In this class, we have reviewed multiple different perspectives on humanoid robots. In each of these, the robots, or androids, are portrayed differently. They exist for different reasons and each behave in different ways. What all of these robots have in common however, is that they all are not what they initially seem to be. In this essay, the cybernetic bodies from Stepford Wives, R.U.R., and Black Mirror will be compared.
Stepford Wives is set in the 1970’s in a suburban neighborhood. When Joanna Eberhart and her family move to the area, Joanna immediately realizes that there is something strange going on with the women in the town. All they seem to care about is doing housework. She realizes that the men behave strangely as well. They are all part of an association that meets every night. Joanna eventually discovers that the men have replaced all the women in Stepford with robot replicas. The men’s motive behind this is they want their women to be perfect housewives. They want them to be well-behaved, cook, clean, and take care of the children. The men don’t make exact physical replicas of the women, they enhance their features to make them more attractive. They want to have women that praise and worship them and always tell them that they look good. The cybernetic bodies in Stepford Wives are physical robot copies of the women they resemble, but they lose all of what they previously were. They hardly have emotions and all they care about is housework. This idea of having robots represented as women is interesting because as Hayles states, “feminist theorists have pointed out that it has historically been constructed as a white European male”. We’re used to seeing humanoid robots as white males so it’s a new concept to see them portrayed as women.
R.U.R. is set in a dystopian future Europe where there exists a factory on an island dedicated to creating robot laborers. The only humans on the island are the men who run the factory. Helena, a female human, comes to the factory to attempt to liberate the robots. She feels that they are being oppressed by not being given a soul. One of the engineers eventually gives souls to a few robots which leads to their uprising against the humans. The only difference that could exist from one robot to another is sex. Female robots fulfill traditionally female roles such as secretaries while all the males are physical laborers. The initial motive behind creating these robots was so that humans would never need to worry about work again. The robots would handle all the labor while humans could relax and discuss philosophy. The robots in R.U.R. were never real people. The only resemblance they bear to humans is their physical appearance and their version of a soul. They are able to feel some sort of empathy, as shown in the ending of the play when two robots feel empathy towards one another when they’re each threatened with death, but they are not human at all.
The episode “Be Right Back” of Black Mirror is about Martha, a woman who loses her boyfriend Ash to a car accident. Devastated by her loss, she recreates his intelligence in a robot body. Based off of only his social media accounts and everything he had stored in his phone, a version of him is uploaded into a robot. This relates to Hayles’ observation that “the posthuman view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines”. Ash’s intelligence in seamlessly uploaded into an exact physical robot copy of himself. At first Martha is shocked and pleased with him, but she begins to realize that he isn’t the man she had once known. While parts of him still remain, such as his appearance and some of his personality, he has no depth or history at all. Martha tries to dispose of him, but eventually locks him in her attic. Martha’s motive behind creating this robot is so that she could have Ash with her, even after he was dead. When she realizes that the robot version of her late boyfriend is nothing like the real him, she is devastated.
In each of these examples, robots are created to benefit humans in some way. In Stepford Wives, they are meant to please and praise the man that created them. In R.U.R., they are meant to replace all human labor so that mankind can reach their philosophical potential. In “Be Right Back”, the robot is meant to ease the suffering of grieving Martha. However, in each of these examples the robots do not completely fulfill their desired intention. The female robots in Stepford Wives start to malfunction, for example, Bobbie begins to repeat the same phrases and break plates. Once the robots in R.U.R. are given souls, they start a revolution and kill all humans except for one. In “Be Right Back”, the robot version of Ash does not have the depth and history that Martha remembers from the real Ash and she is distraught.
The robots in Stepford Wives, R.U.R., and “Be Right Back” all exist to better human existence. Initially, they all fulfill their potential but as the stories progress, they each begin to deviate from the original intention. The either begin to malfunction, start an uprising, or reveal that they are not what they once appeared to be. In all cases, they cost more than they were worth.
Works Cited:
- Hayles, Katherine. “How We Became Posthuman.” dropbox, https://www.dropbox.com/s/0u9yaj6wtcgm1d7/Hayles-Posthuman-excerpts.pdf?dl=0. Accessed 1 November 2017.
- Capek, Karel. R.U.R. 1921.
- Stepford Wives. Bryan Forbes. 1975. Film
- Be Right Back. Owen Harris. 2013. Television Episode