Symmetry: an eye for an eye

One of the most thrilling things about watching R.Scotts films is the deep symbolism that both contrasts and complements our world against his. Comcepts of balance and symmetry in an asymetrical universe - and the differences between the two may not always be visable to the eye. The Replicants are near perfect immitations of humanity and as such were designed with manufactured obscelecence in mind- and I mean that in both sences of the phrase. And the conditions that they were manufactured for were slavery - a power structure that is itself unbalanced and asymmetrical. The quest of the Replicants to extend thier artificial life spans (the level to which they value themselves) is sharply juxtaposed against thier disregard for human life along the way; not only does this retaliatory behavior directly mirror a capacity of humanity - to defend and preserve self at all costs, even others: an eye for an eye, if you will. The eye can be deceptive and may warp the true state of the issue, even blinding the viewer altogether.

A unique city

With Blade Runner, I can see how critics and fans can refer to it as a "revolutionary" movie, or a movie that is completely different from the rest as far as sci-fi goes. One of the things I noticed most prominently that you typically don't see is the setting of the film. In most sci-fi films, the far-flung future is a clean, organized metropolis of sorts, where everything is either Apple Store white or Chrome. Giant, HD tvs dot the landscape, and everything is beautiful. In Blade Runner, the city is...dirty. The main setting is an underbelly of sorts, filled with all kinds of immigrants and locals, from various walks of life; this isn't even touching on the Replicants that are so important to the actual film. The city isn't clean and wonderful, it's dirty, filthy even. The problems of the city aren't hidden under a layer of beautiful quasi-utopia, but are visible from the get go; it's always bright and loud, the buildings look as if they have been standing for centuries (as opposed to being brand spanking new), and the crime of the city is running wild through the streets. I prefer realistic settings like these, as a real futuristic city would most likely look similar to the slums of Blade Runner; the city's role as a setting stood out to me through the entire film.

Eye see what you did there

In class we briefly discussed the quote by Shakespeare emphasizing that the eyes are the window to the soul. This is seen in everyday life. Usually when you're conversing with someone or looking for their attention, you look to see where their eyes are. You look to see if they're looking at you or paying attention to something else. With Blade Runner, there is no doubt that the eyes were a large underlying theme in the movie. The opening scene showed the reflection of the city in a pair of eyes, the test to weed out humans from replicants involved pupil and lens scans, also the eyemaker was the person who led Roy and the replicants to Tyrell. One subtle feature that stood out to me was the replicants' pupils when smoke crossed in front of them. They seemed to glow a dull red color, almost like the power-light on an application to let you know it's running off of a battery. I know a couple fairly common description of the eyes are dreamy or glossed over, but the replicant eyes were almost portrayed as dreadful or dangerous. They almost seemed like they should be projecting light versus taking it in and analyzing it. I feel this was a huge allusion to the differences between robots and humans. The red eyes were symbolic of a machine analyzing code and initiating the correct process or algorithm to complete the next logical movement. Whereas humans don't think logically 100% of the time, they use emotions and experience to also govern their day-to-day decisions. Interestingly enough, Tyrell Corp decided to give the Nexus-6 replicants false memories. This brings up an incredibly interesting philosophical argument that I stumbled over years ago. Have we really lived our entire life, or could we have materialized 5..10 minutes ago along with all of our experiences and memories? Eerily similar to the experience of the Nexus-6 and Rachel. Personally I believe to be human, but I've never actually opened up the back of my head to see if there's actually a brain there or if it's a circuit board (don't worry I don't intend to anytime soon). But how would we ever know? How could we ever know?

It depends on Us

The Bladerunner was produced in 1982 that is too early to see what will happen in 20^th century. The background of this movie is in 2019 in Los Angeles, the replicates want to survive after getting human’s emotion while human are trying to kill them all.  The eye symbol at the beginning and the end of the movie, in my opinion indicates that all these are depends on us human beings. In other words, how future would look like is all from our imagination. However, how it will truly be in the future depends on what we are doing right now.  The scene in the eyes could change at any time while we are making different effort on different things.

   For me I love this movie because it has many metaphors that need us to take a long time to think about it. For example, the eyes and other symbolic sign on the street. Besides that, the conversation between people is also under carefully design by director, because it fits the time background and complex relationship between characters very well.

  Last but not least, at the beginning of this semester, we talked about the contemporary movie about monsters are tending to related more to human’s emotion, such as friendship and love. In this movie, the love between replicate and human just reflect the trend. In 1986, it could be seen like a frontier that add these emotional expression in a science fiction, monster related movie.

  In a nutshell, the Bladerunner is a landmark of monster movies, especially in movies about “replicates” or “colones”.

The Exaggerated Power of Pupils

Eyes are often considered one of the greatest gifts of humankind. They allow for people to witness beauty, happiness, and even tragedy. Their significance, though, is that they provide the opportunity for humans to experience life. In the film Blade Runner, the Tyrell Corporation actually provided the replicants with this ability. This is witnessed whenever they communicate with each other, since eyes often play a large role in communication. Even when the replicants are killing the humans in the film, and they are glancing at each other, they are sharing a strange "moment." Eyes also allow for the replicants to, in a way, love and trust each other. When Roy Batty says, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe," he is basically proving that he has experienced life, even if not everything was good. The replicants did not seem to appreciate their gift of sight until that point in the film.

Part of their anger stems from the fact, though, that their eyes appear different from humans. If one does a simple Google search on “Blade Runner eyes,” it is apparent that the replicant eyes do not have normal pupils. One can actually “look” into a human’s eyes through their pupils. Meanwhile, replicants’ pupils are not “windows into their souls,” but instead contain different colors. They seem to resent this idea and take their wrath out on humans, who are lucky enough to be so called “open books.” This deeper connection that humans can share seems overestimated to me. By looking into another person’s pupils, you really cannot understand that person any more. For this reason, the replicants should only be upset about the fact that they only have a four-year lifespan. All of the things that people say and do make them who they are, not just what their eyes look like.

The Eyes Have It

Eyes played a very crucial part in Bladerunner.  The Voight-Kampff test relied on checking the subject's eyes for pupil dilation to prove that the subject was not a replicant.  In this way the eyes became the one thing that could not be replicated perfectly in a machine.  They would always separate the human from the replicant so they sort of symbolized an intangible, indescribable part of humanity that some might consider the soul.  Another thing I noticed was that when Roy killed Tyrell, he put his thumbs into Tyrell's eyes.  I took this to mean that the human life is as fragile as the eyes and the replicant, and robots in general, are a threat to our humanity.  When Roy took the life of his creator, he sent a clear message that the coexistence of man and machine would not be possible.

Whats up with the eyeballs...

Eyes come up a lot in this film. The movie starts with a close of up an eye, the replicant test is based on eyes, the eyemaker tells the replicants how to find Tyrell, Tyrell gets his glasses-augmented eyes crushed in, etc etc.



Anyone who has been to a wax museum before can tell you that no matter how perfectly done a wax person is, the eyes will never look real. Similarly, it is often said that eyes are the windows to one's soul, which is perhaps the reason for the replicant test is based on the subjects eyes. I think Ridley Scott is trying to emphasize that to be human is to have a soul and true emotions and memories, which in turn can be expressed or observed by the human eye.

Blade Runner

It's interesting that part of this blog assignment was to talk about the eyes in the film because upon viewing, All I could pay attention to was the obsession with eyes. Whether it was the scene where the two replicants meet with the man who manufactures eyes, or the way the camera focuses on Rachael's eyes as the light hits them (looking the way that an animals eyes look when using a camera flash). Even the first scene of the film shows the closeup of an eye gazing upon the dark, dismal view of Los Angeles. An eye is usually a reference to what makes us human (i.e. "the eyes are the window to the soul") and since they appear to be the most important part of the human body, especially in this film, I would say that they give the viewer a sense of artificiality. Hence why the camera focuses a lot on the glow from Rachael's eye as well as the other replicants; because it gives the viewer an idea that these replicants can't and never will be human. Another thing that doesn't get a lot of focus in discussion would be the use of the artificial owl that is briefly discussed. This owl too, has the "glowing" eye that shows it's not real. Fear of not being human is another concept touched on in the film, which is evident by the character Rachael. She, unlike the other replicants, shows the most emotion and at one point in the film begins crying. Much of this emotion is due to her having artificial memories and I think most of all coming to the realization that she is just a machine. It also gives us a chance to see what makes ourselves human. Are we only human because of our capability to have emotion and go past our memories, and how does that separate the replicant from the human? The society in this movie is one that destroys any of the replicants who come back to Earth and it shows how not being human is something to be feared and eventually eradicated. Much like Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, the film goes at lengths to show the boundaries over what is human versus what isn't, what is alive versus what's not alive, and doubts over what is real or fabricated. That's why much of the landscape in the film has an absence of nature and a dark, looming presence about. Is the society in this film possible? Has the world become so "inhuman" that it has become nothing but desolation and ruin? 

Bladerunner

While watching the movie Bladerunner, I kept forgetting the movie was not set in China or Japan because of the way the streets looked.  The way Las Angeles is portrayed definitely ties into the Cyborg Manifesto.  The movie demonstrates a capitalist society at its finest. We can clearly see the industrial environment created from the capitalist desire.  As the movie begins, flames burst into the sky from many different chimneys over a skyline that doesn't look Earthly.  Not only that, but when the replicants want to find someone to help lengthen their lives, there is only one company that can do it; a company that held a monopoly. 

I found it interesting that the essay mentions

The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism.  But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins.  Their fathers, after all, are inessential.

In the movie we see this as the main replicant goes on a search for two people, Dr. Tyrell and J. F. Sebastian, who are good friends.  This replicant can't get what he wants from his creator Dr. Tyrell and so he kills him, showing no remorse for the death of his creator.  He kills Dr. Tyrell's best friend as well.  This shows that cyborgs have no soul and don't care about their creators.  What puzzles me is that there is no emotion at these deaths but he does seem to care when his replicant friends die. 

Finally, I see the eyes as the transgression of the boundary between human and machine.  The eyes are clearly from humans put into these replicant machines.  Because the replicants aren't human and aren't supposed to have emotions, their involuntary emotional responses displayed in their eyes are not the same as a humans.

Eyes

In the movie Blade Runner, I believe the reoccurring symbolism of eyes is a reference to a person’s memories and experiences. Humans use their eyes to witness the world. The things we see and experience are remembered and in turn make us who we are. I remember the last replicant to die, Roy, mentioned that all his experiences would be lost when he dies. Those experiences that make him unique would be forgotten. These same memories and experiences help form what we know as the soul. But do cyborgs have souls? This seems to be one of the main themes of the film. The common phrase “the eyes are the windows of the soul” becomes very relevant in this regard. When the replicants question the Asian eye manufacturer, they learn that Tyrell made their mind. It is not mentioned who made their soul, begging the question if a soul can even be manufactured. Towards the end of the film when Roy confronts Tyrell and is denied a longer life, he grabs Tyrell’s head and stares into his eyes. He must have seen something terrible or perhaps nothing at all, as he gouges out Tyrell’s eyes. I interpret this as Roy saying that Tyrell, his creator, has no soul as he created a life that is doomed to a short existence. Tyrell is more obsessed with scientific advancement than about the lives his creations have. The events of the film make me think that the replicant’s had souls, or at least thought they did.

I would like to finish off with saying that I very much enjoyed the movie as I had never watched it and always heard great things about it. The movie was a bit cryptic at times, but that just added to the dark, mysterious tone of the film. The flying cars also reminded me of The Fifth Element; another great movie if you haven’t seen it yet.  

Bladerunner: Eyes & Other Musings

      Firstly, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, as I do with most sci-fi films I come across. I also loved the combination of futuristic sci-fi with film noir.

      Moving on, the eyes are a powerful tool used in this movie to poke and prod our conception of what makes and defines us as human. Eyes in human culture are very important in giving of visual cues as to how we are feeling, and they are also often associated with the soul and truth in the form of the phrases, "The eyes are the portal to the soul" and "If you want to know if I'm telling the truth, look into my eyes". These two phrases and similar sayings are popular and well known across humanity, and that is because the face, especially the eyes, are used as a universal communicator to tell others who we are and how we are feeling, regardless of our nationality, culture, or language barriers. This method of communication is also something used to commonly contrast what makes us human, and not say a cyborg or robot. Our eyes and faces are capable of showing emotions we feel and communicating this with others, where as robots and cyborgs are normally shown to have stoic facial expressions, regardless of whether or not they can feel and process emotions. Now in the movie, the replicant Rachel provides an example of something that can feel and process emotion(we think), that does not or possibly can't display that emotion on her face and in her eyes. From what I observed, I didn't see her facial expression change once during the entire film. 

    Another thing I found strange, was how the replicants found themselves flawed because they had such short life spans, yet their creators idolized them as being "perfect". Tyrell and Sebastian both remark at how beautiful the replicants are and how they are better and superior to humans in almost every way conceivable. It's almost as if Tyrell and Sebastian can't even manage to sympathize with the replicants because they find them to be perfect because they are better than humans.

 

Ucann-eyes

Thinking about the frequent focus that Bladerunner placed on eyes, I was brought back to the Sigmund Freud essay The Uncanny that we read. Freud spends a large amount of time dissecting the common references to the eyes in The Sandmen, and I decided I would try and connect his analysis to the importance of eyes in Bladerunner.

To start, we can see the relation between humans and replicants is similar to that of to that of parents and child, as creator and creation. Using Freud's idea of the Castration Complex and the Oedipus Complex, we know that there is a subconscious fear of damage to the eyes, which he theorized to be a stand in for the male member. From there, he explains, the fear of damage to the eyes, and therefore the male member as well, is rooted to the fear of castration at the hands of the father. This leads to the the understand that Nathaniel's father and Coppelius must be halves of the true father, wherein the loving relationship between father and son is separated from the aspect of the father responsible for the castration anxiety in Nathaniel.

Comparing this idea to the paradoxical interaction between Batty and Tyrell. Instead of splitting Tyrell into two separate figures, we see the contrasting behavior. While at first the father-son relationship is clear, with Tyrell showing pride in what Batty has done and become, and Batty as the scared child needing protection from his fate. We also see that Tyrell appeared to show great concern, and had researched and attempted to divine a method of prolonging the life of the replicants, showing that Tyrell views the replicants as more than a disposable product. although he admits that he has been unable to find a means. Batty begins to kiss Tyrell, before killing him, showing both immense love and incredible dread towards his "father".

To understand this, the importance of the eyes on the identity must be understood. By denying Batty prolonged life, Tyrell also denies Batty the possibility to be human. As the eyes are the indicator of someone as human or replicant, and therefore through Freud's understanding of the eyes as a substitute for the male member, we can see that Tyrell denying Batty his prolonged life was analogous to castration. Therefore, we can understand Batty's actions as rooted in the castration complex. This can be further supported in that Batty's means of killing also functioned as a destruction of Tyrell's eyes, which through Freud's ideas would be a revenge driven "eye for an eye" (literally) situation.

Although this is one example, it does illustrate why the eye is a recurring theme in Bladerunner. By creating the replicants with manufactured eyes, the Tyrell corporation had effectively castrated the replicants, and so their rebellion can be understood as both retribution for as well as an attempt at reverting their castration by their creators.

Bladerunner: Eyes and Other Organs.

As mentioned eyes play an important role in the movie.  I'd like to point out that the person Roy and Leon target first is the person who created their eyes.  This is important since eyes are often thought of as windows into the soul.  There must have been multiple people that could have had the information they needed however they chose to go after the one that figuratively gave them their souls.  This shows the replicants innate connection to human ideas.  Roy and Leon are starting to break down the line that separates the humans for the replicants, the artificial from the organic.  Another important scene is when Roy kills his creator Eldon Tyrell by gouging his eyes.  The chosen method of murder was to destroy the window to Eldon's soul.  Roy is literally destroying what figuratively makes Eldon a human.  This again shows Roy's innate connection to human idea's and his attempt to break the line between human and replicant. 

Rachel represents a fear of being inhuman and a confusion of what she actually is.  She comes to
Deckard in an attempt to prove to him that she's a human.  As Eldon says he thinks she is starting to suspect that she is a replicant.  But even with this suspicion she tries to prove that she's not and that she's a human.  This stems from a human fear of being not human.  From this also comes a confusion of what a human really is.  She has memories of a childhood.  She has emotions.  She's for all intent and purposes a human... but she's not.  In our present world this confusion is starting to grow more and more.  We've developed artificial heart valves and are on the verge of complete artificial organs.  If someone were to have one of these organs implanted within them would they still be a human?  This creates a confusion in what a human is.  This same idea can be applied to all technology.  Am I human even though I'm using this computer?  Am I human even though I use rocks and sticks as a weapon?  What's the really difference between an artificial organ and a sharpened stick besides the level of technology?  Both of them are used to keep their user alive.  In the movie the character Rachel forces us to think about this.  She confuses the line between human and cyborg.

Bladerunner

    First of all, I had enjoyed the movie very much although some scenes were a little much violence and grotesque. 

    The meanings of eyes can be the symbol of human being, life, and truth. Eyes have been considered as the symbol of truth in many diverse cultures. They always have a power to tell some messages. In the movie, characters seemed like that they communicate with their eyes rather than languages. Although the replicants did not have any emotion, the 6 replicants are able to have the emotion. To tell this emotion, the characters use the eye contacts to send the true messages with their emotions. 

     In the file, the replicates have been created and used as the slaves. As well as, the female replicants seem described as a female only when they try to sexually approach to other male characters. At the end of her article, Haraway says that "I would rather be a cyborg than a godless" (Haraway p.181). Haraway might think that the in the terms of working or being a labor force, it is easier to lose the emotion and being a female. Thinking about "who am I" or "what am I doing" kind of question for the meaningless work as a slave makes the person (or cyborg) confused. It is more simple and easy not to think about those things and just keep working. In fact, in the Bladerunner, the replicants realized that and needed to fight towards human beings.

     

Bladerunner

I had never seen Bladerunner before watching it in class but I have to say that it was a very interesting film with a lot of underlying ideas being expressed throughout about what it means to be human. I think that the heavy use of showing close ups of eyes in the movie is meant to make the viewer think about their humanity. The first shot that you see with eyes is a pair of eyes with a reflection of a large city in them. Upon first seeing this scene it seems a little odd to be showing a shot of the city as the reflection off of someone's eyes but by the end I begin to wonder who's eyes that were. To the best of my memory they do not show who it was that was overlooking the city which means it could have been a human or a Replicant. The fact that they do not show you who it is makes it impossible for the viewer to tell the difference and I believe that that is supposed to be a demonstration of one of the ideas that I thought the story brought on very well which was that these Replicants are as human as any actual person in the film. Throughout the film there are many more close up shots of the characters eyes which I again believe means to show the viewer that there is no difference between humans and Replicants.

This theme in the movie got really strong by the end, I felt, as Sebastian and Deckard were having their final fight. It became more and more obvious that although Sebastian has his physical differences that he and Deckard are one and the same. Throughout the entire film Sebastian has been following clues, hunting people, and looking for his maker while Deckard has been following clues, hunting the Replicants, and looking for Sebastian. They are following the same pattern which makes you wonder who exactly is supposed to be the good guy in all of this. I think that Deckard knew felt all along that the Bladerunners were not the good guys because of the way that he would react every time that he had to kill one of the Replicants. He would always act as if he were a police officer that was forced to kill a human being. Deckard was capable of looking deeper into these androids and seeing that they were more than just machines. I think that Rachel played a role in his realization of this because she forced him to question what it means to be human when he discovered that she did not even know that she wasn't. Rachel put the idea into his head even more when she asked him if he had ever taking the test, meaning that she was asking him how he could be so certain that he was not a Replicant. The entire story carries a lot of questions about what it means to be a human and how things would be different if there were real life creatures like the Replicants.

Extra Credit Blog: Bladerunner

Extra Credit blog on Bladerunner     

Worth up to 5 points total

Post by next Monday, November 30^th before class.

I mentioned in class that I’d like to offer an extra credit blog as a platform for a conversation about Bladerunner. There were a few leading questions I had to spark your thoughts that I mentioned in class:

-What’s with eyes in the film?

-How does the world and technology of the film tie into or relate to Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto?”

-And taking into consideration that we are all cyborgs, how does the replicant Rachel, as Haraway suggests, register the “fear, love, and confusion,” of our contemporary cyborg culture?

Of course, feel free to produce your own perspectives and analyses, or to make connections between Bladerunner and other texts from the course.

Siri, Robot or Human?

I decided to question Siri and to see if they are a robot or human.

Q. Siri are you human?

A. Sorry, I’ve been advised not to discuss my existential status.

A. In the cloud, no one questions your existential status.

A. I’m an assistant. That's all that matters.

A. Close enough, I’d say.

A. I’ll leave that for you to decide.

A. I am Siri, your personal assistant.

A. That's a rather personal question.

A. I’m not sure that matters.

Q. Siri are you a robot?

A. I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but virtual assistants have feelings too.

A. Let's just say I am made of silicon, memory, and the courage of my convictions.

A. I can neither confirm nor deny my current existential status.

A. I only share that information on a need to know basis.

A. Well, I don't want to brag but I got a B+ on the Turing test.

Then I wondered, what is a Turing test?  So I proceeded to look it up, and this is what I found: “The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.”

Siri demonstrates human intelligence but also shows, though avoidance of topics, that they are possibly not human. But because the responses are very similar to human responses it is hard to really know for sure. But that is what Siri is supposed to do, as clearly that's why they got a high score on the Turing test. But in the process of a person wondering and questioning if Siri is a robot or not, a person can start to fear how much they know. How many humans are actually human? How can we know who is human and who is not? Do we just think we know? Is it obvious or does it just seem so obvious we don't even see it really isn't?

Bender

What better contemporary robot to talk about than the beer guzzling robot, Bender. Bender is one of the main characters in the television show Futurama, and is always a fan favorite. Bender can be described for the most part as quite selfish, and some of his most prominent qualities is that he loves to steal, drink heavy amounts of alcohol, and is a womanizer or lady fembotanizer. Bender was made in a factory in Mexico, with one purpose, which as his name suggests is bending. He can bend anything and everything.

Benders qualities are why I decided to write about him, one can see his qualities all over in today's society. Take for instance his alcoholism, he practically embodies the stereotypical college student who runs on booze. It is near impossible to go through the day without hearing at least one person saying, "I could use a drink." Bender begins to break down if he goes a time without a drop of alcohol, just like some people today and not just college students. Alcoholism has become quite predominant, and most people know one person who may be suffering from it. Some people may go through withdrawals if they have not had a drink in one day. One of Bender's other qualities is how he treats women. He can be quite degrading at times with his comments or remarks toward some woman or lady robot. Which today is a huge problem, that fact that most of my female friends carry mace or a taser on them because they are terrified for their safety is sad. So many women today hear degrading comments on the daily, and for the most part the person who says it does not even realize what they are doing.

One fear or anxiety that Bender brings up is that of the technology taking over. Bender is always making comments about how he wants to kill all humans or ruin everything that they care about. Although they are pretty much empty threats, he is still poking fun of those people who fear that technology will someday overrun the humans. But those people can just bite his shiny metal ass.

Terminator or Not?

The monster in the movie Terminator Salvation is the artificial intelligence that ran a military defense program called Skynet.  Skynet became aware and decided humanity needed to be terminated, and so terminator machines were built.  The terminator named Marcus doesn’t know he is a terminator because he is so human-like.  He has a metal skeleton covered in human flesh and a beating heart.  Though he is a terminator, Marcus has a soul.  He is on the boundary between human and machine.  He shows kindness, curiosity, and many other emotions.  He has a strong heart and is willing to sacrifice it to save the life of a human, but it is questionable whether he is programmed to bring Kyle Reese and John Connor to Skynet to die.  His characteristics confirm what a human is and show human fears of spies and people infiltrating secure compounds in times of war.  These are legitimate fears as the U.S. was in a war at the time the movie was made.

The two biggest fears humans have of technology are robots becoming more intelligent than humans and not being able to differentiate between human and machine.  These fears are present in R.U.R. and are still present today, as shown by the movie.

The Stepford Wives

The modern example of a "robot" that comes to mind would be from the novel/movie The Stepford Wives. Essentially the story is about a woman who, along with her husband and children, moves to a small, rural suburb in Connecticut called Stepford. Eventually she comes to the realization that the women in the town are in fact robots created by their husbands - finding it disturbing that the women in the neighborhood are very zombie like and submissive to their husbands. Much of the novel centers around being a woman in modern society and gender roles that play out amongst them. In the novel/movie, the main character discovers that the women in the town were once feminist activists. To their husbands' dismay, the women are whipped into shape and turned into the "perfect housewife". It's clear that the women are turned into robots because of their husbands' envy over their successes. The men are jealous and together they create a machine that will obey and submit to all of their needs. This particular figure of the robot plays in to the notion that women are only successful at being housewives and they must be submissive to their husbands (doing the dishes, making meals, doing laundry, etc.) The men of the movie, just as men in modern society, don't like the idea of women having more power than they do and by creating the "step ford wife robot", one is able to keep that in control. The robot as a whole is wanted by human society because of what it can produce, how it can behave, and the most important part of all - it lacks human emotions, which are considered problematic and get in the way. Hence why the Stepford Wives are created!

Red Queen

The Red Queen is the computer in the movie Resident Evil. She was created to pretty much help guard and run a secret underground building known as the hive. In the movie a virus gets released in the facility, contaminating everyone. The computer makes a decision and kills everyone there closing the doors sealing everything. During the movie you constantly see the computer making decisions and having a thought process.

The Red Queen is closely tried to our time in that it is a highly advanced piece of technology. Not only does it just run regular things but it also has the ability to think and to make decisions - like I mentioned earlier. This is something that humans are capable of - it is something that would be hard to program into somebody because situations happen so quickly and in so many different ways that it is almost impossible to determine reactions. Also I think there is something tied to her in the fact that she doesn't feel. Although she clearly can make well educated thought out decisions she does not feel the sympathy or the regret or sadness or anything when she just goes and kills all those workers. She of course knew the consequences - as well as many other people - yet the way I like to think is that a real human would have taken the time to try and figure out a way to save those peoples lives.

Being a real human gives you feelings that sometimes we could do without. Those feelings sometimes prevent or hinder us from doing certain things or making certain decisions. I feel like sometimes the computers or robots or any technology we make reflects the times that we wish we could make a choice and not feel the regret after. But if you really think about it - those feelings are what makes us human. Those extra feelings that cause us to second guess ourselves - that make us try and find a solution - that is why we are human.

Star Wars: Attack of the ...?

I spent a lot of my time when I was younger loving everything about Star Wars, watching the movies, reading the books, and playing the games. While I was generally obsessive about most of the series, Attack of the Clones and the related Clone Wars stories I focused on, not particularly sure on the reason. While I have moved further away to other interests, our discussions in class over the breakdown on the border brought me right back to Star Wars.

During Attack of the Clones, during Obi-Wan's visit to Kamino, we first learn of the existence of the clone troopers, and the shock Obi-Wan feels as he looks at the literal army of clones below him is a feeling I am confident is shared by many. We see the lockstep movements of the clone troopers as they move in unison, their futuristic schooling that involves flashes of information on a screen, and the incubation vats they are created in. This seems totally an alien scenario, as the distinctly nonhuman Kaminoans speak of creating the "perfect" army, treating human bodies as a product, not a person. The similarities to Rossum's Universal Robots would appear to good to be accidental, of course.

Later, the battle droid manufacturing plant on Geonosis is explored, although in more hostile terms, but while the methods used are definitely more similar to a modern manufacturing plant, it is difficult to miss the relatively similar product produced for their war against the Republic. While the identification of the battle droids as robots is definitely easier, the similarities between the clone troopers and them are hard to miss. Both are created for war, faceless, uniform, expendable, and created for war. And they both follow their programming. While everyone expects the battle droids to ruthlessly and dispassionately kill as instructed, the horror as Order 66 is given to the clone army and their unquestioning obedience in turning their weapons against the Jedi is hard to ignore.
While both the droids and the clone troopers were given mostly background attention, it is interesting to note that the battle droids gained personality as the war progressed. While certainly lacking autonomy, the infamous "Roger Roger" was slowly transformed as the series went from the Phantom Menace to Revenge of the Sith, with more inflections and vocabulary added, perhaps in an attempt at creating a better soldier, although that would purely be speculation as it is not covered, and very likely for comedic effect. The clone troopers did not really experience a similar transformation, and so it is possible to see that the clone troopers were actually behind in their individuality development, at least compared to the battle droids.

While definitely not an exhaustive comparison, the parallels between the battle droids and the clone troopers are hard to ignore. While it is generally easy to distinguish the battle droids as a manufactured product, there seems almost a reluctance to see the clone troopers in a similar way. This seems to reflect some of the anxieties we discussed before, where the battle droids are not threatening until they are compared to the human clones, and how they were more similar than different, and how that connects to our perceptions of us as humans. It also brings up the questions about how the clones could be programmed in their behavior just the same as their robotic counterparts, and how that connects to larger society and the social and cultural influenced behavior we exhibit.

Ultron is Unstoppable

In one of the more inferior Marvel films, artificial intelligence is brought to light as a potential enemy to humans. Avengers: Age of Ultron, introduces a global defense program named "Ultron," which almost brings about the Armageddon. The program that was created was built with artificial intelligence that Tony Stark and Bruce Banner recovered from Loki's scepter. The unintentional consequence is that Ultron develops his own ideas about how to save Earth. In its point of view, humans need to be eliminated. Americans and people, in general, continue to overuse resources. In particular with oil, humans even start wars over it. Ultron, unlike some other contemporary examples of artificial intelligence, never really seems human in the movie. It does, however, question the idea of humanity through its criticisms of the human race. Because of Ultron's immense knowledge, it is capable of scheming against the protagonists of the film and is often one step ahead of the humans.

Ultron quintessentially represents the current pursuit in technology. Throughout American history, improvement has been the goal. In the 1800's, technology was developed with the purpose of improving efficiency and essentially with the goal of achieving a profit. Agricultural equipment and methods were improved, and factories were developed during the Industrial Revolution. In the 1900's with globalization beginning to become more of a factor, America began to concern itself more with being the most powerful nation. This is obvious in the Nuclear Arms Race and, soon after, the Space Race. Now, computers are all the rage, and American entrepreneurs want to further the abilities of their electronic counterparts. The characters in the Avengers show fear towards their immensely-superior friend Ultron, but this does not seem to be the case with Americans today. At least from my point of view, most people are excited about technological developments and want to see the day where their phones can do everything for them (they already can do a lot- maybe even too much.)