Tag: Hayles

For many years, as a society, we have witnessed human-like machines replacing jobs that were done by humans. This is referred to the “cybernetic body.” The cybernetic body can be defined as integrating mechanical systems with humanity. In the movies and plays that we have focused on so far in class, the 1975 movie Stepford Wives, the play R.U.R., and the television series Black Mirror, they all are similar but have different perspectives on the cybernetic body.

The 1975 film Stepford Wives took place in the suburbans in which the women’s liberation movement of the 1970’s showed the illustration of the gender conflicts. In the movie, everything was picture perfect, from the way the woman’s body structure was shaped, their clothes, and the way they carried themselves. Having the women turn into robots in the movie showed how much power the men wanted over them and the reality in living in a community like Stepford; white picket fences and the identical house. Stepford Wives relates to the term cybernetic because in the movie, all the women were changed into robots because there was a certain society norm in which all the women had to abide by. The men wanted all the control and in order for that to happen, they were all transformed into a human-like machine.

The play R.U.R. was written around the time World War I was ending. In the play, the robots were treated as slaves because the humans would abuse their privilege of having someone doing their work for them. Although they weren’t human, they played an important role in the people live because they did everything for them. Comparing R.U.R to Stepford Wives; there is a huge difference. Stepford Wives praised the idea of women being robots but in R.U.R., the robots were treated as trash to the point where the overall goal was to kill all the humans off. But then you had characters like Helena and Dr. Gall who actually wanted the robots to be treated fairly and with respect.

An episode of Black Mirror showed a grieving woman who had just lost her partner. Since she was having so much trouble with moving on, she thought by having his body recreated would bring back the happiness in her life. But little did she know that the little things that Ash (the robot) was doing made her realize that she would never have the real him back. For instance when she told him to get out, he obeyed but her response was “the real Ash wouldn’t had tried leaving.” This proves that no matter how hard a robot tries to be human, it would never happen. It can do the labors that humans do but having actually traits of a human would possibly never happen.

Stepford Wives, R.U.R., and Black Mirror are all examples of how the cybernetic body works. Whether its from men wanted to be dominant (Stepford Wives) or to robots having  human traits but not fully having human traits at the same time, it all comes down to the question on whether cybernetics are going to be apart of this society’s future. If so, what is the approach, would it be like Stepford Wives where the men were all dominant, R.U.R. where the robots were treated badly and they wanted all humans killed, or Black Mirror where they try to make robots have the physical characteristics of a human (reproduction)?

Cybernetic bodies are essentially humanoid machines created to resemble natural born human beings. In the movie Stepford Wives, the TV show Black Mirror, and the play Rossum’s Universal Robots there are cybernetic bodies that are portrayed in a very similar way. In R.U.R. and the episode of Black Mirror called “Be Right Back” the reason for the creation of these robots was to satisfy a human need for labor or companionship. The cyborgs in these works were meant to be slaves to human needs and desires. These two texts also reflect a very male-dominated society in which women are complacent and placed in stereotypical roles. The similar themes in these texts make it easier for a viewer/reader to analyze a common theme that is predicting what it may be like if cybernetic bodies were to be mass produced in our world.

In Black Mirror a woman creates a cybernetic body of her deceased partner in an attempt to ease her own grieving. This cyborg was created solely for the purpose of fulfilling her every need.  It wanted to do anything she wanted in order to please her. The cyborg meant to resemble Martha’s partner, Ash, constantly asks her questions to measure how much he is pleasing her and serving her the way he was made to. He says things like “does this bother you?” 0r “is this something [Ash] would say?” in order to ensure that he is fulfilling his purpose, which was ultimately to replace Martha’s missing lover. This is very similar to the cyborgs that were created in the movie Stepford Wives who were also created to please their husbands. In Stepford Wives the robot women are meant to replace the men’s initial wives and be a more perfect carbon copy of them. They cooked, cleaned, dressed modestly, took care of the children, and did anything that their husbands wanted them to do. They even had bodies that were altered to be more perfect, just like in Black Mirror. “You look like him, on a good day,” is the way that Martha described her cyborg Ash. To parallel these two works, the play R.U.R. also emphasizes that the ultimate purpose of robots is labor. The robots in this text were all created to serve as cheap laborers as a replacement to humans in the workforce. In the play, Domin states “[…] within the next ten years, Rossum’s Universal Robots will produce so much wheat, so much cloth, so much everything that things will no longer have any value. Everyone will be able to take as much as he needs. There’ll be no more poverty. Yes, people will be out of work, but by then there’ll be no work left to be done. Everything will be done by living machines. People will do only what they enjoy. They will live only to perfect themselves. (prologue.317). The robots in all three of these stories have been created to serve the needs of humans. This is thought provoking because it is a realistic view on why we as a human society would want to create cybernetic bodies.

Gender stereotypes and sexism are also very evident in R.U.R. and Stepford Wives. The main characters of the play consist of mostly men, with only two women out of all of the characters. The women in this play are looked down upon, in fact the main female lead Helena seems to only be viewed as a potential wife to all the men in the play. The other female character, Nana, is also overlooked although she seems to be one of the most logical and intelligent characters as she is right about many tragedies and mistakes that occur throughout the story. None of the men in the play listen to the women and they are very overshadowed, almost an afterthought. At a point along the play Helena even says “why don’t you ever let me finish my sentences?” (prolougue.31) to Domin which emphasizes the fact that these men never let her get a word or thought in. Even the way the characters are named is sexist in some way. The name Domin can be viewed to mean “dominant,” as he is the figure in the play that is constantly attempting to be dominant over Helena. The character name “Nana” is also very significant as this is one of two female characters in a play and she is named in a way that makes her seem like a maid or servant. These same sexist undertones are present in Stepford Wives as the men of Stepford have basically decided that the ideal woman is one that performs domestic duties and lives to please her husband. The men in this text recreate their women to have ideal flawless bodies, faces, and manners. The cyborg women are not dominant or in powerful positions in society. It is interesting to contrast the sexist undertones and gender roles present in these two works when cybernetic bodies get involved. They raise the question of whether the creation of cyborgs could lead to a gender divide among society that is even deeper and more severe than it is right now.

Recently in history, artificial intelligence has been a big theory of concern among people. The concept of human-like robots is a new and unfamiliar idea and it has a tendency to make people uncomfortable. It has been an interesting experience to read and watch the different accounts of what people believe these creatures will be like in the future. We have gotten many different examples through different mediums and each one have been both unique, yet still similar in some ways to the other examples we have been studying. Throughout all of the works we have read in this class, there have been similarities and differences about the cybernetic bodies between each of the different mediums. The three different works I will be focusing on are the movie, Stepford Wives, the play R.U.R. and the television episode of Black Mirror.

In the movie, Stepford Wives, the women in the town of Stepford have all been replaced by the “ideal wife” the men in the town dreamt up. All of the women once they have been replaced with their robot counterpart are obedient, have the perfect, ideal body, genuinely enjoy household work such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children, and grocery shopping. The women do not have careers or jobs outside of the home and they are the paper definition of the “perfect woman”. The men in Stepford have clearly been working on the concept of creating the perfect wife for sometime and they have all of the means to do so. The men’s club is used to have the opportunity to draw perfect likenesses of the women to be used for the designing of the robots they also get a recording of the women’s voices to use. The fact that the men in this town see nothing wrong with killing and replacing their wives shocks me. Why would anyone want to give up the option of having a real conversation for someone who does the work of a maid but is still willing to have sex with them and please them in any way they can. The fact that this is what the movie suggests is all men care about speaks loud and clear.

In the episode from Black Mirror that we watched in class, the idea behind the intent for the cyborg is to aid in the grieving processes. This idea seems more humane than in Stepford Wives due to the fact that when Martha’s husband dies and she has been communicating with a computer program that used information about Ash, her deceased husband, she is fully aware the person is not real. And, when she reaches the point of the cyborg being introduced, she still knows he is not the real Ash, just an incredible likeness. Throughout the episode, the cyborg does or says things that upset Martha due to the fact the reaction was not what Ash would have actually said or done in that situation. This is different from the men in Stepford Wives because they wanted their wives to be obedient, they wanted them to change and be different which is why they killed and replaced them with cyborgs in the first place. However, Martha did not have a choice in the matter and if she had the option she would prefer the real Ash to the fake one who wishes to please her anyway she wishes. Both of the cyborgs in Stepford Wives and Black Mirror are obedient, they are lifelike and they can do anything their human version could do, they just do not have the thought processes of humans or the ability to react certain ways to things. For example, in Black Mirror, Martha becomes overwhelmed by the differences between cyborg Ash and the real man he was and she orders the cyborg to jump off of a cliff, Ash is willing to do so because it is what she asked of him. This upsets Martha more because she knows the real Ash would have fought her on it. In Stepford Wives, Joanna says that she bleeds when she cuts herself and asks Bobbie’s counterpart if she bleeds and stabs her in the stomach. Bobbie says, “Joanna, how could you do a thing like that?”(Katherine Ross and Paula Prentiss, 1975) and pulls the knife out of her stomach. Then Bobbie’s robot starts acting strange and repeating the same movements over and over, showing that her systems were malfunctioning.

In the play, R.U.R., the robots are very humanlike once again. When Helena first meets Sulla, she cannot believe that she is not human. In the play, Domin asks Sulla to let Helena have a look at her, “HELENA: (stands and offers her hand) Pleased to meet you. It must be very hard for you out here, cut off from the rest of the world.

SULLA: I do not know the rest of the world Miss Glory. Please sit down.

HELENA: (sits) Where are you from?

SULLA: From here, the factory.

HELENA: Oh, you were born here.

SULLA: Yes I was made here.

HELENA: (startled) What?

DOMIN: (laughing) Sulla isn’t a person, Miss Glory, she’s a robot.

HELENA: Oh, please forgive me…”(Capek, 1921). This encounter shows how these robots are much like the ones in both Stepford Wives, and the episode of Black Mirror we watched in class. The robots are also very content with being left to do their work. They do not seem to mind it too much, however, in the play, the robots realize they are sick of being ordered around and as a result they decide to kill every human on earth. They succeed in this plan as well, they manage to kill every human on earth, except one. They decide to let Alquist, the builder and chief of construction, live because, like them, he works with his hands. These robots are different in that they have thoughts and minds of their own and they use them to decide to kill the humans. In the end, Robot Helena and Robot Primus develop feelings toward one another and Alquist leaves the world to them knowing they will be the start of the next race on earth.

All in all, the robots tend to share a lot of the same characteristics between the different examples we have studied in class. The largest difference between the movie, play and episode would be that the robots in R.U.R. Revolt and kill the humans for the way they are treated. In Black Mirror and Stepford Wives, the robots do not seem like they would have the means to want to change the way they are, they know nothing else and are built in a way that they do not have minds of their own. The thought that one day these creatures could be considered the “norm” is an interesting concept to grasp. It is even more interesting to imagine which kind of cyborg they would most likely resemble. I think that, out of the three we’ve most recently looked at, the cyborgs from the episode of Black Mirror would be the kind I would want to see. The other two seem too odd for society. The damage that could be done from either one of those cyborgs is not something pleasant I would like to imagine.

Cybernetic bodies are forms of technology that are created to essentially replicate and replace human activity and humans in general. It can also be said that cybernetic bodies create a “perfect” society that makes one gender more dominant than before and allows for others to control them. Cyborgs that are created by other people tend to be autopoietic, meaning that humans can alter and replicate the composition of something or someone to make the cyborg any way that they want. This can be seen through various examples such as Stepford Wives, a movie, R.U.R., a play, and Black Mirror, a show.

In Stepford Wives, the husbands wanted to create a perfect and submissive housewife. They ended up doing this by having a committee observe their wives and the house that they lived in to then replicate the appearance of their wife and create a cyborg version that bases their life around cleaning, cooking, and other house work. The creation of the cyborgs represented the reflexivity or thoughts and values of the husbands, which is usually a “condensed image of both imagination and material reality” (Haraway 292). It also represented the gender and labor roles that were seen as more ideal during this time period. At this time more women were becoming interested in having their own jobs in fields that once were dominated by men; however, the men wanted their wives to have more of a 1950’s mindset where they stayed at home and did stereotypical housework. The men gained more power and control over the wives by replacing them and making them do whatever they wanted, which relates back to the autopoietic mindset.

The domination of women continues to be seen in other works like R.U.R. In this play, Domin, a main character, is portrayed as condescending and is constantly interrupting Helena, another main character, and never seems to let her have her own thoughts. This play only has two women who live inside of the world, which can be viewed as a major problem. Both Helena and Nana face discrimination and are seen as less than everyone else on a regular basis. Helena was forced into a marriage and Nana gets overlooked. The male figures seem to be running the show and never want to listen to what the women have to say or tell them regarding the world they live in and the potential of a cyborg apocalypse, which ends up happening and kills off everyone but one person. The idea of dominating women and making them lesser beings seems to be a norm not only in the society portrayed in this play, but also as a norm between all of the works that we have read so far. Like Lennard J. Davis mentions in his article, “the idea of a norm is less a condition of human nature than it is a feature of a certain kind of society” (Davis 3). Davis poses the question on whether male dominance is just human nature or if it’s a part of society.

As far as Stepford Wives and R.U.R., it appears that dominance is a part of society and rules the way that people live. “Abstraction and illusion rule in knowledge, dominations rules in practice” (Haraway 298). Male dominance was being depicted in these shows, plays, and movies because of it being a norm in our actual society not just a fictional society. These two works are very similar. In both, men try to control the way that the women are viewed and the amount of power they have. Helena, Nana, and all of the Stepford Wives experience that same kind of discrimination and the same kind of power loss. Joanna, one of the wives in Stepford Wives, gets chased by her husband who claims that he just wants to take her to bed, but he’s actually trying to catch her in order to kill her off and replace her. She is also told several times that her passion for photography and art isn’t important. Helena and Nana also face similar situations because they both end up being overlooked and told that they would never have power in their society.

Black Mirror; however, is similar in some ways, but very different in others. The episode that we watched was about a husband and wife. The husband unfortunately dies in a car accident and the wife is left alone, but eventually has a cyborg version of her husband created. There aren’t many labor or gender roles that are portrayed in this episode, but there are a few. When Ash, the husband, arrives in cyborg form, the wife expects him to be exactly like the human version. When he ends up not being as emotional and reactive, the wife gets upset and demands that he acts a certain way. The wife wants cyborg Ash to still do the same things that he did before he died such as housework and being the dominant figure during sex. Since it is a cyborg version of a human, it will never be the same. The wife wanted cyborg Ash to fill an empty spot that she was left with, but wasn’t ready to handle the differences between the two.

“In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals” (Hayles 3). Cyborg Ash, in this sense has no difference from human Ash and is essentially doing his job, which is to fulfill a purpose for the wife. From what Hayles is saying, cyborgs are no different than humans. They all have a purpose and should be treated equally. While Black Mirror may not touch on many gender roles, it slightly touches on labor roles in the sense that Ash, both cyborg and human, are seen as a male figure whose sole purpose is to be a husband, help do major housework, make the women feel loved, and please her. However, like mentioned above, when the wife felt as though it was a bad idea to create a cyborg version of Ash since he wasn’t exactly the same, she became frustrated and upset because she wasn’t getting her way.

Even through cybernetic bodies there are gender and labor roles that are being portrayed. Whether it’s men that want to be known as the most dominant and powerful group, men trying to create the perfect woman, or a wife trying to recreate their husband, there are specific qualities that everyone is looking for. Being seen as less and having someone replace you with a cyborg can be scary, just like in Stepford Wives or even R.U.R.; however, if this were to happen, they shouldn’t be treated as anything less than human. Black Mirror, R.U.R., and Stepford Wives all delve into cybernetics and social issues that were seen during specific time periods. With all of these examples we can look deeper and learn more about us as a society while also questioning whether or not cybernetic bodies are going to be part of our future and whether or not they should be treated equally.