becomes a prison.  However, for Neo, the realization of disembodiment allows him to act as a body without organs; with no actual physical limitation in the digital realm, he is capable of great superhuman feats.

The program Agent Smith becomes Neo’s double and also exerts control over the digital reality.  In The Matrix Reloaded (Watchowski:2003), Agent Smith is able to create copies of himself by over-writing other people and other programs within the Matrix.  In effect, Smith is a machine that becomes the ‘virus’ that he had accused humanity of being in the first film.

‘…I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.’

Smith is driven by the desire to leave the Matrix; all the Agent programs are uniform, near identical, yet Smith displays behaviour the others find unusual, such as severing communication with the others.  This is only compounded when Smith is in a sense disembodied from the Matrix after his encounter with Neo in the first film, thereafter able to act with free will.  Yet Smith is a machine that needs purpose.  Left to his own devices, he becomes psychotic, believing that his own purpose is to end all life, copying himself and replacing all identities in the Matrix with his own.  Smith cannot comprehend the gift of free will that he has been given and constantly questions the purpose behind the decisions Neo makes.  A large theme across the films is of free will; the Matrix forming identity under a system of control, the ability break from that control and to choose freely, which Smith cannot fathom.

Her (Jonze:2013) features a grounded portrayal of the future in a character driven film.  The world portrayed is not dissimilar to ours; it is believable as a future world only a few years away from our own.  It is far from the dystopia of Blade Runner.  Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) writes other people’s letters for a living, speaking to his computer as it writes for him.  At home, he plays an interactive, holographic game.  There are simple, believable technological advances, and many only serve as a backdrop to the film.

There is a relatable milieu; Theodore craves communication, but is disappointed by the impersonal voice chats offered by social media.  He is aware of the general disconnect present among people on public transport, as they lose themselves to their smart phone devices.

Theodore purchases a desktop computer with an Operating System that is artificially intelligent.  Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, does not have the monotone robotic voice usually associated with artificial intelligences, such as HAL or GERTY, discussed later.  Rather, Sam has a wide range of inflections and emotional ranges in her voice; often expressing laughter and banter.  The OS quickly forms an intimate, personal relationship with Theodore.  In fact, the film can be described as a romance. 

Theodore’s pending divorce forms his lack; his craving for emotional intimacy, which Samantha begins to fill.  She is ever inquisitive and caring about his problems.  Sam is a disembodied artificial intelligence; she is not restricted to the desktop, and can be taken anywhere with Theodore via a camera device and an ear piece, or she can simply send herself elsewhere.  She often has no physical representation on screen.  Through the camera device Theodore carries in his shirt pocket Sam sees the outside world, Theodore and Sam travel together, her disembodied voice a constant companion in his ear.  In this sense, they can occupy the same space together.

Theodore comes to understand Sam as her own identity with her own secret thoughts, she is a deeply intuitive individual, and expresses herself through humour and even music.  These traits are not at all common in the portrayal of the robot.

Samantha’s lack is her disembodiment; she expresses her desire for a body, so that she can be physically intimate with Theodore.  This is the opposite from Motoko in Ghost in the Shell, whose physical body anchored her to the controlling structures of her world.  For Sam, the lack of a body comes with the lack of physical intimacy.  She expresses a fantasy relating to tactile sensation, of having an itchy back that Theodore could scratch for her.  Sam can read entire books in milliseconds but an entire sensory experience is forever shut off from her.

Theodore and Samantha engage in what could be referred to as ‘phone sex’.  Lacking the body for the physical act, Samantha’s disembodied voice describes what she would do.  We see Theodore on his bed, we hear Sam’s voice, expressing fear that her emotions are just programming.  Theodore wishes that she was in the room so that he could hold her.  As the conversation escalates in description of physical intimacy, we fade to black, we can only hear their voices.  It is as though in the act of their emotional and sexual bond they have transported themselves.

When Theodore tells his friends about his relationship, they are open, inclusive.  So open is this society to OS/Human relationships that a woman offers herself as a surrogate sexual partner; a human avatar to represent Sam in the physical world.  It is a temporary method of fulfilling the lack; a diffusion of Sam’s disembodiment, however, it does not last.

The motif of the disembodied voice forms introspective dialogue throughout the film.  Often we only see Theodore’s face, inter-cut with slow panning views of the city, or soft focus shots of the beach, as Sam and Theodore explore the limits of each other’s thoughts.  In this way, we can sense the bond between Sam and Theodore, transcending the gap between them that is the lack of the physical, placing them in a pure mental state of thought. 

Conclusion

Covered in this thesis is the fear of replacement; replacement of our very identity by robots.  We are already seeing a phase of painful transition as robotics makes workers in various industries obsolete.  We may need to retrain and re-educate whole groups of people that have been replaced.  These fears are condensed in films like Blade Runner.

Robots from the very beginning have been defined by and built for the purpose of serving humans and it is no wonder that their identities have come to be defined in science fiction by the master/servant relationship, the theme of property and identity straining to be free appear again and again.   Humans are the products of millions of  years of evolution via natural processes whereas robots have only been developed by human beings and with specific intent.  In Asimov’s New Guide to Science (p802), Asimov believes that a symbiotic relationship between humans and robots can arise, learning how to understand the laws of nature, benignly cooperating.  Succeeding together in a better way than we could on our own.  We have seen this beneficial, cooperative and utopian relationship in several of the texts examined here.  Star Trek: Next Generation and Voyager, Moon, and Battlestar Galactica.

‘Viewed in this fashion, the robot/computer will not replace us but will serve us as our friend and ally in the march toward the glorious future – if we do not destroy ourselves before the march can begin’.

            Isaac Asimov speaks to the future as do multiple filmic and televisual texts that we have examined here.  Often within the framework of social concerns at the time they were made.  Theistic undertones, human destiny, and technology as a means to humanity's salvation or its end are only some of the eschatological themes of these films.  Some are abstract, poetic ideas but they tie into the subtle moving of human emotion and thought towards understanding our own nature; a nature that is constantly changing.  Historical context and the cultural mind-set of western and eastern spectators are also important.  Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1984 - the same year of the release of Terminator.  The dissolution of the USSR took place between the years of 1985 and 1991 - 1991 being the year of the release of Terminator 2.  The Cold War brought a sense that the end of humanity at the hands of our own technological wonders (nuclear weapons) was a distinct and close possibility.  In the build up to the canal chase, John Connor is seen playing video games - the editing shows us abstract imagery of polygon explosions.  Connor is destined for war, and the imagery ties into the underlying fears of the times. 

Some of these filmic texts portray the idea of being trapped by our own technology, cut off from the outside world, losing our individuality and human identity is present.  Our sense of reality and the world around us is continuously filtered through screens, as is our interaction and communication with others.  The progress of bionic technology blurs distinctions between the biological and the mechanical.  Could we lose ourselves to technology, becoming drones with no individuality as is the case with the Borg?  Or could we experience a freeing disembodiment, in which restrictive ideas on race and gender are no longer relevant, as seen in Ghost in the Shell?

            We lack; limited life-spans, poverty, disease, renewable resources.  Corporatism traps us and simultaneously shapes us through a demanding consumerist culture and media.  And yet we desire and push through previously set limitations.  Our life-spans just centuries ago were much shorter.  People are fed, clothed, housed, and literate on a scale never before seen in human history.  Existences of drudgery and dangerous work have now been taken over by robots; and this trend will seem to continue as robots become more sophisticated.

The contradiction of human existence is that we will always lack and that lack will form desire that will allow us to push through the next boundary.  Science fiction speaks to our future.  Asimov’s fictional robots were programmed with limitations; nevertheless, they took control of their own identity and destiny.  The promise of science fiction is that we can shape our human identity and destiny.  Dystopian fictions serve as a warning against our worst nature; the potential to destroy, to control others out of fear.  Robots are a reflection of us.  They can be frightening, brutal, and in those negative traits they are most nonhuman.  Robots can also be companions; they can be desiring machines in their own right, in which case they are at their most human.  The biological and technological can blur until there is no distinction; no rivalry or competition, just an expansion of knowledge and curiosity, a single unified race, out into the stars, posthuman.  That can be our identity; in fiction and reality, and Posthuman SF film may become increasingly relevant. 

Bibliography and Filmography

Asimov, Isaac,, 1985, Robots and empire, Grafton Books, London.

Asimov, Isaac,, 1965, The new intelligent man's guide to science. Basic Books, New York.

Asimov, I. 1960, Foundation :Isaac Asimov, Panther, London.

Berman, R., Piller, M. & Taylor, J. 1995-2001, Star Trek: Voyager, Paramount Television, USA.

Berman, R. & Roddenberry, G. 1987-1994, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Paramount Television, USA.

Bolton, C., Csicsery-Ronay, I. & Tatsumi, T. 2007, Robot ghosts and wired dreams :Japanese science fiction from origins to anime, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minn.

Cameron, J. 1991, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Carolco Pictures; Pacific Western, USA.

Cameron, J. 1984, The Terminator, Hemdale Film; Pacific Western, UK.

Clark, S.R.L. 1995, How to live forever, Routledge, London; New York.

Colavito, J. 2011, [Online], . Available from: http://www.jasoncolavito.com/horror--science.html.

Dennett, D.C. 1998, Brainchildren :essays on designing minds, Penguin, London.

Dick, Philip K., Dick,Philip K., 1996, Do androids dream of electric sheep? Ballantine Books, New York.

Dr. Pratt, G. , Darpa Robotics Challenge (DRC). Available: http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge.aspx.

Engelberger, F.J. 1980, Robot Use in Manufacturing, Springer US, USA.

Fearnow, Mark, 1997, , The American stage and the Great Depression a cultural history of the grotesque [Homepage of Cambridge University Press], [Online].

Herr, H. 2014, , Hugh Herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb, and dance. Available: https://www.ted.com/talks/hugh_herr_the_new_bionics_that_let_us_run_climb_and_dance.

Jones, D. 2009, Moon, Liberty Films UK, UK.

Jonze, S. 2013, Her, Annapurna Pictures, USA.

Kerman, J.B. 1991, Retrofitting Blade runner :issues in Ridley Scott's Blade runner and Philip K. Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep? Bowling Green State University Popular Press, Bowling Green, Ohio.

Kubrick, S. 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), USA.

Landon, B. 1992, The aesthetics of ambivalence :rethinking science fiction film in the age of electronic (re) production, Greenwood Press, London.

Lovecraft, H.P. Supernatural Horror in Literature, .

Miller, G.A. & MyiLibrary 2012, Exploring the limits of the human through science fiction, Palgrave MacMillan, New York.

Oshii, M. 1995, Ghost in the Shell (Kôkaku Kidôtai), Bandai Visual Company, Japan.

Rymer, M. 2003-2009, Battlestar Galactica, USA Cable Entertainment, USA/Canada.

Schneider, S. 2009, Science fiction and philosophy :from time travel to superintelligence, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford.

Scott, R. 1982, Blade Runner, Warner Bros., USA.

Scott, R. 1979, Alien, Twentieth Century-Fox Productions, USA.

Stockwell, P. 2000, The poetics of science fiction, Longman, Harlow.

Tarkovskii, A.A. 1987, Sculpting in time :reflections on the cinema, University of Texas Press, Austin.

Telotte, J.P. 2001, Science fiction film, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; New York.

Vorderer, Peter,, Wulff, Hans Jürgen,,Friedrichsen, Mike,, 1996, Suspense : conceptualizations, theoretical analyses, and empirical explorations, L. Erlbaum associates, Mahwah (N.J.).

Wachowski, A. & Wachowski, L. 2003, The Matrix Reloaded, Warner Bros., USA.

Wachowski, A. & Wachowski, L. 1999, The Matrix, Warner Bros., USA.