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December 15, 2009
Robots, Robots, Robots!!!
"Everything means something."
Susannah told me this once, and by saying so she placed herself firmly in the camp of Freud, countless conspiracy theorists, most religious nuts, and most of the modern academy of Art History professors. In this essay, which is a written version of a presentation I gave at Denver's Tattered Cover book store, I will be playing the part of an art history professor as I discuss the allegorical resonance of Robots in these modern times. I may also end up sounding like a conspiracy theorist, a Freudian and possibly even a religious nut.
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I think most everyone agrees that The David is a symbol of the ideals and aspirations of the Late Italian Renaissance and that period's regard for classicism, strength, ingenuity and ideals. Similarly, The Statue of Liberty, shown here under construction, hearkens back to both the Renaissance and Classical Antiquity in its form, and in allegory symbolizes the destruction of burdens, the hope for a young America and a firm statement of belief in the power of illumination and enlightenment.
So what the hell does this mean?
and more broadly: What does a robot mean?
We ascribe certain symbolic meaning to things: In architecture and literature, Light can mean understanding, clarity, hope ; In Film, Zombies often stand in for the great unthinking masses; Doves for the grace of god; Axe murderers for the fear of transgressing societal norms, especially if you are a teenage girl who sleeps around too much.
But what is it that Robots represent? They have been an ever increasing component in our cultural language over the last century. In this essay, I will offer some theories on how we might read and understand these clockwork characters as important signifiers of our times and in some cases even ourselves.
Let's begin with that amazing structure shown above.Though it looks like it came out of a better version of the latest Michael Bay movie, it is an actual moving statue that was erected in Tokyo over the last year. Many more excellent pictures and movies can be found here.
It is a Gundam, which is a device in the long standing children's Anime Mobile Suit Gundam. The Gundam are not robots exactly: their drivers sit in the chest cavity- the suits themselves are more like giant suits of mechanized and weapanized armor. It is a much more realized and complicated world than the popular show "The Tranformers", though I think that the basic impulse and function of the two shows are the same.
Like many shows aimed primarily at young boys, Transformers and MSG offer a variety of costumes for the young mind to try on and a variety of imaginary stages to wear them on. I suppose "Role modeling" or "role playing" is another term for it, and I am sure there are fancier, more evocative words out there- but from my own personal experience, the viewer imagines themselves as the Hero, sometimes as the villain, sometimes as the omnipotent god who controls all fates. From these games, and similar games such as "guns", a boy learns the rules of society, the ins and outs of teamwork, and several strategies which, though they originate in play, are essential for future interactions.
The characters in the show are often exemplars of certain traits: Optimus Prime is the pleasant combination of strength and wisdom that we all hope for, Megatron is shrill hatred, lust for power and paranoia, BumbleBee is adolescent energy, untamed and somewhat helpless and dependent on his superiors for survival, etc etce . I imagine that what these characters (and that these types of characterizations) do for the young mind is to help develop words for identifying behaviors and the framework for learning the desired one.
Obviously the difference between the Transformers and previous hero stories like The Three Musketeers and the Illiad is that the transformers are machines. They are animate- they have something like a soul so they are not simple machines, and they are given very definitive characters, very Human characteristics in fact. The child is directed to imagine themselves with all the power and strength that these machines possess.
So is it fair then to say that these two guys are sorta doing the same thing?
Obviously, we can go ahead and imagine that they occupy different strata within their society. And I certainly mean no disrespect for either- But in essence aren't they doing the same thing with their costumes? That is- aren't they both dressing as entities which are more powerful, more magical then their own naked selves?
Our fascination with robots then is in part due to the way we romanticize and glamourize the power that our machines have.
For the last several hundred years we have given more and more importance to machines. It's whats allowed us to fly, travel to the moon, watch Criminal Intent all Sunday night and of course, write little blogedy blogs. And sure, we all love all that stuff, and it's especially nice being able to watch porn on your phone- But there is a lingering feeling that our culture seems to harbor that perhaps we are not fully in control:
And not only are we not entirely in control, but we are inherently less powerful than our devices. It seems that this plays a big part in our cultures anxieties about out ability to control our machines:
Perhaps our anxiety is not just about our ability to control our machines: perhaps this anxiety is about the very nature of machines themselves. A trope in Robot sci-fi is the thought that Robots are inherenetly evil. They are products of mankind's hubristic attempt to play God, and , the logic does, because we lack the perfection of God, our machines will always turn against us. (note the pentagram in the background here in a still from Metropolis)
This negative feeling is recurrent through the last century of sci-fi, but there are several examples of the friendly robot, perhaps none more famous than these two lovelies:
When I gave this presentation last summer, an astute point was raised by my friend Mike King which I want to incorporate here. He speculates that the reason we do see more friendly robots in current sci-fi is because we have been incorporating technology and machines into our daily lives with good consequences now for at least a century... We may feel ambivalent about how much our landscapes have changed, or may dislike he noise and business of the modern cities, but by gum, the internet is wonderful, as is cable and modern medicine...
more to come.
Posted by felix at 10:50 PM | Comments (1)