The idea of embodied virtuality is perceived very differently between the two examples given. The Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back” seems to support the ida of dualism, that the mind and the body are two separate entities that can survive without the other. However, The Stepford Wives seems to reject this idea, ultimately suggesting that the body and mind are wholly tied and codependent, not being able to exist without the other.
In “Be Right Back“, Ash dies and his wife Martha uses his social media, personal videos and photos to recreate her husband. First, it just texts, than it talks with his voice, and later it creates himself in his body. At one point, when he is still just a voice on the phone, Martha drops her phone, breaking it. However, Ash’s alternate self is still intact because, as he says, “I’m not in there. I’m remote. I’m in the cloud.” Proving that his consciousness is not biologically tied.
However, for most of the episode, it s unclear whether or not he is actually of the same consciousness as the actual human Ash. However, this is proved at the end of story. Martha tells the artificial Ash to jump off of a cliff, and at first he is going to comply, but then he begins pleading for her to let him live, declaring that he is scared to die and doesn’t want to leave her, implying that he has now taken on the actual consciousness he was initially made to imitate.
The Stepford Wives takes a much different view on the issue. The women in the small town go from being lively, independent woman to being boring, submissive housewives who do everything their husbands tell them to do. It is clear that in this story that when they are assimilated they are no longer themselves. This is summed up at one point when the protagonist, Joanna, “I won’t be here when you get back, don’t you see? There’ll be somebody with my name, and she’ll cook and clean like crazy, but she won’t take pictures, and she won’t be me!” That once the body dies, the mind goes with it. And sure enough, her very fears are confirmed at the end of the film, when she is replaced by her submissive android counterpoint.
So these two examples represent two very different views on the subject of Embodied Virtuality and Dualism. One supporting the idea of dualism and the other ejecting it in favor of a biological connection between mind and body. Oddly enough though, both have sexual connotations. In Stepford it’s more blatant, with one of the primary intentions of the Men’s Association being to sexually dominate their wives. But this also occurs, albeit less prominently, in Black Mirror. Martha initiates sex with the now embodied Ash, where she discovers that he is better at sex than the human Ash was, and they procede to have sex several times. Granted , unlike The Stepford Wives, sex was not the primary or even secondary goal in replacing Ash, but merely an aspect that came about as a result of that. It speaks volumes that in fiction a man would be replaced to fill n emotional void whereas a woman would be replaced for sex and power.
Works Cited:
- Black Mirror “Be Right Back” Brooker, Charlie. BBC. Television.
- The Stepford Wives. Screenplay by William Goldman. Paramount, 1975. Film.
- Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. The University of Chicago Press. 1999.