Artificial intelligence is tightening its grip on the popular imagination. As computers become more capable and physical robotics becomes more seamless it seems more and more pressing and relevant to tell stories of beings generated from human invention.
In Hollywood this takes a number of reliable forms. There is the replacement, or doppelganger in films such as The Stepford Wives, which is also related to an example like Haley Joel Osment’s performance as David in Spielberg’s A.I. These are mechanisms made to look human as well as to display intelligence for the stated purpose of replacing a human.
Then there are examples that are meant to merely look real, examples of basic deception like in Peter Weir’s S1mone. Their opposite numbers are the machines that have only intelligence without any human aspect like in War Games.
There are the robots that evolve, like in Blade Runner or Automota. These transcend their programming threatening the human experience by reflecting its need to develop.
Then there are the instances of robot as deceptive and threatening “OTHER.” Usually these will be invented or designed machines, made to look, feel, and behave human. But because of their similarity they pose a threat. How can we tell which is which? What good are we when stronger more durable beings take on the things that make us uniquely human? Movies in this group are Ex-Machina or Under the Skin. Tellingly the robots in these films will generally be women and will often target men by means of their sexuality. Some subconscious discord about the otherness and probable superiority of women may well be at play.
There is obvious spill over between categories. The doppelganger category overlaps with that of the “Threatening Other,” particularly in a movie like A.I. which instead of a primal sexual female follows the perspective of a sexual neuter, a child, and uses as its central metaphor that of the mother/son relationship. Yet another sphere closed to the adult male.
The “Evolution” category shares a film like Spike Jonze’s Her with that of the “Threatening Other.” In that film the “other” in question is again female but instead of a sexual predator she is an honest love interest whose crime is becoming more and better than her lover. Rather then devouring him she breaks his heart through transcendence.
If one cares to read the fears of patriarchal Hollywood they are all pretty near the surface.
In the next installment I will post a consideration of the first of seven films on whose face can be read what we fear about artificial intelligence and to some extent what we fear about each other and ourselves.
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